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Title: Greatest wonders of the world
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Language: English
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THE GREATEST
WONDERS
OF THE
WORLD
[Illustration]
[Illustration: MER DE GLACE, MONT BLANC. _Frontispiece._]
GREATEST
WONDERS
of the WORLD
_AS SEEN AND DESCRIBED
BY FAMOUS WRITERS_
EDITED AND TRANSLATED
By ESTHER SINGLETON
AUTHOR OF
“TURRETS, TOWERS AND TEMPLES,” “GREAT PICTURES,”
“PARIS,” AND “A GUIDE TO THE OPERA,” AND TRANSLATOR
OF THE MUSIC DRAMAS OF RICHARD WAGNER
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD
LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor
Nos. 91 to 115 BIBLE HOUSE
Copyright, 1900, By Dodd, Mead & Co.
Copyright, 1906, By Louis Klopsch
Preface
In my former collections of objects of interest to the tourist, I
have confined myself to masterpieces of painting and architecture.
The success of those books has encouraged me to carry the idea still
further and make a compilation of pleasurable and striking impressions
produced upon thoughtful travellers by a contemplation of the wonders
of nature.
The range is somewhat limited, for I have confined myself to the
description of the grand, the curious and the awe-inspiring in nature,
leaving the beauties of landscape for future treatment. Those who miss
the Lakes of Killarney or the vine-clad hills of the Rhine therefore
will remember that in the following pages I have purposely neglected
beautiful scenery.
The professional traveller, by which I mean the emissary of a
scientific society, appears very seldom here, because it is the effect
produced rather than the topographical or detailed description that
I have sought. I hope this book will appeal to that large class of
readers that takes pleasure in travelling by imagination, as well as to
those who have actually seen the objects described and pictured here.
It is interesting to note the difference between the old and the modern
travellers. The day of the Marco Polos has passed; the traveller of
old seemed to feel himself under an obligation to record marvels and
report trifling details, while the modern traveller is more concerned
about describing or analyzing the effect produced upon himself. He
feels it encumbent upon him to exhibit æsthetic appreciation. For this
tendency we have to thank Gautier and his humble follower D’Amicis.
Thackeray and Dickens write of their journeyings in a holiday spirit;
Kipling is a stimulating combination of the flippant and the devout;
Shelley is quite up to date; and Fromentin and Gautier always speak
in terms of the palette. Thus we get an additional pleasure from
the varied literary treatment of nature’s wonders--apart from their
intrinsic interest.
Though there is a great deal of information in the following pages, I
have generally avoided what is simply instructive; my aim has been to
suit all tastes.
For the kind permission to use _The Mammoth Cave_, _Fuji-San_ and _The
Antarctic_, and _The Yellowstone_, my best thanks are due to Messrs.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co., and Mr. Rudyard
Kipling.
E. S.
New York, _September, 1900_.
Contents
The Blue Grotto of Capri 1
Alexandre Dumas.
Mount Blanc and Chamouni 7
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The Dead Sea 15
Pierre Loti.
Mount Vesuvius 25
Charles Dickens.
The Falls of the Rhine 39
Victor Hugo.
In Arctic and Antarctic Seas 46
I. Lord Dufferin.
II. W. G. Burn Murdoch.
The Desert of Sahara 55
Eugène Fromentin.
Fingal’s Cave 62
I. Sir Walter Scott.
II. John Keats.
In the Himalayas 71
G. W. Steevens.
Niagara Falls 79
I. Anthony Trollope.
II. Charles Dickens.
Fuji-San 90
Sir Edwin Arnold.
The Cedars of Lebanon 98
Alphonse de Lamartine.
The Giant’s Causeway 103
William Makepeace Thackeray.
The Great Glacier of the Selkirks 113
Douglas Sladen.
Mauna Loa 118
Lady Brassey.
Trollhätta 129
Hans Christian Andersen.
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado 134
C. F. Gordon-Cumming.
The Rock of Gibraltar 139
Augustus J. C. Hare.
Thingvalla 144
Lord Dufferin.
Land’s End and Logan Rock 152
John Ayrton Paris.
Mount Hekla 160
Sir Richard F. Burton.
Victoria Falls 169
David Livingstone.
The Dragon-Tree of Orotava 179
Alexander von Humboldt.
Mount Shasta 183
J. W. Boddam-Wheatham.
The Lagoons of Venice 189
John Ruskin.
The Cataracts of the Nile 199
Amelia B. Edwards.
In the Alps 205
Théophile Gautier.
The Vale of Kashmir 212
Andrew Wilson.
The Lake of Pitch 220
Charles Kingsley.
The Lachine Rapids 228
Douglas Sladen.
Lake Rotorua 232
H. R. Haweis.
The Big Trees of California 239
C. F. Gordon-Cumming.
Gersoppa Falls 248
W. M. Yool.
Etna 254
Alexandre Dumas.
Pike’s Peak and the Garden of the Gods 263
Iza Duffus Hardy.
The Great Geysir of Iceland 268
Sir Richard F. Burton.
The Rapids of the Danube 275
William Beattie.
The Mammoth Cave 283
Bayard Taylor.
Stromboli 295
Alexandre Dumas.
The High Woods 302
Charles Kingsley.
The Yo-semité Valley 323
C. F. Gordon-Cumming.
The Golden Horn 342
Alphonse de Lamartine.
The Yellowstone 352
Rudyard Kipling.
Illustrations
Mer de Glace, Mont Blanc _Switzerland_ _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Blue Grotto _Italy_ 4
Chamouni, Mer de Glace _Switzerland_ 12
The Dead Sea _Palestine_ 20
Mount Vesuvius _Italy_ 28
The Falls of the Rhine _Germany_ 40
An Ice Floe _Antarctic_ 52
The Desert of Sahara _Africa_ 60
Fingal’s Cave _Scotland_ 64
The Himilayas _India_ 72
Niagara Falls _North America_ 80
Niagara Falls in Winter _North America_ 88
Fuji-San _Japan_ 92
The Cedars of Lebanon _Syria_ 100
The Giant’s Loom, Giant’s Causeway _Ireland_ 104
The Keystone, Giant’s Causeway _Ireland_ 108
The Great Glacier of the Selkirks _Canada_ 116
Lava Cascade Flow _Hawaii_ 124
Trollhätta _Sweden_ 132
Canyon of the Colorado _North America_ 136
The Rock of Gibraltar _Spain_ 140
The Rock of Gibraltar _Spain_ 144
Thingvalla _Iceland_ 148
Rocking Stones, Land’s End _England_ 156
Falls of the Zambesi _Africa_ 172
The Dragon-Tree _Teneriffe_ 180
Mount Shasta _North America_ 184
The City of the Lagoons _Italy_ 192
First Cataract of the Nile _Africa_ 200
Mont Blanc _Switzerland_ 208
Aiguille du Dru, Alps _Switzerland_ 210
The Vale of Kashmir _India_ 216
The Lachine Rapids _Canada_ 228
Lake Rotorua _New Zealand_ 232
The Big Trees of California _North America_ 240
Gersoppa Falls _India_ 248
Etna _Sicily_ 256
The Garden of the Gods _America_ 264
The Iron Gates of the Danube _Turkey_ 280
The High Woods _South America_ 304
The Yo-semité Valley _North America_ 328
The Golden Horn _Turkey_ 344
Costing Springs, Yellowstone _North America_ 352
WONDERS OF THE WORLD
THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI
(_ITALY_)
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
We were surrounded by five and twenty boatmen, each of whom exerted
himself to get our custom: these were the _ciceroni_ of the Blue
Grotto. I chose one and Jadin another, for you must have a boat and a
boatman to get there, the opening being so low and so narrow that one
cannot enter unless in a very small boat.
The sea was calm, nevertheless, even in this beautiful weather it broke
with such force against the belt of rocks surrounding the island that
our barks bounded as if in a tempest, and we were obliged to lie down
and cling to the sides to avoid being thrown into the sea. At last,
after three-quarters of an hour of navigation, during which we skirted
about one-sixth of the island’s circumference, our boatmen informed
us of our arrival. We looked about us, but we could not perceive the
slightest suspicion of a grotto until we made out with difficulty a
little black, circular point above the foaming waves: this was the
orifice of the vault.
The first sight of this entrance was not reässuring: you could not
understand how it was possible to clear it without breaking your
head against the rocks. As the question seemed important enough for
discussion, I put it to my boatman, who replied that we were perfectly
right in remaining seated now, but presently we must lie down to avoid
the danger. We had not come so far as this to flinch. It was my turn
first; my boatman advanced, rowing with precaution and indicating that,
accustomed as he was to the work, he could not regard it as exempt
from danger. As for me, from the position that I occupied, I could see
nothing but the sky; soon I felt myself rising upon a wave, the boat
slid down it rapidly, and I saw nothing but a rock that seemed for a
second to weigh upon my breast. Then, suddenly, I found myself in a
grotto so marvellous that I gave a cry of astonishment, and I jumped up
so quickly to look about me that I nearly capsized the boat.
In reality, before me, around me, above me, under me, and behind me
were marvels of which no description can give an idea, and before
which, the brush itself, the grand preserver of human memories, is
powerless. You must imagine an immense cavern entirely of azure, just
as if God had amused himself by making a pavilion with fragments of
the firmament; water so limpid, so transparent, and so pure that you
seemed floating upon dense air; from the ceiling stalactites hanging
like inverted pyramids; in the background a golden sand mingled with
submarine vegetation; along the walls which were bathed by the water
there were trees of coral with irregular and dazzling branches; at
the sea-entrance, a tiny point--a star--let in the half-light that
illumines this fairy palace; finally, at the opposite end, a kind of
stage arranged like the throne of a splendid goddess who has chosen one
of the wonders of the world for her baths.
At this moment the entire grotto assumed a deeper hue, darkening as the
earth does when a cloud passes across the sun at brightest noontide.
It was caused by Jadin, who entered in his turn and whose boat closed
the mouth of the cavern. Soon he was thrown near me by the force of the
wave that had lifted him up; the grotto recovered its beautiful shade
of azure; and his boat stopped tremblingly near mine, for this sea, so
agitated and obstreperous outside, breathes here as serenely and gently
as a lake.
In all probability the Blue Grotto was unknown to the ancients. No
poet speaks of it, and certainly, with their marvellous imagination,
the Greeks would not have neglected making of it the palace of
some sea-goddess with a musical name and leaving some story to us.
Suetonius, who describes for us with so much detail the Thermes and
baths of Tiberius, would certainly have devoted a few words to this
natural pool which the old emperor would doubtless have chosen as
the theatre for some of his monstrous pleasures. No, the ocean must
have been much higher at that epoch than it is at present, and this
marvellous sea-cave was known only to Amphitrite and her court of
Sirens, Naïads, and Tritons.
But sometimes Amphitrite is angered with the indiscreet travellers who
follow her into this retreat, just as Diana was when surprised by
Actæon. At such times the sea rises suddenly and closes the entrance
so effectually that those who have entered cannot leave. In this case,
they must wait until the wind, which has veered from east to west,
changes to south or north; and it has even happened that visitors,
who have come to spend twenty minutes in the Blue Grotto, have had to
remain two, three, and, even four, days. Therefore, the boatmen always
carry with them a certain portion of a kind of biscuit to nourish the
prisoners in the event of such an accident. With regard to water,
enough filters through two or three places in the grotto to prevent any
fear of thirst. I bestowed a few reproaches upon my boatman for having
waited so long to apprise me of so disquieting a fact; but he replied
with a charming _naïveté_:
“_Dame! excellence!_ If we told this to the visitors at first, only
half would come, and that would make the boatmen angry.”
I admit that after this accidental information, I was seized with
a certain uneasiness, on account of which I found the Blue Grotto
infinitely less delightful than it had appeared to me at first.
Unfortunately, my boatman had told me these details just at the moment
when I was undressing to bathe in this water, which is so beautiful and
transparent that to attract the fisherman it would not need the song
of Goethe’s poetical Undine. We were unwilling to waste any time in
preparations, and, wishing to enjoy ourselves as much as possible, we
both dived.
[Illustration: BLUE GROTTO, CAPRI.]
It is only when you are five or six feet below the surface of the
water that you can appreciate its incredible purity. Notwithstanding
the liquid that envelops the diver, no detail escapes him; he sees
everything,--the tiniest shell at the base of the smallest stalactite
of the arch, just as clearly as if through the air; only each object
assumes a deeper hue.
At the end of a quarter of an hour, we clambered back into our boats
and dressed ourselves without having apparently attracted one of the
invisible nymphs of this watery palace, who would not have hesitated,
if the contrary had been the case, to have kept us here twenty-four
hours at least. The fact was humiliating; but neither of us pretended
to be a Telemachus, and so we took our departure. We again crouched in
the bottom of our respective canoes, and we went out of the Blue Grotto
with the same precautions and the same good luck with which we had
entered it: only it was six minutes before we could open our eyes; the
ardent glare of the sun blinded us. We had not gone more than a hundred
feet away from the spot we had visited before it seemed to have melted
into a dream.
We landed again at the port of Capri. While we were settling our
account with our boatmen, Pietro pointed out a man lying down in the
sunshine with his face in the sand. This was the fisherman who nine or
ten years ago discovered the Blue Grotto while looking for _frutti di
mare_ along the rocks. He went immediately to the authorities of the
island to make his discovery known, and asked the privilege of being
the only one allowed to conduct visitors to the new world he had found,
and to have revenue from those visitors. The authorities, who saw in
this discovery a means of attracting strangers to their island, agreed
to the second proposition, and since that time this new Christopher
Columbus has lived upon his income and does not trouble to conduct the
visitors himself; this explains why he can sleep as we see him. He is
the most envied individual in the island.
As we had seen all that Capri offered us in the way of wonders, we
stepped into our launch and regained the _Speronare_, which, profiting
by several puffs of the land breeze, set sail and gently glided off in
the direction of Palermo.
_Le Speronare: Impressions de Voyage_ (Paris, 1836).
MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI
(_SWITZERLAND_)
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni--Mont Blanc was before
us--the Alps, with their innumerable glaciers on high all around,
closing in the complicated windings of the single vale--forests
inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty--intermingled
beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road, or receded, whilst
lawns of such verdure as I have never seen before occupied these
openings, and gradually became darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc
was before us, but it was covered with cloud; its base furrowed with
dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright,
part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds
at intervals on high. I never knew--I never imagined what mountains
were before. The immensity of these aërial summits excited, when
they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of extatic wonder,
not unallied to madness. And remember this was all one scene, it all
pressed home to our regard and our imagination. Though it embraced a
vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the bright
blue sky seemed to overhang our path; the ravine, clothed with gigantic
pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring
of the untameable Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard
above--all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such
impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature was
the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of
the divinest.
As we entered the valley of Chamouni (which in fact may be considered
as a continuation of those which we have followed from Bonneville and
Cluses) clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of 6,000
feet from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal not only Mont
Blanc, but the other _aiguilles_, as they call them here, attached and
subordinate to them. We were travelling along the valley, when suddenly
we heard a sound as of the burst of smothered thunder rolling above;
yet there was something earthly in the sound, that told us it could not
be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the mountain
opposite, from whence the sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the
smoke of its path among the rocks, and continued to hear at intervals
the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of a torrent, which it
displaced, and presently we saw its tawny-coloured waters also spread
themselves over the ravine, which was their couch.
We did not, as we intended, visit the _Glacier de Boisson_ to-day,
although it descends within a few minutes’ walk of the road, wishing
to survey it at least when unfatigued. We saw this glacier which comes
close to the fertile plain, as we passed, its surface was broken
into a thousand unaccountable figures: conical and pyramidical
crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height, rise from its
surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendour, overhang the
woods and meadows of the vale. This glacier winds upwards from the
valley, until it joins the masses of frost from which it was produced
above, winding through its own ravine like a bright belt flung over
the black region of pines. There is more in all these scenes than mere
magnitude of proportion: there is a majesty of outline; there is an
awful grace in the very colours which invest these wonderful shapes--a
charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even from the reality
of their unutterable greatness.
Yesterday morning we went to the source of the Arveiron. It is
about a league from this village; the river rolls forth impetuously
from an arch of ice, and spreads itself in many streams over a vast
space of the valley, ravaged and laid bare by its inundations. The
glacier by which its waters are nourished, overhangs this cavern and
the plain, and the forests of pine which surround it, with terrible
precipices of solid ice. On the other side rises the immense glacier of
Montanvert, fifty miles in extent, occupying a chasm among mountains
of inconceivable height, and of forms so pointed and abrupt, that they
seem to pierce the sky. From this glacier we saw as we sat on a rock,
close to one of the streams of the Arveiron, masses of ice detach
themselves from on high, and rush with a loud dull noise into the vale.
The violence of their fall turned them into powder, which flowed over
the rocks in imitation of waterfalls, whose ravines they usurped and
filled.
In the evening I went with Ducrée, my guide, the only tolerable person
I have seen in this country, to visit the glacier of Boisson. This
glacier, like that of Montanvert, comes close to the vale, overhanging
the green meadows and the dark woods with the dazzling whiteness
of its precipices and pinnacles, which are like spires of radiant
crystal covered with a network of frosted silver. These glaciers flow
perpetually into the valley, ravaging in their slow but irresistible
progress the pastures and the forests which surround them, performing
a work of desolation in ages, which a river of lava might accomplish
in an hour, but far more irretrievably; for where the ice has once
descended, the hardiest plant refuses to grow; if even, as in some
extraordinary instances, it should recede after its progress has once
commenced. The glaciers perpetually move onward, at the rate of a
foot each day, with a motion that commences at the spot where, on the
boundaries of perpetual congelation, they are produced by the freezing
of the waters which arise from the partial melting of the eternal
snows. They drag with them from the regions whence they derive their
origin, all the ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, and immense
accumulations of sand and stones. These are driven onwards by the
irresistible stream of solid ice; and when they arrive at a declivity
of the mountain, sufficiently rapid, roll down, scattering ruin. I saw
one of these rocks which had descended in the spring (winter here is
the season of silence and safety) which measured forty feet in every
direction.
The verge of a glacier, like that of Boisson, presents the most vivid
image of desolation that it is possible to conceive. No one dares to
approach it; for the enormous pinnacles of ice which perpetually fall,
are perpetually reproduced. The pines of the forest, which bound it at
one extremity, are overthrown and shattered to a wide extent at its
base. There is something inexpressibly dreadful in the aspect of the
few branchless trunks, which, nearest to the ice rifts, still stand
in the uprooted soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and
stones. Within this last year, these glaciers have advanced three
hundred feet into the valley. Saussure, the naturalist, says, that they
have their periods of increase and decay: the people of the country
hold an opinion entirely different; but as I judge, more probable. It
is agreed by all, that the snow on the summit of Mont Blanc and the
neighbouring mountains perpetually augments, and that ice, in the form
of glaciers, subsists without melting in the valley of Chamouni during
its transient and variable summer. If the snow which produces this
glacier must augment, and the heat of the valley is no obstacle to the
perpetual existence of such masses of ice as have already descended
into it, the consequence is obvious; the glaciers must augment and will
subsist, at least until they have overflowed this vale.
I will not pursue Buffon’s sublime but gloomy theory--that this globe
which we inhabit will at some future period be changed into a mass of
frost by the encroachment of the polar ice, and of that produced on the
most elevated points of the earth. Do you, who assert the supremacy
of Ahriman, imagine him throned among these desolating snows, among
these palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible
magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he casts
around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation, avalanches,
torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, at
once the proof and symbols of his reign;--add to this, the degradation
of the human species--who in these regions are half-deformed or
idiotic, and most of whom are deprived of anything that can excite
interest or admiration. This is a part of the subject more mournful and
less sublime; but such as neither the poet nor the philosopher should
disdain to regard.
This morning we departed on the promise of a fine day, to visit the
glacier of Montanvert. In that part where it fills a slanting valley,
it is called the Sea of Ice. This valley is 950 toises, or 7,600 feet
above the level of the sea. We had not proceeded far before the rain
began to fall, but we persisted until we had accomplished more than
half of our journey, when we returned, wet through.
* * * * *
Chamouni, July 25th.
We have returned from visiting the glacier of Montanvert, or as it is
called, the Sea of Ice, a scene in truth of dizzying wonder. The path
that winds to it along the side of a mountain, now clothed with pines,
now intersected with snowy hollows, is wide and steep. The cabin of
Montanvert is three leagues from Chamouni, half of which distance is
performed on mules, not so sure footed, but that on the first day the
one I rode fell in what the guides call a _mauvais pas_, so that I
narrowly escaped being precipitated down the mountain. We passed over
a hollow covered with snow, down which vast stones are accustomed to
roll. One had fallen the preceding day, a little time after we had
returned: our guides desired us to pass quickly, for it is said that
sometimes the least sound will accelerate their descent. We arrived at
Montanvert, however, safe.
[Illustration: CHAMOUNI, MER DE GLACE.]
On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of unrelenting frost,
surround this vale: their sides are banked up with ice and snow,
broken, heaped high, and exhibiting terrific chasms. The summits are
sharp and naked pinnacles, whose overhanging steepness will not even
permit snow to rest upon them. Lines of dazzling ice occupy here and
there their perpendicular rifts, and shine through the driving vapours
with inexpressible brilliance: they pierce the clouds like things not
belonging to this earth. The vale itself is filled with a mass of
undulating ice, and has an ascent sufficiently gradual even to the
remotest abysses of these horrible deserts. It is only half a league
(about two miles) in breadth, and seems much less. It exhibits an
appearance as if frost had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools
of a mighty torrent. We walked some distance upon its surface. The
waves are elevated about twelve or fifteen feet from the surface of
the mass, which is intersected by long gaps of unfathomable depth, the
ice of whose sides is more beautifully azure than the sky. In these
regions everything changes, and is in motion. This vast mass of ice has
one general progress, which ceases neither day nor night; it breaks
and bursts forever: some undulations sink while others rise; it is
never the same. The echo of rocks, or of the ice and snow which fall
from their overhanging precipices, or roll from their aërial summits,
scarcely ceases for one moment. One would think that Mont Blanc, like
the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and that the frozen blood
forever circulated through his stony veins.
_Prose works_ (London, 1880).
THE DEAD SEA
(_PALESTINE_)
PIERRE LOTI
A sound of church bells follows us for a long time in the lonely
country as we ride away on horseback in the early morning towards
Jericho, towards the Jordan and the Dead Sea. The Holy City speedily
disappears from our eyes, hidden behind the Mount of Olives. There
are fields of green barley here and there, but principally regions
of stones and asphodels. Nowhere are there any trees. Red anemones
and violet irises enamel the greyness of the rough country, all rock
and desert. By a series of gorges, valleys, and precipices we follow
a gradually descending route. Jerusalem is at an altitude of eight
hundred metres and this Dead Sea to which we are going is four hundred
metres below the level of other seas.
If it were not for this way for vehicles upon which our horses walk so
easily, one would be tempted to call it every now and then Idumæa, or
Arabia.
This road to Jericho is, moreover, full of people to-day: Bedouins upon
camels; Arabian shepherds driving hundreds of black goats; bands of
Cook’s tourists on horseback, or in mule-chairs; Russian pilgrims, who
are returning on foot from the Jordan, piously carrying gourds filled
with water from the sacred river; numerous troops of Greek pilgrims
from the island of Cyprus, upon asses; incongruous caravans and strange
groups which we overtake or meet.
It is soon midday. The high mountains of the country of Moab which
lie beyond the Dead Sea, and which we have seen ever since we reached
Hebron like a diaphanous wall in the east seem to be as distant
as ever, although for three hours we have been advancing towards
them,--apparently fleeing before us like the visions of a mirage. But
they have grown misty and gloomy; all that was trailing in the sky like
light veils in the morning has gathered and condensed upon their peaks,
while a purer and more magnificent blue now extends above our heads.
Half-way from Jericho, we make the great halt in a caravansary, where
there are Bedouins, Syrians, and Greeks; then we again mount our horses
beneath a burning sun.
Every now and then, in the yawning gulfs far below us the torrent of
the Cedron is visible like a thread of foaming silver; its course here
is not troubled as beneath the walls of Jerusalem, and it rushes along
rapidly towards the Dead Sea, half-hidden in the deepest hollows of the
abysses.
The mountain slopes continue to run down towards this strange and
unique region, situated below the level of the sea, where sleep the
waters which produce death. It seems that one is made conscious of
something abnormal in this continuous descent by some unknown sense of
oddity and even giddiness suggested by these slopes. Growing more and
more grand and rugged, the country now presents almost the appearance
of a true desert. But the impression of immeasurable solitude is not
experienced here. And then there is always that road traced by human
hands and these continual meetings with horsemen and various passengers.
The air is already dryer and warmer than at Jerusalem, and the light
becomes more and more magnifying,--as is always the case when one
approaches places devoid of vegetation.
The mountains are ever more and more denuded and more cracked by the
dryness, opening everywhere with crevasses like great abysses. The heat
increases in proportion as we descend to the shore of the Dead Sea
which in summer is one of the hottest places in the world. A mournful
sun darts its rays around us upon the rocks, masses of stone, and pale
limestone where the lizards run about by the thousand; whilst over
beyond us, serving as a background for everything, stands ever the
chain of Moab, like a Dantesque wall. And to-day storm-clouds darken
and deform it, hiding its peaks, or carrying them up too high into the
sky and forming other imaginary peaks, thus producing the terror of
chaos.
In a certain deep valley, through which our way lies for a moment, shut
in without any view between vertical walls, some hundreds of camels
are at pasture, hanging like great fantastic goats to the flanks of
the mountains,--the highest perched one of all the troop silhouetted
against the sky.
Then we issue from this defile and the mountains of Moab reäppear,
higher then ever now and more obscured by clouds. Upon this sombre
background the near prospective of this desolate country stands
out very clearly; the summits are whitish and all around us blocks,
absolutely white, are delineated by the broiling sun with an extreme
hardness of outline.
Towards three o’clock, from the elevated regions where we still are,
we see before us the country that is lower than the sea, and, as
if our eyes had preserved the remembrance of ordinary levels, this
really seems not an ordinary plain, but something too low and a great
depression of the earth, the bottom of a vast gulf into which the road
is about to fall.
This sunken region has the features of the desert, with gleaming
grey wastes like fields of lava, or beds of salt; in its midst an
unexpectedly green patch, which is the oasis of Jericho,--and towards
the south, a motionless expanse with the polish of a mirror and the
sad hue of slate, which begins and loses itself in the distance with a
limitless horizon: the Dead Sea, enwrapped in darkness to-day by all
the clouds of the distance, by all that is heavy and opaque yonder
weighing upon the border of Moab.
The few little white houses of Jericho are gradually outlined in
the green of the oasis in proportion as we descend from our stony
summits, inundated with the sun. One would hardly call it a village.
It seems that there is not the least vestige of the three large and
celebrated cities that formerly successively occupied this site and
that in different ages were called Jericho. These utter destructions
and annihilations of the cities of Canaan and Idumæa seem to be for
the confounding of human reason. Truly a very powerful breath of
malediction and death must have passed over it all.
When we are finally down in the plain, an insufferable heat surprises
us; one would say that we had traversed an immense distance
southward,--and yet, in reality, we have only descended a few hundred
metres towards the bowels of the earth: it is to their depressed level
that the environs of the Dead Sea owe their exceptional climate.
Jericho is composed to-day of a little Turkish citadel, three or
four new houses built for pilgrims and tourists, half a hundred Arab
habitations of mud with roofing of thorny branches and a few Bedouin
tents. Round about them are gardens in which grow an occasional palm;
a wood of green shrubs traversed by clear brooks; some paths overrun
by grass, where horsemen in burnous caracole upon their horses with
long manes and tails. And that is all. Immediately beyond the wood the
uninhabitable desert begins; and the Dead Sea lies there very near,
spreading its mysterious winding-sheet above the engulfed kingdoms of
Sodom and Gomorrah. This Sea has a very individual aspect, and this
evening it is very funereal; it truly gives the impression of death,
with its heavy, leaden, and motionless waters between the deserts
of its two shores where great confused mountains mingle with the
storm-clouds hanging in the sky.
* * * * *
Sunday, April 8th.
From Jericho, where we passed the night, the Dead Sea seems very
near; one would think in 3 few minutes it would be easy to reach its
tranquil sheet,--which this morning is of a blue barely tinted with
slate, under a sky rid of all of yesterday’s clouds. Yet, to reach it,
almost two hours on horseback are still required, under a heavy sun,
across the little desert which, minus the immensity, resembles the
large one in which we have just spent so many days; towards this Sea,
which seems to flee in proportion as we approach, we descend by means
of a series of exhausted strata and desolate plateaux, all glittering
with sand and salt. Here we find a few of the odoriferous plants of
Arabia Petræa, and even the semblance of a mirage, the uncertainty as
to distances and the continual tremulousness of the horizon. We also
find here a band of Bedouins resembling very closely our friends of the
desert in their shirts with long pointed sleeves floating like wings,
and their little brown veils tied to the forehead with black cords, the
two ends of which stand up on the temples like the ears of an animal.
Moreover, these shores of the Dead Sea, especially on the southern
side, are frequented by pillagers almost as much as Idumæa.
We know that geologists trace the existence of the Dead Sea back to
the first ages of the world; they do not contest, however, that at the
period of the destruction of the accursed cities it must have suddenly
overflowed, after some new eruption, to cover the site of the Moabite
pentapolis. And it was at that time that was engulfed all this “Vale
of Siddim,” where were assembled, against Chedorlaomer, the kings
of Sodom, of Gomorrah, of Admah, of Zeboiim, and of Zoar (_Genesis_
xiv. 2, 3); all that “plain of Siddim” which “was well watered
everywhere,” like a garden of delight (_Genesis_ xiii. 10). Since these
remote times, this Sea has receded a little, without, however, its form
being sensibly changed. And, beneath the shroud of its heavy waters,
unfathomable to the diver by their very density, sleep strange ruins,
_débris_, which, without doubt, will never be explored; Sodom and
Gomorrah are there, buried in their dark depths.
[Illustration: THE DEAD SEA.]
At present, the Dead Sea, terminated at the north by the sands we
cross, extends to a length of about eighty kilometres, between two
ranges of parallel mountains: to the east, those of Moab, eternally
oozing bitumen, which stand this morning in their sombre violet; to the
west, those of Judea, of another nature, entirely of whitish limestone,
at this moment dazzling with sunlight. On both shores the desolation is
equally absolute; the same silence hovers over the same appearances of
death. These are indeed the immutable and somewhat terrifying aspects
of the desert,--and one can understand the very intense impression
produced upon travellers who do not know the Arabia Magna; but, for
us, there is here only a too greatly diminished image of the mournful
phantasmagoria of that region. Besides, one does not lose altogether
the view of the citadel of Jericho; from our horses we may still
perceive it behind us, like a vague little white point, but still a
protector. In the extreme distance of the desert sands, under the
trembling network of mirage, appears also an ancient fortress, which is
a monastery for Greek hermits. And, finally, another white blot, just
perceptible above us, in a recess of the mountains of Judah, stands
that mausoleum which passes for the tomb of Moses--for which a great
Mohammedan pilgrimage is soon about to start.
However, upon the sinister strand where we arrive, death reveals
itself, truly sovereign and imposing. First, like a line of defence
which it is necessary to surmount, comes a belt of drift-wood, branches
and trees stripped of all bark, almost petrified in the chemical bath,
and whitened like bones,--one would call them an accumulation of great
vertebræ. Then there are some rounded pebbles as on the shore of every
sea; but not a single shell, not a piece of seaweed, not even a little
greenish slime, nothing organic, not even of the lower order; and
nowhere else has this ever been seen, a sea whose bed is as sterile as
a crucible of alchemy; this is something abnormal and disconcerting.
Some dead fish lie here and there, hardened like wood, mummified in the
naptha and the salts: fish of the Jordan which the current brought here
and which the accursed waters suffocated instantly.
And before us, this sea flees, between its banks of desert mountains,
to the troubled horizon with an appearance of never ending. Its
whitish, oily waters bear blots of bitumen, spread in large iridescent
rings. Moreover, they burn, if you drink them, like a corrosive liquor;
if you enter them up to your knees you have difficulty in walking, they
are so heavy; you cannot dive in them nor even swim in the ordinary
position, but you can float upon the surface like a cork buoy.
Once the Emperor Titus, as an experiment, had several slaves bound
together with iron chains and cast in, and they did not drown.
On the eastern shore, in the little sandy desert where we have just
been marching for two hours, a line of a beautiful emerald serpentines;
a few flocks and a few Arabian shepherds that are half bandits pass in
the far distance.
Towards the middle of the day we reënter Jericho, whence we shall not
depart until to-morrow morning, and there remain the tranquil hours of
the evening for us to go over the still oasis.
When we are seated before the porch of the little inn of Jericho in
the warm twilight, we see a wildly galloping horse, bringing a monk
in a black robe with long hair floating in the wind. He is one of the
hermits of the Mount of the Forty Days, who is trying to be the first
to arrive and offer us some little objects in the wood of Jericho and
shell rosaries from the Jordan.--At nightfall others come, dressed in
the same black robe, and with the same thin hair around their bandit’s
countenance, and enter the inn to entice us with little carvings and
similar chaplets.
The night is sultry here, and a little heavy, quite different to the
cold nights of Jerusalem, and just as the stars begin to shine a
concert of frogs begins simultaneously from every side, under the dark
entanglement of the balms of Gilead,--so continuous and, moreover, so
discreet is it, that it seems but another expression of the tranquil
silence. You hear also the barking of the sheep-dogs, below, on the
side of the Arabian encampments; then, very far away, the drum and the
little Bedouin flute furnish the rhythm for some wild fête;--and, at
intervals, but very distinctly, comes the lugubrious falsetto of a
hyena or jackal.
Now, here is the unexpected refrain of the coffee-houses of Berlin,
which suddenly bursts forth, in ironical dissonance, in the midst of
these light and immutable sounds of ancient evenings in Judea: the
German tourists who have been here since sunset, encamped under the
tents of agencies; a band of “Cook’s tourists” come to see and profane,
as far as they can, this little desert.
It is after midnight, when everything is hushed and the silence belongs
to the nightingales which fill the oasis with an exquisite and clear
music of crystal.
_Jerusalem_ (Paris, 1895).
MOUNT VESUVIUS
(_ITALY_)
CHARLES DICKENS
A noble mountain pass, with the ruins of a fort on a strong eminence,
traditionally called the Fort of Fra Diavolo; the old town of Itrí,
like a device in pastry, built up, almost perpendicularly, on a hill,
and approached by long steep flights of steps; beautiful Mola di Gaëta,
whose wines, like those of Albano, have degenerated since the days of
Horace, or his taste for wine was bad: which is not likely of one who
enjoyed it so much, and extolled it so well; another night upon the
road at St. Agatha; a rest next day at Capua, which is picturesque, but
hardly so seductive to a traveller now as the soldiers of Prætorian
Rome were wont to find the ancient city of that name; a flat road among
vines festooned and looped from tree to tree; and Mount Vesuvius close
at hand at last!--its cone and summit whitened with snow; and its smoke
hanging over it, in the heavy atmosphere of the day, like a dense
cloud. So we go, rattling down-hill, into Naples.
Capri--once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius--Ischia,
Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, lie in the
blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a
day: now close at hand, now far off, now unseen. The fairest country
in the world is spread about us. Whether we turn towards the Miseno
shore of the splendid watery amphitheatre, and go by the Grotto of
Posilipo to the Grotto del Cane, and away to Baiæ: or take the other
way, towards Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one succession of delights.
In the last-named direction, where, over doors and archways, there
are countless little images of San Gennaro, with his Canute’s hand
stretched out to check the fury of the Burning Mountain, we are
carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beautiful Sea Beach, past
the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the ashes of the former town,
destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, within a hundred years, and
past the flat-roofed houses, granaries, and macaroni manufactories;
to Castel-a-Mare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen,
standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks. Here, the railroad
terminates; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken succession of
enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest
summit of St. Angelo, the highest neighbouring mountain, down to the
water’s edge--among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges and
lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills--and
by the bases of snow-covered heights, and through small towns with
handsome, dark-haired women at the doors--and pass delicious summer
villas--to Sorrento, where the poet Tasso drew his inspiration from
the beauty surrounding him. Returning, we may climb the heights above
Castel-a-Mare, and, looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the
crisp water glistening in the sun, and clusters of white houses in
distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to
dice. The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset: with
the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain, with its smoke
and flame, upon the other, is a sublime conclusion to the glory of the
day.
Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, and look up
the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis,
over the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day,
away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful distance; and
lose all count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange and
melancholy sensation of seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer making
this quiet picture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every turn,
the little familiar tokens of human habitation and every-day pursuits;
the chafing of the bucket rope in the stone rim of the exhausted
well; the track of carriage wheels in the pavement of the street; the
marks of drinking vessels on the stone counter of the wine-shop; the
amphoræ in private cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago,
and undisturbed to this hour--all rendering the solitude and deadly
lonesomeness of the place ten thousand times more solemn, than if the
volcano, in its fury, had swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in
the bottom of the sea.
After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded the eruption,
workmen were employed in shaping out, in stone, new ornaments for
temples and other buildings that had suffered. Here lies their work,
outside the city gate, as if they would return to-morrow.
In the cellar of Diomede’s house, where certain skeletons were found
huddled together, close to the door, the impression of their bodies on
the ashes hardened with the ashes, and became stamped and fixed there,
after they had shrunk, inside, to scanty bones. So, in the theatre of
Herculaneum, a comic mask, floating on the stream when it was hot and
liquid, stamped its mimic features in it as it hardened into stone, and
now it turns upon the stranger the fantastic look it turned upon the
audiences in that same theatre two thousand years ago.
Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, and in and out
of the houses, and traversing the secret chambers of the temples of a
religion that has vanished from the earth, and finding so many fresh
traces of remote antiquity: as if the course of Time had been stopped
after this desolation, and there had been no nights and days, months,
years, and centuries since: nothing is more impressive and terrible
than the many evidences of the searching nature of the ashes as
bespeaking their irresistible power, and the impossibility of escaping
them. In the wine-cellars, they forced their way into the earthen
vessels: displacing the wine, and choking them, to the brim, with
dust. In the tombs, they forced the ashes of the dead from the funeral
urns, and rained new ruin even into them. The mouths, and eyes, and
skulls of all the skeletons were stuffed with this terrible hail. In
Herculaneum, where the flood was of a different and a heavier kind, it
rolled in, like a sea. Imagine a deluge of water turned to marble, at
its height--and that is what is called “the lava” here.
[Illustration: MOUNT VESUVIUS.]
Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the brink of which we
now stand, looking down, when they came on some of the stone benches
of the theatre--those steps (for such they seem) at the bottom of
the excavation--and found the buried city of Herculaneum. Presently
going down, with lighted torches, we are perplexed by great walls of
monstrous thickness, rising up between the benches, shutting out the
stage, obtruding their shapeless forms in absurd places, confusing the
whole plan, and making it a disordered dream. We cannot, at first,
believe, or picture to ourselves, that this came rolling in, and
drowned the city; and that all that is not here has been cut away,
by the axe, like solid stone. But this perceived and understood, the
horror and oppression of its presence are indescribable.
Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless chambers of both
cities, or carefully removed to the museum at Naples, are as fresh and
plain as if they had been executed yesterday. Here are subjects of
still life, as provisions, dead game, bottles, glasses, and the like;
familiar classical stories, or mythological fables, always forcibly
and plainly told; conceits of cupids, quarrelling, sporting, working
at trades; theatrical rehearsals; poets reading their productions to
their friends; inscriptions chalked upon the walls; political squibs,
advertisements, rough drawings by school-boys; everything to people and
restore the ancient cities in the fancy of their wondering visitor.
Furniture, too, you see, of every kind--lamps, tables, couches;
vessels for eating, drinking, and cooking; workmen’s tools, surgical
instruments, tickets for the theatre, pieces of money, personal
ornaments, bunches of keys found clinched in the grasp of skeletons,
helmets of guards and warriors; little household bells, yet musical
with their old domestic tones.
The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell the interests
of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination. The looking,
from either ruined city, into the neighbouring grounds overgrown
with beautiful vines and luxuriant trees; and remembering that house
upon house, temple on temple, building after building, and street
after street, are still lying underneath the roots of all the quiet
cultivation, waiting to be turned up to the light of day; is something
so wonderful, so full of mystery, so captivating to the imagination,
that one would think it would be paramount, and yield to nothing else.
To nothing but Vesuvius; but the mountain is the genius of the scene.
From every indication of the ruin it has worked, we look, again, with
an absorbing interest to where its smoke is rising up into the sky. It
is beyond us, as we thread the ruined streets: above us, as we stand
upon the ruined walls; we follow it through every vista of broken
columns, as we wander through the empty court-yards of the houses; and
through the garlandings and interlacings of every wanton vine. Turning
away to Pæstum yonder, to see the awful structures built, the least
aged of them hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, and standing
yet, erect in lonely majesty, upon the wild malaria-blighted plain--we
watch Vesuvius as it disappears from the prospect, and watch for it
again, on our return, with the same thrill of interest: as the doom and
destiny of all this beautiful country, biding its terrible time.
It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring day, when we return
from Pæstum, but very cold in the shade: insomuch, that although we may
lunch pleasantly, at noon, in the open air, by the gate of Pompeii, the
neighbouring rivulet supplies thick ice for our wine. But, the sun is
shining brightly; there is not a cloud or speck of vapour in the whole
blue sky, looking down upon the Bay of Naples; and the moon will be at
the full to-night. No matter that the snow and ice lie thick upon the
summit of Vesuvius, or that we have been on foot all day at Pompeii,
or that croakers maintain that strangers should not be on the mountain
by night, in such an unusual season. Let us take advantage of the fine
weather; make the best of our way to Resina, the little village at
the foot of the mountain; prepare ourselves, as well as we can on so
short a notice, at the guide’s house; ascend at once, and have sunset
half-way up, moonlight at the top, and midnight to come down in!
At four o’clock in the afternoon there is a terrible uproar in the
little stable-yard of Signore Salvatore, the recognized head-guide,
with the gold band around his cap; and thirty under-guides, who are all
scuffling and screaming at once, are preparing half-a-dozen saddled
ponies, three litters, and some stout staves for the journey. Every
one of the thirty quarrels with the other twenty-nine, and frightens
the six ponies; and as much of the village as can possibly squeeze
itself into the little stable-yard participates in the tumult, and gets
trodden on by the cattle.
After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would suffice for
the storming of Naples, the procession starts. The head-guide, who is
liberally paid for all the attendants, rides a little in advance of
the party; the other thirty guides proceed on foot. Eight go forward
with the litters that are to be used by and by; and the remaining
two-and-twenty beg.
We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad flights of
stairs, for some time. At length, we leave these, and the vineyards
on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak, bare region, where
the lava lies confusedly in enormous rusty masses: as if the earth
had been plowed up by burning thunder-bolts. And now we halt to see
the sun set. The change that falls upon the dreary region, and on the
whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes on--and the
unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign around, who that has
witnessed it can ever forget!
It is dark when, after winding for some time over the broken ground,
we arrive at the foot of the cone: which is extremely steep, and seems
to rise, almost perpendicularly, from the spot where we dismount. The
only light is reflected from the snow, deep, hard, and white, with
which the cone is covered. It is now intensely cold, and the air is
piercing. The thirty-one have brought no torches, knowing that the moon
will rise before we reach the top. Two of the litters are devoted to
the two ladies; the third, to a rather heavy gentleman from Naples,
whose hospitality and good nature have attached him to the expedition,
and determined him to assist in doing the honours of the mountain. The
rather heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen men; each of the ladies
by half-a-dozen. We who walk make the best use of our staves; and so
the whole party begin to labour upward over the snow--as if they were
toiling to the summit of an antediluvian Twelfth-cake.
We are a long time toiling up; and the head-guide looks oddly about
him when one of the company--not an Italian, though an habitué of the
mountain for many years: whom we will call, for our present purpose,
Mr. Pickle of Portici--suggests that, as it is freezing hard, and
the usual footing of ashes is covered by the snow and ice, it will
surely be difficult to descend. But the sight of the litters above,
tilting up and down, and jerking from this side to that, as the bearers
continually slip and tumble, diverts our attention; more especially
as the whole length of the rather heavy gentleman is, at that moment,
presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, with his head downward.
The rising of the moon soon afterward, revives the flagging spirits
of the bearers. Stimulating each other with their usual watchword,
“Courage, friend! It is to eat macaroni!” they press on, gallantly, for
the summit.
From tingeing the top of the snow above us with a band of light,
and pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while we have
been ascending in the dark, the moon soon lights the whole white
mountain-side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in the
distance, and every village in the country round. The whole prospect
is in this lovely state, when we come upon the platform on the
mountain-top--the region of Fire--an exhausted crater formed of great
masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some tremendous
waterfall, burned up; from every chink and crevice of which hot,
sulphurous smoke is pouring out: while, from another conical-shaped
hill, the present crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the
end, great sheets of fire are streaming forth: reddening the night with
flame, blackening it with smoke, and spotting it with red-hot stones
and cinders, that fly up into the air like feathers, and fall down like
lead. What words can paint the gloom and grandeur of this scene!
The broken ground; the smoke; the sense of suffocation from the
sulphur; the fear of falling down through the crevices in the
yawning ground; the stopping, every now and then, for somebody who
is missing in the dark (for the dense smoke now obscures the moon);
the intolerable noise of the thirty; and the hoarse roaring of the
mountain; make it a scene of such confusion, at the same time, that we
reel again. But, dragging the ladies through it, and across another
exhausted crater to the foot of the present Volcano, we approach close
to it on the windy side, and then sit down among the hot ashes at its
foot, and look up in silence; faintly estimating the action that is
going on within, from its being full a hundred feet higher, at this
minute, than it was six weeks ago.
There is something in the fire and roar that generates an irresistible
desire to get nearer to it. We cannot rest long, without starting off,
two of us, on our hands and knees, accompanied by the head-guide, to
climb to the brim of the flaming crater, and try to look in. Meanwhile,
the thirty yell, as with one voice, that it is a dangerous proceeding,
and call to us to come back; frightening the rest of the party out of
their wits.
What with their noise, and what with the trembling of the thin crust
of ground, that seems about to open underneath our feet, and plunge
us into the burning gulf below (which is the real danger, if there be
any); and what with the flashing of the fire in our faces, and the
shower of red-hot ashes that is raining down, and the choking smoke and
sulphur; we may well feel giddy and irrational, like drunken men. But,
we contrive to climb up to the brim, and look down, for a moment, into
the Hell of boiling fire below. Then, we all three come rolling down;
blackened, and singed, and scorched, and hot, and giddy: and each with
his dress alight in half-a-dozen places.
You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of descending
is by sliding down the ashes: which, forming a gradually increasing
ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid a descent. But, when we have
crossed the two exhausted craters on our way back, and are come to this
precipitous place, there is (as Mr. Pickle has foretold) no vestige of
ashes to be seen; the whole being a smooth sheet of ice.
In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously join hands,
and make a chain of men; of whom the foremost beat, as well as they
can, a rough track with their sticks, down which we prepare to follow.
The way being fearfully steep, and none of the party: even of the
thirty: being able to keep their feet for six paces together, the
ladies are taken out of their litters, and placed, each between two
careful persons; while others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to
prevent their falling forward--a necessary precaution, tending to the
immediate and hopeless dilapidation of their apparel. The rather heavy
gentleman is adjured to leave his litter too, and be escorted in a
similar manner; but he resolves to be brought down as he was brought
up, on the principle that his fifteen bearers are not likely to tumble
all at once, and that he is safer so than trusting to his own legs.
In this order, we begin the descent: sometimes on foot, sometimes
shuffling on the ice: always proceeding much more quietly and slowly
than on our upward way: and constantly alarmed by the falling among
us of somebody from behind, who endangers the footing of the whole
party, and clings pertinaciously to anybody’s ankles. It is impossible
for the litter to be in advance, too, as the track has to be made;
and its appearance behind us, overhead--with some one or other of the
bearers always down, and the rather heavy gentleman with his legs in
the air--is very threatening and frightful. We have gone on thus;
a very little way, painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and
regarding it as a great success--and have all fallen several times,
and have all been stopped, somehow or other, as we were sliding
away--when Mr. Pickle, of Portici, in the act of remarking on these
uncommon circumstances as quite beyond his experience, stumbles, falls,
disengages himself with quick presence of mind, from those about him,
plunges away head foremost, and rolls, over and over, down the whole
surface of the cone!
Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to help him, I see him
there, in the moonlight--I have had such a dream often--skimming over
the white ice like a cannonball. Almost at the same moment, there is
a cry from behind; and a man who has carried a light basket of spare
cloaks on his head, comes rolling past at the same frightful speed,
closely followed by a boy. At this climax of the chapter of accidents,
the remaining eight-and-twenty vociferate to that degree, that a pack
of wolves would be music to them!
Giddy and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle of Portici
when we reach the place where we dismounted, and where the horses
are waiting; but, thank God, sound in limb! And never are we likely
to be more glad to see a man alive, and on his feet, than to see him
now--making light of it too, though sorely bruised and in great pain.
The boy is brought into the Hermitage on the Mountain, while we are
at supper, with his head tied up; and the man is heard of some hours
afterwards. He, too, is bruised and stunned, but has broken no bones;
the snow having, fortunately, covered all the larger blocks of rock and
stone, and rendered them harmless.
After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing fire, we again
take horse, and continue our descent to Salvatore’s house--very slowly,
by reason of our bruised friend being hardly able to keep the saddle,
or endure the pain of motion. Though it is so late at night, or early
in the morning, all the people of the village are waiting about the
little stable-yard when we arrive, and looking up the road by which we
are expected. Our appearance is hailed with a great clamour of tongues,
and a general sensation, for which, in our modesty, we are somewhat
at a loss to account, until turning into the yard, we find that one
of a party of French gentlemen, who were on the mountain at the same
time, is lying on some straw in the stable with a broken limb; looking
like Death and suffering great torture; and that we were confidently
supposed to have encountered some worse accident.
So “well returned and Heaven be praised!” as the cheerful Vetturino,
who has borne us company all the way from Pisa says with all his heart!
And away with his ready horses into sleeping Naples!
It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo singers and
beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, dirt, and universal
degradation; airing its Harlequin suit in the sunshine, next day and
every day; singing, starving, dancing, gaming on the seashore; and
leaving all labour to the burning mountain, which is ever at its work.
_Pictures from Italy_ (London, 1845).
THE FALLS OF THE RHINE
(_GERMANY_)
VICTOR HUGO
My friend, what shall I say to you? I have just come from seeing that
strange thing. I am only a few steps from it. I hear the noise of it.
I am writing to you without knowing what falls from my thoughts. Ideas
and images accumulate there pell-mell, hastening, jostling and bruising
each other, and disappearing in vapour, in foam, in uproar, and in
clouds.
Within me there is an immense ebullition. It seems to me that I have
the Falls of the Rhine in my brain.
I write at random, just as it comes. You must understand if you can.
You arrive at Laufen. It is a castle of the Thirteenth Century, a very
beautiful pile and of a very good style. At the door there are two
gilded wyverns with open mouths. They are roaring. You would say that
they are making the mysterious noise you hear.
You enter.
You are in the courtyard of a castle. It is no longer a castle, it is
a farm. Hens, geese, turkeys, dirt; a cart in a corner; and a vat of
lime. A door opens. The cascade appears.
Marvellous spectacle!
Frightful tumult! That is the first effect. Then you look about
you. The cataract cuts out the gulfs which it fills with large white
sheets. As in a conflagration, there are some little peaceful spots
in the midst of this object of terror; groves blended with foam;
charming brooks in the mosses; fountains for the Arcadian Shepherds
of Poussin, shadowed by little boughs gently agitated.--And then
these details vanish, and the impression of the whole returns to you.
Eternal tempest! Snow, vital and furious. The water is of a strange
transparency. Some black rocks produce sinister aspects under the
water. They appear to touch the surface and are ten feet down. Below
the two principal leaps of the falls two great sheaves of foam spread
themselves upon the river and disperse in green clouds. On the other
side of the Rhine, I perceive a tranquil group of little houses, where
the housekeepers come and go.
As I am observing, my guide tells me: “Lake Constance froze in the
winter of 1829 and 1830. It had not frozen for a hundred and four
years. People crossed it in carriages. Poor people were frozen to death
in Schaffhausen.”
I descended a little lower towards the abyss. The sky was grey and
veiled. The cascade roared like a tiger. Frightful noise, terrible
rapidity! Dust of water, smoke and rain at the same time. Through this
mist you see the cataract in its full development. Five large rocks cut
it into five sheets of water of diverse aspects and different sizes.
You believe you see the five worn piers of a bridge of Titans. In the
winter the ice forms blue arches upon these black abutments.
[Illustration: THE FALLS OF THE RHINE.]
The nearest of these rocks is of a strange form; it seems as if the
water issued full of rage from the hideous and impassive head of an
Hindu idol with an elephant’s head. Some trees and brambles, which
intermingle at its summit, give it bristling and horrible hair.
At the most awe-inspiring point of the Falls, a great rock disappears
and reäppears under the foam like the skull of an engulfed giant,
beaten for six thousand years by this dreadful shower-bath.
The guide continues his monologue: “The Falls of the Rhine are one
league from Schaffhausen. The whole mass of the river falls there at a
height of seventy feet.”--
The rugged path which descends from the castle of Laufen to the
abyss crosses a garden. At the moment when I passed, deafened by the
formidable cataract, a child, accustomed to living with this marvel of
the world, was playing among the flowers.
This path has several barriers, where you pay a trifle from time to
time. The poor cataract should not work for nothing. See the trouble it
gives! It is very necessary that with all the foam that it throws upon
the trees, the rocks, the river, and the clouds, that it should throw a
few sous into the pocket of some one. That is the least it can do.
I came along this path until I reached a kind of balcony skilfully
poised in reality right over the abyss.
There, everything moves you at once. You are dazzled, made dizzy,
confused, terrified, and charmed. You lean on a wooden rail that
trembles. Some yellow trees,--it is autumn,--and some red quick-trees
surround a little pavilion in the style of the Café Turc, from which
one observes the horror of the thing. The women cover themselves with
an oil-skin (each one costs a franc). You are suddenly enveloped in a
terrible, thundering and heavy shower.
Some pretty little yellow snails crawl voluptuously over this dew on
the rail of the balcony. The rock that slopes beyond the balcony weeps
drop by drop into the cascade. Upon this rock, which is in the centre
of the cataract, a troubadour-knight of painted wood stands leaning
upon a red shield with a white cross. Some man certainly risked his
life to plant this doubtful ornament in the midst of Jehovah’s grand
and eternal poetry.
The two giants, who lift up their heads, I should say the two largest
rocks, seem to speak. The thunder is their voice. Above an alarming
mound of foam you see a peaceful little house with its little orchard.
You would say that this terrible hydra is condemned to carry eternally
upon his back that sweet and happy cabin.
I went to the extremity of the balcony; I leaned against the rock. The
sight became still more terrible. It was a frightful descent of water.
The hideous and splendid abyss angrily throws a shower of pearls in
the face of those who dare to regard it so near. That is admirable.
The four great heaps of the cataract fall, mount, and fall again
without ceasing. You would believe that you were beholding the four
lightning-wheels of the storm-chariot.
The wooden bridge was laid under water. The boards were slippery. Some
dead leaves quivered under my feet. In a cleft of the rock, I noticed a
little tuft of dried grass. Dry under the cataract of Schaffhausen! in
this deluge, it missed every drop of water! There are some hearts that
may be likened to this tuft of grass. In the midst of a vortex of human
prosperity, they wither of themselves. Alas! this drop of water which
they have missed and which springs not forth from the earth but falls
from heaven, is Love!
How long did I remain there, absorbed in that grand spectacle? I could
not possibly tell you. During that contemplation the hours passed in my
spirit like the waves in the abyss, without leaving a trace or memory.
However, some one came to inform me that the day was declining. I
climbed up to the castle and from there I descended to the sandy shore
whence you cross the Rhine to gain the right bank. This shore is below
the Falls, and you cross the river at a few fathoms from the cataract.
To accomplish this, you risk yourself in a little boat, charming,
light, exquisite, adjusted like the canoe of a savage, constructed of
wood as supple as the skin of a shark, solid, elastic, fibrous, grazing
the rocks every instant and hardly escaping--being managed like all the
small boats of the Rhine and the Meuse with a hook and an oar in the
form of a shovel. Nothing is stranger than to feel in this little boat
the deep and thunderous shocks of the water.
As the bark moved away from the bank, I looked above my head at
the battlements covered with tiles and the sharp gable ends of the
_château_ that dominates the precipice. Some fishermen’s nets were
drying up on the stones on the bank of the river. Do they fish in this
vortex? Yes, without doubt. As the fish cannot leap over the cataract,
many salmon are caught here. Moreover, where is the whirlpool in which
man will not fish?
Now I will recapitulate my intense and almost poignant sensations.
First impression: you do not know what to say, you are crushed as by
all great poems. Then the whole unravels itself. The beauties disengage
themselves from the cloud. Altogether it is grand, sombre, terrible,
hideous, magnificent, unutterable.
On the other side of the Rhine, the Falls are made to turn mill-wheels.
Upon one bank, the castle; upon the other, the village, which is called
Neuhausen.
It is a remarkable thing that each of the great Alpine rivers, on
leaving the mountains, has the colour of the sea to which it flows.
The Rhône, escaping from the Lake of Geneva, is blue like the
Mediterranean; the Rhine, issuing from Lake Constance, is green like
the ocean.
Unfortunately the sky was overcast. I cannot, therefore, say that I saw
the Falls of Laufen in all their splendour. Nothing is richer nor more
marvellous than that shower of pearls of which I have already told you.
This should be, however, even more wonderful when the sun changes these
pearls to diamonds and when the rainbow plunges its emerald neck into
the foam like a divine bird that comes to drink in the abyss.
From the other side of the Rhine, whence I am now writing, the
cataract appears in its entirety, divided into five very distinct
parts, each of which has its physiognomy quite apart from the others,
and forming a kind of crescendo. The first is an overflowing from a
mill; the second, almost symmetrically composed by the work of the
wave and time, is a fountain of Versailles; the third, a cascade; the
fourth, an avalanche; and the fifth, chaos.
A last word and I will close this letter. Several paces from the Falls,
you explore a calcareous rock, which is very beautiful. In the midst of
one of the quarries that are there a galley-slave, in stripes of grey
and black, with pick-axe in his hand and a double chain on his feet,
looked at the cataract. Chance seems to delight itself sometimes in
placing in antitheses, sometimes sad and sometimes terrible, the work
of nature and the work of society.
_Le Rhin_ (Paris, 1846).
IN ARCTIC SEAS
LORD DUFFERIN
Ever since leaving England, as each four-and-twenty hours we climbed
up nearer to the pole, the belt of dusk dividing day from day had been
growing narrower and narrower, until having nearly reached the Arctic
circle, this,--the last night we were to traverse,--had dwindled to a
thread of shadow. Only another half-dozen leagues more, and we would
stand on the threshold of a four months’ day! For the few preceding
hours, clouds had completely covered the heavens, except where a clear
interval of sky, that lay along the northern horizon, promised a
glowing stage for the sun’s last obsequies. But like the heroes of old
he had veiled his face to die, and it was not until he dropped down to
the sea that the whole hemisphere overflowed with glory and the gilded
pageant concerted for his funeral gathered in slow procession round his
grave; reminding one of those tardy honours paid to some great prince
of song, who--left during life to languish in a garret--is buried by
nobles in Westminster Abbey. A few minutes more the last fiery segment
had disappeared beneath the purple horizon, and all was over.
“The king is dead--the king is dead--the king is dead! Long live the
king!” And up from the sea that had just entombed his sire, rose the
young monarch of a new day; while the courtier clouds, in their ruby
robes, turned faces still aglow with the favours of their dead lord, to
borrow brighter blazonry from the smile of a new master.
A fairer or a stranger spectacle than the last Arctic sunset cannot be
well conceived. Evening and morning--like kinsmen whose hearts some
baseless feud has kept asunder--clasping hands across the shadow of the
vanished night.
You must forgive me if sometimes I become a little magniloquent; for
really, amid the grandeur of that fresh primæval world, it was almost
impossible to prevent one’s imagination from absorbing a dash of
the local colouring. We seemed to have suddenly waked up among the
colossal scenery of Keats’s _Hyperion_. The pulses of young Titans beat
within our veins. Time itself,--no longer frittered down into paltry
divisions,--had assumed a more majestic aspect. We had the appetite of
giants,--was it unnatural we should also adopt “the large utterance of
the early gods”?
About 3 A. M. it cleared up a little. By breakfast-time the sun
reäppeared, and we could see five or six miles ahead of the vessel.
It was shortly after this, that as I was standing in the main rigging
peering out over the smooth blue surface of the sea, a white twinkling
point of light suddenly caught my eye about a couple of miles off on
the port bow, which a telescope soon resolved into a solitary isle of
ice, dancing and dipping in the sunlight. As you may suppose, the news
brought everybody upon deck; and when almost immediately afterwards
a string of other pieces--glittering like a diamond necklace--hove in
sight, the excitement was extreme.
Here, at all events, was honest blue salt water frozen solid, and
when--as we proceeded--the scattered fragments thickened, and passed
like silver argosies on either hand, until at last we found ourselves
enveloped in an innumerable fleet of bergs,--it seemed as if we could
never be weary of admiring a sight so strange and beautiful. It was
rather in form and colour than in size that these ice islets were
remarkable; anything approaching to a real iceberg we neither saw, nor
are we likely to see. In fact, the lofty ice mountains that wander like
vagrant islands along the coast of America, seldom or never come to
the eastward or northward of Cape Farewell. They consist of land ice,
and are all generated among the bays and straits within Baffin’s Bay,
and first enter the Atlantic a good deal to the southward of Iceland;
whereas the Polar ice, among which we have been knocking about, is
field ice, and--except when packed one ledge above another, by great
pressure--is comparatively flat. I do not think I saw any pieces
that were piled up higher than thirty or thirty-five feet above the
sea-level, although at a little distance through the mist they may have
loomed much loftier.
In quaintness of form, and in brilliancy of colours, these wonderful
masses surpassed everything I had imagined; and we found endless
amusement in watching their fantastic procession.
At one time it was a knight on horseback, clad in sapphire mail, a
white plume above his casque. Or a cathedral window with shafts of
chrysophras, new powdered by a snowstorm. Or a smooth sheer cliff
of lapis lazuli; or a Banyan tree, with roots descending from its
branches, and a foliage as delicate as the efflorescence of molten
metal; or a fairy dragon, that breasted the water in scales of emerald;
or anything else that your fancy chose to conjure up. After a little
time, the mist again descended on the scene, and dulled each glittering
form to a shapeless mass of white; while in spite of all our endeavours
to keep upon our northerly course, we were constantly compelled to turn
and wind about in every direction--sometimes standing on for several
hours at a stretch to the southward and eastward.
But why should I weary you with the detail of our various manœuvres
during the ensuing days? they were too tedious and disheartening at the
time for me to look back at them with any pleasure. Suffice it to say,
that by dint of sailing north whenever the ice would permit us, and
sailing west when we could not sail north,--we found ourselves on the
2d of August, in the latitude of the southern extremity of Spitzbergen,
though divided from the land by about fifty miles of ice. All this
while the weather had been pretty good, foggy and cold enough, but with
a fine stiff breeze that rattled us along at a good rate whenever we
did get a chance of making any Northing. But lately it had come on to
blow very hard, the cold became quite piercing, and what was worse--in
every direction round the whole circuit of the horizon, except along
its southern segment,--a blaze of iceblink illuminated the sky. A
more discouraging spectacle could not have met our eyes. The iceblink
is a luminous appearance, reflected on the heavens from the fields of
ice that still lie sunk beneath the horizon; it was therefore on this
occasion an unmistakable indication of the encumbered state of the sea
in front of us.
I had turned in for a few hours of rest, and release from the
monotonous sense of disappointment, and was already lost in a dream of
deep bewildering bays of ice, and gulfs whose shifting shores offered
to the eye every possible combination of uncomfortable scenery, without
possible issue,--when “a voice in my dreaming ear” shouted “_Land!_”
and I awoke to its reality. I need not tell you in what double quick
time I tumbled up the companion,--or with what greediness I feasted my
eyes on that longed-for view,--the only sight--as I then thought--we
were ever destined to enjoy of the mountains of Spitzbergen!
The whole heaven was overcast with a dark mantle of tempestuous clouds,
that stretched down in umbrella-like points towards the horizon,
leaving a clear space between their edge and the sea, illuminated by
the sinister brilliancy of the iceblink. In an easterly direction,
this belt of unclouded atmosphere was etherealized to an indescribable
transparency, and up into it there gradually grew--above the dingy line
of starboard ice--a forest of thin lilac peaks, so faint, so pale, that
had it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their outline, one
could have deemed them as unsubstantial as the spires of fairyland.
The beautiful vision proved only too transient; in one short half hour
mist and cloud had blotted it all out, while a fresh barrier of ice
compelled us to turn our backs on the very land we were striving to
reach.
It was one o’clock in the morning of the 6th of August, 1856, that
after having been eleven days at sea, we came to an anchor in the
silent haven of English Bay, Spitzbergen.
And now, how shall I give you an idea of the wonderful panorama in the
midst of which we found ourselves? I think, perhaps, its most striking
feature was the stillness--and deadness--and impossibility of this new
world; ice, and rock, and water surrounded us; not a sound of any kind
interrupted the silence; the sea did not break upon the shore; no bird
or any living thing was visible; the midnight sun--by this time muffled
in a transparent mist--shed an awful, mysterious lustre on glacier and
mountain; no atom of vegetation gave token of the earth’s vitality;
an universal numbness and dumbness seemed to pervade the solitude. I
suppose in scarcely any other part of the world is this appearance of
deadness so strikingly exhibited.
On the stillest summer day in England, there is always perceptible
an undertone of life thrilling through the atmosphere; and though no
breeze should stir a single leaf, yet--in default of motion--there is
always a sense of growth; but here not so much as a blade of grass
was to be seen, on the sides of the bald, excoriated hills. Primeval
rocks--and eternal ice--constitute the landscape.
_Letters from High Latitudes_ (London, 1859).
IN ANTARCTIC SEAS
W. G. BURN MURDOCH
Days such as this are few in a lifetime, so full of interest has it
been, and so fatiguing. Since early morning, rather since yesterday,
for there was no night and no morning, we have been constantly
marvelling at most astonishing and beautiful spectacles. We have been
bathed in red blood, and for hours and hours we have rowed in the boats
and plunged over miles of soft snow dragging seal-skins, and I have
been drawing hard in the times between the boat excursions; but the air
is exhilarating, and we feel equal to almost any amount of work. Sun
and snow-showers alternate--fine hard snow it is, that makes our faces
burn as if before a fire. It is very cold sketching, and incidents and
effects follow each other so rapidly that there is time to make little
more than mental notes.
Christmas Eve.
Those who have felt the peace of a summer night in Norway or Iceland,
where the day sleeps with wide-open eyes, can fancy the quiet beauty of
such a night among the white floes of the Antarctic.
To-day has passed, glistering in silky white, decked with sparkling
jewels of blue and green, and we thought surely we had seen the last of
Nature’s white harmonies; then evening came, pensive and soothing
and grey, and all the white world changed into soft violet, pale
yellow, and rose.
[Illustration: ICE FLOE, ANTARCTIC.]
A dreamy stillness fills the air. To the south the sun has dipped
behind a bank of pale grey cloud, and the sky above is touched with
primrose light. Far to the north the dark, smooth sea is bounded by two
low bergs, that stretch across the horizon. The nearest is cold violet
white, and the sunlight strikes the furthest, making it shine like a
wall of gold. The sky above them is of a leaden peacock blue, with rosy
cloudlets hanging against it--such colouring as I have never before
seen or heard described. To the westward, across the gulf, we can just
distinguish the blue-black crags jutting from the snowy lomonds. Little
clouds touched with gold and rose lie nestling in the black corries,
and gather round the snowy peaks. To the south, in the centre of the
floe, some bergs lie, cold and grey in the shadow of the bank of cloud.
They look like Greek temples imprisoned forever in a field of snow.
A faint cold air comes stealing to us over the floe; it ripples the
yellow sky reflection at the ice-edge for a moment, and falls away.
In the distance a seal is barking--a low muffled sound that travels
far over the calm water, and occasionally a slight splash breaks the
silence, as a piece of snow separates from the field and joins its
companion pieces that are floating quietly past our stern to the
north,--a mysterious, silent procession of soft, white spirits, each
perfectly reflected in the lavender sea.
Nature sleeps--breathlessly--silent; perhaps she dreams of the
spirit-world, that seems to draw so close to her on such a night.
By midnight the tired crew were all below and sound asleep in their
stuffy bunks. But the doctor and I found it impossible to leave the
quiet decks and the mysterious daylight, so we prowled about and brewed
coffee in the deserted galley. Then we watched the sun pass behind the
grey bergs in the south for a few seconds, and appear again, refreshed,
with a cool silvery light. A few flakes of snow floated in the clear,
cold air, and two snowy petrels, white as the snow itself, flitted
along the ice-edge.
A cold, dreamy, white Christmas morning,--beautiful beyond expression.
_From Edinburgh to the Antarctic--An Artist’s Notes and Sketches
during the Dundee Antarctic Expedition of 1892-3_ (London, 1894).
THE DESERT OF SAHARA
(_AFRICA_)
EUGENE FROMENTIN
The Saharans adore their country,[1] and, for my part, I should come
very near justifying a sentiment so impassioned, especially when it
is mingled with the attachment to one’s native soil.... It is a land
without grace or softness, but it is severe, which is not an evil
though its first effect is to make one serious--an effect that many
people confound with weariness. A great land of hills expiring in a
still greater flat land bathed in eternal light; empty and desolate
enough, to give the idea of that surprising thing called the desert;
with a sky almost always the same, silence, and on all sides a
tranquil horizon. In the centre a kind of lost city, surrounded by
solitude; then a little verdure, sandy islets, and, lastly, a few
reefs of whitish calcareous stone or black schists on the margin of
an expanse that resembles the sea;--in all this, but little variety,
few accidents, few novelties, unless it be the sun that rises over the
desert and sinks behind the hills, ever calm, rayless but devouring;
or perhaps the banks of sand that have changed their place and form
under the last wind from the South. Brief dawns, longer noons that are
heavier than elsewhere, and scarcely any twilight; sometimes a sudden
expansion of light and warmth with burning winds that momentarily give
the landscape a menacing physiognomy and that may then produce crushing
sensations; but more usually a radiant immobility, the somewhat
mournful fixity of fine weather, in short, a kind of impassibility that
seems to have fallen from the sky upon lifeless things and from them to
have passed into human faces.
The first impression received from this ardent and inanimate picture,
composed of sun, expanse, and solitude, is acute and cannot be compared
with any other. However, little by little, the eye grows accustomed
to the grandeur of the lines, the emptiness of the space, and the
nakedness of the earth, and if one is still astonished at anything, it
is at still remaining sensible to such slightly changing effects and at
being so deeply stirred by what are in reality the most simple sights.
Here the sky is clear, arid, and unchanging; it comes in contact with
fawn-coloured or white ground, and maintains a frank blue in its
utmost extent; and when it puts on gold opposite the setting sun its
base is violet and almost leaden-hued. I have not seen any beautiful
mirages. Except during the sirocco, the horizon is always distinctly
visible and detached from the sky; there is only a final streak of
ash-blue which is vigorously defined in the morning, but in the middle
of the day is somewhat confounded with the sky and seems to tremble
in the fluidity of the atmosphere. Directly to the South, a great way
off towards M’zab, an irregular line formed by groves of tamarinds is
visible. A faint mirage, that is produced every day in this part of the
desert, makes these groves appear nearer and larger; but the illusion
is not very striking and one needs to be told in order to notice it.
Shortly after sunrise the whole country is rosy, a vivid rose, with
depths of peach colour; the town is spotted with points of shadow, and
some little white argils, scattered along the edge of the palms, gleam
gaily enough in this mournful landscape which for a short moment of
freshness seems to smile at the rising sun. In the air are vague sounds
and a suggestion of singing that makes us understand that every country
in the world has its joyous awakening.
Then, almost at the same moment every day, from the south we hear the
approach of innumerable twitterings of birds. They are the _gangas_
coming from the desert to drink at the springs.... It is then half-past
six. One hour later and the same cries suddenly arise in the north;
the same flocks pass over my head one by one, in the same numbers and
order, and regain their desert plains. One might say that the morning
is ended; and the sole smiling hour of the day has passed between the
going and returning of the _gangas_. The landscape that was rose has
already become dun; the town has far fewer little shadows; it greys as
the sun gets higher; in proportion as it shines brighter the desert
seems to darken; the hills alone remain rosy. If there was any wind
it dies away; warm exhalations begin to spread in the air as if they
were from the sands. Two hours later all movement ceases at once, and
noontide commences.
The sun mounts and is finally directly over my head. I have only the
narrow shelter of my parasol and there I gather myself together; my
feet rest in the sand or on glittering stones; my pad curls up beside
me under the sun; my box of colours crackles like burning wood. Not a
sound is heard now. There are four hours of incredible calm and stupor.
The town sleeps below me then dumb and looking like a mass of violet
with its empty terraces upon which the sun illumines a multitude of
screens full of little rose apricots, exposed there to dry;--here and
there a black hole marks a window, or an interior door, and fine lines
of dark violet show that there are only one or two strips of shadow
in the whole town. A fillet of stronger light that edges the contour
of the terraces helps us to distinguish these mud edifices from one
another, piled as they are rather than built upon their three hills.
On all sides of the town extends the oasis, also dumb and slumbrous
under the heavy heat of the day. It looks quite small and presses
close against the two flanks of the town with an air of wanting to
defend it at need rather than to entice it. I can see the whole of
it: it resembles two squares of leaves enveloped by a long wall like
a park, roughly drawn upon the sterile plain. Although divided by
compartments into a multitude of little orchards, also all enclosed
within walls, seen from this height it looks like a green tablecloth;
no tree is distinguishable, two stages of forest only can be remarked:
the first, round-headed clumps; the second, clusters of palms. At
intervals some meagre patches of barley, only the stubble of which
now remains, form shorn spaces of brilliant yellow amid the foliage;
elsewhere in rare glades a dry, powdery, and ash-coloured ground shows.
Finally, on the south side, a few mounds of sand, heaped by the wind,
have passed over the surrounding wall; it is the desert trying to
invade the gardens. The trees do not move; in the forest thickets we
divine certain sombre gaps in which birds may be supposed to be hidden,
sleeping until their second awakening in the evening.
This is also the hour when the desert is transformed into an obscure
plain. The sun, suspended over its centre, inscribes upon it a circle
of light the equal rays of which fall full upon it in all ways and
everywhere at the same time. There is no longer any clearness or
shadow; the perspective indicated by the fleeting colours almost
ceases to measure distances; everything is covered with a brown tone,
continuous without streaks or mixture; there are fifteen or twenty
leagues of country as uniform and flat as a flooring. It seems that
the most minute salient object should be visible upon it, and yet the
eye discerns nothing there; one could not even say now where there is
sand, earth, or stony places, and the immobility of this solid sea
then becomes more striking than ever. On seeing it start at our feet
and then stretch away and sink towards the South, the East, and the
West without any traced route or inflexion, we ask ourselves what may
be this silent land clothed in a doubtful tone that seems the colour
of the void; whence no one comes, whither no one goes, and which ends
in so straight and clear a strip against the sky;--we do not know; we
feel that it does not end there and that it is, so to speak, only the
entrance to the high sea.
Then add to all these reveries the fame of the names we have seen
upon the map, of places that we know to be there, in such or such
direction, at five, ten, twenty, fifty days’ march, some known, others
only indicated and yet others more and more obscure.... Then the negro
country, the edge of which we only know; two or three names of towns
with a capital for a kingdom; lakes, forests, a great sea on the left,
perhaps great rivers, extraordinary inclemencies under the equator,
strange products, monstrous animals, hairy sheep, elephants, and what
then? Nothing more distinct; unknown distances, an uncertainty, an
enigma. Before me I have the beginning of this enigma and the spectacle
is strange beneath this clear noonday sun. Here is where I should like
to see the Egyptian Sphinx.
[Illustration: THE DESERT OF SAHARA.]
It is vain to gaze around, far or near; no moving thing can be
distinguished. Sometimes by chance, a little convoy of laden camels
appears, like a row of blackish points, slowly mounting the sandy
slopes; we only perceive them when they reach the foot of the hills.
They are travellers; who are they? whence come they? Without our
perceiving them, they have crossed the whole horizon beneath our eyes.
Or perhaps it is a spout of sand which suddenly detaches itself from
the surface like a fine smoke, rises into a spiral, traverses a certain
space bending under the wind and then evaporates after a few seconds.
The day passes slowly; it ends as it began with half rednesses, an
amber sky, depths assuming colour, long oblique flames which will
empurple the mountains, the sands and the eastern rocks in their turn;
shadows take possession of that side of the land that has been fatigued
by the heat during the first half of the day; everything seems to be
somewhat comforted. The sparrows and turtle-doves begin to sing among
the palms; there is a movement as of resurrection in the town; people
show themselves on the terraces and come to shake the sieves; the
voices of animals are heard in the squares, horses neighing as they are
taken to water and camels bellowing; the desert looks like a plate of
gold; the sun sinks over the violet mountains and the night makes ready
to fall.
_Un Été dans le Sahara_ (Paris, 1857).
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The word Sahara does not necessarily convey the idea of a desert
immensity. Inhabited at certain points, it is called _Fiafi_;
habitable at certain others, it takes the name of _Kifar_, a word
whose signification is the same as that of the common word _Khela_,
_abandoned_; habitable and inhabited at yet other points, it is called
_Falat_.
These three words represent each of the characteristics of the Sahara.
_Fiafi_ is the oasis where life retires, about the fountains and wells,
under the palms and fruit trees, sheltered from the sun and _choub_
(simoon).
_Kifar_ is the sandy and void plain, which, however, when fertilized
for a moment by the winter rains, is covered with grass (_a’ cheb_)
in the spring; and the nomadic tribes that ordinarily camp around the
oases go thither to pasture their flocks.
_Falat_, finally, is the sterile and bare immensity, the sea of sand,
whose eternal billows, to-day agitated by the _choub_, to-morrow will
lie in motionless heaps;--the sea that is slowly ploughed by those
fleets called caravans.--General Daumas, _Le Sahara Algérien_.
FINGAL’S CAVE
(_SCOTLAND_)
SIR WALTER SCOTT
July 19, 1810.
Yesterday we visited Staffa and Iona: the former is one of the most
extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every
description I had heard of it; or rather, the appearance of the
cavern, composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of
a cathedral,[2] and the running deep into the rock, eternally swept
by a deep and swelling sea, and paved as it were with ruddy marble,
baffles all description. You can walk along the broken pillars, with
some difficulty, and in some places with a little danger, as far as
the farthest extremity. Boats also can come in below when the sea is
placid,--which is seldom the case. I had become a sort of favourite
with the Hebridean boatmen, I suppose from my anxiety about their old
customs, and they were much pleased to see me get over the obstacles
which stopped some of the party. So they took the whim of solemnly
christening a great stone at the mouth of the cavern, Clachan-an
Bairdh, or the Poet’s Stone. It was consecrated with a pibroch, which
the echoes rendered tremendous, and a glass of whisky, not poured forth
in the ancient mode of libation, but turned over the throats of the
assistants. The head boatman, whose father had been himself a bard,
made me a speech on the occasion; but as it was in Gaelic, I could only
receive it as a silly beauty does a fine-spun compliment--bow, and say
nothing.
When this fun was over (in which, strange as it may seem, the
men were quite serious), we went to Iona, where there are some
ancient and curious monuments. From this remote island the light of
Christianity shone forth on Scotland and Ireland. The ruins are of
a rude architecture, but curious to the antiquary. Our return was
less comfortable; we had to row twenty miles against an Atlantic tide
and some wind, besides the pleasure of seeing occasional squalls
gathering to windward. The ladies were sick, especially poor Hannah
Mackenzie, and none of the gentlemen escaped except Staffa and myself.
The men, however, cheered by the pipes, and by their own interesting
boat-songs, which were uncommonly wild and beautiful, one man leading
and the others answering in chorus, kept pulling away without
apparently the least sense of fatigue, and we reached Ulva at ten at
night, tolerably wet, and well disposed for bed.
The haze and dullness of the atmosphere seem to render it dubious if
we can proceed, as we intended, to Staffa to-day--for mist among these
islands is rather unpleasant. Erskine reads prayers on deck to all
hands, and introduces a very apt allusion to our being now in sight
of the first Christian Church from which Revelation was diffused over
Scotland and all its islands. There is a very good form of prayer for
the Lighthouse Service composed by the Rev. Mr. Brunton. A pleasure
vessel lies under our lee from Belfast, with an Irish party related to
Macneil of Colonsay. The haze is fast degenerating into downright rain,
and that right heavy--verifying the words of Collins--
“And thither where beneath the _showery west_
The mighty Kings of three fair realms are laid.”[3]
After dinner, the weather being somewhat cleared, sailed for Staffa,
and took boat. The surf running heavy up between the island and
the adjacent rock, called Booshala, we landed at a creek near the
Cormorant’s cave. The mist now returned so thick as to hide all view
of Iona, which was our landmark; and although Duff, Stevenson, and
I, had been formerly on the isle, we could not agree upon the
proper road to the cave. I engaged myself, with Duff and Erskine, in
a clamber of great toil and danger, and which at length brought me to
the _Cannon-ball_, as they call a round granite stone moved by the sea
up and down in a groove of rock, which it has worn for itself, with
a noise resembling thunder. Here I gave up my research, and returned
to my companions, who had not been more fortunate. As night was now
falling, we resolved to go aboard and postpone the adventure of the
enchanted cavern until next day. The yacht came to an anchor with the
purpose of remaining off the island all night, but the hardness of the
ground, and the weather becoming squally, obliged us to return to our
safer mooring at Y-Columb-Kill.
[Illustration: FINGAL’S CAVE.]
* * * * *
29th August, 1814.
Night squally and rainy--morning ditto--we weigh, however, and return
towards Staffa, and, very happily, the day clears as we approach the
isle. As we ascertained the situation of the cave, I shall only make
this memorandum, that when the weather will serve, the best landing
is to the lee of Booshala, a little conical islet or rock, composed
of basaltic columns placed in an oblique or sloping position. In this
way, you land at once on the flat causeway, formed by the heads of
truncated pillars, which leads to the cave. But if the state of tide
renders it impossible to land under Booshala, then take one of the
adjacent creeks; in which case, keeping to the left hand along the top
of the ledge of rocks which girdles in the isle, you find a dangerous
and precipitous descent to the causeway aforesaid, from the table.
Here we were under the necessity of towing our Commodore, Hamilton,
whose gallant heart never fails him, whatever the tenderness of his
toes may do. He was successfully lowered by a rope down the precipice,
and proceeding along the flat terrace or causeway already mentioned,
we reached the celebrated cave. I am not sure whether I was not more
affected by this second, than by the first view of it. The stupendous
columnar side walls--the depth and strength of the ocean with which
the cavern is filled--the variety of tints formed by stalactites
dropping and petrifying between the pillars, and resembling a sort of
chasing of yellow or cream-coloured marble filling the interstices of
the roof--the corresponding variety below, where the ocean rolls over
a red, and in some places a violet-coloured rock, the basis of the
basaltic pillars--the dreadful noise of those august billows so well
corresponding with the grandeur of the scene--are all circumstances
elsewhere unparalleled. We have now seen in our voyage the three
grandest caverns in Scotland,--Smowe, Macallister’s Cave, and Staffa;
so that, like the Troglodytes of yore, we may be supposed to know
something of the matter. It is, however, impossible to compare scenes
of natures so different, nor, were I compelled to assign a preference
to any of the three, could I do it but with reference to their distinct
characters, which might affect different individuals in different
degrees. The characteristic of the Smowe cave may in this case be
called the terrific, for the difficulties which oppose the stranger are
of a nature so uncommonly wild, as, for the first time at least, to
convey an impression of terror--with which the scenes to which he is
introduced fully correspond. On the other hand the dazzling whiteness
of the incrustations in Macallister’s Cave, the elegance of the
entablature, the beauty of its limpid pool, and the graceful dignity
of its arch, render its leading features those of severe and chastened
beauty. Staffa, the third of these subterranean wonders, may challenge
sublimity as its principal characteristic. Without the savage gloom
of the Smowe cave, and investigated with more apparent ease, though,
perhaps, with equal real danger, the stately regularity of its columns
forms a contrast to the grotesque imagery of Macallister’s Cave,
combining at once the sentiments of grandeur and beauty. The former is,
however, predominant, as it must necessarily be in any scene of the
kind.
We had scarce left Staffa when the wind and rain returned.
_Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott_ (Edinburgh, 1878).
FOOTNOTES:
[2]
“----that wondrous dome,
Where, as to shame the temples deck’d
By skill of earthly architect,
Nature herself, it seem’d, would raise,
A minster to her Maker’s praise!
Not for a meaner use ascend
Her columns, or her arches bend;
Nor of a theme less solemn tells
That mighty surge that ebbs and swells,
And still, beneath each awful pause
From the high vault an answer draws,
In varied tone prolonged and high
That mocks the organ’s melody.
Nor doth its entrance front in vain
To old Iona’s holy fane,
That Nature’s voice might seem to say,
‘Well hast thou done, frail Child of clay!
Thy humble powers that stately shrine
Task’d high and hard--but witness mine!’”
_Lord of the Isles._ Canto IV. St. 10.
[3] _Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands._
FINGAL’S CAVE
(_SCOTLAND_)
JOHN KEATS
I am puzzled how to give you an Idea of Staffa. It can only be
represented by a first-rate drawing. One may compare the surface of the
Island to a roof--this roof is supported by grand pillars of basalt
standing together as thick as honeycombs. The finest thing is Fingal’s
Cave--it is entirely a hollowing out of Basalt Pillars. Suppose now
the Giants who rebelled against Jove had taken a whole Mass of black
Columns and bound them together like bunches of matches--and then
with immense axes had made a cavern in the body of these columns----
Of course the roof and floor must be composed of broken ends of the
Columns--such is Fingal’s Cave, except that the Sea has done the work
of excavations, and is continually dashing there--so that we walk
along the sides of the cave on the pillars which are left as if for
convenient stairs. The roof is arched somewhat gothic-wise, and the
length of some of the entire side-pillars is fifty feet. About the
island you might seat an army of Men each on a pillar. The length of
the cave is 120 feet, and from its extremity the view into the sea,
through the large Arch at the entrance--the colour of the columns is a
sort of black with a lurking gloom of purple therein. For solemnity and
grandeur it far surpasses the finest Cathedral. At the extremity of
the Cave there is a small perforation into another cave, at which the
waters meeting and buffeting each other there is sometimes produced a
report as of a cannon heard as far as Iona, which must be twelve Miles.
As we approached in the boat, there was such a fine swell of the sea
that the pillars appeared rising immediately out of the crystal. But it
is impossible to describe it--
Not Aladdin magian
Ever such a work began.
Not the Wizard of the Dee
Ever such a dream could see,
Not St. John in Patmos Isle
In the passion of his toil
When he saw the churches seven
Golden-aisled built up in heaven
Gaz’d at such a rugged wonder.
As I stood its roofing under
Lo! I saw one sleeping there
On the marble cold and bare.
While the surges wash’d his feet
And his garments white did beat
Drench’d about the sombre rocks,
On his neck his well-grown locks
Lifted dry above the Main
Were upon the curl again--
“What is this? and what art thou?”
Whisper’d I, and touch’d his brow;
“What art thou? and what is this?”
Whisper’d I, and strove to kiss
The Spirit’s hand, to wake his eyes;
Up he started in a trice:
“I am Lycidas,” said he
“Fam’d in funeral Minstrelsy--
This was architected thus
By the great Oceanus.
Here his mighty waters play
Hollow Organs all the day,
Here, by turns, his dolphins all,
Finny palmers great and small,
Come to pay devotion due--
Each a mouth of pearls must strew!
Many a mortal of these days
Dares to pass our sacred ways,
Dares to touch, audaciously
This Cathedral of the sea--
I have been the Pontiff-priest,
Where the Waters never rest,
Where a fledgy sea-bird choir
Soars for ever--holy fire
I have hid from Mortal Man.
Proteus is my Sacristan
But the stupid eye of Mortal
Hath pass’d beyond the Rocky portal,
So for ever will I leave
Such a taint and soon unweave
All the magic of the place--
’Tis now free to stupid face--
To cutters and to fashion boats,
To cravats and Petticoats.
The great Sea shall war it down,
For its fame shall not be blown
At every farthing quadrille dance.”
So saying with a Spirit’s glance
He dived--
I am sorry I am so indolent as to write such stuff as this. It can’t be
helped. The western coast of Scotland is a most strange place--it is
composed of rocks, mountains, mountainous and rocky islands intersected
by lochs--you can go but a short distance anywhere from salt water in
the highlands.
_Letters of John Keats_ (London and New York, 1891).
IN THE HIMALAYAS
(_INDIA_)
G. W. STEEVENS
In Calcutta they grumbled that the hot weather was beginning already.
Mornings were steamy, days sticky, and the municipal impurities rose
rankly. The carter squatted over his bullocks with his shining body
stark naked but for a loin-cloth.
At Siliguri, the bottom of the ascent to Darjiling, the rough grass and
the tea-gardens were sheeted at sunrise in a silver frost. What few
natives appeared happed their heads in shawls as if they had toothache.
It takes you an afternoon and a night to get as far as Siliguri. What
you principally notice on the way is the dullness of the flat, moist
richness of Bengal, and the extraordinary fullness of the first-class
carriages. Even at this winter season the residents of Calcutta snatch
at the chance of being cold for twenty-four hours. When you get out
of your carriage at the junction station, you see on the other side
of the platform a dumpy little toy train--a train at the wrong end of
a telescope with its wheels cut from beneath it. Engines and trucks
and carriages seem to be crawling like snakes on their bellies. Six
miniature easy-chairs, three facing three, on an open truck with an
awning, make a first-class carriage.
This is the Darjiling-Himalaya Railway--two-foot gauge, climbing four
feet to the hundred for fifty miles up the foothills of the greatest
mountains in the world. It is extraordinary as the only line in India
that has been built with Indian capital. But you will find that the
least of its wonders. A flat-faced hillman bangs with a hammer twice
three times on a spare bit of railway metal hung up by way of a gong,
the whistle screams, and you pant away on surely the most entrancing
railway journey in the world. Nothing very much to make your heart jump
in the first seven miles. You bowl along the surface of a slightly
ascending cart-load, and your view is mostly bamboo and tea. Graceful
enough, and cool to the eye--the bamboos, hedges or clumps of slender
stem with plumes of pale leaf swinging and nodding above them; the tea,
trim ranks and files of short, well-furnished bushes with lustrous,
dark-green leaves, not unlike evergreens or myrtle in a nursery at
home,--but you soon feel that you have known bamboo and tea all your
life. Then suddenly you begin to climb, and all at once you are in a
new world--a world of plants.
[Illustration: THE HIMALAYAS.]
A new world is easy to say, but this is new indeed and a very
world--such a primeval vegetable world as you have read of in books and
eked out with dreams. It has everything you know in your world, only
everything expressed in vegetation. It is a world in its variety alone.
Trees of every kind rise up round you at every angle--unfamiliar, most
of them, and exaggerations of forms you know, as if they were seen
through a microscope. You might come on such broad fleshy leaves by way
of Jack’s giant bean-stalk. Other growths take the form of bushes
as high as our trees; but beside them are skinny, stunted starvelings,
such as the most niggardly country might show. Then there are
grasses--tufted, ruddy bamboo grass, and huge yellow straws with giant
bents leaning insolently over to flick your face as you go by. Smaller
still grow the ferns, lurking shyly in the crevices of the banks. And
over everything, most luxuriant of everything, crawl hundred-armed
creepers, knitting and knotting the whole jungle into one mellay of
struggling life.
The varieties--the trees and shrubs and grasses and ferns and
creepers--you would see in any tropical garden; but you could not
see them at home. You could not see them in their unpruned native
intercourse one with the other. The rise and fall of the ground, the
whims of light and air, coax them into shapes that answer to the most
fantastic imagination. Now you are going through the solemn aisles of
a great cathedral--grey trunks for columns, with arches and vaulted
roofs of green, with dark, retreating chapels and altar-trappings of
mingled flowers. Now it is a king’s banqueting-hall, tapestried with
white-flowering creeper and crimson and purple bougainvillea; overhead
the scarlet-mahogany blossoms of a sparse-leaved tulip-tree might be
butterflies frescoed on a ceiling.
Fancy can compel the wilderness into moments of order, but wild it
remains. The growths are not generally buildings, but animate beings
in a real world. You see no perfectly shaped tree, as in a park or
garden; one is warped, another stunted, another bare below--each
formed, like men, by the pressure of a thousand fellows. Here is a
corpse spreading white, stark arms abroad. Here are half-a-dozen young
creatures rolling over each other like puppies at play. And there is
a creeper flinging tumultuous, enraptured arms round a stately tree;
presently it is gripping it in thick bands like Laocöon’s serpent,
then choking it mercilessly to death, then dead itself, its bleached,
bare streamers dangling limply in the wind. It is life, indeed, this
forest--plants fighting, victorious and vanquished; loving and getting
children; springing and waxing and decaying and dying--our own world of
men translated into plants.
While I am spinning similitudes, the Darjiling-Himalaya Railway is
panting always upwards, boring through the thick world of trees like
a mole. Now it sways round a curve so short that you can almost look
back into the next carriage, and you understand why the wheels are so
low. Now it stops dead, and almost before it stops starts backwards up
a zigzag, then forwards up another, and on again. In a moment it is
skating on the brink of a slide of shale that trembles to come down and
overwhelm it; next it is rumbling across a bridge above the point it
passed ten minutes ago, and also that which it will reach ten minutes
hence. Twisting, backing, circling, dodging, but always rising, it
untreads the skein whose end is in the clouds and the snows.
Presently the little engine draws quite clear of the jungle. You skirt
opener slopes, and the blue plain below is no longer a fleeting vista,
but a broad prospect. You see how the forest spills itself on to the
fields and spreads into a dark puddle over their lightness. You see
a great river overlaying the dimness with a ribbon of steel. The
ferns grow thicker about you; gigantic fronds bow at you from gullies
overhead, and you see the tree-fern--a great crown of drooping green on
a trunk of a man’s height--standing superbly alone, knowing its supreme
gracefulness. Next, as you rise and rise, the air gets sharp; through a
gauzy veil of mist appear again huge forests, but dark and gloomy with
brown moss dripping dankly from every branch. Rising, rising, and you
have now come to Ghoom, the highest point. Amid the cold fog appears
the witch of Ghoom--a hundred years old, with a pointed chin and mop of
grizzled hair all witch-fashion, but beaming genially and requesting
backsheesh.
Then round a corner--and here is Darjiling. A scattered settlement on
a lofty ridge, facing a great cup enclosed by other ridges--mountains
elsewhere, here hills. Long spurs run down into the hollow, half black
with forest, half pale and veined with many paths. At the bottom is a
little chequer of fresh green millet; the rim at the top seems to line
the sky.
And the Himalayas and the eternal snows? The devil a Himalaya in
sight. Thick vapours dip down and over the very rim of the cup; beyond
Darjiling is a tumult of peaked creamy cloud. You need not be told
it,--clouds that hide mountains always ape their shapes,--the majestic
Himalayas are behind that screen, and you will not see them to-day, nor
perhaps to-morrow, nor yet for a fortnight of to-morrows.
You must console yourself with Darjiling and the hillmen. And
Darjiling is pleasant to the eye as you look down on it, a huddle of
grey corrugated-iron roofs, one stepping over the other, hugging the
hillside with one or two red ones to break the monotone. There is no
continuous line of them: each stands by itself in a ring of deep green
first. The place is cool and grateful after an Indian town--clean and
roomy, a place of homes and not of pens.
In the middle of it is the bazaar, and my day, by luck, was market-day.
Here, again, you could never fancy yourself in India. A few Hindus
there are, but beside the dumpy hillmen their thin limbs, tiny
features, and melting eyes seem hardly human. More like the men you
know is the Tibetan, with a long profile and long, sharp nose, though
his hat has the turned-up brim of the Chinese, though he wears a
long bottle-green dressing-gown open to the girdle, and his pigtail
knocks at the back of his knees. But the prevailing type, though as
Mongolian, is far more genial than the Tibetan. Squat little men, for
the most part, fill the bazaar, with broad faces that give room for the
features, with button noses, and slits for eyes. They wear boots and
putties, or gaiters made of many-coloured carpet-bagging; and their
women are like them--with shawls over their heads, and broad sashes
swathing them from bosom to below the waist, with babies slung behind
their backs, not astride on the hip as are the spawn of India. Their
eyes are black as sloes--puckered, too, but seeming puckered with
laughter; and their clear yellow skins are actually rosy on the cheeks,
like a ripe apricot. Square-faced, long-pigtailed, plump, cheery, open
of gaze, and easy of carriage, rolling cigarettes, and offering them
to soothe babies--they might not be beautiful in Europe; here they are
ravishing.
But you come to Darjiling to see the snows. So on a night of agonizing
cold--feet and hands a block of ice the moment you cease to move
them--must follow a rise before it is light. Maybe the clouds will be
kinder this morning. No; the same stingy, clammy mist,--only there,
breaking through it, high up in the sky--yes, there are a few faint
streaks of white. Just a few marks of snow scored on the softer white
of the cloud, chill with the utterly disconsolate cold of ice through a
window of fog. Still, there are certainly Himalayas there.
Up and up I toiled; the sun was plainly rising behind the ridge of
Darjiling. In the cup below the sunlight was drawing down the hillsides
and peeling off the twilight. Then, at a sudden turn of the winding
ascent, I saw the summit of Kinchinjunga. Just the summit, poised in
the blue, shining and rejoicing in the sunrise. And as I climbed and
climbed, other peaks rose into sight below and beside him, all dazzling
white, mounting and mounting the higher I mounted, every instant more
huge and towering and stately, boring into the sky.
Up--till I came to the summit, and the sun appeared--a golden ball
swimming in a sea of silver. He was sending the clouds away curling
before him; they drifted across the mountains, but he pursued and smote
and dissolved them. And ever the mountains rose and rose, huger and
huger; as they swelled up they heaved the clouds away in rolls off
their shoulders. Now their waists were free, and all but their feet.
Only a chasm of fog still hid their lower slopes. Fifty miles away,
they looked as if I could toss a stone across to them; only you could
never hope to hit their heads, they towered so gigantically. Now the
clouds, clearing to right and left, laid bare a battlemented range
of snow-white wall barring the whole horizon. Behind these appeared
other peaks; it was not a range, but a country of mountains, not now a
wall, but a four-square castle carved by giants out of eternal ice. It
was the end of the world--a sheer rampart, which forbade the fancy of
anything beyond.
And in the centre, by peak and col and precipice, the prodigy reared
itself up to Kinchinjunga. Bare rock below, then blinding snow seamed
with ridges of chimneys, and then, above, the mighty summit--a
tremendous three-cornered slab of grey granite between two resplendent
faces of snow. Other mountains tiptoe at the sky snatch at it with a
peak like a needle. Kinchinjunga heaves himself up into it, broadly,
massively, and makes his summit a diadem. He towers without effort,
knowing his majesty. Sublime and inviolable, he lifts his grey
nakedness and his mail of burnished snow, and turns his forehead
serenely to sun and storm. Only their touch, of all things created, has
perturbed his solitude since the birth of time.
_In India_ (New York, 1899).
NIAGARA FALLS
(_NORTH AMERICA_)
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
It has been said that it matters much from what point the Falls are
first seen, but to this I demur. It matters, I think, very little, or
not at all. Let the visitor first see it all, and learn the whereabouts
of every point, so as to understand his own position and that of the
waters; and then having done that in the way of business let him
proceed to enjoyment. I doubt whether it be not the best to do this
with all sight-seeing. I am quite sure that it is the way in which
acquaintance may be best and most pleasantly made with a new picture.
The Falls are, as I have said, made by a sudden breach in the level of
the river. All cataracts are, I presume, made by such breaches; but
generally the waters do not fall precipitously as they do at Niagara,
and never elsewhere, as far as the world yet knows, has a breach so
sudden been made in such a body of water. Up above the Falls, for more
than a mile, the waters leap and burst over rapids, as though conscious
of the destiny that awaits them. Here the river is very broad, and
comparatively shallow, but from shore to shore it frets itself into
little torrents, and begins to assume the majesty of its power. Looking
at it even here, one feels sure that no strongest swimmer could have
a chance of saving himself, if fate had cast him in even among those
petty whirlpools. The waters, though so broken in their descent, are
deliciously green. This colour as seen early in the morning, or just as
the sun has set, is so bright as to give to the place of its chiefest
charms.
This will be best seen from the further end of the island--Goat Island,
as it is called, which, as the reader will understand, divides the
river immediately above the Falls. Indeed the island is a part of that
precipitously broken ledge over which the river tumbles; and no doubt
in process of time will be worn away and covered with water. The time,
however, will be very long. In the meanwhile it is perhaps a mile
round, and is covered thickly with timber. At the upper end of the
island the waters are divided, and coming down in two courses, each
over its own rapids, form two separate falls. The bridge by which the
island is entered is a hundred yards or more above the smaller fall.
The waters here have been turned by the island, and make their leap
into the body of the river below at a right angle with it,--about two
hundred yards below the greater fall. Taken alone this smaller cataract
would, I imagine, be the heaviest fall of water known, but taken in
conjunction with the other it is terribly shorn of its majesty. The
waters here are not green as they are at the larger cataract, and
though the ledge has been hollowed and bowed by them so as to form a
curve, that curve does not deepen itself into a vast abyss as it does
at the horseshoe up above. This smaller fall is again divided, and the
visitor passing down a flight of steps and over a frail wooden bridge
finds himself on a smaller island in the midst of it.
[Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS.]
But we will go at once on to the glory, and the thunder, and the
majesty, and the wrath of that upper hell of waters. We are still, let
the reader remember, on Goat Island, still in the States, and on what
is called the American side of the main body of the river. Advancing
beyond the path leading down to the lesser fall, we come to that point
of the island at which the waters of the main river begin to descend.
From hence across to the Canadian side the cataract continues itself
in one unabated line. But the line is very far from being direct or
straight. After stretching for some little way from the shore, to a
point in the river which is reached by a wooden bridge at the end of
which stands a tower upon the rock,--after stretching to this, the line
of the ledge bends inwards against the flood,--in, and in, and in, till
one is led to think that the depth of that horseshoe is immeasurable.
It has been cut with no stinting hand. A monstrous cantle has been worn
back out of the centre of the rock, so that the fury of the waters
converges, and the spectator as he gazes into the hollow with wishful
eyes fancies that he can hardly trace out the centre of the abyss.
Go down to the end of that wooden bridge, seat yourself on the rail,
and there sit till all the outer world is lost to you. There is no
grander spot about Niagara than this. The waters are absolutely around
you. If you have that power of eye-control, which is so necessary to
the full enjoyment of scenery, you will certainly see nothing but the
water. You will certainly hear nothing else; and the sound, I beg you
to remember, is not an ear-cracking, agonizing crash and clang of
noises; but is melodious and soft withal, though loud as thunder. It
fills your ears, and as it were envelops them, but at the same time
you can speak to your neighbour without an effort. But at this place,
and in these moments, the less of speaking I should say the better.
There is no grander spot than this. Here, seated on the rail of the
bridge, you will not see the whole depth of the fall. In looking at the
grandest works of nature, and of art too, I fancy, it is never well to
see all. There should be something left to the imagination, and much
should be half-concealed in mystery. The greatest charm of a mountain
range is the wild feeling that there must be strange desolate worlds in
those far-off valleys beyond. And so here, at Niagara, that converging
rush of waters may fall down, down at once into a hell of rivers for
what the eye can see. It is glorious to watch them in their first curve
over the rocks. They come green as a bank of emeralds; but with a
fitful flying colour, as though conscious that in one moment more they
would be dashed into spray and rise into air, pale as driven snow. The
vapour rises high into the air, and is gathered there, visible always
as a permanent white cloud over the cataract; but the bulk of the spray
which fills the lower hollow of that horseshoe is like a tumult of
snow. This you will not fully see from your seat on the rail. The head
of it rises ever and anon out of the caldron below, but the caldron
itself will be invisible. It is ever so far down,--far as your own
imagination can sink it. But your eyes will rest full upon the curve of
the waters. The shape you will be looking at is that of a horseshoe,
but of a horseshoe miraculously deep from toe to heel;--and this depth
becomes greater as you sit there. That which at first was only great
and beautiful, becomes gigantic and sublime till the mind is at loss to
find an epithet for its own use. To realize Niagara you must sit there
till you see nothing else than that which you have come to see. You
will hear nothing else, and think of nothing else. At length you will
be at one with the tumbling river before you. You will find yourself
among the waters as though you belonged to them. The cool liquid green
will run through your veins, and the voice of the cataract will be
the expression of your own heart. You will fall as the bright waters
fall, rushing down into your new world with no hesitation and with no
dismay; and you will rise again as the spray rises, bright, beautiful,
and pure. Then you will flow away in your course to the uncompassed,
distant, and eternal ocean.
And now we will cross the water, and with this object will return by
the bridge out of Goat Island on the mainland of the American side.
But as we do so let me say that one of the great charms of Niagara
consists in this,--that over and above that one great object of wonder
and beauty, there is so much little loveliness;--loveliness especially
of water, I mean. There are little rivulets running here and there over
little falls, with pendent boughs above them, and stones shining under
their shallow depths. As the visitor stands and looks through the trees
the rapids glitter before him, and then hide themselves behind islands.
They glitter and sparkle in far distances under the bright foliage
till the remembrance is lost, and one knows not which way they run.
Close to the cataract, exactly at the spot from whence in former days
the Table Rock used to project from the land over the boiling caldron
below, there is now a shaft down which you will descend to the level of
the river, and pass between the rock and the torrent. This Table Rock
broke away from the cliff and fell, as up the whole course of the river
the seceding rocks have split and fallen from time to time through
countless years, and will continue to do till the bed of the upper lake
is reached. You will descend this shaft, taking to yourself or not
taking to yourself a suit of oil-clothes as you may think best.
In the spot to which I allude the visitor stands on a broad safe path,
made of shingles, between the rock over which the water rushes. He will
go in so far that the spray rising back from the bed of the torrent
does not incommode him. With this exception, the further he can go in
the better; but circumstances will clearly show him the spot to which
he should advance. Unless the water be driven in by a strong wind,
five yards make the difference between a comparatively dry coat and
an absolutely wet one. And then let him stand with his back to the
entrance, thus hiding the last glimmer of the expiring day. So standing
he will look up among the falling waters, or down into the deep misty
pit, from which they reascend in almost as palpable a bulk. The rock
will be at his right hand, high and hard, and dark and straight, like
the wall of some huge cavern, such as children enter in their dreams.
For the first five minutes he will be looking but at the waters of
a cataract,--at the waters, indeed, of such a cataract as we know no
other, and at their interior curves which elsewhere we cannot see.
But by and by all this will change. He will no longer be on a shingly
path beneath a waterfall; but that feeling of a cavern wall will grow
upon him, of a cavern deep, below roaring seas, in which the waves are
there, though they do not enter in upon him; or rather not the waves,
but the very bowels of the ocean. He will feel as though the floods
surrounded him, coming and going with their wild sounds, and he will
hardly recognize that though among them he is not in them. And they,
as they fall with a continual roar, not hurting the ear, but musical
withal, will seem to move as the vast ocean waters may perhaps move
in their internal currents. He will lose the sense of one continued
descent, and think that they are passing round him in their appointed
courses. The broken spray that rises from the depth below, rises so
strongly, so palpably, so rapidly, that the motion in every direction
will seem equal. And, as he looks on, strange colours will show
themselves through the mist; the shades of grey will become green or
blue, with ever and anon a flash of white; and then, when some gust of
wind blows in with greater violence, the sea-girt cavern will become
all dark and black. Oh, my friend, let there be no one there to speak
to thee then; no, not even a brother. As you stand there speak only to
the waters.
_North America_ (London, 1862).
NIAGARA FALLS
(_NORTH AMERICA_)
CHARLES DICKENS
We called at the town of Erie, at eight o’clock that night, and lay
there an hour. Between five and six next morning, we arrived at
Buffalo, where we breakfasted; and being too near the Great Falls to
wait patiently anywhere else, we set off by the train, the same morning
at nine o’clock, to Niagara.
It was a miserable day; chilly and raw; a damp mist falling; and the
trees in that northern region quite bare and wintry. Whenever the train
halted, I listened for the roar; and was constantly straining my eyes
in the direction where I knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river
rolling on towards them; every moment expecting to behold the spray.
Within a few moments of our stopping, not before, I saw two great white
clouds rising up slowly and majestically from the depths of the earth.
That was all. At length we alighted; and then for the first time, I
heard the mighty rush of water, and felt the ground tremble underneath
my feet.
The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain, and half-melted
ice. I hardly know how I got down, but I was soon at the bottom, and
climbing, with two English officers who were crossing and had joined
me, over some broken rocks, deafened by the noise, half-blinded by the
spray, and wet to the skin. We were at the foot of the American Fall. I
could see an immense torrent of water tearing headlong down from some
great height, but had no idea of shape, or situation, or anything but
vague immensity.
When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were crossing the
swollen river immediately before both cataracts, I began to feel what
it was--but I was in a manner stunned, and unable to comprehend the
vastness of the scene. It was not until I came on Table Rock, and
looked--Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright green water!--that it
came upon me in its full might and majesty.
Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first
effect, and the enduring one--instant and lasting--of the tremendous
spectacle, was Peace. Peace of Mind, tranquillity, calm recollections
of the Dead, great thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness: nothing of
gloom or terror. Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an Image
of Beauty; to remain there, changeless and indelible, until its pulses
cease to beat, for ever.
Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life receded from my view, and
lessened in the distance, during the ten memorable days we passed on
that Enchanted Ground! What voices spoke from out the thundering water;
what faces, faded from the earth, looked out upon me from its gleaming
depths; what Heavenly promise glistened in those angels’ tears, the
drops of many hues, that showered around, and twined themselves about
the gorgeous arches which the changing rainbows made!
I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian side, whither I had
gone at first. I never crossed the river again; for I knew there were
people on the other shore, and in such a place it is natural to shun
strange company. To wander to and fro all day, and see the cataracts
from all points of view; to stand upon the edge of the great Horse-Shoe
Fall, marking the hurried water gathering strength as it approached the
verge, yet seeming too, to pause before it shot into the gulf below;
to gaze from the river’s level up at the torrent as it came streaming
down; to climb the neighbouring heights and watch it through the trees,
and see the wreathing water in the rapids hurrying on to take its
fearful plunge; to linger in the shadow of the solemn rocks three miles
below; watching the river as, stirred by no visible cause, it heaved
and eddied and awoke the echoes, being troubled yet, far down beneath
its surface, by its giant leap; to have Niagara before me, lighted by
the sun and by the moon, red in the day’s decline, and grey as evening
slowly fell upon it; to look upon it every day, and wake up in the
night and hear its ceaseless voice: this was enough.
[Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS IN WINTER.]
I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters roll and leap,
and roar and tumble, all day long; still are the rainbows spanning
them, a hundred feet below. Still, when the sun is on them, do they
shine and glow like molten gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, do they
fall like snow, or seem to crumble away like the front of a great chalk
cliff, or roll down the rock like dense white smoke. But always does
the mighty stream appear to die as it comes down, and always from
its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and mist
which is never laid: which has haunted this place with the same dread
solemnity since Darkness brooded on the deep, and that first flood
before the Deluge--Light--came rushing on Creation at the word of God.
_American Notes for General Circulation_ (London, 1842).
FUJI-SAN
(_JAPAN_)
SIR EDWIN ARNOLD
I have just made in the company of Captain John Ingles, R. N., Naval
Adviser to the Imperial Government of this country, and a young
Japanese gentleman--Mr. Asso--a very fortunate and delightful ascent
of Fuji-San, the famous mountain--you would not wonder, residing
here, that everybody in Japan talks about Fuji, and thinks about her;
paints her on fans, and limns her with gold on lacquer; carves her on
temple-gates and house-fronts, and draws her for curtains of shops
and signboards of inns, rest-houses and public institutions. Living
in Tokio or Yokohama, or anywhere along this Tokaidô--the Southern
road of Japan--you would soon perceive how the great volcano dominates
every landscape, asserts perpetually her sovereignty over all other
hills and mountains, and becomes in reality as well as imagination, an
indispensable element in the national scenery. Far away at sea, when
approaching Japan, if the weather be clear, long before the faintest
blue line of coast is discernible from the deck, there is seen hanging
in the air a dim white symmetrical cone, too constant for a cloud,
which is Fuji-San. After you have landed and taken up your residence
in Yokohama, Tokio, or any point of the southeastern littoral, you
will be always seeing Fuji-Yama from some garden-nook, some tea-house
gallery, some grove of cryptomerias, or thicket of bamboo, or even from
the railway-carriage window. In the spring and autumn, as frequently
as not, she will, indeed, be shrouded in the dense masses of white
or grey cumulus which her crest collects, and seems to create in the
mists of the Pacific. But during summer, when the snows are all melted
from the vast cone, and again in winter, when she is covered with snow
half-way down her colossal sides, but the air is clear, the superb
mountain stands forth, dawn after dawn, and evening after evening--like
no other eminence in the world for beauty, majesty, and perfectness
of outline. There are loftier peaks, of course, for Fuji-San is not
much higher than Mont Blanc, but there is none--not even Etna--which
rises so proudly alone, isolated, distinct, from the very brink of the
sea--with nothing to hide or diminish the dignity of the splendid and
immense curves sweeping up from where the broad foot rests, planted on
the Suruga Gulf, to where the imperial head soars, lifted high above
the clouds into the blue of the firmament. By many and many a picture
or photograph you must know well those almost perfectly matched flanks,
that massive base, the towering lines of that mighty cone, slightly
truncated and dentated at the summit. But no picture gives, and no
artist could ever reproduce, the variety and charm of the aspect which
Fuji-San puts on from day to day and hour to hour under the differing
influences of air and weather. Sometimes it is as a white cloud that
you see her, among the white clouds, changeless among the changeful
shapes from which she emerges. Sometimes there will break forth, high
above all clouds, a patch of deep grey against the blue, the broad head
of Fuji. Sometimes you will only know where she sits by the immense
collection of cirrus and cirro-cumulus there alone gathered in the sky;
and sometimes--principally at dawn and nightfall--she will suddenly
manifest herself, from her foot, jewelled with rich harvests, to her
brow, bare and lonely as a desert--all violet against the gold of the
setting sun, or else all gold and green against the rose and silver of
the daybreak....
As late as the Fourteenth Century Fuji was constantly smoking, and
fire is spoken of with the eruptions, the last of which took place in
December, 1707, and continued for nearly forty days. The Ho-Yei-san, or
hump in the south face, was probably then formed. In this, her final
outbreak, Fuji covered Tokio itself, sixty miles away, with six inches
of ash, and sent rivers of lava far and wide. Since then she has slept,
and only one little spot underneath the Kwan-nom-Gatake, on the lip of
the crater, where steam exhales, and the red pumice-cracks are hot,
shows that the heart of this huge volcano yet glows, and that she is
capable of destroying again her own beauty and the forests and rich
regions of fertility which clothe her knees and feet.
[Illustration: FUJI SAN.]
It is a circuit of 120 miles to go all round the base of Fuji-San. If
you could cut a tunnel through her from Yoshiwara to Kawaguchi, it
would be forty miles long. Generally speaking, the lower portion of the
mountain is cultivated to a height of 1,500 feet, and it is a whole
province which thus climbs round her. From the border of the farms
there begins a rough and wild, but flowery moorland, which stretches
round the hill to an elevation of 4,000 feet, where there the thick
forest-belt commences. This girdles the volcano up to 7,000 feet on
the Subashiri side and 8,000 on the Murayama fall, but is lower to the
eastward. Above the forest extends a narrow zone of thicket and bush,
chiefly dwarfed larch, juniper and a vaccinium; after which comes the
bare, burnt, and terribly majestic peak itself, where the only living
thing is a little yellow lichen which grows in the fissures of the lava
blocks, for no eagle or hawk ventures so high, and the boldest or most
bewildered butterfly will not be seen above the bushes half-way down.
The best--indeed, the only--time for the ascent of the mountain is
between July 15th and September 5th. During this brief season the snow
will be melted from the cone, the huts upon the path will be opened
for pilgrims, and there will be only the danger of getting caught by
a typhoon, or reaching the summit to find it swathed day after day in
clouds, and no view obtainable. Our party of three started for the
ascent on August 25th, taking that one of the many roads by which Fuji
is approached that goes by Subashiri. Such an expedition may be divided
into a series of stages. You have first to approach the foot of the
mountain by train or otherwise, then to ride through the long slope of
cultivated region. Then, abandoning horses or vehicles, to traverse on
foot the sharper slopes of the forest belt. At the confines of this
you will reach the first station, called _Sho_ or _Go_; for Japanese
fancy has likened the mountain to a heap of dry rice and the stations
are named by rice-measure. From the first station to the ninth,
whatever road you take, all will be hard, hot, continuous climbing.
You must go by narrow, bad paths, such as a goat might make, in loose
volcanic dust, gritty pumice, or over the sharp edges of lava dykes,
which cut boots and sandals to shreds....
At daybreak the horses are brought, and the six coolies, two by
two, bind upon their backs the _futons_ and the food. We start, a
long procession, through a broad avenue in the forest, riding for
five miles, under a lovely dawn, the sun shining gloriously on the
forehead of Fuji, who seems further off and more immensely lofty the
nearer we approach. The woodland is full of wild strawberries and
flowers; including tiger-lilies, clematis, Canterbury bells, and the
blue _hotari-no hana_, or fire-fly blossom. At 6:30 A. M., we reach
Uma-Gayeshi, or “turn-the-horses-back”; and hence to the mountain top
there is nothing for it but to walk every step of the long, steep, and
difficult path. Two of the men with the lightest loads led the way
along the narrow path, in a wood so thick that we shall not see Fuji
again till we have passed through it. It takes us every now and then
through the gates and precincts of little Shinto temples, where the
priests offer us tea or mountain water. In one of them, at Ko-mitake,
we are invited to ring the brass gong in order that the Deity may make
our limbs strong for the task before us. And this is solemnly done
by all hands, the _ninsoku_ slapping their brown thighs piously after
sounding the bell....
The shortest time in which the ascent has been made is six hours
and a half. We, taking it more easily, made no attempt to beat the
record, and stopped frequently to botanize, geologize, etc. The
rarefaction of the air gave our Japanese companion, Takaji San, a
slight headache, which soon passed as the circulation became accustomed
to the atmosphere; but Captain Ingles and I, being I suppose, both
in excellent health and strength, experienced no inconvenience worth
mentioning.
At half-past four next morning, while I was dreaming under my thick
coverings, a hand touched me and a voice said softly, “Danna Sama,
hi no de!” “Master, here is the sun!” The _shoji_ at my feet were
thrown open. I looked out, almost as you might from the moon, over a
prodigious abyss of space, beyond which the eastern rim of all the
world seemed to be on fire with flaming light. A belt of splendid rose
and gold illumined all the horizon, darting long spears of glory into
the dark sky overhead, gilding the tops of a thousand hills, scattered
over the purple plains below, and casting on the unbroken background
of clouds beyond an enormous shadow of Fuji. The spectacle was of
unparalleled splendour, recalling Lord Tennyson’s line--
“And, in the East,
God made himself an awful Rose of Dawn.”
Moment by moment it grew more wonderful in loveliness of colour and
brilliant birth of day; and then, suddenly, just when the sun rolled
into sight--an orb of gleaming gold, flooding the world beneath with
almost insufferable radiance--a vast mass of dense white clouds swept
before the north wind over the view, completely blotting out the sun,
the belt of rose and gold, the lighted mountains and plains, and the
lower regions of Fuji-San. It was day again, but misty, white, and
doubtful; and when we started to climb the last two stages of the cone
the flags of the stations were invisible, and we could not know whether
we should find the summit clear, or wrapped in enveloping clouds.
All was to be fortunate, however, on this happy day; and after a
hard clambering of the remaining 2,000 feet we planted our staffs
victoriously on the level ground of the crater’s lip and gazed north,
south, east, and west through clear and cloudless atmosphere over a
prodigious prospect, whose diameter could not be less than 300 miles.
It was one of the few days when O-ana-mochi, the Lord of the Great
Hole, was wholly propitious! Behind the long row of little black
huts standing on the edge of the mountain, gaped that awful, deadly
Cup of the Volcano--an immense pit half a mile wide and six or seven
hundred feet deep, its sides black, yellow, red, white, and grey,
with the varying hues of the lava and scoriæ. In one spot where a
perpetual shadow lay, from the ridge-peaks of Ken-ga-mine and the
Shaka-no-wari-ishi, or “Cleft Rock of Buddha,” gleamed a large patch
of unmelted snow, and there was dust-covered snow at the bottom of
the crater. We skirted part of the crater, passed by the dangerous
path which is styled “Oya-shirazu, Ko-shirazu,” “The place where you
must forget parents and children, to take care of yourself;” saw
the issue of the Kim-mei-sai or “Golden famous water,” and of the
Gim-mei-sai, or “Silver famous water”; and came back to breakfast at
our hut silent with the delight and glory, the beauty and terror of
the scene. Enormous flocks of fleecy clouds and cloudlets wandered in
the lower air, many thousand feet beneath, but nowhere concealed the
lakes, peaks, rivers, towns, villages, valleys, sea-coasts, islands,
and distant provinces spreading out all round. Imagine the prospect
obtainable at 13,000 feet of elevation through the silvery air of Japan
on a summer’s morning with not a cloud, except shifting, thin, and
transitory ones, to veil the view!...
At the temple with the bell we were duly stamped--shirts, sticks, and
clothing--with the sacred mark of the mountain, and having made the
hearts of our faithful and patient _ninsoku_ glad with extra pay,
turned our backs on the great extinct volcano, whose crest, glowing
again in the morning sunlight, had no longer any secrets for Captain
Ingles, or Takaji San, or myself.
_Seas and Lands_ (New York, 1891).
THE CEDARS OF LEBANON
(_SYRIA_)
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
The Sheik of Eden, the last inhabited village towards the summit of
Lebanon, was the maternal uncle of M. Mazoyer, my interpreter. Informed
by his nephew of our arrival in Tripoli, the venerable sheik descended
the mountain with his eldest son and a portion of his retinue; he
came to visit me at the convent of the Franciscans, and offered me
hospitality at his home in Eden. From Eden to the Cedars of Solomon it
is only a three hours’ march; and if the snows that cover the mountains
will permit us, we can visit these ancient trees that have spread their
glory over all Lebanon and that are contemporaries of the great king;
we accepted, and the start was arranged for the following day.
At five o’clock in the morning we were on horseback. The caravan, more
numerous than usual, was preceded by the Sheik of Eden, an admirable
old man whose elegance of manner, noble and easy politeness, and
magnificent costume were far from suggesting an Arab chieftain; one
would have called him a patriarch marching at the head of his tribe; he
rode upon a mare of the desert whose golden-bay skin and floating mane
would have made a worthy mount for a hero of Jerusalem; his son and his
principal attendants caracoled upon magnificent stallions, a few paces
before him; we came next, and then the long file of our _moukres_ and
our Saïs....
The sheik has sent three Arabs over the route to the Cedars to learn if
the snow will permit us to approach those trees; the Arabs returning
say that access is impracticable; there are fourteen feet of snow in a
narrow valley which must be crossed before reaching the trees;--wishing
to get as near as possible, I entreat the sheik to give me his son
and several horsemen; I leave my wife and my caravan at Eden; I mount
the strongest of my horses, _Scham_, and we are _en route_ at break
of day;--a march of three hours over the crests of the mountains, or
in the fields softened with melting snow. I arrive at the edge of
the valley of the Saints, a deep gorge where the glance sweeps from
the rocky height to a valley more confined, more sombre and more
solemn even than that of Hamana; at the top of this valley, at the
place where, after continually rising, it reaches the snows, a superb
sheet of water falls, a hundred feet high and two or three _toises_
wide; the entire valley resounds with this waterfall and the leaping
torrents that it feeds; on every side the rocky flanks of the mountain
stream with foam; we see almost beyond our vision, in the depths of
the valley, two large villages the houses of which can scarcely be
distinguished from the rocks rolled down by the torrent; the tops of
the poplars and the mulberries from here look like tufts of reed or
grass; we descend to the village of Beschieraï by paths cut in the
rock, and so abrupt that one can hardly imagine that men will risk
themselves upon them; people do perish sometimes; a stone thrown from
the crest where we stand would fall upon the roofs of these villages
where we shall arrive after an hour’s descent; above the cascade and
the snows, enormous fields of ice extend, undulating like vapours
in tints greenish and blue by turns; in about a quarter of an hour
towards the left in a half circular valley formed by the last mounts of
Lebanon, we see a large, black blot upon the snow,--the famous group
of cedars; they crown the brow of the mountain like a diadem; they
mark the branching off of numerous and large valleys that descend from
there; the sea and the sky are their horizon.
We put our horses to a gallop over the snow to get as near as possible
to the forest; but on arriving five or six hundred steps from the
trees, we plunge our horses up to their shoulders; we realize that
the report of the Arabs is correct, and we must renounce the hope of
touching these relics of the centuries and of nature; we alight and sit
upon a rock to contemplate them.
[Illustration: THE CEDARS OF LEBANON.]
These trees are the most celebrated natural monuments in the whole
universe. Religion, poetry, and history have equally consecrated
them. Holy Writ celebrates them in several places. They are one of
the favourite images which the prophets employ. Solomon wished to
consecrate them--doubtless on account of the renown of magnificence and
sanctity that these prodigies of vegetation enjoyed at this epoch--to
the ornamentation of the temple that he was the first to elevate to
the one God. These were certainly the trees; for Ezekiel speaks of
the cedars of Eden as the most beautiful of Lebanon. The Arabs of
all sects have a traditional veneration for them. They attribute to
these trees, not only a vegetative force that gives them eternal life,
but even a soul that makes them give signs of wisdom, of foresight,
similar to those of instinct in animals and intelligence in men. They
know the seasons in advance; they move their enormous branches like
human limbs, they spread or contract their boughs, they raise their
branches towards the sky or incline them to the earth, according as
the snow is preparing to fall or to melt. They are divine beings
under the form of trees. They grow on this single spot of the mounts
of Lebanon; they take root far beyond the region where all prolific
vegetation dies. All this strikes the imagination of the Oriental
people with astonishment, and I do not know that science is not even
more astonished. Alas! however, Basan languishes and Carmel and the
flower of Lebanon fade.--These trees diminish every century. Travellers
formerly counted thirty or forty, later seventeen, and still later,
about a dozen.--There are now only seven of those whose massive forms
can presume to be contemporaneous with Biblical times. Around these old
memorials of past ages, which know the history of the ground better
than history herself, and which could tell us, if they could speak, of
many empires, religions, and vanished human races, there remains still
a little forest of cedars more yellow it appears to me than a group of
four or five hundred trees or shrubs. Each year in the month of June
the population of Beschieraï, Eden, and Kanobin, and all the villages
of the neighbouring valleys, ascend to the cedars and celebrate mass
at their feet. How many prayers have resounded beneath their branches!
And what more beautiful temple, what nearer altar than the sky! What
more majestic and holier daïs than the highest plateau of Lebanon, the
trunks of the cedars and the sacred boughs that have shaded and that
will still shade so many human generations pronouncing differently
the name of God, but who recognize him everywhere in his works and
adore him in his manifestations of nature! And I, I also prayed in the
presence of those trees. The harmonious wind that resounded through
their sonorous branches played in my hair and froze upon my eyelids
those tears of sorrow and adoration.
_Voyage en Orient_ (Paris, 1843).
THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY
(_IRELAND_)
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The road to the Causeway is bleak, wild, and hilly.
The cabins along the road are scarcely better than those of Kerry, the
inmates as ragged, and more fierce and dark-looking. I never was so
pestered by juvenile beggars as in the dismal village of Ballintoy.
A crowd of them rushed after the car, calling for money in a fierce
manner, as if it was their right; dogs as fierce as the children came
yelling after the vehicle; and the faces which scowled out of the black
cabins were not a whit more good-humoured. We passed by one or two more
clumps of cabins, with their turf and corn-stacks lying together at the
foot of the hills; placed there for the convenience of the children,
doubtless, who can thus accompany the car either way, and shriek out
their “Bonny gantleman, gi’e us a ha’p’ny.” A couple of churches,
one with a pair of its pinnacles blown off, stood in the dismal open
country, and a gentleman’s house here and there: there were no trees
about them, but a brown grass round about--hills rising and falling in
front, and the sea beyond. The occasional view of the coast was noble;
wild Bengore towering eastwards as we went along; Raghery Island before
us, in the steep rocks and caves of which Bruce took shelter when
driven from yonder Scottish coast, that one sees stretching blue in the
northeast.
I think this wild gloomy tract through which one passes is a good
prelude for what is to be the great sight of the day, and got my mind
to a proper state of awe by the time we were near the journey’s end.
Turning away shorewards by the fine house of Sir Francis Macnaghten, I
went towards a lone handsome inn, that stands close to the Causeway.
The landlord at Ballycastle had lent me Hamilton’s book to read on the
road; but I had not time then to read more than half-a-dozen pages of
it. They described how the author, a clergyman distinguished as a man
of science, had been thrust out of a friend’s house by the frightened
servants one wild night, and butchered by some Whiteboys who were
waiting outside and called for his blood. I had been told at Belfast
that there was a corpse in the inn: was it there now? It had driven
off, the car-boy said, “in a handsome hearse and four to Dublin the
whole way.” It was gone, but I thought the house looked as if the ghost
was there. See, yonder are the black rocks stretching to Portrush: how
leaden and grey the sea looks! how grey and leaden the sky! You hear
the waters rushing evermore, as they have done since the beginning
of the world. The car drives us with a dismal grinding noise of the
wheels to the big lone house: there’s no smoke in the chimneys; the
doors are locked. Three savage-looking men rush after the car: are they
the men who took out Mr. Hamilton--took him out and butchered him in
the moonlight? Is everybody, I wonder, dead in that big house? Will
they let us in before those men are up? Out comes a pretty smiling
girl, with a curtsey, just as the savages are at the car, and you
are ushered into a very comfortable room; and the men turn out to be
guides. Well, thank Heaven it’s no worse! I had fifteen pounds still
left; and, when desperate, have no doubt should fight like a lion.
[Illustration: THE GIANT’S LOOM, GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.]
The traveller no sooner issues from the inn by a back door, which he
is informed will lead him straight to the Causeway, than the guides
pounce upon him, with a dozen rough boatmen who are likewise lying in
wait; and a crew of shrill beggar-boys, with boxes of spars, ready to
tear him and each other to pieces seemingly, yell and bawl incessantly
round him. “I’m the guide Miss Henry recommends,” shouts one. “I’m
Mr. Macdonald’s guide,” pushes in another. “This way,” roars a third,
and drags his prey down a precipice; the rest of them clambering and
quarrelling after. I had no friends; I was perfectly helpless. I wanted
to walk down to the shore by myself, but they would not let me, and
I had nothing for it but to yield myself into the hands of the guide
who had seized me, who hurried me down the steep to a little wild
bay, flanked on each side by rugged cliffs and rocks, against which
the waters came tumbling, frothing, and roaring furiously. Upon some
of these black rocks two or three boats were lying: four men seized
a boat, pushed it shouting into the water, and ravished me into it.
We had slid between two rocks, where the channel came gurgling in: we
were up one swelling wave that came in a huge advancing body ten feet
above us, and were plunging madly down another (the descent causes a
sensation in the lower regions of the stomach which it is not at all
necessary here to describe), before I had leisure to ask myself why
the deuce I was in that boat, with four rowers hurrooing and bounding
madly from one liquid mountain to another--four rowers whom I was bound
to pay. I say, the query came qualmishly across me why the devil I was
there, and why not walking calmly on the shore.
The guide began pouring his professional jargon into my ears. “Every
one of them bays,” says he, “has a name (take my place, and the spray
won’t come over you): that is Port Noffer, and the next, Port na Gange;
them rocks is the Stookawns (for every rock has its name as well as
every bay); and yonder--give way, my boys,--hurray, we’re over it now:
has it wet you much, sir?--that’s a little cave: it goes five hundred
feet under ground, and the boats goes into it easy of a calm day.”
“Is it a fine day or a rough one now?” said I; the internal disturbance
going on with more severity than ever.
“It’s betwixt and between; or, I may say, neither one nor the other.
Sit up, sir. Look at the entrance of the cave. Don’t be afraid, sir;
never has an accident happened in any one of these boats, and the
most delicate ladies has rode in them on rougher days than this. Now,
boys, pull to the big cave. That, sir, is six hundred and sixty yards
in length, though some say it goes for miles inland, where the people
sleeping in their houses hear the waters roaring under them.”
The water was tossing and tumbling into the mouth of the little cave. I
looked,--for the guide would not let me alone till I did,--and saw what
might be expected: a black hole of some forty feet high, into which
it was no more possible to see than into a millstone. “For Heaven’s
sake, sir,” says I, “if you’ve no particular wish to see the mouth of
the big cave, put about and let us see the Causeway and get ashore.”
This was done, the guide meanwhile telling some story of a ship of
the Spanish Armada having fired her guns at two peaks of rock, then
visible, which the crew mistook for chimney-pots--what benighted fools
these Spanish Armadilloes must have been; it is easier to see a rock
than a chimney-pot; it is easy to know that chimney-pots do not grow on
rocks.--“But where, if you please, is the Causeway?”
“That’s the Causeway before you,” says the guide.
“Which?”
“That pier which you see jutting out into the bay right ahead.”
“_Mon dieu!_ and have I travelled a hundred and fifty miles to see
_that_?”
I declare, upon my conscience, the barge moored at Hungerford Market
is a more majestic object, and seems to occupy as much space. As for
telling a man that the Causeway is merely a part of the sight; that he
is there for the purpose of examining the surrounding scenery; that if
he looks to the westward he will see Portrush and Donegal Head before
him; that the cliffs immediately in his front are green in some places,
black in others, interspersed with blotches of brown and streaks of
verdure;--what is all this to a lonely individual lying sick in a boat,
between two immense waves that only give him momentary glimpses of the
land in question, to show that it is frightfully near, and yet you are
an hour from it? They won’t let you go away--that cursed guide _will_
tell out his stock of legends and stories. The boatmen insist upon your
looking at boxes of “specimens,” which you must buy of them; they laugh
as you grow paler and paler; they offer you more and more “specimens”;
even the dirty lad who pulls number three, and is not allowed by his
comrades to speak, puts in _his_ oar, and hands you over a piece of
Irish diamond (it looks like half-sucked alicompayne), and scorns you.
“Hurry, lads, now for it, give way!” how the oars do hurtle in the
rowlocks, as the boat goes up an aqueous mountain, and then down into
one of those cursed maritime valleys where there is no rest as on shore!
At last, after they had pulled me enough about, and sold me all the
boxes of specimens, I was permitted to land at the spot whence we set
out, and whence, though we had been rowing for an hour, we had never
been above five hundred yards distant. Let all cockneys take warning
from this; let the solitary one caught issuing from the back door
of the hotel, shout at once to the boatmen to be gone--that he will
have none of them. Let him, at any rate, go first down to the water
to determine whether it be smooth enough to allow him to take any
decent pleasure by riding on its surface. For after all, it must be
remembered that it is pleasure we come for--that we are not _obliged_
to take those boats.--Well, well! I paid ten shillings for mine, and
ten minutes after would cheerfully have paid five pounds to be allowed
to quit it; it was no hard bargain after all. As for the boxes of
spar and specimens, I at once, being on terra firma, broke my promise,
and said I would see them all--first. It is wrong to swear, I know; but
sometimes it relieves one _so_ much!
[Illustration: THE KEYSTONE, GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.]
The first act on shore was to make a sacrifice to Sanctissima Tellus;
offering up to her a neat and becoming Taglioni coat, bought for a
guinea in Covent Garden only three months back. I sprawled on my back
on the smoothest of rocks that is, and tore the elbows to pieces: the
guide picked me up; the boatman did not stir, for they had their will
of me; the guide alone picked me up, I say, and bade me follow him.
We went across a boggy ground in one of the little bays, round which
rise the green walls of the cliff, terminated on either side by a black
crag, and the line of the shore washed by the poluphloisboiotic, nay
the poluphloisboiotatotic sea. Two beggars stepped over the bog after
us howling for money, and each holding up a cursed box of specimens.
No oaths, threats, entreaties, would drive these vermin away; for some
time the whole scene had been spoiled by the incessant and abominable
jargon of them, the boatmen, and the guides. I was obliged to give them
money to be left in quiet, and if, as no doubt will be the case, the
Giant’s Causeway shall be a still greater resort of travellers than
ever, the county must put policemen on the rocks to keep the beggars
away, or fling them in the water when they appear.
And now, by force of money, having got rid of the sea and land beggars,
you are at liberty to examine at your leisure the wonders of the place.
There is not the least need for a guide to attend the stranger, unless
the latter have a mind to listen to a parcel of legends, which may be
well from the mouth of a wild simple peasant who believes in his tales,
but are odious from a dullard who narrates them at the rate of sixpence
a lie. Fee him and the other beggars, and at last you are left tranquil
to look at the strange scene with your own eyes, and enjoy your own
thoughts at leisure.
That is, if the thoughts awakened by such a scene may be called
enjoyment; but for me, I confess, they are too near akin to fear to be
pleasant; and I don’t know that I would desire to change that sensation
of awe and terror which the hour’s walk occasioned, for a greater
familiarity with this wild, sad, lonely place. The solitude is awful.
I can’t understand how those chattering guides dare to lift up their
voices here, and cry for money.
It looks like the beginning of the world, somehow: the sea looks
older than in other places, the hills and rocks strange, and formed
differently from other rocks and hills--as those vast dubious monsters
were formed who possessed the earth before man. The hilltops are
shattered into a thousand cragged fantastical shapes; the water comes
swelling into scores of little strange creeks, or goes off with a
leap, roaring into those mysterious caves yonder, which penetrate who
knows how far into our common world. The savage rock-sides are painted
of a hundred colours. Does the sun ever shine here? When the world
was moulded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this must have been
the _bit over_--a remnant of chaos! Think of that!--it is a tailor’s
simile. Well, I am a cockney: I wish I were in Pall Mall! Yonder is a
kelp-burner: a lurid smoke from his burning kelp rises up to the leaden
sky, and he looks as naked and fierce as Cain. Bubbling up out of the
rocks at the very brim of the sea rises a little crystal spring: how
comes it there? and there is an old grey hag beside, who has been there
for hundreds and hundreds of years, and there sits and sells whisky
at the extremity of creation! How do you dare to sell whisky there,
old woman? Did you serve old Saturn with a glass when he lay along the
Causeway here? In reply, she says, she has no change for a shilling:
she never has; but her whisky is good.
This is not a description of the Giant’s Causeway (as some clever
critic will remark), but of a Londoner there, who is by no means so
interesting an object as the natural curiosity in question. That single
hint is sufficient; I have not a word more to say. “If,” says he, “you
cannot describe the scene lying before us--if you cannot state from
your personal observation that the number of basaltic pillars composing
the Causeway has been computed at about forty thousand, which vary
in diameter, their surface presenting the appearance of a tesselated
pavement of polygonal stones--that each pillar is formed of several
distinct joints, the convex end of the one being accurately fitted in
the concave of the next, and the length of the joints varying from five
feet to four inches--that although the pillars are polygonal, there is
but one of three sides in the whole forty thousand (think of that!),
but three of nine sides, and that it may be safely computed that
ninety-nine out of one hundred pillars have either five, six, or seven
sides; if you cannot state something useful, you had much better, sir,
retire and get your dinner.”
Never was summons more gladly obeyed. The dinner must be ready by this
time; so, remain you, and look on at the awful scene, and copy it down
in words if you can. If at the end of the trial you are dissatisfied
with your skill as a painter, and find that the biggest of your words
cannot render the hues and vastness of that tremendous swelling sea--of
those lean solitary crags standing rigid along the shore, where they
have been watching the ocean ever since it was made--of those grey
towers of Dunluce standing upon a leaden rock, and looking as if
some old old princess, of old old fairy times, were dragon-guarded
within--of yon flat stretches of sand where the Scotch and Irish
mermaids hold conference--come away, too, and prate no more about the
scene! There is that in nature, dear Jenkins, which passes even our
powers. We can feel the beauty of a magnificent landscape, perhaps: but
we can describe a leg of mutton and turnips better. Come, then, this
scene is for our betters to depict. If Mr. Tennyson were to come hither
for a month, and brood over the place, he might, in some of those lofty
heroic lines which the author of the _Morte d’Arthur_ knows how to pile
up, convey to the reader a sense of this gigantic desolate scene. What!
you, too, are a poet? Well, then Jenkins, stay! but believe me, you had
best take my advice, and come off.
_The Irish Sketch-Book_ (London, 1843).
THE GREAT GLACIER OF THE SELKIRKS
(_CANADA_)
DOUGLAS SLADEN
If Banff represents the Rocky Mountains made easy, the Glacier House
represents the Selkirks made easy--a much more notable performance, for
these mountains had long been regarded as impassable by engineering.
The Glacier House is a few miles beyond Rogers’ Pass, in the midst
of the line’s greatest marvels of nature and engineering. Just
before comes the monarch of snow sheds; just above the monarch of
glaciers; just below the monarch of viaducts. The Great Glacier of
the Selkirks comes to a conclusion within a couple of miles above it.
The moraines and splintered forests at its foot tell a frightful tale
of destruction, and the glacier advances every year; but only a few
inches, so the hotel is safe for the present.
The hotel is a pretty little châlet, mostly dining-room, with a trim,
level lawn in front containing a fine fountain. Eighteen miles broad
is the great Glacier of the Selkirks, one foot of which is planted so
threateningly above the hotel and the railway station, that it looks as
if it meant to stamp them out of existence with the stealth of a thief
in the night.
A marvellous and delightful walk it is from the hotel to the
Glacier--at first through dry woods of fir and spruce, and balsam
and tamarack, carpeted, wherever the sun breaks through, with purple
blueberries, wild raspberries, pigeon and salmon berries. Here you
might meet a grizzly bear any minute. You pause, if you are only a man
and a woman, on the lovers’ seat under the thousand-ton boulder hurled
down by the Glacier in the childhood of the earth. Then you pass the
fierce glacial torrent of grey-green water, so cold or charged with
impurities that fish refuse to live in it, swelling, as all snow-fed
rivers do, as the heat of a summer’s day waxes. Some of its pools are
huge and deep; some of its falls and rapids as fierce as the cataract
at Lorette, rounded boulders and splintered trunks everywhere attesting
its fury. The path crosses and recrosses the river over bridges of
tree-trunks, with smaller trunks loosely pinned across them, like the
little straw mats in which cream cheeses are wrapped. As the path
mounts, the scenery becomes more open, and you are greeted, according
to the season, with Canada’s gorgeous lily or Canada’s prodigality of
wild fruits; for you are in the track of the glacier and the avalanche,
and in the death of the forest is the birth of blossoms and berries.
All around you now is a scene of awful grandeur--boulders as big as
settlers’ huts, and giant tree trunks, many of them blackened with
fire, tossed together like the rubbish on a dust-heap, and, brooding
over all, the great Glacier like a dragon crouching for the spring. One
can hardly believe it is the Glacier; the transitions are so abrupt.
A turn of a path brings you almost in contact with a piece of ice
larger than any lake in the British Islands. From under its skirts
trickle tiny rills; a few feet below, the rills league themselves into
a river. Even a first-class glacier is a disappointing affair if you
go too close. Its blueness disappears, also its luminosity, except
in crevasses deep enough to show you the pure heart of the ice. The
surface is a dirty-looking mixture of ice and snow. There were two
lovely horizontal crevasses, one so spacious and shining that it is
called the Fairy Cavern. The pleasure of standing in them is spoilt,
because they look all the time as if they were going to close on you.
At another foot of the Glacier there are immense moraines, looking like
the earthworks of Dover Castle. I examined them one October day when I
went with a guide to the top of the Glacier, eight thousand feet above
sea-level, to see the splendid Glacier-girdled head of Mount Fox on the
other side of the abyss.
I never intend to do any more mountain climbing through deep, fresh
snow. For the last hour or two of the ascent the snow was as deep as
one’s thighs at every step, and though the guide was towing me by a
rope tied round my waist, it was intolerably wearisome. To begin with,
he had to sound with his staff at every step and see that we were on
_terra firma_, and not on the _soufflet_ of a crevasse; and though
there had been such a snowfall the night before, the sun was as hot as
summer overhead. The sight was worth doing once, with the miles and
miles of the sea of ice all round one, and the long white slopes of
virgin snow.
If it had not been for the aggressive visage of Mount Fox, it would
have answered to the description of the interior of Greenland given
me by Dr. Nansen, where the world consists of yourselves, the sun, and
the snow. We started at eight o’clock in the morning, but in some way
or other I was not quite as rapid as the guide had calculated, for
a couple of hours before nightfall he began to get excited, if not
alarmed. We were at the time clear of the deep snow, and muddling about
in a mixture of drifts and moraines; but after dark he was not sure of
his way until we struck the path at the foot of the Glacier....
The Glacier House has not only its noble and easily accessible glacier;
it is in the very heart of the finest mountain scenery in the Selkirks,
which is so different to the scenery of the Rockies. The Canadian
Rockies are blunt-topped _fisty_ mountains, with knuckles of bare rock
sticking out everywhere. The Selkirks are graceful pyramids and sharp
sierras, up to their shoulders in magnificent forests of lofty pines.
The trees on the Rockies are much smaller and poorer. Right above the
hotel, to the left of the overhanging Glacier, is the bare steeple of
Sir Donald, one of the monarchs of the range; Ross Peak and Cheops
frown on the descent of the line to the Pacific; and the line of the
Atlantic is guarded by the hundred pinnacles of the rifted mountain,
formerly known as the Hermit, and now, with singular infelicity,
re-christened, in an eponymous fit, Mount Tupper.
[Illustration: THE GREAT GLACIER OF THE SELKIRKS.]
Sir Charles Tupper is one of Canada’s greatest men, but his name is
more suitable for a great man than a great mountain, especially since
there is a very perfect effect of a hermit and his dog formed by
boulders near the top of the mountain. The men in the railway camp
have got over this difficulty with the doggerel:
“That’s Sir Charles Tupper
Going home to his supper.”
We made two long stays at the Glacier House, and I never enjoyed
anything more in my life than the effect of the snug little châlet,
with its velvety lawn, in the stronghold of the giant mountains,
brought into touch with the great world twice a day by the trains east
and west, which echoed their approach and departure miles on miles
through the ranges.
_On the Cars and Off_ (London, 1895).
MAUNA LOA
(_HAWAII_)
LADY BRASSEY
At 6:30 A. M., we made the island of Hawaii, rather too much to
leeward, as we had been carried by the strong current at least eighteen
miles out of our course. We were therefore obliged to beat up to
windward, in the course of which operation we passed a large bark
running before the wind--the first ship we had seen since leaving
Tahiti--and also a fine whale, blowing close to us. We could not see
the high land in the centre of the island, owing to the mist in which
it was enveloped, and there was great excitement and much speculation
on board as to the principal points which were visible. At noon the
observations taken proved that Tom was right in his opinion as to our
exact position. The wind dropped as we approached the coast, where we
could see the heavy surf dashing against the black lava cliffs, rushing
up the little creeks, and throwing its spray in huge fountain-like jets
high above the tall cocoanut-trees far inland.
We sailed along close to the shore, and by two o’clock were near the
entrance to the Bay of Hilo. In answer to our signal for a pilot, a
boat came off with a man who said he knew the entrance to the harbour,
but informed us that the proper pilot had gone to Honolulu on a
pleasure trip.
It was a clear afternoon. The mountains, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, could
be plainly seen from top to bottom, their giant crests rising nearly
14,000 feet above our heads, their tree and fern clad slopes seamed
with deep gulches or ravines, down each of which a fertilizing river
ran into the sea. Inside the reef, the white coral shore, on which the
waves seemed too lazy to break, is fringed with a belt of cocoanut
palms, amongst which, as well as on the hillsides, the little white
houses are prettily dotted. All are surrounded by gardens, so full of
flowers that the bright patches of colour were plainly visible even
from the deck of the yacht. The harbour is large, and is exposed only
to one bad wind, which is most prevalent during the winter months....
It was half-past nine before we were all mounted and fairly off. The
first part of our way lay along the flat ground, gay with bright
scarlet Guernsey lilies, and shaded by cocoanut-trees, between the
town and the sea. Then we struck off to the right, and soon left the
town behind us, emerging into the open country. At a distance from
the sea, Hilo looks as green as the Emerald Isle itself; but on a
closer inspection the grass turns out to be coarse and dry, and many
of the trees look scrubby and half dead. Except in the “gulches” and
the deep holes, between the hills, the island is covered with lava,
in many places of so recent a deposit that it has not yet had time to
decompose, and there is consequently only a thin layer of soil on its
surface. The soil being, however, very rich, vegetation flourishes
luxuriantly for a time; but as soon as the roots have penetrated a
certain depth, and have come into contact with the lava, the trees
wither up and perish, like the seed that fell on stony ground.
The _ohia_ trees form a handsome feature in the landscape, with their
thick stems, glossy foliage, and light crimson flowers. The fruit is a
small, pink, waxy-looking apple, slightly acid, pleasant to the taste
when you are thirsty. The candle-nut trees attain to a large size,
and their light green foliage and white flowers have a very graceful
appearance. Most of the foliage, however, is spoiled by a deposit
of a black dust, not unlike what one sees on the leaves of a London
garden. I do not know whether this is caused by the fumes of the not
far-distant volcano, or whether it is some kind of mold or fungus.
After riding about ten miles in the blazing sun we reached a forest,
where the vegetation was quite tropical, though not so varied in its
beauties as that of Brazil, or of the still more lovely South Sea
Islands. There were ferns of various descriptions in the forest,
and many fine trees, entwined, supported, or suffocated by numerous
climbing plants, amongst which were blue and lilac convolvulus, and
magnificent passion-flowers. The protection from the sun afforded by
this dense mass of foliage was extremely grateful; but the air of the
forest was close and stifling, and at the end of five miles we were
glad to emerge once more into the open. The rest of the way lay over
the hard lava, through a desert of scrubby vegetation, occasionally
relieved by clumps of trees in hollows. More than once we had a fine
view of the sea, stretching away into the far distance, though it
was sometimes mistaken for the bright blue sky, until the surf could
be seen breaking upon the black rocks, amid the encircling groves of
cocoanut-trees.
The sun shone fiercely at intervals, and the rain came down several
times in torrents. The pace was slow, the road was dull and dreary, and
many were the inquiries made for the “Half-way House,” long before we
reached it.
Directly we had finished our meal--about three o’clock--the guide
came and tried to persuade us that, as the baggage mules had not yet
arrived, it would be too late for us to go on to-day, and that we had
better spend the night where we were, and start early in the morning.
We did not, however, approve of this arrangement, so the horses were
saddled, and leaving word that the baggage-mules were to follow us on
as soon as possible, we mounted, and set off for the “Volcano House.”
We had not gone far before we were again overtaken by a shower, which
once more drenched us to the skin.
The scene was certainly one of extreme beauty. The moon was hidden by a
cloud, and the prospect lighted only by the red glare of the volcano,
which hovered before and above us like the Israelites’ pillar of fire,
giving us hope of a splendid spectacle when we should at last reach
the long wished-for crater. Presently the moon shone forth again, and
gleamed and glistened on the raindrops and silver grasses till they
looked like fireflies and glowworms. When we emerged from the wood, we
found ourselves at the very edge of the old crater, the bed of which,
three or four hundred feet beneath us, was surrounded by steep and in
many places overhanging sides. It looked like an enormous caldron, four
or five miles in width, full of a mass of coloured pitch. In the centre
was the still glowing stream of dark red lava, flowing slowly towards
us, and in every direction were red-hot patches, and flames and smoke
issuing from the ground. A bit of the “black country” at night, with
all the coal-heaps on fire, would give you some idea of the scene. Yet
the first sensation is rather one of disappointment, as one expects
greater activity on the part of the volcano; but the new crater was
still to be seen, containing the lake of fire, with steep walls rising
up in the midst of the sea of lava....
The grandeur of the view in the direction of the volcano increased as
the evening wore on. The fiery cloud above the present crater augmented
in size and depth of colour; the extinct crater glowed red in thirty or
forty different places; and clouds of white vapour issued from every
crack and crevice in the ground, adding to the sulphurous smell with
which the atmosphere was laden. Our room faced the volcano: there were
no blinds, and I drew back the curtains and lay watching the splendid
scene until I fell asleep.
* * * * *
Sunday, December 24th (Christmas Eve).
I was up at four o’clock, to gaze once more on the wondrous spectacle
that lay before me. The molten lava still flowed in many places, the
red cloud over the fiery lake was bright as ever, and the stream was
slowly ascending in every direction, over hill and valley, till, as
the sun rose, it became difficult to distinguish clearly the sulphurous
vapours from the morning mists. We walked down to the Sulphur Banks,
about a quarter of a mile from the “Volcano House,” and burned our
gloves and boots in our endeavours to procure crystals, the beauty of
which generally disappeared after a very short exposure to the air. We
succeeded, however, in finding a few good specimens, and, by wrapping
them at once in paper and cotton-wool and putting them into a bottle,
hope to bring them home uninjured.
On our return we found a gentleman who had just arrived from Kan, and
who proposed to join us in our expedition to the crater, and at three
o’clock in the afternoon we set out, a party of eight, with two guides,
and three porters to carry our wraps and provisions, and to bring back
specimens. Before leaving the inn the landlord came to us and begged us
in an earnest and confidential manner to be very careful to do exactly
what our guides told us, and especially to follow in their footsteps
exactly when returning in the dark. He added: “There never has been an
accident happen to anybody from my house, and I should feel real mean
if one did: but there have been a power of narrow escapes.”
First of all we descended the precipice, 300 feet in depth, forming the
wall of the old crater, but now thickly covered with vegetation. It is
so steep in many places that flights of zigzag wooden steps have been
inserted in the face of the cliff in some places, in order to render
the descent practicable. At the bottom we stepped straight on to the
surface of cold boiled lava, which we had seen from above last night.
Even here, in every crevice where a few grains of soil had collected,
delicate little ferns might be seen struggling for life, and thrusting
out their green fronds towards the light. It was the most extraordinary
walk imaginable over that vast plain of lava, twisted and distorted
into every conceivable shape and form, according to the temperature it
had originally attained, and the rapidity with which it had cooled,
its surface, like half-molten glass, cracking and breaking beneath our
feet. Sometimes we came to a patch that looked like the contents of
a pot, suddenly petrified in the act of boiling; sometimes the black
iridescent lava had assumed the form of waves, or more frequently of
huge masses of rope, twisted and coiled together; sometimes it was
piled up like a collection of organ-pipes, or had gathered into mounds
and cones of various dimensions. As we proceeded the lava became hotter
and hotter, and from every crack arose gaseous fumes, affecting our
noses and throats in a painful manner; till at last, when we had to
pass to leeward of the molten stream flowing from the lake, the vapours
almost choked us, and it was with difficulty we continued to advance.
The lava was more glassy and transparent-looking, as if it had been
fused at a higher temperature than usual; and the crystals of sulphur,
alum, and other minerals, with which it abounded, reflected the light
in bright prismatic colours. In places it was quite transparent, and we
could see beneath it the long streaks of a stringy kind of lava, like
brown spun glass, called “Pélé’s hair.”
[Illustration: LAVA CASCADE FLOW.]
At last we reached the foot of the present crater, and commenced the
ascent of the outer wall. Many times the thin crust gave way beneath
our guide, and he had to retire quickly from the hot, blinding, choking
fumes that immediately burst forth. But we succeeded in reaching the
top; and then what a sight presented itself to our astonished eyes! I
could neither speak nor move at first, but could only stand and gaze at
the terrible grandeur of the scene.
We were standing on the extreme edge of the precipice, overhanging a
lake of molten fire, a hundred feet below us, and nearly a mile across.
Dashing against the cliffs on the opposite side, with a noise like
the roar of a stormy ocean, waves of blood-red, fiery, liquid lava
hurled their billows upon an iron-bound headland, and then rushed up
the face of the cliffs to toss their gory spray high in the air. The
restless, heaving lake boiled and bubbled, never remaining the same for
two minutes together. Its normal colour seemed to be a dull, dark red,
covered with a thin grey scum, which every moment and in every part
swelled and cracked, and emitted fountains, cascades, and whirlpools of
yellow and red fire, while sometimes one big golden river, sometimes
four or five flowed across it. There was an island on one side of
the lake, which the fiery waves seemed to attack unceasingly with
relentless fury, as if bent on hurling it from its base. On the other
side was a large cavern, into which the burning mass rushed with a
loud roar, breaking down in its impetuous headlong career the gigantic
stalactites that overhung the mouth of the cave, and flinging up the
liquid material for the formation of fresh ones.
It was all terribly grand, magnificently sublime; but no words could
adequately describe such a scene. The precipice on which we were
standing overhung the crater so much that it was impossible to see what
was going on immediately beneath; but from the columns of smoke and
vapour that arose, the flames and sparks that constantly drove us back
from the edge, it was easy to imagine that there must have been two or
three grand fiery fountains below. As the sun set, and the darkness
enveloped the scene, it became more awful than ever. We retired a
little way from the brink, to breathe some fresh air, and to try and
eat the food we had brought with us; but this was an impossibility.
Every instant a fresh explosion or glare made us jump up to survey the
stupendous scene. The violent struggles of the lava to escape from
its fiery bed, and the loud and awful noises by which they were at
times accompanied, suggested the idea that some imprisoned monsters
were trying to release themselves from their bondage with shrieks
and groans, and cries of agony and despair, at the futility of their
efforts.
Sometimes there were at least seven spots on the borders of the lake
where the molten lava dashed up furiously against the rocks--seven
fire-fountains playing simultaneously. With the increasing darkness the
colours emitted by the glowing mass became more and more wonderful,
varying from the deepest jet-black to the palest grey, from darkest
maroon through cherry and scarlet to the most delicate pink, violet,
and blue; from the richest brown, through orange and yellow, to
the lightest straw-colour. And there was yet another shade, only
describable by the term “molten-lava colour.” Even the smokes and
vapours were rendered beautiful by their borrowed lights and tints,
and the black peaks, pinnacles, and crags, which surrounded the
amphitheatre, formed a splendid and appropriate background. Sometimes
great pieces broke off and tumbled with a crash into the burning lake,
only to be remelted and thrown up anew. I had for some time been
feeling very hot and uncomfortable, and on looking round the cause was
at once apparent. Not two inches beneath the surface, the grey lava on
which we were standing and sitting was red-hot. A stick thrust through
it caught fire, a piece of paper was immediately destroyed, and the
gentlemen found the heat from the crevices so great that they could not
approach near enough to light their pipes.
One more last look, and then we turned our faces away from the scene
that had enthralled us for so many hours. The whole of the lava we had
crossed, in the extinct crater, was now aglow in many patches, and in
all directions flames were bursting forth, fresh lava was flowing,
and smoke and steam were issuing from the surface. It was a toilsome
journey back again, walking as we did in single file, and obeying the
strict injunctions of our head guide to follow him closely, and to
tread exactly in his footsteps. On the whole it was easier by night
than by day to distinguish the route to be taken, as we could now see
the dangers that before we could only feel; and many were the fiery
crevices we stepped over or jumped across. Once I slipped, and my
foot sank through the thin crust. Sparks issued from the ground, and
the stick on which I leaned caught fire before I could fairly recover
myself.
* * * * *
Monday, December 25th, (Christmas Day).
Turning in last night was the work of a very few minutes, and this
morning I awoke perfectly refreshed and ready to appreciate anew the
wonders of the prospect that met my eyes. The pillar of fire was still
distinctly visible, when I looked out from my window, though it was not
so bright as when I had last seen it: but even as I looked it began to
fade, and gradually disappeared. At the same moment a river of glowing
lava issued from the side of the bank which we had climbed with so
much difficulty yesterday, and slowly but surely overflowed the ground
we had walked over. I woke Tom, and you may imagine the feelings with
which we gazed upon this startling phenomenon, which, had it occurred a
few hours earlier, might have caused the destruction of the whole party.
_A Voyage in the Sunbeam_ (London, 1878).
TROLLHÄTTA
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
Whom did we meet at Trollhätta? It is a strange story. We will relate
it.
We landed at the first sluice and immediately stood in a kind of
English garden; the broad pathways are covered with gravel and rise in
low terraces between the green sunlit greensward. It is charming and
delightful here, but by no means imposing; if one desires to be excited
in this manner, he must go a little higher up to the old sluices,
that have burst, deep and narrow, through the hard rock. Nature is
magnificent here, and the water roars and foams in its deep bed far
below. Up here one looks over valley and river; the bank of the river
on the other side rises in green undulating hills, with clusters of
leafy trees and wooden houses painted red; rocks and pine forests hem
in the landscape. Through the sluices steamboats and sailing vessels
are ascending; the water itself is the attendant spirit that must
bear them up above the rock. And from the forest it issues, buzzing,
roaring, and blustering. The din of the Trollhätta Falls mingles with
the noise of the sawmills and the smithies.
“In three hours we shall be through the sluices,” said the Captain,
“and then you shall visit the Falls. We shall meet again at the inn
above.”
We went along the path that led through the forest and thickets; a
whole flock of bare-headed boys surrounded us, all wishing to be our
guides; each one outscreamed the other, and each gave contradictory
explanations of how high was the water and how high it did not or
could rise; and here was also a great difference of opinion among the
learned. Soon we came to a halt on a large heather-covered rock, a
dizzying eminence. Before us, but deep below, the foaming, roaring
water--the Hell Fall, and over this, cascade after cascade, the rich,
swelling, rushing river, the outlet of the largest lake in Sweden. What
a sight, what a foaming above and below! It is like the waves of the
sea, or like effervescing champagne, or like boiling milk; the water
rushes around two rocky islands above so that the spray rises like mist
from a meadow, while below, it is more compressed, and, hurrying away,
returns in circles; then it rolls down in a long wave-like fall, the
Hell Fall. What a roaring storm in the deep--what a spectacle! Man is
dumb. And so were also the screaming little guides; they were silent,
and when they renewed their explanations and stories, they did not get
far before an old gentleman, whom none of us had noticed, although
he was here among us, made himself heard above the noise with his
peculiarly shrill voice; he spoke of the place and its former days as
if they had been of yesterday.
“Here on the rocky isles,” said he, “here in olden times the warriors,
as they are called, decided their disputes. The warrior, Stärkodder,
dwelt in this region, and took a fancy to the pretty maid Ogn; but
she fancied Hergrimer the more, and in consequence he was challenged
by Stärkodder to a duel here by the Falls and met his death; but Ogn
sprang towards them, and, seizing her lover’s bloody sword, thrust it
into her heart. Stärkodder did not get her. So a hundred years passed
and another hundred; the forest became heavy and thick, wolves and
bears prowled here summer and winter, and wicked robbers hid their
booty here and no one could find them; yonder, by the Fall before
Top Island, on the Norwegian side, was their cave; now it has fallen
in--the cliff there overhangs it!”
“Yes, the Tailors’ Cliff!” screamed all the boys. “It fell in the year
1755!”
“Fell!” cried the old man as if astonished that any one could know
of it but himself. “Everything will fall: the tailor also fell. The
robbers placed him upon the cliff and told him that if he would be
liberated for his ransom he must sew a suit of clothes there; he tried
to do it, but as he drew out his thread at the first stitch, he became
dizzy and fell into the roaring water, and thus the rock got the name
of The Tailors’ Cliff. One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she
betrayed them; she kindled a fire in the cavern, the smoke was seen,
the cavern was discovered, and the robbers imprisoned and executed;
that outside there is called The Thieves’ Fall, and below, under the
water, is another cave; the river rushes in there and issues out
foaming; you can see it well up here and hear it too, but it can be
heard better under the stony roof of the mountain sprite.”
And we went on and on along the waterfall towards Top Island, always
on smooth paths covered with saw-dust to Polhelm’s-Sluice; a cleft has
been made in the rock for the first intended sluice-work, which was not
finished, but on account of which has been shaped the most imposing of
all the Trollhätta Falls; the hurrying water falls perpendicularly into
the dark depth. The side of the rock here is connected with Top Island
by means of a light iron bridge, which seems to be thrown over the
abyss; we venture on this swaying bridge above the rushing, whirling
water, and soon stand on the little rocky island between firs and pines
that dart out of the crevices; before us rushes a sea of waves, broken
as they rebound against the rock on which we stand, spraying us with
their fine eternal mist; on each side the torrent flows as if shot from
a gigantic cannon, waterfall upon waterfall; we look above them all and
are lulled by the harmonic tone that has existed for thousands of years.
“No one can ever get to that island over there,” said one of our party,
pointing to the large island above the highest fall.
“I know one who got there!” exclaimed the old man, and nodded with a
peculiar smile.
“Yes, my grandfather got there!” said one of the boys, “but for a
hundred years scarcely any one else has reached it. The cross that
stands there was set up by my grandfather. It had been a severe winter,
the whole of Lake Venern was frozen, the ice dammed up the outlet, and
for many hours the bottom was dry. Grandfather has told us about it:
he and two others went over, set up the cross, and returned. Just then
there was a thundering and cracking noise just like cannon, the ice
broke up and the stream overflowed meadows and forest. It is true,
every word I say!”
[Illustration: TROLLHÄTTA.]
One of the travellers cited Tegner:
“Vildt Göta stortade fran Fjallen,
Hemsk Trollet fran sat Toppfall röt!
Men Snillet kom och sprängt stod Hallen,
Med Skeppen i sitt sköt!”
“Poor mountain sprite,” he added, “thy power and glory are failing! Man
flies beyond thee--Thou must learn of him!”
The garrulous old man made a grimace, and muttered something to
himself--but we were now by the bridge before the inn, the steamboat
glided through the open way, every one hurried on board and immediately
it shot above the Fall just as if no Fall existed.
It was evening; I stood on the heights of Trollhätta’s old sluices, and
saw the ships with outspread sails glide away over the meadows like
large white spectres. The sluice-gates opened with a heavy, crashing
sound like that related of the copper gates of the _Vehmgericht_; the
evening was so still; in the deep silence the tone of the Trollhätta
Fall was like a chorus of a hundred water-mills, ever one and the
same tone and sometimes the ringing of a deep and mighty note that
seemed to pass through the very earth--and yet through all this the
eternal silence of Nature was felt;--suddenly a great bird with heavily
flapping wings flew out of the trees in the deep woods towards the
waterfall. Was it the mountain sprite? We must believe so.
_Pictures of Sweden_ (Leipzig, 1851).
THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO
(_UNITED STATES_)
C. F. GORDON-CUMMING
Probably the greatest chasm in the known world is the grand canyon of
the Colorado river (the Rio Colorado Grande), which is a gorge upward
of two hundred miles in length, and of tremendous depth. Throughout
this distance its vertical crags measure from _one_ to upwards of _six
thousand feet_ in depth! Think of it! The highest mountain in Scotland
measures 4,418 feet. The height of Niagara is 145 feet. And here is a
narrow, tortuous pass where the river has eaten its way to a depth of
6,200 feet between vertical granite crags!
Throughout this canyon there is no cascade; and though the river
descends 16,000 feet within a very short distance, forming rushing
rapids, it is nevertheless possible to descend it by a raft--and this
has actually been done, in defiance of the most appalling dangers and
hardships. It is such a perilous adventure as to be deemed worthy of
note even in this country, where every prospector carries his life in
his hand, and to whom danger is the seasoning of daily life, which,
without it, would appear positively monotonous.
I suppose no river in the world passes through scenery so extraordinary
as does the Colorado river, in its journey of 2,000 miles from its
birthplace in the Rocky mountains, till, traversing the burning plains
of New Mexico, it ends its course in the Gulf of California. Its early
career is uneventful. In its youth it bears a maiden name, and, as the
Green river, wends it way joyously through the upper forests. Then it
reaches that ghastly country known as the _mauvaises terres_ of Utah
and Arizona--a vast region--extending also into Nevada and Wyoming,
which, by the ceaseless action of water, has been carried into an
intricate labyrinth of deep gloomy caverns.
For a distance of _one thousand miles_ the river winds its tortuous
course through these stupendous granite gorges, receiving the waters of
many tributary streams, each rushing along similar deeply hewn channels.
In all the range of fiction no adventures can be devised more terrible
than those which have actually befallen gold-seekers and hunters who,
from any cause, have strayed into this dreary and awesome region. It
was first discovered by two bold explorers, by name Strobe and White,
who, being attacked by Indians, took refuge in the canyons. Preferring
to face unknown dangers to certain death at the hands of the enemy,
they managed to collect enough timber to construct a rude raft, and
determined to attempt the descent.
Once embarked on that awful journey, there was no returning--they must
endure to the bitter end.
On the fourth day the raft was upset. Strobe was drowned, and the
little store of provisions and ammunition was lost. White contrived to
right the raft, and for ten days the rushing waters bore him down the
frightful chasm, seeing only the perpendicular cliffs on either side,
and the strip of sky far overheard--never knowing, from hour to hour,
but that at the next winding of the canyon the stream might overleap
some mighty precipice, and so end his long anguish. During those awful
ten days of famine, a few leaves and seed-pods, clutched from the
bushes on the rocks, were his only food.
At length he reached a wretched settlement of half-bred Mexicans, who,
deeming his escape miraculous, fed him; and eventually he reached the
homes of white men, who looked on him (as well they might) as on one
returned from the grave. The life thus wonderfully saved, was, however,
sacrificed a few months later, when he fell into the hands of his old
Indian foes.
The story of White’s adventure was confirmed by various trappers and
prospectors, who, from time to time, ventured some little way into
this mysterious rock-labyrinth; and it was determined to attempt
a government survey of the region. Accordingly, in 1869, a party,
commanded by Major J. W. Powell, started on this most interesting but
dangerous expedition. Warned by the fate of a party who attempted to
explore the country in 1855, and who, with the exception of two men
(Ashley and another), all perished miserably, the government party
started with all possible precautions.
[Illustration: THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO.]
Four light Chicago-built boats were provisioned for six months, and,
with infinite difficulty, were transported 1,500 miles across the
desert. On reaching their starting-point, they were lowered into the
awful ravines, from which it was, to say the least, problematic
whether all would emerge alive. The dangers, great enough in reality,
had been magnified by rumour. It was reported, with every semblance of
probability, that the river formed terrible whirlpools--that it flowed
underground for hundreds of miles, and emerged only to fall in mighty
cataracts and appalling rapids. Even the friendly Indians entreated the
explorers not to attempt so rash an enterprise, assuring them that none
who embarked on that stream would escape alive.
But in the face of all such counsel, the expedition started, and for
upwards of three months the party travelled, one may almost say in
the bowels of the earth--at least in her deepest furrows--through
canyons where the cliffs rise, sheer from the water, to a height of
three-quarters of a mile!
They found, as was only natural, that imagination had exaggerated
the horrors of the situation, and that it was possible to follow the
rock-girt course of the Colorado through all its wanderings--not
without danger, of course. In many places the boat had to be carried.
One was totally wrecked and its cargo lost, and the others came to
partial grief, entailing the loss of valuable instruments, and almost
more precious lives. Though no subterranean passage was discovered, nor
any actual waterfall, there were, nevertheless, such dangerous rapids
as to necessitate frequent troublesome portage; and altogether, the
expedition had its full share of adventure.
The ground was found to vary considerably. In some places the rock
is so vivid in colour--red and orange--that the canyons were
distinguished as the Red Canyon and the Flaming Gorge. Some are
mere fissures of tremendous depth; while in other places, where the
water has carved its way more freely, they are broad, here and there
expanding into a fertile oasis, where green turf and lovely groves
are enclosed by stupendous crags--miniature Yosemites--which to these
travellers appeared to be indeed visions of Paradise.
_Granite Crags_ (Edinburgh and London, 1884).
THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR
(_SPAIN_)
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
It was a lovely day, and a calm sea, which was a great subject of
rejoicing, for even as it was the rickety Spanish vessel rolled
disagreeably. Owing to the miserable slowness of everything, we were
eleven hours on board. There was little interest till we reached
the yellow headland of Trafalgar. Then the rugged outlines of the
African coast rose before us, and we entered the straits, between
Tarifa sleeping amid its orange groves on the Spanish coast, and the
fine African peak above Ceuta. Soon, on the left, the great rock
of Gibraltar rose from the sea like an island, though not the most
precipitous side, which turns inwards towards the Mediterranean. But it
was already gun-fire, and too late to join another steamer and land at
the town, so we waited for a shoal of small boats which put out from
Algeciras, and surrounded our steamer to carry us on shore.
Here we found in the Fonda Inglesa (kept by an English landlady), one
of the most primitive but charming little hotels we ever entered. The
view from our rooms alone decided us to stay there some days. Hence,
framed by the balcony, Gibraltar rose before us in all the glory of its
rugged sharp-edged cliffs, grey in the morning, pink in the evening
light, with the town at its foot, whence, at night, thousands of lights
were reflected on the still water. In the foreground were groups of
fishing-boats at anchor, and, here and there, a lateen sail flitted,
like a white albatross, across the bay. On the little pier beneath
us was endless life and movement, knots of fishermen, in their blue
shirts and scarlet caps and sashes, mingling with solemn-looking Moors
in turbans, yellow slippers, and flowing burnouses, who were watching
the arrival or embarcation of their wares; and an endless variety of
travellers from all parts of Europe, waiting for different steamers, or
come over to see the place. Here an invalid might stay, imbibing health
from the fine air and sunshine, and never be weary of the ever changing
diorama. In every direction delightful walks wind along the cliffs
through groves of aloes and prickly-pear, or descend into little sandy
coves full of beautiful shells. Behind the town, a fine old aqueduct
strides across the valley, and beyond it the wild moors begin at once
sweeping backwards to a rugged chain of mountains. Into the gorges
of these mountains we rode one day, and most delightful they are,
clothed in parts with magnificent old cork-trees, while in the depths
of a ravine, overhung with oleander and rhododendron, is a beautiful
waterfall.
[Illustration: THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR.]
It was with real regret that we left Algeciras and made the short
voyage across the bay to Gibraltar, where we instantly found ourselves
in a place as unlike Spain as it is possible to imagine. Upon the
wharf you are assailed by a clamour of English-speaking porters and
boatmen. Passing the gates, you come upon a barrack-yard swarming
with tall British soldiers, looking wonderfully bright and handsome,
after the insignificant figures and soiled, shabby uniforms of
the Spanish army. Hence the Waterport Street opens, the principal
thoroughfare of the town, though from its insignificant shops, with
English names, and its low public-houses, you have to look up at the
strip of bright blue sky above, to be reminded that you are not in an
English seaport.
Just outside the principal town, between it and the suburb of Europe,
is the truly beautiful Alameda, an immense artificial garden, where
endless gravel paths wind through labyrinths of geraniums and coronella
and banks of flame-coloured ixia, which are all in their full blaze of
beauty under the March sun, though the heat causes them to wither and
droop before May. During our stay at Gibraltar, it has never ceased to
surprise us that this Alameda, the shadiest and pleasantest place open
to the public upon the Rock, should be almost deserted; but so it is.
Even when the band playing affords an additional attraction, there are
not a dozen persons to listen to it; whereas at Rome on such occasions,
the Pincio, exceedingly inferior as a public garden, would be crowded
to suffocation, and always presents a lively and animated scene.
One succession of gardens occupies the western base of the Rock,
and most luxuriant and gigantic are the flowers that bloom in them.
Castor-oil plants, daturas, and daphnes, here attain the dignity of
timber, while geraniums and heliotropes many years old, so large as to
destroy all the sense of floral proportions which has hitherto existed
in your mind. It is a curious characteristic, and typical of Gibraltar,
that the mouth of a cannon is frequently found protruding from a
thicket of flowers.
The eastern side of the Rock, in great part a perpendicular precipice,
is elsewhere left uncultivated, and is wild and striking in the
highest degree. Here, beyond the quaint Jewish cemetery of closely set
gravestones, bearing Hebrew inscriptions on the open hillside, a rugged
path winds through rocks and tangled masses of flowers and palmists, to
a curious stalactitic cavern called Martin’s Cave. On this side of the
cliff a remnant of the famous “apes of Tarshish” is suffered to remain
wild and unmolested, though their numbers, always very small, have
lately been reduced by the very ignorant folly of a young officer, who
shot one and wounded nine others, for which he has been very properly
impounded.
On the northern side of the Rock are the famous galleries tunnelled
in the face of the precipice, with cannon pointing towards Spain from
their embrasures. Through these, or, better, by delightful paths,
fringed with palmettos and asphodel, you may reach El Hacho, the signal
station, whence the view is truly magnificent over the sea, and the
mountain chains of two continents, and down into the blue abysses
beneath the tremendous precipice upon which it is placed.
[Illustration: THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR.]
The greatest drawback to the charms of Gibraltar has seemed to be the
difficulty of leaving it. It is a beautiful prison. We came fully
intending to ride over the mountain passes by Ronda, but on arriving we
heard that the whole of that district was in the hands of the brigands
under the famous chief Don Diego, and the Governor positively refused
to permit us to go that way. Our lamentations at this have since been
cut short by the news of a double murder at the hands of the brigands
on the way we wished to have taken, and at the very time we should
have taken it. So we must go to Malaga by sea, and wait for the happy
combination of a good steamer and calm weather falling on the same day.
Late in the afternoon of the 15th of March we embarked on board the
_Lisbon_ in the dockyard of Gibraltar. It had been a lovely day, and
the grand Rock had looked its best, its every cleft filled with flowers
and foliage. The sun set before we had rounded Europe Point, and the
precipitous cliffs of the eastern bay rose utterly black against the
yellow sky.
_Wanderings in Spain_ (London, 1873).
THINGVALLA
(_ICELAND_)
LORD DUFFERIN
At last I have seen the famous Geysers, of which every one has heard
so much; but I have also seen Thingvalla, of which no one has heard
anything. The Geysers are certainly wonderful marvels of nature, but
more wonderful, more marvellous is Thingvalla; and if the one repay you
for crossing the Spanish Sea, it would be worth while to go round the
world to reach the other.
Of the boiling fountains I think I can give you a good idea, but
whether I can contrive to draw for you anything like a comprehensible
picture of the shape and nature of the Almanna Gja, the Hrafna Gja,
and the lava vale, called Thingvalla, that lies between them, I am
doubtful. Before coming to Iceland I had read every account that had
been written of Thingvalla by any former traveller, and when I saw it,
it appeared to me a place of which I had never heard; so I suppose I
shall come to grief in as melancholy a manner as my predecessors, whose
ineffectual pages whiten the entrance to the valley they have failed to
describe.
After an hour’s gradual ascent through a picturesque ravine, we emerged
upon an immense desolate plateau of lava, that stretched away for
miles and miles like a great stony sea. A more barren desert you
cannot conceive. Innumerable boulders, relics of the glacial period,
encumbered the track. We could only go at a foot-pace. Not a blade
of grass, not a strip of green, enlivened the prospect, and the only
sound we heard was the croak of the curlew and the wail of the plover.
Hour after hour we plodded on, but the grey waste seemed interminable,
boundless: and the only consolation Sigurdr would vouchsafe was that
our journey’s end lay on this side of some purple mountains that peeped
like the tents of a demon leaguer above the stony horizon.
As it was already eight o’clock, and we had been told the entire
distance from Reykjavik to Thingvalla was only five-and-thirty miles,
I could not comprehend how so great a space should still separate us
from our destination. Concluding more time had been lost in shooting,
lunching, etc., by the way than we supposed, I put my pony into a
canter, and determined to make short work of the dozen miles which
seemed still to lie between us and the hills, on this side of which I
understood from Sigurdr our encampment for the night was to be pitched.
Judge then of my astonishment when, a few minutes afterwards, I was
arrested in full career by a tremendous precipice, or rather chasm,
which suddenly gaped beneath my feet, and completely separated the
barren plateau we had been so painfully traversing from a lovely, gay,
sunlit flat, ten miles broad, that lay,--sunk at a level lower by a
hundred feet,--between us and the opposite mountains. I was never so
completely taken by surprise; Sigurdr’s purposely vague description of
our halting-place was accounted for.
We had reached the famous Almanna Gja. Like a black rampart in the
distance, the corresponding chasm of the Hrafna Gja cut across the
lower sloop of the distant hills, and between them now slept in
sunshine and beauty the broad verdant plain[4] of Thingvalla.
Ages ago,--who shall say how long,--some vast commotion shook the
foundations of the island, and bubbling up from sources far away
amid the inland hills, a fiery deluge must have rushed down between
their ridges, until, escaping from the narrow gorges, it found space
to spread itself into one broad sheet of molten stone over an entire
district of country, reducing its varied surface to one vast blackened
level.
One of two things then occurred: either the vitrified mass contracting
as it cooled,--the centre area of fifty square miles burst asunder at
either side from the adjoining plateau, and sinking down to its present
level, left the two paralleled Gjas, or chasms, which form its lateral
boundaries, to mark the limits of the disruption; or else, while the
pith or marrow of the lava was still in a fluid state, its upper
surface became solid, and formed a roof beneath which the molten stream
flowed on to lower levels, leaving a vast cavern into which the upper
crust subsequently plumped down.
But to return where I left myself, on the edge of the cliff, gazing
down with astonished eyes over a panorama of land and water imbedded
at my feet. I could scarcely speak for pleasure and surprise; Fitz was
equally taken aback, and as for Wilson, he looked as if he thought we
had arrived at the end of the world. After having allowed us sufficient
time to admire the prospect, Sigurdr turned to the left, along the edge
of the precipice, until we reached a narrow pathway accidentally formed
down a longitudinal niche in the splintered face of the cliff, which
led across the bottom, and up the opposite side of the Gja, into the
plain of Thingvalla.
Independently of its natural curiosities, Thingvalla was most
interesting to me on account of the historical associations connected
with it. Here, long ago, at a period when feudal despotism was the
only government known throughout Europe, free parliaments used to sit
in peace, and regulate the affairs of the young Republic; and to this
hour the precincts of its Commons House of Parliament are as distinct
and unchanged as on the day when the high-hearted fathers of the
emigration first consecrated them to the service of a free nation. By
a freak of nature, as the subsiding plain cracked and shivered into
twenty thousand fissures, an irregular oval area, of about two hundred
feet by fifty, was left almost entirely surrounded by a crevice so
deep and broad as to be utterly impassable;--at one extremity alone a
scanty causeway connected it with the adjoining level, and allowed of
access to its interior. It is true, just at one point the encircling
chasm grows so narrow as to be within the possibility of a jump; and an
ancient worthy, named Flosi, pursued by his enemies, did actually take
it at a fly: but as leaping an inch short would have entailed certain
drowning in the bright green waters that sleep forty feet below, you
can conceive there was never much danger of this entrance becoming a
thoroughfare. I confess that for one moment, while contemplating the
scene of Flosi’s exploit, I felt, like a true Briton,--an idiotic
desire to be able to say that I had done the same;--that I survive
to write this letter is a proof of my having come subsequently to my
senses.
This spot, then, erected by nature almost into a fortress, the founders
of the Icelandic constitution chose for the meetings of their Thing, or
Parliament; armed guards defended the entrance, while the grave bonders
deliberated in security within: to this day, at the upper end of the
place of meeting, may be seen the three hummocks, where sat in state
the chiefs and judges of the land.
But those grand old times have long since passed away. Along the banks
of the Oxeraa no longer glisten the tents and booths of the assembled
lieges; no longer stalwart berserks guard the narrow entrance to the
Althing; ravens alone sit on the sacred Logberg; and the floor of the
old Icelandic House of Commons is ignominiously cropped by the sheep
of the parson. For three hundred years did the gallant little Republic
maintain its independence--three hundred years of unequalled literary
and political vigour. At last its day of doom drew near. Like the
Scotch nobles in the time of Elizabeth, their own chieftains intrigued
against the liberties of the Icelandic people; and in 1261 the island
became an appendage of the Norwegian crown. Yet even then the deed
embodying the concession of their independence was drawn up in such
haughty terms as to resemble rather the offer of an equal alliance than
the renunciation of imperial rights.
[Illustration: THINGVALLA.]
As I gazed around on the silent, deserted plain, and paced to and
fro along the untrodden grass that now clothed the Althing, I could
scarcely believe it had ever been the battle-field where such keen and
energetic wits encountered,--that the fire-scathed rocks I saw before
me were the very same that had once inspired one of the most successful
rhetorical appeals ever hazarded in a public assembly.
From the Althing we strolled over to the Almanna Gja, visiting the
Pool of Execution on our way. As I have already mentioned, a river
from the plateau above leaps over the precipice into the bottom of the
Gja, and flows for a certain distance between its walls. At the foot
of the fall, the waters linger for a moment, in a dark, deep, brimming
pool, hemmed in by a circle of ruined rocks; to this pool, in ancient
times, all women convicted of capital crimes were immediately taken,
and drowned. Witchcraft seems to have been the principal weakness of
ladies in those days, throughout the Scandinavian countries. For a long
period, no disgrace was attached to its profession. Odin himself, we
are expressly told, was a great adept, and always found himself very
much exhausted at the end of his performance; which leads me to think
that, perhaps, he dabbled in electro-biology.
Turning aside from what, I dare say, was the scene of many an
unrecorded tragedy, we descended the gorge of the Almanna Gja, towards
the lake; and I took advantage of the opportunity again to examine
its marvellous construction. The perpendicular walls of rock rose on
either hand from the flat greensward that carpeted its bottom, pretty
much as the waters of the Red Sea must have risen on each side of the
fugitive Israelites. A blaze of light smote the face of one cliff,
while the other lay in the deepest shadow; and on the rugged surface
of each might still be traced corresponding articulations, that once
had dovetailed into each other, ere the igneous mass was rent asunder.
So unchanged, so recent seemed the vestiges of this convulsion, that I
felt as if I had been admitted to witness one of nature’s grandest and
most violent operations, almost in the very act of its execution. A
walk of about twenty minutes brought us to the borders of the lake--a
glorious expanse of water, fifteen miles long, by eight miles broad,
occupying a basin formed by the same hills, which must also, I imagine,
have arrested the further progress of the lava torrent. A lovelier
scene I have seldom witnessed. In the foreground lay huge masses of
rock and lava, tossed about like the ruins of a world, and washed by
waters as bright and green as polished malachite. Beyond, a bevy of
distant mountains, robed by the transparent atmosphere in tints unknown
to Europe, peeped over each other’s shoulders into the silver mirror at
their feet, while here and there from among their purple ridges columns
of white vapour rose like altar smoke towards the tranquil heaven.
The next morning we started for the Geysers; this time dividing the
baggage-train, and sending on the cook in light marching order, with
the materials for dinner. The weather still remained unclouded, and
each mile we advanced disclosed some new wonder in the unearthly
landscape. A three hours’ ride brought us to the Rabna Gja, the eastern
boundary of Thingvalla, and, winding up its rugged face, we took our
last look over the lovely plain beneath us, and then manfully set
across the same kind of arid lava plateau as that which we had already
traversed before arriving at the Almanna Gja.
_Letters from High Latitude, being some account of a voyage in the
schooner yacht Foam in 1856_ (London, 1859).
FOOTNOTE:
[4] The plain of Thingvalla is in a great measure clothed with birch
brushwood.
LAND’S END AND LOGAN ROCK
(_ENGLAND_)
JOHN AYRTON PARIS
“The sunbeams tremble, and the purple light
Illumes the dark Bolerium;--seat of storms,
High are his granite rocks; his frowning brow
Hangs o’er the smiling ocean. In his caves,
Where sleep the haggard spirits of the storm,
Wild dreary are the schistose rocks around,
Encircled by the waves, where to the breeze
The haggard cormorant shrieks; and far beyond
Are seen the cloud-like islands, grey in mists.”
Sir H. Davy.
In an excursion to the _Land’s End_ the traveller will meet with
several intermediate objects well worthy his attention, more worthy,
perhaps, than the celebrated promontory itself, as being monuments
of the highest antiquity in the kingdom. They consist of Druidical
circles, cairns, or circular heaps of stones, cromlechs, crosses,
military entrenchments, and the obscure remains of castles.
Having arrived at the celebrated promontory, we descend a rapid slope,
which brings us to a bold group of rocks, composing the western
extremity of our island. Some years ago a military officer who visited
this spot, was rash enough to descend on horseback; the horse soon
became unruly, plunged, reared, and, fearful to relate, fell backwards
over the precipice, and rolling from rock to rock was dashed to atoms
before it reached the sea. The rider was for some time unable to
disengage himself, but at length by a desperate effort he threw himself
off, and was happily caught by some fragments of rock, at the very
brink of the precipice, where he remained in a state of insensibility
until assistance could be afforded him! The awful spot is marked by the
figure of a horseshoe, traced on the turf with a deep incision, which
is cleared out from time to time, in order to preserve it as a monument
of rashness which could alone be equalled by the good fortune with
which it was attended.
Why any promontory in an island should be exclusively denominated the
Land’s End, it is difficult to understand; yet so powerful is the charm
of a name, that many persons have visited it on no other account; the
intelligent tourist, however, will receive a much more substantial
gratification from his visit; the great geological interest of the spot
will afford him an ample source of entertainment and instruction, while
the magnificence of its convulsed scenery, the ceaseless roar, and deep
intonation of the ocean, and the wild shrieks of the cormorant, all
combine to awaken the blended sensations of awe and admiration.
The cliff which bounds this extremity is rather abrupt than elevated,
not being more than sixty feet above the level of the sea. It is
composed entirely of granite, the forms of which present a very
extraordinary appearance, assuming in some places the resemblance
of _shafts_ that had been regularly cut with the chisel; in others,
regular equidistant fissures divide the rock into horizontal masses,
and give it the character of basaltic columns; in other places, again,
the impetuous waves of the ocean have opened, for their retreat,
gigantic arches, through which the angry billows roll and bellow with
tremendous fury.
Several of these rocks from their grotesque forms have acquired
whimsical appellations, as that of the _Armed Knight_, the _Irish
Lady_, etc. An inclining rock on the side of a craggy headland, south
of the Land’s End, has obtained the name of _Dr. Johnson’s Head_, and
visitors after having heard the appellation seldom fail to acknowledge
that it bears some resemblance to the physiognomy of that extraordinary
man.
On the north, this rocky scene is terminated by a promontory 229 feet
above the level of the sea, called _Cape Cornwall_, between which and
the Land’s End, the coast retires, and forms _Whitesand Bay_; a name
which it derives from the peculiar whiteness of the sand, and amongst
which the naturalist will find several rare microscopic shells. There
are, besides, some historical recollections which invest this spot with
interest. It was in this bay that Stephen landed on his first arrival
in England; as did King John, on his return from Ireland; and Perkin
Warbeck, in the prosecution of those claims to the Crown to which some
late writers have been disposed to consider that he was entitled, as
the real son of Edward the Fourth. In the rocks near the southern
termination of _Whitesand Bay_ may be seen the junction of the granite
and slate; large veins of the former may also be observed to traverse
the latter in all directions.
We now return to the Land’s End,--from which we should proceed to visit
a promontory called “Castle Treryn,” where is situated the celebrated
“Logan Stone.” If we pursue our route along the cliffs, it will be
found to be several miles southeast of the Land’s End, although by
taking the direct and usual road across the country, it is not more
than two miles distant; but the geologist must walk, or ride along
the coast on horseback, and we can assure him that he will be amply
recompensed for his trouble.
From the Cape on which the signal station is situated, the rock scenery
is particularly magnificent, exhibiting an admirable specimen of the
manner, and forms, into which granite disintegrates. About forty yards
from this Cape is the promontory called Tol-Pedn-Penwith, which in the
Cornish language signifies the _holed headland in Penwith_. The name is
derived from a singular chasm, known by the appellation of the Funnel
Rock; it is a vast perpendicular excavation in the granite, resembling
in figure an inverted cone, and has been evidently produced by the
gradual decomposition of one of those vertical veins with which this
part of the coast is so frequently intersected. By a circuitous route
you may descend to the bottom of the cavern, into which the sea flows
at high water. Here the Cornish chough (_Corvus Graculus_) has built
its nest for several years, a bird which is very common about the rocky
parts of this coast, and may be distinguished by its red legs and bill,
and the violaceous blackness of its feathers. This promontory forms the
western extremity of the Mount’s Bay. The antiquary will discover in
this spot, the vestiges of one of the ancient “Cliff Castles,” which
were little else than stone walls, stretching across necks of land from
cliff to cliff. The only geological phenomenon worthy of particular
notice is a large and beautiful contemporaneous vein of _red_ granite
containing schorl; is one foot in width, and may be seen for about
forty feet in length.
Continuing our route around the coast we at length arrive at Castle
Treryn. Its name is derived from the supposition of its having been
the site of an ancient British fortress, of which there are still some
obscure traces, although the wild and rugged appearance of the rocks
indicate nothing like art.
[Illustration: ROCKING STONES, LAND’S END, CORNWALL.]
The foundation of the whole is a stupendous group of granite rocks,
which rise in pyramidal clusters to a prodigious altitude, and overhang
the sea. On one of those pyramids is situated the celebrated “Logan
Stone,” which is an immense block of granite weighing about sixty tons.
The surface in contact with the under rock is of very small extent,
and the whole mass is so nicely balanced, that, notwithstanding its
magnitude, the strength of a single man applied to its under edge is
sufficient to change its centre of gravity, and though at first in
a degree scarcely perceptible, yet the repetition of such impulses,
at each return of the stone, produces at length a very sensible
oscillation! As soon as the astonishment which this phenomenon excites
has in some measure subsided, the stranger anxiously inquires how, and
whence the stone originated--was it elevated by human means, or was it
produced by the agency of natural causes? Those who are in the habit
of viewing mountain masses with geological eyes, will readily discover
that the only chisel ever employed has been the tooth of time--the
only artist engaged, the elements. Granite usually disintegrates into
rhomboidal and tabular masses, which by the farther operation of air
and moisture gradually lose their solid angles, and approach the
spheroidal form. _De Luc_ observed, in the giant mountains of Silesia,
spheroids of this description so piled upon each other as to resemble
Dutch cheeses; and appearances, no less illustrative of the phenomenon,
may be seen from the signal station to which we have just alluded. The
fact of the upper part of the cliff being more exposed to atmospheric
agency, than the parts beneath, will sufficiently explain why these
rounded masses so frequently rest on blocks which still preserve the
tabular form; and since such spheroidal blocks must obviously rest
in that position in which their lesser axes are perpendicular to the
horizon, it is equally evident that whenever an adequate force is
applied they must vibrate on their point of support.
Although we are thus led to deny the Druidical _origin_ of this stone,
for which so many zealous antiquaries have contended, still we by
no means intend to deny that the Druids employed it as an engine of
superstition; it is indeed very probable that, having observed so
uncommon a property, they dexterously contrived to make it answer
the purposes of an ordeal, and by regarding it as the _touchstone_
of truth, acquitted or condemned the accused by its motions. Mason
poetically alludes to this supposed property in the following lines:
“Behold yon huge
And unknown sphere of living adamant,
Which, pois’d by magic, rests its central weight
On yonder pointed rock: firm as it seems,
Such is its strange, and virtuous property,
It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch
Of him whose heart is pure, but to a traitor,
Tho’ e’en a giant’s prowess nerv’d his arm,
It stands as fix’d as--Snowdon.”
The rocks are covered with a species of _Byssus_ long and rough to
the touch, forming a kind of hoary beard; in many places they are
deeply furrowed, carrying with them a singular air of antiquity, which
combines with the whole of the romantic scenery to awaken in the minds
of the poet and enthusiast the recollection of the Druidical ages. The
botanist will observe the common Thrift--(_Statice Armeria_) imparting
a glowing tinge to the scanty vegetation of the spot, and, by growing
within the crevices of the rocks, affording a very picturesque contrast
to their massive fabric. Here, too, the _Daucus Maritimus_, or wild
carrot; _Sedum Telephium_, _Saxifraga Stellaris_, and _Asplenium
Marinum_, may be found in abundance.
The granite in this spot is extremely beautiful on account of its
porphyritic appearance; the crystals of feldspar are numerous and
distinct; in some places the rock is traversed by veins of red
feldspar, and of black tourmaline, or schorl, of which the crystalline
forms of the prisms, on account of their close aggregation, are very
indistinct. Here may also be observed a contemporaneous vein of _schorl
rock_ in the granite, nearly two feet wide, highly inclined and very
short, and not having any distinct walls. On the western side of
the Logan Rock is a cavern, formed by the decomposition of a vein of
granite, the feldspar of which assumes a brilliant flesh-red and lilac
colour; and, where it is polished by the sea, exceeding even in beauty
the _Serpentine caverns_ at the Lizard.
_A Guide to the Mount’s Bay and the Land’s End_ (London, 2d Ed., 1824).
MOUNT HEKLA[5]
(_ICELAND_)
SIR RICHARD F. BURTON
The Hekla of our ingenuous childhood, when we believed in the “Seven
Wonders of the World,” was a mighty cone, a “pillar of heaven,” upon
whose dreadful summit white, black, and sanguine red lay in streaks and
patches, with volumes of sooty smoke and lurid flames, and a pitchy
sky. The whole was somewhat like the impossible illustrations of
Vesuvian eruptions, in body-colours, plus the ice proper to Iceland.
The Hekla of reality, No. 5 in the island scale, is a commonplace
heap, half the height of Hermon, and a mere pigmy compared with the
Andine peaks, rising detached from the plains, about three and a
half miles in circumference, backed by the snows of Tindafjall and
Torfajökull, and supporting a sky-line that varies greatly with the
angle under which it is seen. Travellers usually make it a three-horned
Parnassus, with the central knob highest--which is not really the
case. From the south-west, it shows now four, then five, distinct
points; the north-western lip of the northern crater, which hides the
true apex; the south-western lip of the same; the north-eastern lip of
the southern crater, which appears the culminating point, and the two
eastern edges of the southern bowls. A pair of white patches represents
the “eternal snows.” On the right of the picture is the steep, but
utterly unimportant Thrihyrningr, crowned with its benchmark; to the
left, the Skardsfjall, variegated green and black; and in the centre,
the Bjólfell, a western buttress of the main building, which becomes
alternately a saddleback, a dorsum, and an elephant’s head, trunk, and
shoulders.
We came upon the valley of the Western Rángá[6] at a rough point, a
gash in the hard yellow turf-clad clay, dotted with rough lava blocks,
and with masses of conglomerate, hollowed, turned, and polished by
water: the shape was a succession of S, and the left side was the
more tormented. Above the ford a dwarf cascade had been formed by
the lava of ’45, which caused the waters to boil, and below the ford
jumped a second, where the stream forks. We then entered an Iceland
“forest,” at least four feet high; the “chapparal” was composed of red
willow (_Salix purpurea_), of Grá-vidir, woolly-leaved willow (_Sulix
lapponum_), the “tree under which the devil flayed the goats”--a
diabolical difficulty, when the bush is a foot high--and the awful
and venerable birch, “_la demoiselle des fôrets_,” which has so often
“blushed with patrician blood.” About mid-afternoon we reached
Næfrholt (birch-bark hill), the “fashionable” place for the ascent, and
we at once inquired for the guide. Upon the _carpe diem_ principle, he
had gone to Reykjavik with the view of drinking his late gains; but
we had time to organize another, and even alpenstocks with rings and
spikes are to be found at the farm-house. Everything was painfully
tourist.
In the evening we scaled the stiff slope of earth and Palagonite
which lies behind, or east of Næfrholt; this crupper of Bjólfell, the
Elephant Mountain, gives perhaps harder work than any part of Hekla on
the normal line of ascent. From the summit we looked down upon a dwarf
basin, with a lakelet of fresh water, which had a slightly (carbonic)
acid taste, and which must have contained lime, as we found two kinds
of shells, both uncommonly thin and fragile. Three species of weeds
floated off the clean sandstrips. Walking northward to a deserted
byre, we found the drain gushing under ground from sand and rock,
forming a distinct river-valley, and eventually feeding the Western
Rángá. This “Vatn” is not in the map; though far from certain that it
is not mentioned by Mackenzie, we named it the “Unknown Lake.” Before
night fell we received a message that three English girls and their
party proposed to join us. This was a “scare,” but happily the Miss
Hopes proved plucky as they were young and pretty, and we rejoiced in
offering this pleasant affront of the feminine foot to that grim old
_solitaire_, Father Hekla.
Before the sleep necessary to prepare for the next day’s work, I
will offer a few words concerning the “Etna of the North,” sparing
the reader, however, the mortification of a regular history. It was
apparently harmless, possibly dormant, till A. D. 1104, when Sæmund,
the “Paris clerk,” then forty-eight years old, threw in a casket, and
awoke the sleeping lion. Since that time fourteen regular eruptions,
without including partial outbreaks are recorded, giving an average of
about two per century. The last was in 1845. The air at Reykjavik was
flavoured, it is said, like a gun that wants washing; and the sounds
of a distant battle were conducted by the lava and basaltic ground.
The ashes extended to Scotland. When some writers tell us that on this
occasion Hekla lost 500 feet in height, “so much of the summit having
been blown away by the explosions,” they forget or ignore the fact that
the new crater opened laterally and low down.
Like Etna, Vesuvius, and especially Stromboli, Hekla became mythical
in Middle-Age Europe, and gained wide repute as one of the gates of
“Hel-viti.” Witches’ Sabbaths were held there. The spirits of the
wicked, driven by those grotesque demons of Father Pinamonti which
would make the fortune of a zoological society, were seen trooping
into the infernal crater; and such facts as these do not readily slip
off the mind of man. The Danes still say “Begone to Heckenfjæld!”
the North Germans, “Go to Hackelberg!” and the Scotch consign you to
“John Hacklebirnie’s house.” Even Goldsmith (Animated Nature, i. 48)
had heard of the local creed, “The inhabitants of Iceland believe the
bellowings of Hekla are nothing else but the cries of the damned,
and that its eruptions are contrived to increase their tortures.”
Uno Van Troil (Letter I.) who in 1770, together with those “inclyti
Brittannici,” _Baron_ Bank and Dr. Solander, “gained the pleasure
of being the first who ever reached the summit of this celebrated
volcano,” attributes the mountain’s virginity to the superstitions
of the people. He writes soberly about its marvels; and he explains
its high fame by its position, skirting the watery way to and from
Greenland and North America. His companions show less modesty of
imagination. We may concede that an unknown ascent “required great
circumspection”; and that in a high wind ascensionists were obliged
to lie down. But how explain the “dread of being blown into the most
dreadful precipices,” when the latter do not exist? Moreover, we learn
that to “accomplish this undertaking” they had to travel from 300 to
360 miles over uninterrupted bursts of lava, which is more than the
maximum length of the island, from northeast to southwest. As will be
seen, modern travellers have followed suit passing well.
The next morning (July 13) broke fair and calm, reminding me
“_Del bel paese la dove il sì suona._”
The Miss Hopes were punctual to a minute--an excellent thing in
travelling womanhood. We rode up half-way somewhat surprised to find
so few parasitic craters; the only signs of independent eruption on
the western flank were the Raudkólar (red hills), as the people call
their lava hornitos and spiracles, which are little bigger than the
bottle-house cones of Leith.
At an impassable divide we left our poor nags to pass the dreary time,
without water or forage, and we followed the improvised guide, who
caused not a little amusement. His general port was that of a bear
that has lost its ragged staff.--I took away his alpenstock for one
of the girls--and he was plantigrade rather than cremnobatic; he had
stripped to his underalls, which were very short, whilst his stockings
were very long and the heraldic gloves converted his hands to paws. The
two little snow fonds (“steep glassy slopes of hard snow”), were the
easiest of walking. We had nerved ourselves to “Break neck or limbs,
be maimed or boiled alive,” but we looked in vain for the “concealed
abysses,” for the “crevasses to be crossed,” and for places where a
“slip would be to roll to destruction.” We did not sight the “lava
wall,” a capital protection against giddiness. The snow was anything
but slippery; the surface was scattered with dust, and it bristled with
a forest of dwarf earth-pillars, where blown volcanic sand preserved
the ice. After a slow hour and a half, we reached the crater of ’45,
which opened at 9 A. M. on September 2, and discharged lava till the
end of November. It might be passed unobserved by the inexperienced
man. The only remnant is the upper lip prolonged to the right; the
dimensions may have been 120 by 150 yards, and the cleft shows a
projecting ice-ledge ready to fall. The feature is well-marked by the
new lava-field of which it is the source: the bristly “stone-river” is
already degrading to superficial dust. A little beyond this bowl the
ground smokes, discharging snow-steam made visible by the cold air.
Hence doubtless those sententious travellers “experienced at one and
the same time, a high degree of heat and cold.”
Fifteen minutes more led us to the First or Southern Crater, whose
Ol-bogi (elbow or rim) is one of the horns conspicuous from below. It
is a regular formation about 100 yards at the bottom each way, with the
right (east) side red and cindery, and the left yellow and sulphury;
mosses and a few flowerets grow on the lips; in the sole rise jets of
steam and a rock-rib bisects it diagonally from northeast to southwest.
We thought it the highest point of the volcano, but the aneroid
corrected our mistake.
From the First Crater we walked over the left or western dorsum, over
which one could drive a coach, and we congratulated one another upon
the exploit. Former travellers “balancing themselves like rope-dancers,
succeeded in passing along the ridge of slags which was so narrow that
there was scarcely room for their feet,” the breadth being “not more
than two feet, having a precipice on each side several hundred feet
in depth.” Charity suggests that the feature has altered, but there
was no eruption between 1766 and 1845; moreover, the lip would have
diminished, not increased. And one of the most modern visitors repeats
the “very narrow ridge,” with the classical but incorrect adjuncts
of “Scylla here, Charybdis there.” Scylla (say the crater slope) is
disposed at an angle of 30°, and Mr. Chapman coolly walked down this
“vast” little hollow. I descended Charybdis (the outer counterscarp)
far enough to make sure that it is equally easy.
Passing the “carriage road” (our own name), we crossed a _névé_
without any necessity for digging foot-holes. It lies where sulphur
is notably absent. The hot patches which account for the freedom from
snow, even so high above the congelation-line, are scattered about the
summit: in other parts the thermometer, placed in an eighteen-inch
hole, made earth colder than air. After a short climb we reached the
apex; the ruddy-walled northeastern lip of the Red Crater (No. 2):
its lower or western rim forms two of the five summits seen from the
prairie, and hides the highest point. We thus ascertained that Hekla
is a linear volcano of two mouths, or three including that of ’45, and
that it wants a true apical crater. But how reconcile the accounts of
travellers? Pliny Miles found one cone and three craters; Madam Ida
Pfeiffer, like Metcalfe, three cones and no crater.
On the summit the guides sang a song of triumph, whilst we drank to
the health of our charming companions and, despite the cold wind which
eventually drove us down, carefully studied the extensive view. The
glorious day was out of character with a scene _niente che Montagne_,
as the unhappy Venetians described the Morea; rain and sleet and
blinding snow would better have suited the picture, but happily they
were conspicuous by their absence. Inland, beyond a steep snow-bed
unpleasantly crevassed, lay a grim photograph all black and white;
Lángjökull looking down upon us with a grand and freezing stare; the
Hrafntinnu Valley marked by a dwarf cone, and beyond where streams
head, the gloomy regions stretching to the Sprengisandur, dreary wastes
of utter sterility, howling deserts of dark ashes, wholly lacking
water and vegetable life, and wanting the gleam and the glow which
light up the Arabian wild. Skaptár and Oræfa were hidden from sight.
Seawards, ranging from west to south, the view, by contrast, was a
picture of amenity and civilization. Beyond castellated Hljódfell and
conical Skjaldbreid appeared the familiar forms of Esja, and the long
lava projection of the Gold Breast country, melting into the western
main. Nearer stretched the fair lowlands, once a broad deep bay, now
traversed by the network of Ölfusá, Thjórsá, and the Markarfljót; while
the sixfold bunch of the Westman Islands, mere stone lumps upon a blue
ground, seemingly floating far below the raised horizon, lay crowned
by summer sea. Eastward we distinctly traced the Fiskivötn. Run the
eye along the southern shore, and again the scene shifts. Below the
red hornitos of the slope rises the classical Three-horned, not lofty,
but remarkable for its trident top; Tindfjall (tooth-fell) with its
two horns or pyramids of ice, casting blue shadows upon the untrodden
snow; and the whole mighty mass known as the Eastern Jökull Eyjafjall
(island-fell), so called from the black button of rock which crowns the
long white dorsum; Kátlá (Költu-gjá), Merkrjökull, and Godalands, all
connected by ridges, and apparently neither lofty nor impracticable.
_Ultima Thule; or a Summer in Iceland_ (London and Edinburgh, 1875).
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Heklu-fjall derives from Hekla (akin to Hökull, a priest’s cope),
meaning a cowled or hooded frock, knitted of various colours, and
applied to the “Vesuvius of the North” from its cap and body vest of
snow. Icelanders usually translate it a chasuble, because its rounded
black shoulders bear stripes of white, supposed to resemble the cross
carried to Calvary.
[6] Rángá (“wrong,” or crooked stream) is a name that frequently
occurs, and generally denotes either that the trend is opposed to the
general water-shed, or that an angle has been formed in the bed by
earthquakes or eruptions.
VICTORIA FALLS
(_AFRICA_)
DAVID LIVINGSTONE
We proceeded next morning, 9th August, 1860, to see the Victoria Falls.
Mosi-oa-tunya is the Makololo name, and means smoke sounding; Seongo
or Chongwé, meaning the Rainbow, or the place of the Rainbow, was the
more ancient term they bore. We embarked in canoes, belonging to Tuba
Mokoro, “smasher of canoes,” an ominous name; but he alone, it seems,
knew the medicine which insures one against shipwreck in the rapids
above the Falls. For some miles the river was smooth and tranquil,
and we glided pleasantly over water clear as crystal, and past lovely
islands densely covered with a tropical vegetation. Noticeable among
the many trees were the lofty Hyphæne and Borassus palms; the graceful
wild date-palm, with its fruit in golden clusters, and the umbrageous
mokononga, of cypress form, with its dark-green leaves and scarlet
fruit. Many flowers peeped out near the water’s edge, some entirely new
to us, and others, as the convolvulus, old acquaintances.
But our attention was quickly called from the charming islands to the
dangerous rapids, down which Tuba might unintentionally shoot us. To
confess the truth, the very ugly aspect of these roaring rapids could
scarcely fail to cause some uneasiness in the minds of new-comers. It
is only when the river is very low, as it was now, that any one durst
venture to the island to which we were bound. If one went during the
period of flood, and fortunately hit the island, he would be obliged to
remain there till the water subsided again, if he lived so long. Both
hippopotamus and elephants have been known to be swept over the Falls,
and of course smashed to pulp.
Before entering the race of waters, we were requested not to speak,
as our talking might diminish the virtue of the medicine; and no one
with such boiling, eddying rapids before his eyes, would think of
disobeying the orders of a “canoe-smasher.” It soon became evident that
there was sound sense in this request of Tuba’s, although the reason
assigned was not unlike that of the canoe-man from Sesheke, who begged
one of our party not to whistle because whistling made the wind come.
It was the duty of the man at the bow to look out ahead for the proper
course, and when he saw a rock or snag to call out to the steersman.
Tuba doubtless thought that talking on board might divert the attention
of his steersman, at a time when the neglect of an order, or a slight
mistake, would be sure to spill us all into the chafing river. There
were places where the utmost exertions of both men had to be put forth
in order to force the canoe to the only safe part of the rapid, and
to prevent it from sweeping down broadside on, where in a twinkling
we should have found ourselves floundering among the plotuses and
cormorants, which were engaged in diving for their breakfast of small
fish. At times it seemed as if nothing could save us from dashing in
our headlong race against the rocks which, now that the river was low,
jutted out of the water; but just at the very nick of time, Tuba passed
the word to the steersman, and then with ready pole turned the canoe a
little aside and we glided swiftly past the threatened danger. Never
was canoe more admirably managed: once only did the medicine seem to
have lost something of its efficacy. We were driving swiftly down, a
black rock, over which the white foam flew, lay directly in our path,
the pole was planted against it as readily as ever, but it slipped just
as Tuba put forth his strength to turn the bow off. We struck hard,
and were half-full of water in a moment; Tuba recovered himself as
speedily, shoved off the bow, and shot the canoe into a still shallow
place, to bale out the water. Here we were given to understand that it
was not the medicine which was at fault; _that_ had lost none of its
virtue; the accident was owing entirely to Tuba having started without
his breakfast. Need it be said we never left Tuba go without that meal
again?
We landed at the head of Garden Island, which is situated near the
middle of the river and on the lip of the Falls. On reaching that lip,
and peering over the giddy height, the wondrous and unique character of
the magnificent cascade at once burst upon us.
It is a rather hopeless task to endeavour to convey an idea of it in
words, since, as was remarked on the spot, an accomplished painter,
even by a number of views, could but impart a faint impression of the
glorious scene. The probable mode of its formation may perhaps help
to the conception of its peculiar shape. Niagara has been formed by
a wearing back of the rock over which the river falls; but during
the long course of ages, it has gradually receded, and left a broad,
deep, and pretty straight trough in front. It goes on wearing back
daily, and may yet discharge the lakes from which its river--the St.
Lawrence--flows. But the Victoria Falls have been formed by a crack
right across the river, in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there
formed the bed of the Zambesi. The lips of the crack are still quite
sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the river rolls.
The walls go sheer down from the lips without any projecting crag,
or symptoms of stratification or dislocation. When the mighty rift
occurred, no change of level took place in the two parts of the bed of
the river thus rent asunder, consequently, in coming down the river to
Garden Island, the water suddenly disappears, and we see the opposite
side of the cleft, with grass and trees growing where once the river
ran, on the same level as that part of its bed on which we sail. The
first crack, is, in length, a few yards more than the breadth of the
Zambesi, which by measurement we found to be a little over 1,860 yards,
but this number we resolved to retain as indicating the year in which
the Fall was for the first time carefully examined. The main stream
here runs nearly north and south, and the cleft across it is nearly
east and west. The depth of the rift was measured by lowering a line,
to the end of which a few bullets and a foot of white cotton cloth were
tied. One of us lay with his head over a projecting crag, and watched
the descending calico, till, after his companions had paid out 310
feet, the weight rested on a sloping projection, probably fifty feet
from the water below, the actual bottom being still further down. The
white cloth now appeared the size of a crown-piece. On measuring the
width of this deep cleft by sextant, it was found at Garden Island, its
narrowest part, to be eighty yards, and at its broadest somewhat more.
Into this chasm, of twice the depth of Niagara-fall, the river, a full
mile wide, rolls with a deafening roar; and this is Mosi-oa-tunya, or
the Victoria Falls.
[Illustration: FALLS OF THE ZAMBESI.]
Looking from Garden Island, down to the bottom of the abyss, nearly
half a mile of water, which has fallen over that portion of the Falls
to our right, or west of our point of view, is seen collected in a
narrow channel twenty or thirty yards wide, and flowing at exactly
right angles to its previous course, to our left; while the other half,
or that which fell over the eastern portion of the Falls, is seen in
the left of the narrow channel below, coming towards our right. Both
waters unite midway, in a fearful boiling waterfall, and find an outlet
by a crack situated at right angles to the fissure of the Falls. This
outlet is about 1,170 yards from the western end of the chasm, and
some 600 from its eastern end; the whirlpool is at its commencement.
The Zambesi, now apparently not more than twenty or thirty yards wide,
rushes and surges south, through the narrow escape-channel for 130
yards; then enters a second chasm somewhat deeper, and nearly parallel
with the first. Abandoning the bottom of the eastern half of this
second chasm to the growth of large trees, it turns sharply off to the
west, and forms a promontory, with the escape-channel at its point, of
1,170 yards long, and 416 yards broad at the base. After reaching this
base, the river runs abruptly round the head of another promontory, and
flows away to the east, in a third chasm; then glides round a third
promontory, much narrower than the rest, and away back to the west, in
a fourth chasm; and we could see in the distance that it appeared to
round still another promontory, and bend once more in another chasm
toward the east. In this gigantic, zigzag, yet narrow trough, the rocks
are all so sharply cut and angular, that the idea at once arises that
the hard basaltic trap must have been riven into its present shape by a
force acting from beneath, and that this probably took place when the
ancient inland seas were cut off by similar fissures nearer the ocean.
The land beyond, or on the south of the Falls, retains, as already
remarked, the same level as before the rent was made. It is as if the
trough below Niagara were bent right and left, several times before it
reached the railway bridge. The land in the supposed bends being of
the same height as that above the Fall, would give standing-places, or
points of view, of the same nature as that from the railway bridge,
but the nearest would be only eighty yards, instead of two miles (the
distance to the bridge) from the face of the cascade. The tops of the
promontories are in general flat, smooth, and studded with trees. The
first, with its base on the east, is at one place so narrow, that it
would be dangerous to walk to its extremity. On the second, however,
we found a broad rhinoceros path and a hut; but, unless the builder
were a hermit, with a pet rhinoceros, we cannot conceive what beast or
man ever went there for. On reaching the apex of this second eastern
promontory we saw the great river, of a deep sea-green colour, now
sorely compressed, gliding away, at least 400 feet below us.
Garden Island, when the river is low, commands the best view of the
Great Fall chasm, as also of the promontory opposite, with its grove of
large evergreen trees, and brilliant rainbows of three-quarters of a
circle, two, three, and sometimes even four in number, resting on the
face of the vast perpendicular rock, down which tiny streams are always
running to be swept again back by the upward rushing vapour. But as,
at Niagara, one has to go over to the Canadian shore to see the chief
wonder--the Great Horseshoe Fall--so here we have to cross over to
Moselekatsé’s side to the promontory of evergreens, for the best view
of the principal Falls of Mosi-oa-tunya. Beginning, therefore, at the
base of this promontory, and facing the Cataract, at the west end of
the chasm, there is, first, a fall of thirty-six yards in breadth, and
of course, as they all are, upwards of 310 feet in depth. Then Boaruka,
a small island, intervenes, and next comes a great fall, with a breadth
of 573 yards; a projecting rock separates this from a second grand
fall of 325 yards broad; in all, upwards of 900 yards of perennial
Falls. Further east stands Garden Island; then, as the river was at
its lowest, came a good deal of the bare rock of its bed, with a score
of narrow falls, which, at the time of flood, constitute one enormous
cascade of nearly another half-mile. Near the east end of the chasm are
two larger falls, but they are nothing at low water compared to those
between the islands.
The whole body of water rolls clear over, quite unbroken; but, after a
descent of ten or more feet, the entire mass suddenly becomes a huge
sheet of driven snow. Pieces of water leap off it in the form of comets
with tails streaming behind, till the whole snowy sheet becomes myriads
of rushing, leaping, aqueous comets. This peculiarity was not observed
by Charles Livingstone at Niagara, and here it happens, possibly from
the dryness of the atmosphere, or whatever the cause may be which makes
every drop of Zambesi water appear to possess a sort of individuality.
It runs off the ends of the paddles, and glides in beads along the
smooth surface, like drops of quicksilver on a table. Here we see them
in a conglomeration, each with a train of pure white vapour, racing
down till lost in clouds of spray. A stone dropped in became less and
less to the eye, and at last disappeared in the dense mist below.
Charles Livingstone had seen Niagara, and gave Mosi-oa-tunya the palm,
though now at the end of a drought, and the river at its very lowest.
Many feel a disappointment on first seeing the great American Falls,
but Mosi-oa-tunya is so strange, it must ever cause wonder. In the
amount of water, Niagara probably excels, though not during the months
when the Zambesi is in flood. The vast body of water, separating in
the comet-like forms described, necessarily encloses in its descent
a large volume of air, which, forced into the cleft, to an unknown
depth, rebounds, and rushes up loaded with vapour to form the three
or even six columns, as if of steam, visible at the Batoka village
Moachemba, twenty-one miles distant. On attaining a height of 200, or
at most 300 feet from the level of the river above the cascade, this
vapour becomes condensed into a perpetual shower of fine rain. Much
of the spray, rising to the west of Garden Island, falls on the grove
of evergreen trees opposite; and from their leaves, heavy drops are
for ever falling, to form sundry little rills, which, in running down
the steep face of rock, are blown off and turned back, or licked off
their perpendicular bed, up into the column from which they have just
descended.
The morning sun gilds these columns of watery smoke with all the
glowing colours of double or treble rainbows. The evening sun, from a
hot yellow sky imparts a sulphureous hue, and gives one the impression
that the yawning gulf might resemble the mouth of the bottomless pit.
No bird sings and sings on the branches of the grove of perpetual
showers, or ever builds his nest there. We saw hornbills and flocks of
little black weavers flying across from the mainland to the islands,
and from the islands to the points of the promontories and back again,
but they uniformly shunned the region of perpetual rain, occupied
by the evergreen grove. The sunshine, elsewhere in this land so
overpowering, never penetrates the deep gloom of that shade. In the
presence of the strange Mosi-oa-tunya, we can sympathize with those
who, when the world was young, peopled earth, air, and river, with
beings not of mortal form. Sacred to what deity would be this awful
chasm and that dark grove, over which hovers an ever-abiding “pillar of
cloud”?
The ancient Batoka chieftains used Kazeruka, now Garden Island, and
Boaruka, the island further west, also on the lip of the Falls, as
sacred spots for worshipping the Deity. It is no wonder that under the
cloudy columns, and near the brilliant rainbows, with the ceaseless
roar of the cataract, with the perpetual flow, as if pouring forth from
the hand of the Almighty, their souls should be filled with reverential
awe.
_The Zambesi and its Tributaries 1858-1864_ (London, 1865).
THE DRAGON-TREE OF OROTAVA[7]
(_CANARY ISLANDS_)
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT
Orotava, the ancient Taoro of the Guanches, is situated on a very steep
declivity. The streets seem deserted; the houses are solidly built,
and of gloomy appearance. We passed along a lofty aqueduct, lined with
a great number of fine ferns; and visited several gardens, in which
the fruit trees of the north of Europe are mingled with orange trees,
pomegranates, and date trees. We were assured, that these last were
as little productive here as on the coast of Cumana. Although we had
been made acquainted, from the narratives of many travellers, with the
dragon-tree in M. Franqui’s garden, we were not the less struck with
its enormous size. We were told, that the trunk of this tree, which is
mentioned in several very ancient documents as marking the boundaries
of a field, was as gigantic in the Fifteenth Century as it is in the
present time. Its height appeared to us to be about fifty or sixty
feet; its circumference near the roots is forty-five feet. We could not
measure higher, but Sir George Staunton found that, ten feet from the
ground, the diameter of the trunk is still twelve English feet; which
corresponds perfectly with the statement of Borda, who found its mean
circumference thirty-three feet, eight inches, French measure. The
trunk is divided into a great number of branches, which rise in the
form of a candelabrum, and are terminated by tufts of leaves, like the
yucca which adorns the valley of Mexico. This division gives it a very
different appearance from that of the palm-tree.
Among organic creations, this tree is undoubtedly, together with the
Adansonia or baobab of Senegal, one of the oldest inhabitants of our
globe. The baobabs are of still greater dimensions than the dragon-tree
of Orotava. There are some which near the root measure thirty-four feet
in diameter, though their total height is only from fifty to sixty
feet. But we should observe, that the Adansonia, like the ochroma,
and all the plants of the family of bombax, grow much more rapidly
than the dracæna, the vegetation of which is very slow. That in M.
Franqui’s garden still bears every year both flowers and fruit. Its
aspect forcibly exemplifies “that eternal youth of nature,” which is an
inexhaustible source of motion and of life.
The _dracæna_, which is seen only in cultivated spots in the Canary
Islands, at Madeira, and Porto Santo, presents a curious phenomenon
with respect to the emigration of plants. It has never been found
in a wild state on the continent of Africa. The East Indies is its
real country. How has this tree been transplanted to Teneriffe, where
it is by no means common? Does its existence prove, that, at some
very distant period, the Guanches had connexions with other nations
originally from Asia?[8]
[Illustration: THE DRAGON TREE.]
The age of trees is marked by their size, and the union of age with
the manifestation of constantly renewed vigour is a charm peculiar to
the vegetable kingdom. The gigantic Dragon-tree of Orotava (as sacred
in the eyes of the inhabitants of the Canaries as the olive-tree in
the Citadel of Athens, or the Elm of Ephesus), the diameter of which I
found, when I visited those islands, to be more than sixteen feet, had
the same colossal size when the French adventurers, the Béthencourts,
conquered these gardens of the Hesperides in the beginning of the
Fifteenth Century; yet it still flourishes, as if in perpetual
youth, bearing flowers and fruit. A tropical forest of Hymenæas and
Cæsalpinieæ may perhaps present to us a monument of more than a
thousand years’ standing.
This colossal dragon-tree, _Dracæna draco_, stands in one of the most
delightful spots in the world. In June, 1799, when we ascended the
Peak of Teneriffe, we measured the circumference of the tree and found
it nearly forty-eight English feet. Our measurement was taken several
feet above the root. Lower down, and nearer to the ground, Le Dru made
it nearly seventy-nine English feet. The height of the tree is not
much above sixty-nine English feet. According to tradition, this tree
was venerated by the Guanches (as was the ash-tree of Ephesus by the
Greeks, or as the Lydian plane-tree which Xerxes decked with ornaments,
and the sacred Banyan-tree of Ceylon), and at the time of the first
expedition of the Béthencourts in 1402, it was already as thick and
as hollow as it now is. Remembering that the Dracæna grows extremely
slowly, we are led to infer the high antiquity of the tree of Orotava.
Bertholet in his description of Teneriffe, says: “_En comparant les
jeunes Dragonniers, voisins de l’arbre gigantesque, les calcus qu’on
fait sur l’ âge de ce dernier effraient l’imagination._” (Nova Acta
Acad. Leop. Carol. Naturæ Curiosorum 1827, vol. xiii., p. 781.) The
dragon-tree has been cultivated in the Canaries, and in Madeira and
Porto Santo, from the earliest times; and an accurate observer, Leopold
von Buch, has even found it wild in Teneriffe, near Igueste....
The measurement of the dragon-tree of the Villa Franqui was made on
Borda’s first voyage with Pingré, in 1771; not in his second voyage,
in 1776, with Varela. It is affirmed that in the earlier times of
the Norman and Spanish conquests, in the Fifteenth Century, Mass
was said at a small altar erected in the hollow trunk of the tree.
Unfortunately, the dragon-tree of Orotava lost one side of its top in
the storm of the 21st of July, 1819.
_Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America
during the years 1799-1804_ (London, 1825); and _Aspects of Nature_
(Philadelphia, 1849).
FOOTNOTES:
[7] This famous tree was blown down by a storm in 1868. Its age was
estimated from five to six thousand years.--E. S.
[8] The form of the dragon-tree is exhibited in several species of the
genus Dracæna, at the Cape of Good Hope, in China, and in New Zealand.
But in New Zealand it is superseded by the form of the yucca; for the
_Dracæna borealis_ of Aiton is a Convallaria, of which it has all the
appearance. The astringent juice, known in commerce by the name of
dragon’s blood, is, according to the inquiries we made on the spot, the
produce of several American plants. At Laguna, toothpicks steeped in
the juice of the dragon-tree are made in the nunneries, and are much
extolled as highly useful for keeping the gums in a healthy state.
MOUNT SHASTA
(_UNITED STATES_)
J. W. BODDAM-WHETHAM
Mount Shasta is the most striking feature of Northern California. Its
height is about 14,500 feet above the sea--very nearly the height of
Mount Blanc. Mount Blanc is broken into a succession of peaks, but
Shasta is one stupendous peak, set upon a broad base that sweeps out
far and wide. From the base the volcanic cone rises up in one vast
stretch of snow and lava. It is very precipitous to the north and
south, but east and west there are two slopes right up to the crater.
It is a matter of doubt whether Shasta is dead or only sleeping.
Vesuvius slept calmly for centuries, and then spread death and
desolation for miles around. The base of the mountain is magnificently
watered and wooded, and forms a splendid hunting-ground. The woods are
full of deer and bears; and now and then a mountain-goat, an animal
very like the chamois of the Alps, is seen in the higher part of the
mountains.
Well-provided with blankets and provisions, we started with a guide,
and a man to look after the horses, at a very early hour, and rode
through a beautiful forest of pines, silver firs, and cedars. Along the
banks of the streams were aspens, willows, and the trees known by the
name of the “Balm of Gilead,” whose vivid green leaves were already
changing to a rich orange or an apple-red--forming a beautiful contrast
of colours with the glazed green of the cedars and the green-tinted
white of the silver firs.
After an easy ascent to a height of about 8,000 feet, we reached the
limits of vegetation. Thence our upward path lay over snow, ice, and
lava--lonely, isolated barrenness on every side, relieved only by an
occasional solitary dwarf-pine, struggling to retain life amidst fierce
storms and heavy-weighing snow. Many of them were quite dead, but
embalmed by frost and snow in a never-decaying death.
With a few loads of this fuel we soon made a splendid fire, the warmth
of which was most welcome in the cold rarefied atmosphere. Scarcely had
we finished a capital supper ere night descended, and great clouds and
fitful fogs began to drift past. These in their turn broke, and the
moon threw a weird light over the forest below; whilst above rose piles
upon piles of pinkish lava and snow-fields, reaching far up into the
sky, whose magnificent blue grew more sparkling and clear every moment.
Wrapping ourselves in our bundles of blankets, we crept as close as
possible to the huge fire, and before long my companions were fast
asleep and snoring. I could not sleep a wink, and mentally registered
a vow never again to camp out without a pillow. No one can tell till
he has tried it, the difference there is between going to sleep with a
pillow under the head and a stone or a pair of boots or saddle as its
resting-place.
[Illustration: MOUNT SHASTA.]
The deep silence, unbroken save by a most unromantic snore, was
painfully oppressive, and I longed to hear even a growl from a bear or
a deep whine from a California lion.[9] I listened intently, for it
seemed as if the slightest sound, even a hundred miles away, ought to
be heard, so still and frosty was the air.
But none fell on my ear, not even a murmur to soothe one to sleep,
and I began to think bears and lions were snores and delusions, when,
just as I was dozing off, I felt my arm violently pulled, and a voice
called out that it was time for us to make a start. Hot coffee soon
had a cheering effect, and long before daylight we left our warm
camping-ground, and began the higher ascent on foot. Broken stone and
slabs of lava afforded pretty good foothold, far preferable to the
fields of frozen snow, which we carefully avoided. After a couple of
hours’ hard walking we seemed to be just as far from the summit as
when we started; but the views gradually became grander. From a rocky
promontory we looked back over a sea of glittering clouds, the only
land visible being the peaks of the Coast range, near the Pacific;
all else was cloud, to which the moonlight lent an almost dazzling
whiteness:
“Far clouds of feathery gold,
Shaded with deepest purple, gleam
Like islands on a dark blue sea.”
When the sun rose and the mists cleared off, the scene was
indescribably grand, and the gradual unfolding of the vast panorama
unapproachable in its splendour.
After some hours of weary climbing over crumbling scoria and splintered
rock, we reached the crater. In the ascent to the summit overlooking
the crater, we had to cross an ice-field. It had that blue tinge found
in the ice of which glaciers are composed, and its slipperiness made
it almost impossible to walk over it, the ice lying often in ridges
resembling the waves of the sea.
The main crater covers several acres. It is hemmed in by rims of rock,
and is filled with volcanic _débris_, covered with snow and ice.
Numbers of little boiling springs were bubbling up through the bed
of sulphur, and were suggestive of the subterranean fires which once
threw their molten lava over the surrounding country. The view from
the summit was most extensive, and fortunately there was none of the
usual smoke from the forest-fires, so prevalent in autumn in Northern
California and Oregon, to impede the range of vision.
Looking northward, far over into Oregon, we could see her lakes,
valleys, and mountains. Southward, we could trace the Sacramento and
Pitt rivers. The great boundary-wall of the Sierra Nevada lay to the
east, and farther onward, the deserts and sparkling lakes of Utah could
be distinguished. To the west the sinuous outline of the Coast range
was visible, and beyond, the broad Pacific shelved away to the horizon.
Fertile valleys, rugged mountains, wood and water, all lent their aid
to enhance the beauty of this unsurpassable scene.
The descent to our camping-ground was accomplished in a comparatively
short time. On the way, we stopped to witness a most glorious sunset.
Round the horizon ran a thin mist with a brilliant depth of colouring.
To the east a blue gauze seemed to cover each valley as it sank into
night, and the intervening ridges rose with increasing distinctness.
The lower country was flooded with an exquisitely delicate light, and a
few fleecy clouds tinted with gold, pale salmon, and sapphire, passed
over the empurpled hills of the Coast range. The great shadow of Mount
Shasta spread itself, cone-like, across the valley; the blue mists
were quenched; the distant mountains glowed like fairy hills for a few
moments; and the sun, poising itself like a great globe of fire in the
darkening heavens, descended slowly below the golden ridge to illumine
another hemisphere.
During our descent we passed through some patches of red snow, which
leaves a crimson track behind those who cross over it. This curious
phenomenon is always avoided by the Shasta Indians, when acting as
guides or porters, as they say it brings death if you tread on it
willingly and after due warning. We found a warm fire to welcome us
on our arrival at the camp, and the exertions of the day made us very
willing to turn in among the blankets where we slept soundly till long
after daybreak. The following day, when we arrived at our original
starting-point, my companions resumed their journey to San Francisco,
and I went on to Sissons, a station on the stage-road, whence I was to
start on a shooting expedition amongst the Castle Rocks.
Sissons, so-called after the name of the proprietor, is a very
delightful place to spend a few days at. The view of Mount Shasta,
which is directly opposite the house, is magnificent; and Sisson
himself is a capital sportsman guide, and succeeds in making his guests
very comfortable. Looking at Mount Shasta is occupation enough for some
time. The play of colour on the mountain is extraordinary. The lava,
which is of a rosy hue, often penetrates through the snow, and when the
sun shines upon it the effect is most beautiful. The pure white fields
of snow are diversified by great blue glaciers, and when the sunbeams
fall with refracted glory on the veins of ice they exhibit wonderful
tints of opal, green, and pink. The effects produced by the mingling
colours of lava, snow, and ice, and the contrasting shadows of a deep
violet hue are so varied, and the radiation of colour at sunrise and
sunset so vivid, that it is difficult to keep the eyes turned from the
mountain--for nothing seems worthy of consideration in comparison with
Shasta.
_Western Wanderings: a Record of Travel in the Evening Land_ (London,
1874).
FOOTNOTE:
[9] These so-called lions are a sort of panther, and abound in most
parts of California and Oregon. They are very cowardly, and seldom
attack a man, unless they can spring on him from a tree, and not often
then.
THE LAGOONS OF VENICE
(_ITALY_)
JOHN RUSKIN
In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which
distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that
toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the
countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness
of the evening hours, when from the top of the last hill he had
surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to
rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from
the long hoped for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw,
for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of
sunset--hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush
of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all
men, an equivalent,--in those days, I say, when there was something
more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each
successive halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and
iron girder, there were few moments of which the recollection was more
fondly cherished by the travelled, than that which, as I endeavoured
to describe in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight
of Venice as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of
Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the
source of some slight disappointment, for seen in this direction, its
buildings are far less characteristic than those of other great towns
of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and
more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out
of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that
the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the
vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre
to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding
it to the east. The salt breeze, the moaning sea-birds, the masses of
black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving
shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be
indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not
such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories,
or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak
power of our own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious
rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished
gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island
church, fitly named “St. George of the Seaweed.” As the boat drew
nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had just left sank
behind him into one long, low, sad-coloured line, tufted irregularly
with brushwood and willows; but, at what seemed its northern extremity,
the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced
on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of
inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond these,
beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps
girded the whole horizon to the north--a wall of jagged blue, here and
there showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices,
fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and
breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow,
into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred
clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the
Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon
the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city,
where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick, silent pacing
of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were
reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not
through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between
two rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller’s
sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces,--each with its black
boat moored at the portal,--each with its image cast down, beneath
its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new
fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the
bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth
from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so
delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow
just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen,
the gondolier’s cry, “Ah! Stalì,” struck sharp upon the ear, and the
prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the
narrow canal, where the splash of the water followed close and loud,
ringing along the marble by the boat’s side; and when at last that boat
darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of
the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy
dome of Our Lady of Salvation, it was no marvel that the mind should
be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful
and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its
being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence
rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that
the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her
state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in
nature was wild or merciless;--Time and Decay, as well as the waves and
tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might
still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed
for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea.
[Illustration: THE CITY OF THE LAGOONS.]
From the mouths of the Adige to those of the Piave there stretches,
at a variable distance of from three to five miles from the actual
shore, a bank of sand, divided into long islands by narrow channels of
sea. The space between this bank and the true shore consists of the
sedimentary deposits from these and other rivers, a great plain of
calcareous mud, covered, in the neighbourhood of Venice, by the sea
at high water, to the depth in most places of a foot or a foot and a
half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided by an
intricate network of narrow and winding channels, from which the sea
never retires. In some places, according to the run of the currents,
the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art, and
some by time, into ground firm enough to be built upon, or fruitful
enough to be cultivated; in others, on the contrary, it has not reached
the sea level; so that, at the average low water, shallow lakelets
glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of seaweed. In the midst
of the largest of these, increased in importance by the confluence
of several large river channels towards one of the openings in the
sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a crowded cluster of
islands; the various plots of higher ground which appear to the north
and south of this central cluster, have at different periods been also
thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their size, the remains
of cities, villages, or isolated convents and churches, scattered among
spaces of open ground, partly waste and encumbered by ruins, partly
under cultivation for the supply of the metropolis.
The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet (varying
considerably with the season); but this fall, on so flat a shore, is
enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main
canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream.
At high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south
of Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or
gleaming with villages; there is a channel, some three miles wide,
between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide
between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the
lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb
the impression of the city’s having been built in the midst of the
ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not
painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep
water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the
studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the
crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong
winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is
widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is
enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and at the
complete ebb, the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain
of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches
of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port
of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the
fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or
five feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels
furrow the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the
clear sea water like the ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves
the gashes upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the
thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves,
leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The
scene is often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot
of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to
know what it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening
the windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the
melancholy plain; let him remove in his imagination, the brightness
of the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the
walls and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until
the bright investiture and sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn
from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its
nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in
dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt rivulets plash
into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with
a questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into
the horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by
man for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes
into the sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their
children were to be the princes of the ocean, and their palaces its
pride; and yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful
wilderness, let it be remembered what strange preparation had been made
for the things which no human imagination could have foretold, and how
the whole existence and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated
or compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and
the sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies
would again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had
stronger surges beaten their shores, all the riches and refinement of
the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and
bulwarks of an ordinary seaport. Had there been no tide, as in other
parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have
become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had
the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the
water access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible:
even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in
landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps; and the
highest tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance
halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the
flood and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low
water, a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system
of water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily
intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city
would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the
peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed.
The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between this
faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the romantic
conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he have
felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the
instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the
wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been
permitted to watch the slow setting of the shrine of those turbid
rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh
waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little
could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were
shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their
desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than
of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the
glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hands are all
the corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which
were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks,
and feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a
preparation, and _the only preparation possible_, for the founding of
a city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the
earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges,
and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in
world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the
burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendour!
_The Stones of Venice_ (Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1886).
THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE
(_AFRICA_)
AMELIA B. EDWARDS
At Assûan one bids good-bye to Egypt and enters Nubia through the gates
of the Cataract--which is, in truth, no cataract, but a succession of
rapids extending over two-thirds of the distance between Elephantine
and Philæ. The Nile--diverted from its original course by some
unrecorded catastrophe, the nature of which has given rise to much
scientific conjecture--here spreads itself over a rocky basin bounded
by sand slopes on the one side, and by granite cliffs on the other.
Studded with numerous islets, divided into numberless channels, foaming
over sunken rocks, eddying among water-worn boulders, now shallow,
now deep, now loitering, now hurrying, here sleeping in the ribbed
hollow of a tiny sand-drift, there circling above the vortex of a
hidden whirlpool, the river, whether looked upon from the deck of the
dahabeeyah, or the heights above the shore, is seen everywhere to be
fighting its way through a labyrinth, the paths of which have never yet
been mapped or sounded.
These paths are everywhere difficult and everywhere dangerous; and
to that labyrinth the Shellalee, or Cataract Arab, alone possesses
the key. At the time of the inundation, when all but the highest
rocks are under water, and navigation is as easy here as elsewhere,
the Shellalee’s occupation is gone. But as the floods subside and
travellers begin to reappear, his work commences. To haul dahabeeyahs
up those treacherous rapids by sheer stress of rope and muscle; to
steer skillfully down again through channels bristling with rocks and
boiling with foam, becomes now, for some five months of the year, his
principal industry. It is hard work; but he gets well paid for it, and
his profits are always on the increase. From forty to fifty dahabeeyahs
are annually taken up between November and March; and every year brings
a larger influx of travellers. Meanwhile, accidents rarely happen;
prices tend continually upward; and the Cataract Arabs make a little
fortune by their singular monopoly.
The scenery of the First Cataract is like nothing else in the
world--except the scenery of the Second. It is altogether new and
strange and beautiful. It is incomprehensible that travellers should
have written of it in general with so little admiration. They seem to
have been impressed by the wildness of the waters, by the quaint forms
of the rocks, by the desolation and grandeur of the landscape as a
whole; but scarcely at all by its beauty--which is paramount.
The Nile here widens to a lake. Of the islands, which it would hardly
be an exaggeration to describe as some hundreds in number, no two are
alike. Some are piled up like the rocks at the Land’s End in Cornwall,
block upon block, column upon column, tower upon tower, as if reared by
the hand of man. Some are green with grass; some golden with slopes of
drifted sand; some are planted with rows of blossoming lupins, purple
and white. Others are again mere cairns of loose blocks, with here and
there a perilously balanced top-boulder. On one, a singular upright
monolith, like a menhir, stands conspicuous, as if placed there to
commemorate a date, or to point the way to Philæ. Another mass rises
out of the water squared and buttressed, in the likeness of a fort. A
third, humped and shining like the wet body of some amphibious beast,
lifts what seems to be a horned head above the surface of the rapids.
All these blocks and boulders and fantastic rocks are granite; some
red, some purple, some black. Their forms are rounded by the friction
of ages. Those nearest the brink reflect the sky like mirrors of
burnished steel. Royal ovals and hieroglyphed inscriptions, fresh as
of yesterday’s cutting, stand out here and there from those glittering
surfaces with startling distinctness. A few of the larger islands
are crowned with clumps of palms; and one, the loveliest of any, is
completely embowered in gum-trees and acacias, dôm and date-palms, and
feathery tamarisks, all festooned together under a hanging canopy of
yellow-blossomed creepers.
[Illustration: FIRST CATARACT OF THE NILE.]
On a brilliant Sunday morning, with a favourable wind, we entered on
this fairy archipelago. Sailing steadily against the current, we glided
away from Assûan, left Elephantine behind, and found ourselves at
once in the midst of the islands. From this moment every turn of the
tiller disclosed a fresh point of view, and we sat on deck, spectators
of a moving panorama. The diversity of subjects was endless. The
combinations of form and colour, of light and shadow, of foreground and
distance, were continually changing. A boat or a few figures alone were
wanting to complete the picturesqueness of the scene, but in all those
channels and among all those islands, we saw no sign of any living
creature.
The Second or Great Cataract, begins a little way above Wady Halfeh
and extends over a distance of many miles. It consists, like the First
Cataract, of a succession of rocks and rapids, and is skirted for
the first five miles or so by the sand-cliff ridge, which, as I have
said, forms a background to the ruins just opposite Wady Halfeh. This
ridge terminates abruptly in the famous precipice known as the Rock of
Abusîr. Only adventurous travellers bound for Dongola or Khartûm go
beyond this point; and they, for the most part, take the shorter route
across the desert from Korosko.
It is hard, now that we are actually here, to realize that this is
the end of our journey. The Cataract--an immense multitude of black
and shining islets, among which the river, divided into hundreds of
separate channels, spreads far and wide for a distance, it is said of
more than sixteen miles,--foams at our feet. Foams, and frets, and
falls; gushing smooth and strong where its course is free; murmuring
hoarsely where it is interrupted; now hurrying; now loitering; here
eddying in oily circles; there lying in still pools unbroken by a
ripple; everywhere full of life, full of voices; everywhere shining to
the sun. Northwards, when it winds away towards Abou Simbel, we see
all the fantastic mountains of yesterday on the horizon. To the east,
still bounded by out-liers of the same disconnected chain, lies a
rolling waste of dark and stony wilderness, trenched with innumerable
valleys through which flow streams of sand. On the western side, the
continuity of the view is interrupted by the ridge which ends with
Abusîr. Southward the Libyan desert reaches away in one vast undulating
plain; tawny, arid, monotonous; all sun; all sand; lit here and there
with arrowy flashes of the Nile. Farthest of all, pale but distinct, on
the outermost rim of the world, rise two mountain summits, one long,
one dome-like. Our Nubians tell us that they are the mountains of
Dongola. Comparing our position with that of the Third Cataract as it
appears upon the map, we come to the conclusion that these ghost-like
silhouettes are the summits of Mount Fogo and Mount Arambo--two
apparently parallel mountains situate on opposite sides of the river
about ten miles below Hannek, and consequently about one hundred and
forty-five miles, as the bird flies, from the spot on which we are
standing.
In this extraordinary panorama, so wild, so weird, so desolate, there
is nothing really beautiful, except the colour. But the colour is
transcendent. Never, even in Egypt, have I seen anything so tender, so
transparent, so harmonious. I shut my eyes, and it all comes before
me. I see the amber of the sands; the pink and pearly mountains; the
Cataract rocks all black and purple and polished; the dull grey palms
that cluster here and there upon the larger islands; the vivid verdure
of the tamarisks and pomegranates; the Nile, a greenish brown flecked
with yeasty foam; over all, the blue and burning sky, permeated with
light, and palpitating with sunshine.
I made no sketch. I felt that it would be ludicrous to attempt it. And
I feel now that any endeavour to put the scene into words is a mere
presumptuous effort to describe the indescribable. Words are useful
instruments; but, like the etching needle and the burin, they stop
short at form. They cannot translate colour.
If a traveller pressed for time asked me whether he should or should
not go as far as the Second Cataract, I think I should recommend him to
turn back from Abou Simbel. The trip must cost four days; and if the
wind should happen to be unfavourable either way, it may cost six or
seven. The forty miles of river that have to be twice traversed are the
dullest on the Nile; the Cataract is but an enlarged and barren edition
of the Cataract between Assûan and Philæ; and the great view, as I have
said, has not that kind of beauty which attracts the general tourist.
It has an interest, however, beyond and apart from that of beauty. It
rouses one’s imagination to a sense of the greatness of the Nile. We
look across a world of desert, and see the river still coming from
afar. We have reached a point at which all that is habitable and
familiar comes abruptly to an end. Not a village, not a bean-field, not
a shâdûf, not a sakkieh, is to be seen in the plain below. There is no
sail on these dangerous waters. There is no moving creature on these
pathless sands. But for the telegraphic wires stalking ghost-like,
across the desert, it would seem as if we had touched the limit of
civilization, and were standing on the threshold of a land unexplored.
Yet for all this, we feel as if we were at only the beginning of the
mighty river. We have journeyed well-nigh a thousand miles against the
stream; but what is that to the distance which still lies between us
and the Great Lakes? And how far beyond the Great Lakes must we seek
for the source that is even yet undiscovered?
_A Thousand Miles Up the Nile_ (London, 1890).
IN THE ALPS
(_SWITZERLAND_)
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
The foot of the high mountains that form the chain of Mount Blanc,
clothed with forests and pastures, revealed hues of delightful
intensity and vigour. Imagine an immense piece of green velvet crumpled
into large folds like the curtain of a theatre with the deep black of
its hollows and the golden glitterings of its lights; this is a very
faint image for the grandeur of the object, but I know of none that
could better describe the effect.
Scheele’s green, mineral green, all those greens that result from the
combinations of Prussian blue and yellow ochre, or Naples yellow, the
mixture of indigo and Indian yellow, Veronese green and _vert prasin_
could not reproduce that quality of green that we might properly call
mountain green and which passes from velvety black into the tenderest
shades of green. In this play of shades, the firs form the shadows;
the deciduous trees and the spaces of meadow or moss, the lights. The
undulations and the cleft ravines of the mountain break these great
masses of green, this vigorous foreground, this energetic _répoussoir_,
rendering the light tones of the zones, (bare of verdure and crowned by
the high lights of the snows,) more vaporous and throwing them back. In
the various more open places, the grass grows green in the sun; and
trees resembling little black patches sown upon this light ground give
it the appearance of tufted material. But when we speak of trees and
firs, woods and forests, do not picture to yourselves anything but vast
blots of dark moss upon the slopes of the mountains: the highest trunks
there assume the proportion of a blade of grass.
The road turns towards the left, and, gliding between stones and blocks
that have fallen down or drifted into the valley by means of the
winter torrents and avalanches, soon enters a forest of birch-trees,
firs, and larches whose openings allow you to see on the other side
the _Aiguilles Rouges_ and _le Brevent_, which face Montanvert. The
ascent was gentle enough and the mules climbed it with easy gait;
in comparison with the road which we scaled the night before to go
to the _Pierre pointue_, the route was a true alley of the Bois de
Boulogne. The zigzags of the road turned at angles sufficiently long
not to fatigue either the rider or his mount. The sunlight played in
the foliage of the forest that we traversed and made a shadow shot
through with rays float over us. Upon the rocks at the foot of the
trees, mosses of emerald green gleamed and lovely little wild flowers
brightly bloomed, while in the spaces through the branches a bluish
mist betrayed the depth of the abyss, for the little caravan, going
along single file and constantly ascending, had now reached the Caillet
fountain, which is regarded as half-way up the mountain. This fountain,
of excellent water, runs into a wooden trough. The mules halt there to
drink. A cabin is built near the fountain and they offer you a glass
of water made opalescent with a few drops of kirsch, cognac, beer,
and other refreshments. We regaled our guides with a glass of brandy,
which, notwithstanding their sobriety, they seemed to prefer to that
diamond liquid that sprang from the rock.
From this point, the road began to grow steeper; the ascents multiplied
without, however, offering any difficulties to mules or pedestrians.
The air became more keen. The forest grew lighter, the trees stood at
greater intervals from each other and stopped as if out of breath. They
seemed to say to us, “Now, go up alone, we cannot go any further.” The
rounded plateau that we mount by keeping to the right is not desolate
and denuded as one would believe; a grass, sturdy enough and enamelled
with Alpine flowers, forms its carpet, and when you have gone beyond
it, you perceive the _châlet_ or inn of Montanvert below the _Aiguille
de Charmoz_.
From this plateau you have a superb view, an astonishing, apocalyptic
view, beyond all dreams. At your feet, between two banks of gigantic
peaks, flows motionless, as if congealed during the tumult of a
tempest, that broad river of crystal which is called the Mer de Glace,
and which lower towards the plain is called the _Glacier des Bois_. The
_Mer de Glace_ comes from a high altitude; it receives many glaciers
as a river its tributaries. We will speak of it presently, but for the
moment let us occupy ourselves with the spectacle that unfolds beneath
our eyes.
Opposite the inn of Montanvert, the glacier is half a league from one
bank to the other, perhaps even more, for it is difficult to gauge
distance in the mountains with exactness; it is about the width of
the Thames, the Neva or the Guadalquiver towards their mouth. But the
slope is much more abrupt than was ever that of any river. It descends
by large waves rounded at their tops, like billows that never break
into foam and whose hollows take a bluish colour. When the ground
that serves as a bed for this torrent of ice becomes too abrupt, the
mass is dislocated and breaks up into slabs that rest one upon the
other and which resemble those little columns of white marble in the
Turkish cemeteries that are forced to lean to right or left by their
own weight; crevasses more or less wide and deep manifest themselves,
opening the immense block and revealing the virgin ice in all its
purity. The walls of these crevasses assume magical colours, tints of
an azure grotto. An ideal blue that is neither the blue of the sky nor
the blue of the water, but the blue of ice, an unnamed tone that is
never found on the artist’s palette illumines these splendid clefts
and turns sometimes to a green of aqua marine or mother of pearl by
gradations of astonishing delicacy. On the other bank, clearly detached
by its sharp escarpment like the spire of a gigantic cathedral, the
high _Aiguille du Dru_ rises with so proud, so elegant, and so bold a
spring. Ascending the glacier, the _Aiguille Verte_ stands out in front
of it, being even higher though the perspective makes it appear lower.
From the foot of the _Aiguille du Dru_, like a rivulet towards a river,
descends the Mont Blanc glacier. A little further to the right, the
_Aiguille du Moine_ and that of _Léchaud_ show themselves, obelisks
of granite which the sunlight tints with reflections of rose and
the snow makes gleam with several touches of silver. It is difficult
to express in words the unexpected outlines, the strange flashes, the
tops cut and indented in the form of saw-teeth, gable-ends and crosses
that are affected by these inaccessible peaks with almost vertical
walls,--often even sloping outwards and overhanging. Running your eye
along the same bank of the glacier and descending towards the valley,
you see the _Aiguille du Bochard_, _le Chapeau_, which is nothing more
or less than a rounded mountain, grassy and enamelled with flowers, not
so high as Montanvert, and the forests which have given to this portion
of the _Mer de Glace_ the name of _Glacier des Bois_, bordering it with
a line of sombre verdure.
[Illustration: MONT BLANC.]
There are in the _Mer de Glace_ two veins that divide it throughout its
length like the currents of two rivers that never mingle: a black vein
and a white vein. The black one flows by the side of the bank where
the _Aiguille du Dru_ rears itself, and the white one bathes the foot
of Montanvert; but words when we speak of colour only half describe
shades, and it must not be imagined that this demarcation is as clearly
defined as we have indicated. It is, however, very sensible.
On looking towards the upper portion of the glacier, at the spot
where it precipitates itself into the rock passage which conducts
it to the valley like a furiously boiling cascade with wild spurts
which some magic power has turned into ice at its strongest leap, you
discover, arranged like an amphitheatre, the _Montagne des Périades_,
the _Petites Jorasses_, the _Grandes Jorasses_, and the _Aiguille du
Géant_, covered with eternal snow, the white diadem of the Alps which
the suns of summer are powerless to melt and which scintillate with a
pure and cold brilliancy in the clear blue of the sky.
At the foot of the Périades, the glacier, as may be seen from
Montanvert, divides into two branches, one of which ascends towards the
east and takes the name of the _Glacier de Léchaud_, while the other
takes its course behind the _Aiguilles de Chamouni_ towards _Mont Blanc
du Tacul_, and is called the _Glacier du Géant_. A third branch, named
the _Glacier du Talifre_, spreads out over the slopes of the _Aiguille
Verte_.
It is in the middle of the _Talifre_ where lies that oasis of the
glaciers that is called the _Jardin_, a kind of basket of Alpine
flowers, which find there a pinch of vegetable earth, a few rays
of sunshine, and a girdle of stones that isolate them from the
neighbouring ice; but to climb to the _Jardin_ is a long, fatiguing and
even dangerous excursion, necessitating a night’s sleep at the _châlet_
of Montanvert.
We resumed our journey not without having gathered several bunches of
rhododendrons of the freshest green and brightest rose, that opened in
the liberty and solitude of the mountains by means of the pure Alpine
breeze. You descend by the same route more rapidly than you ascended.
[Illustration: AIGUILLE DU DRU, ALPS.]
The mules stepped gaily by the side of their leaders, who carried the
sticks, canes and umbrellas, which had now become useless. We traversed
the forest of pines pierced here and there by the torrents of stones
of the avalanches; we gained the plain and were soon at Chamouni to go
to the source of the Arveiron, which is found at the base of the
_Glacier des Bois_, the name that is assumed by the _Mer de Glace_ on
arriving in the valley.
This is an excursion that you can make in a carriage. You follow the
bottom of the valley, cross the Arve at the hamlet of Praz, and after
having passed the _Hameau des Bois_, where you must alight, you arrive,
winding among masses of rocks in disorder and pools of water across
which logs are placed, at the wall of the glacier, which reveals itself
by its slit and tortured edges, full of cavities and gashes where the
blue-green hatchings colour the transparent whiteness of the mass.
The white teeth of the glacier stand out clearly against the sombre
green of the forests of Bochard and Montanvert and are majestically
dominated by the _Aiguille du Dru_, which shoots its granite obelisk
three thousand nine hundred and six _metres_ into the depths of the
sky, and the foreground is formed by the most prodigious confusion of
stones, rocks and blocks that a painter could wish for giving value to
those vapourous depths. The Arveiron foams and roars across this chaos
and, after half an hour of frantic disordered course, loses itself in
the Arve.
_Les Vacances de Lundi_ (Paris, 1881).
THE VALE OF KASHMIR
(_INDIA_)
ANDREW WILSON
Almost every one longs, and many hope, to see the beautiful Vale of
Kashmir. Probably no region of the earth is so well known to the eye of
imagination, or so readily suggests the idea of a terrestrial Paradise.
So far from having been disappointed with the reality, or having
experienced any cause for wishing that I had left Kashmir unvisited, I
can most sincerely say that the beautiful reality excels the somewhat
vague poetic vision which has been associated with the name. But
Kashmir is rather a difficult country to get at, especially when you
come down upon it from behind by way of Zanskar and Súrú. According to
tradition, it was formerly the Garden of Eden; and one is very well
disposed to accept that theory when trying to get into it from the
north or northwest.
After months of the sterile, almost treeless Tibetan provinces, the
contrast was very striking, and I could not but revel in the beauty and
glory of the vegetation; but even to one who had come up upon it from
below, the scene would have been very striking. There was a large and
lively encampment at the foot of the pass, with tents prepared for the
Yarkand envoy, and a number of Kashmir officers and soldiers; but I
pushed on beyond that, and camped in solitude close to the Sind river,
just beneath the Panjtarne valley, which leads up towards the caves
of Ambernath, a celebrated place for Hindú pilgrimage. This place is
called Báltal, but it has no human habitations. Smooth green meadows,
carpet-like and embroidered with flowers, extended to the silvery
stream, above which there was the most varied luxuriance of foliage,
the lower mountains being most richly clothed with woods of many and
beautiful colours. It was late autumn, and the trees were in their
greatest variety of colour; but hardly a leaf seemed to have fallen.
The dark green of the pines contrasted beautifully with the delicate
orange of the birches, because there were intermingling tints of brown
and saffron. Great masses of foliage were succeeded by solitary pines,
which had found a footing high up the precipitous crags.
And all this was combined with peaks and slopes of pure white snow.
_Aiguilles_ of dark rock rose out of beds of snow, but their faces were
powdered with the same element. Glaciers and long beds of snow ran down
the valleys, and the upper vegetation had snow for its bed. The effect
of sunset upon this scene was wonderful; for the colours it displayed
were both heightened and more harmoniously blended. The golden light
of eve brought out the warm tints of the forest; but the glow of the
reddish-brown precipices, and the rosy light upon the snowy slopes and
peaks, were too soon succeeded by the cold grey of evening. At first,
however, the wondrous scene was still visible in a quarter-moon’s
silvery light, in which the Panjtarne valley was in truth--
“A wild romantic chasm that slanted
Down the sweet hill athwart a cedarn cover--
A savage place, as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath the waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover.”
The demon lovers to be met with in that wild valley are bears, which
are in abundance, and a more delightful place for a hunter to spend a
month in could hardly be invented; but he would have to depend on his
rifle for supplies, or have them sent up from many miles down the Sind
valley.
The remainder of my journey down the latter valley to the great valley
or small plain of Kashmir was delightful. A good deal of rain fell, but
that made one appreciate the great trees all the more, for the rain was
not continuous, and was mingled with sunshine. At times, during the
season when I saw it, this “inland depth” is “roaring like the sea;”
“While trees, dim-seen in frenzied numbers tear
The lingering remnant of their yellow hair;”
but soon after it is bathed in perfect peace and mellow sunlight.
The air was soft and balmy; but, at this transfer from September to
October, it was agreeably cool even to a traveller from the abodes and
sources of snow. As we descended, the pine-forests were confined to the
mountain-slopes; but the lofty deodar began to appear in the valley,
as afterwards the sycamore, the elm, and the horse-chestnut. Round
the picturesque villages, and even forming considerable woods, there
were fruit-trees--as the walnut, the chestnut, the peach, the apricot,
the apple, and the pear. Large quantities of timber (said to be cut
recklessly) was in course of being floated down the river; and where
the path led across it there were curious wooden bridges for which it
was not necessary to dismount. This Sind valley is about sixty miles
long, and varies in breadth from a few hundred yards to about a mile,
except at its base, where it opens out considerably. It is considered
to afford the best idea of the mingled beauty and grandeur of Kashmir
scenery; and when I passed through its appearance was greatly enhanced
by the snow, which not only covered the mountain-tops, but also came
down into the forests which clothed the mountain-sides. The path
through it, being part of the great road from Kashmir to Central Asia,
is kept in tolerable repair, and it is very rarely that the rider
requires to dismount. Anything beyond a walking-pace, however, is for
the most part out of the question. Montgomerie divides the journey from
Srinagar to Báltal (where I camped below the Zoji La) into six marches,
making in all sixty-seven miles; and though two of these marches may be
done in one day, yet if you are to travel easily and enjoy the scenery,
one a day is sufficient. The easiest double march is from Sonamarg to
Gond, and I did it in a day with apparent ease on a very poor pony;
but the consequence is that I beat my brains in order to recall what
sort of a place Gond was, no distinct recollection of it having been
left on my mind, except of a grove of large trees and a roaring fire in
front of my tent at night. Sonamarg struck me as a very pleasant place;
and I had there, in the person of a youthful captain from Abbotabad,
the pleasure of meeting the first European I had seen since leaving
Lahaul. We dined together, and I found he had come up from Srinagar
to see Sonamarg, and he spoke with great enthusiasm of a view he had
had, from another part of Kashmir, of the 26,000 feet mountain Nanga
Parbat. _Marg_ means “meadow,” and seems to be applied especially to
elevated meadows; _sona_ stands for “golden”: and this place is a
favourite resort in the hot malarious months of July and August, both
for Europeans in Kashmir and for natives of rank.
At Ganderbahl I was fairly in the great valley of Kashmir, and encamped
under some enormous _chúnár_ or sycamore trees; the girth of one was so
great that its trunk kept my little mountain-tent quite sheltered from
the furious blasts. Truly--
“There was a roaring in the wind all night,
The rain fell heavily, and fell in floods,
but that gigantic _chúnár_ kept off both wind and rain wonderfully.
Next day a small but convenient and quaint Kashmir boat took me up
to Srinagar; and it was delightful to glide up the backwaters of
the Jhelam, which afforded a highway to the capital. It was the
commencement and the promise of repose, which I very sadly needed, and
in a beautiful land.
[Illustration: THE VALE OF KASHMIR.]
I afterwards went up to Islamabad, Martand, Achibal, Vernag, the Rozlú
valley, and finally went out of Kashmir by way of the Manas and Wúlar
Lakes, and the lower valley of the Jhelam, so that I saw the most
interesting places in the country, and all the varieties of scenery
which it affords. That country has been so often visited and described,
that, with one or two exceptions, I shall only touch generally upon its
characteristics. It doubtless owes some of its charm to the character
of the regions in its neighbourhood. As compared with the burning
plains of India, the sterile steppes of Tibet, and the savage mountains
of the Himalaya and of Afghanistan, it presents an astonishing and
beautiful contrast. After such scenes even a much more commonplace
country might have afforded a good deal of the enthusiasm which Kashmir
has excited in Eastern poetry, and even in common rumour; but beyond
that it has characteristics which give it a distinct place among the
most pleasing regions of the earth. I said to the Maharajah, or ruling
Prince of Kashmir, that the most beautiful countries I had seen were
England, Italy, Japan, and Kashmir; and though he did not seem to like
the remark much, probably from a fear that the beauty of the land he
governed might make it too much an object of desire, yet there was
no exaggeration in it. Here, at a height of nearly 6,000 feet, in
a temperate climate, with abundance of moisture, and yet protected
by lofty mountains from the fierce continuous rains of the Indian
southwest monsoon, we have the most splendid amphitheatre in the world.
A flat oval valley about sixty miles long, and from forty in breadth,
is surrounded by magnificent mountains, which, during the greater part
of the year, are covered more than half-way down with snow, and present
vast upland beds of pure white snow. This valley has fine lakes, is
intersected with water-courses, and its land is covered with brilliant
vegetation, including gigantic trees of the richest foliage. And out
of this great central valley there rise innumerable, long, picturesque
mountain-valleys, such as that of the Sind river, which I have just
described; while above these there are great pine-forests, green slopes
of grass, glaciers, and snow. Nothing could express the general effect
better than Moore’s famous lines on sainted Lebanon--
“Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,
And whitens with eternal sleet;
While Summer, in a vale of flowers,
Is sleeping rosy at his feet.”
The great encircling walls of rock and snow contrast grandly with the
soft beauty of the scene beneath. The snows have a wonderful effect as
we look up to them through the leafy branches of the immense _chúnár_,
elm, and poplar trees. They flash gloriously in the morning sunlight
above the pink mist of the valley-plain; they have a rosy glow in the
evening sunlight; and when the sunlight has departed, but ere darkness
shrouds them, they gleam, afar off, with a cold and spectral light, as
if they belonged to a region where man had never trod. The deep black
gorges in the mountains have a mysterious look. The sun lights up some
softer grassy ravine or green slope, and then displays splintered rocks
rising in the wildest confusion. Often long lines of white clouds lie
along the line of mountain-summits, while at other times every white
peak and precipice-wall is distinctly marked against the deep-blue
sky. The valley-plain is especially striking in clear mornings and
evenings, where it lies partly in golden sunlight, partly in the shadow
of its great hills.
The green mosaic of the level land is intersected by many streams,
canals or lakes, or beautiful reaches of river which look like small
lakes. The lakes have floating islands composed of vegetation. Besides
the immense _chúnárs_ and elms, and the long lines of stately poplars,
great part of the plain is a garden filled with fruits and flowers, and
there is almost constant verdure.
“There eternal summer dwells,
And west winds, with musky wing,
About the cedar’d alleys fling
Nard and cassia’s balmy smells.”
_Travel, Adventure and Sport from Blackwood’s Magazine_ (Edinburgh and
London), Vol. vi.
THE LAKE OF PITCH
(_TRINIDAD_)
CHARLES KINGSLEY
This Pitch Lake should be counted among the wonders of the world; for
it is, certainly, tolerably big. It covers ninety-nine acres, and
contains millions of tons of so-called pitch.
Its first discoverers were not bound to see that a pitch lake of
ninety-nine acres was no more wonderful than any of the little pitch
wells--“spues” or “galls,” as we should call them in Hampshire--a yard
across; or any one of the tiny veins and lumps of pitch which abound in
the surrounding forests; and no less wonderful than if it had covered
ninety-nine thousand acres instead of ninety-nine.
As we neared the shore, we perceived that the beach was black with
pitch; and the breeze being off the land, the asphalt smell (not
unpleasant) came off to welcome us. We rowed in, and saw in front of a
little row of wooden houses, a tall mulatto, in blue policeman’s dress,
gesticulating and shouting to us. He was the ward policeman, and I
found him (as I did all the coloured police) able and courteous, shrewd
and trusty. These police are excellent specimens of what can be made of
the Negro, or Half-Negro, if he be but first drilled, and then given a
responsibility which calls out his self-respect. He was warning our
crew not to run aground on one or other of the pitch reefs, which here
take the place of rocks. A large one, a hundred yards off on the left,
has been almost all dug away, and carried to New York or to Paris to
make asphalt pavement.
The boat was run ashore, under his directions, on a spit of sand
between the pitch; and when she ceased bumping up and down in the
muddy surf, we scrambled out into a world exactly the hue of its
inhabitants--of every shade, from jet-black to copper-brown. The
pebbles on the shore were pitch. A tide-pool close by was enclosed in
pitch: a four-eyes was swimming about in it, staring up at us; and when
we hunted him, tried to escape, not by diving, but by jumping on shore
on the pitch, and scrambling off between our legs. While the policeman,
after profoundest courtesies, was gone to get a mule-cart to take us up
to the lake, and planks to bridge its water-channels, we took a look
round at this oddest of the corners of the earth.
In front of us was the unit of civilization--the police-station, wooden
on wooden stilts (as all well-built houses are here), to ensure a
draught of air beneath them. We were, of course, asked to come and sit
down, but preferred looking around, under our umbrellas; for the heat
was intense. The soil is half pitch, half brown earth, among which
the pitch sweals in and out, as tallow sweals from a candle. It is
always in slow motion under the heat of the tropic sun: and no wonder
if some of the cottages have sunk right and left in such a treacherous
foundation. A stone or brick house could not stand here: but wood and
palm-thatch are both light and tough enough to be safe, let the ground
give way as it will.
The soil, however, is very rich. The pitch certainly does not injure
vegetation, though plants will not grow actually in it. The first
plants which caught our eyes were pine-apples; for which La Brea is
famous. The heat of the soil, as well as of the air, brings them to
special perfection. They grow about anywhere, unprotected by hedge or
fence; for the Negroes here seem honest enough, at least towards each
other. And at the corner of the house was a bush worth looking at, for
we had heard of it for many a year. It bore prickly, heart-shaped pods
an inch long, filled with seeds coated with a rich waxy pulp.
This was a famous plant--Bixa, Orellana, Roucou; and that pulp was
the well-known Arnotta dye of commerce. In England and Holland, it is
used merely, I believe, to colour cheeses; but in the Spanish Main, to
colour human beings. As we went onward up the gentle slope (the rise
is one hundred and thirty-eight feet in rather more than a mile), the
ground became more and more full of pitch, and the vegetation poorer
and more rushy, till it resembled on the whole, that of an English fen.
An Ipomœa or two, and a scarlet-flowered dwarf Heliconia kept up the
tropic type as does a stiff brittle fern about two feet high.
The plateau of pitch now widened out, and the whole ground looked
like an asphalt pavement, half overgrown with marsh-loving weeds,
whose roots feed in the sloppy water which overlies the pitch. But,
as yet, there was no sign of the lake. The incline, though gentle,
shuts off the view of what is beyond. This last lip of the lake has
surely overflowed, and is overflowing still, though very slowly. Its
furrows all curve downward; and, it is, in fact, as one of our party
said, “a black glacier.” The pitch, expanding under the burning sun
of day, must needs expand most towards the line of least resistance,
that is, down hill; and when it contracts again under the coolness of
night, it contracts surely from the same cause, more downhill than it
does uphill; so that each particle never returns to the spot whence
it started, but rather drags the particles above it downward towards
itself. At least, so it seemed to us.
At last we surmounted the last rise, and before us lay the famous
lake--not at the bottom of a depression, as we expected, but at the
top of a rise, whence the ground slopes away from it on two sides, and
rises from it very slightly on the two others. The black pool glared
and glittered in the sun. A group of islands, some twenty yards wide,
were scattered about the middle of it. Beyond it rose a noble forest
of Moriche fan-palms; and to the right of them high wood with giant
Mombins and undergrowth of Cocorite--a paradise on the other side of
the Stygian pool.
We walked, with some misgivings, on to the asphalt, and found it
perfectly hard. In a few yards we were stopped by a channel of clear
water, with tiny fish and water-beetles in it; and, looking round, saw
that the whole lake was intersected with channels, so unlike anything
which can be seen elsewhere, that it is not easy to describe them.
Conceive a crowd of mushrooms, of all shapes from ten to fifty feet
across, close together side by side, their tops being kept at exactly
the same level, their rounded rims squeezed tight against each other;
then conceive water poured on them so as to fill the parting seams, and
in the wet season, during which we visited it, to overflow the tops
somewhat. Thus would each mushroom represent, tolerably well, one of
the innumerable flat asphalt bosses, which seem to have sprung up each
from a separate centre.
In five minutes we had seen, handled, and smelt enough to satisfy us
with this very odd and very nasty vagary of tropic nature; and as we
did not wish to become faint or ill, between the sulphuretted hydrogen
and the blaze of the sun reflected off-the hot black pitch, we hurried
on over the water-furrows, and through the sedge-beds to the further
shore--to find ourselves in a single step out of an Inferno into a
Paradise.
We looked back at the foul place, and agreed that it is well for the
human mind that the Pitch Lake was still unknown when Dante wrote that
hideous poem of his--the opprobrium (as I hold) of the Middle Age. For
if such were the dreams of its noblest and purest genius, what must
have been the dreams of the ignoble and impure multitude? But had he
seen this lake, how easy, how tempting too, it would have been to him
to embody in imagery the surmise of a certain “Father,” and heighten
the torments of the lost being, sinking slowly into that black Bolge
beneath the baking rays of the tropic sun, by the sight of the saved,
walking where we walked, beneath cool fragrant shade, among the
pillars of a temple to which the Parthenon is mean and small.
Sixty feet and more aloft, the short, smooth columns of the Moriches
towered around us, till, as we looked through the “pillared shade,”
the eye was lost in the green abysses of the forest. Overhead, their
great fan-leaves form a grooved roof, compared with which that of St.
Mary Radcliff, or even of King’s College, is as clumsy as all man’s
works are beside the works of God; and beyond the Moriche wood, ostrich
plumes packed close round madder-brown stems, formed a wall to our
temple, which bore such tracery, carving, and painting, as would have
stricken dumb with awe and delight him who ornamented the Loggie of the
Vatican.
What might not have been made, with something of justice and mercy,
common sense and humanity, of these gentle Arawaks and Guaraons. What
was made of them, almost ere Columbus was dead, may be judged from this
one story, taken from Las Casas.
“There was a certain man named Juan Bono, who was employed by the
members of the Andencia of St. Domingo to go and obtain Indians. He
and his men to the number of fifty or sixty, landed on the Island of
Trinidad. Now the Indians of Trinidad were a mild, loving, credulous
race, the enemies of the Caribs, who ate human flesh. On Juan Bono’s
landing, the Indians armed with bows and arrows, went to meet the
Spaniards, and to ask them who they were, and what they wanted. Juan
Bono replied that his men were good and peaceful people, who had come
to live with the Indians; upon which, as the commencement of good
fellowship, the natives offered to build houses for the Spaniards. The
Spanish captain expressed a wish to have one large house built. The
accommodating Indians set about building it. It was to be in the form
of a bell and to be large enough for a hundred persons to live in.
On any great occasion it would hold many more.... Upon a certain day
Juan Bono collected the Indians together--men, women, and children--in
the building ‘to see,’ as he told them, ‘what was to be done.’... A
horrible massacre ensued....”
Such was the fate of the poor gentle folk who for unknown ages had
swung their hammocks to the stems of these Moriches, spinning the skin
of the young leaves into twine, and making sago from the pith, and then
wine from the sap and fruit, while they warned their children not to
touch the nests of the humming-birds, which even till lately swarmed
around the lake. For--so the Indian story ran--once on a time a tribe
of Chaymas built their palm-leaf ajoupas upon the very spot, where the
lake now lies, and lived a merry life. The sea swarmed with shell-fish
and turtle, and the land with pine-apples; the springs were haunted by
countless flocks of flamingoes and horned screamers, pajuis and blue
ramiers; and, above all, by humming-birds. But the foolish Chaymas
were blind to the mystery and beauty of the humming-birds, and would
not understand how they were no other than the souls of dead Indians,
translated into living jewels; and so they killed them in wantonness,
and angered “The Good Spirit.” But one morning, when the Guaraons came
by, the Chayma village had sunk deep into the earth, and in its place
had risen this Lake of Pitch. So runs the tale, told forty years since
to Mr. Joseph, author of a clever little history of Trinidad, by an old
half-caste Indian, Señor Trinidada by name, who was said then to be
nigh one hundred years of age. Surely the people among whom such a myth
could spring up, were worthy of a nobler fate.
_At Last_ (London and New York, 1871).
THE LACHINE RAPIDS
(_CANADA_)
DOUGLAS SLADEN
From St. Anne’s to Lachine is not such a very far cry, and it was
at Lachine that the great La Salle had his first seigniory. This
Norman founder of Illinois, who reared on the precipices of Fort St.
Louis the white flag and his great white cross nearly a couple of
centuries before the beginnings of the Metropolis of the West, made his
beginnings at his little seigniory round Fort Remy, on the Island of
Montreal.
The son of a wealthy and powerful burgher of Rouen, he had been brought
up to become a Jesuit. La Salle was well fitted for an ecclesiastic,
a prince of the Church, a Richelieu, but not for a Jesuit, whose
effacement of self is the keystone of the order. To be one step, one
stone in the mighty pyramid of the Order of Jesus was not for him, a
man of mighty individuality like Columbus or Cromwell, and accordingly
his piety, asceticism, vast ambition, and superhuman courage were lost
to the Church and gained to the State. So says Parkman....
[Illustration: THE LACHINE RAPIDS.]
His seigniory and fort--probably the Fort Remy of which a contemporary
plan has come down to us--were just where the St. Lawrence begins to
widen into Lake St. Louis, abreast of the famous Rapids of Lachine,
shot by so many tourists with blanched cheeks every summer. I say
tourists, for, as I have said before, there is nothing your true
Canadian loves so much as the off-chance of being drowned in a cataract
or “splifficated” on a toboggan slide. It is part of the national
education, like the Bora Bora, or teeth-drawing, of the Australian
aborigines. The very name Lachine breathes a memory of La Salle, for it
was so christened in scorn by his detractors--the way by which La Salle
thinks he is going to get to China. A palisade containing, at any rate,
the house of La Salle, a stone mill still standing, and a stone barrack
and ammunition house, now falling into most picturesque and pitfallish
decay--such is Fort Remy, founded nearly two centuries and a quarter
ago, when England was just beginning to feel the invigorating effects
of a return to the blessings of Stuart rule. This was in 1667, but La
Salle was not destined to remain here long. In two years’ time he had
learned seven or eight Indian languages, and felt himself ready for the
ambition of his life: to find his way to the Vermilion Sea--the Gulf
of California--for a short cut to the wealth of China and Japan,--an
ambition which resolved itself into founding a province or Colonial
Empire for France at the mouth of the Mississippi, when he discovered
later on that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and not
into the Gulf of California.
We cannot follow him in his long connection with the Illinois Indians
and Fort St. Louis. We must leave him gazing from the walls of his
seigniory across the broad bosom of Lake St. Louis at the forests
of Beauharnais and Chateauguay (destined afterwards to be Canada’s
Thermopylæ) and the sunset, behind which must be a new passage to the
South Seas and the treasures of Cathay and Cipango--the dream which
had fired the brain of every discoverer from Columbus and Vasco Nuñez
downwards.
Nowadays Lachine suggests principally the canal by which the rapids are
avoided, the rapids themselves, and the superb Canadian Pacific Railway
Bridge, which is a link in the realization of La Salle’s vast idea.
Hard by, too, the St. Lawrence opens out into the expanse of Lake St.
Louis, dear to Montreallers in the glowing Canadian summer. Seen from
the bank, the rapids are most disappointing to people who expect them
to look like Niagara. Seen from the deck of the steamer which runs in
connection with the morning and evening train from Montreal, they make
the blood of the novice creep, though the safety of the trip is evinced
by the fact that it is no longer considered necessary to take a pilot
from the neighbouring Indian village of Caughnawaga. It is said that,
if the steamer is abandoned to the current, it is impossible for her to
strike, the scour being so strong; certainly, her engines are slowed;
she reels about like a drunken man; right and left you see fierce green
breakers with hissing white fillets threatening to swamp you at every
minute. Every second thud of these waves upon the sides convinces you
that the ship is aground and about to be dashed to pieces. There seems
absolutely no chance of getting safely out of the boiling waters, which
often rush together like a couple of fountains. Yet, after a few trips,
you know that the Captain is quite justified in sitting in his easy
chair and smoking a cigarette all through it. It is admirably described
in brief by Dawson: “As the steamer enters the long and turbulent
rapids of the Sault St. Louis, the river is contracted and obstructed
by islands; and trap dykes, crossing the softer limestone rocks, make,
by their uneven wear, a very broken bottom. The fall of the river is
also considerable, and the channel tortuous, all which circumstances
combined cause this rapid to be more feared than any of the others.
“As the steamer enters the rapids the engines are slowed, retaining
a sufficient speed to give steerage way, and, rushing along with the
added speed of the swift current, the boat soon begins to labour among
the breakers and eddies. The passengers grow excited at the apparently
narrow escapes, as the steamer seems almost to touch rock after rock,
and dips her prow into the eddies, while the turbulent waters throw
their spray over the deck.”
_On the Cars and Off_ (London, New York and Melbourne, 1895).
LAKE ROTORUA
(_NEW ZEALAND_)
H. R. HAWEIS
The thermæ, or hot baths, of the near future are without doubt the
marvellous volcanic springs of Rotorua and the Lake Taupo district, in
the North Island. They can now be reached from London, _via_ Francisco,
in thirty-three days. They concentrate in a small area all the varied
qualities of the European springs, and other curative properties of an
extraordinary character, which are not possessed in the same degree
by any other known waters. Before Mr. Froude’s _Oceana_, and the
subsequent destruction of the famous pink terraces, little attention
had been called to one of the most romantic and amazing spectacles in
the world. The old terraces are indeed gone. The idyllic villages, the
blossoming slopes are a waste of volcanic ashes and scoriæ through
which the dauntless vegetation is only now beginning to struggle. The
blue waters are displaced and muddy, but the disaster of one shock
could not rob the land of its extraordinary mystery and beauty. For
a distance of three hundred miles, south of Lake Taupo and running
north, a volcanic crust, sometimes thin enough to be trodden through,
separates the foot from a seething mass of sulphur, gas, and boiling
water, which around Rotorua and Waikari finds strange and ample vents,
in hot streams, clouds of vapour, warm lakes, geysers, occasionally
developing into appalling volcanic outbursts, which certainly
invest this region with a weird terror, but also with an inconceivable
charm, as white vapour breaks amidst flowering bushes, in the midst of
true valleys of paradise; the streams ripple hot and crystalline over
parti-coloured rocks or through emerald-hued mossy dells; the warm
lakes sleep embedded in soft, weedy banks, reflecting huge boulders,
half clothed in tropical foliage; coral-like deposits here and there of
various tints reproduce the famous terraces in miniature; and geysers,
in odd moments, spout huge volumes of boiling water with an unearthly
roar eighty feet into the air. At Waikari, near Lake Taupo, specimens
of all these wonders are concentrated in a few square miles--the
bubbling white mud pools, like foaming plaster of Paris, the petrifying
springs, into which a boy fell some time ago, and getting a good
silicate coat over him was taken out months afterwards “as good as
ever,” so my guide explained.
[Illustration: LAKE ROTORUA.]
“What,” I said, “did he not feel even a little poorly?”
“What’s that?” said the guide, and the joke dawning on him burst into a
tardy roar.
And time would fail me to tell of the dragon’s mouth, and open rock
vomiting sulphur and steam; the lightning pool, in whose depths for
ever flash queer opaline subaqueous flashes; the champagne pool, the
Prince of Wales’s Feathers, a geyser which can be made to play half an
hour after a few clods of mud have blocked up a little hot stream; the
steam hammer, the fairy bath, the donkey engine, etc.
At Rotorua we bought blocks of soap and threw them in to make a certain
big geyser spout. The Maoris have still the monopoly there; you pay
toll, cross a rickety bridge with a Maori girl as guide, and then visit
the pools, terraces, and boiling fountains. They are not nearly so
picturesque as at Waikari, which is a wilderness of blossoming glens,
streams, and wooded vales. But you see the Maori in his native village.
The volcanic crust is warm to the feet; the Maori huts of “toitoi”
reeds and boards are all about; outside are warm pools; naked boys and
girls are swimming in them; as we approach they emerge half out of the
water; we throw them threepenny bits. The girls seem most eager and
dive best--one cunning little girl about twelve or thirteen, I believe,
caught her coin each time under water long before it sank, but throwing
up her legs half out of water dived deep, pretending to fetch it up
from the bottom. Sometimes there was a scramble under water for the
coin; the girls generally got it; the boys seemed half lazy. We passed
on.
“Here is the brain pot,” said our Maori belle; a hollowed stone. It
was heated naturally--the brains cooked very well there in the old
days--not very old days either.
“Here is the bread oven.” She drew off the cloth, and sure enough in
a hole in the hot ground there were three new loaves getting nicely
browned. “Here are potatoes,” and she pointed to a little boiling pool,
and the potatoes were nearly done; and “here is meat,”--a tin let
into the earth, that was all, contained a joint baking; and farther
on was a very good stew--at least, it being one o’clock, it smelt
well enough. And so there is no fuel and no fire wanted in this and
dozens of other Maori pahs or hamlets. In the cold nights the Maoris
come out of their tents naked, and sit or even sleep in the hot
shallow lakelets and pools hard by. Anything more uncanny than this
walk through the Rotorua Geyser village can hardly be conceived. The
best springs are rented from the Maoris by the Government, or local
hotel-keepers. These are now increasingly fashionable bathing resorts.
The finest bath specific for rheumatism is the Rachel bath, investing
the body with a soft, satiny texture, and a pearly complexion; the
iron, sulphur, and especially the oil bath, from which when you emerge
you have but to shake yourself dry. But the Priest’s bath, so called
from the discoverer, Father Mahoney--who cured himself of obstinate
rheumatism--is perhaps of all the most miraculous in its effects,
and there are no two opinions about it. Here take place the most
incredible cures of sciatica, gout, lumbago, and all sorts of rheumatic
affections. It is simply a question of fact.
The Countess of Glasgow herself told me about the cure of a certain
colonel relative or aide-de-camp of the Governor, the Earl of Glasgow.
The Colonel had for years been a perfect martyr to rheumatism and
gout. He went to Rotorua with his swollen legs and feet, and came away
wearing tight boots, and “as good as ever,” as my guide would have
said. But indeed I heard of scores of similar cases. Let all victims
who can afford it lay it well to heart. A pleasure trip, of only
thirty-two days, changing saloon rail carriage but three times, and
steamer cabins but twice, will insure them an almost infallible cure,
even when chronically diseased and no longer young. This is no “jeujah”
affair. I have seen and spoken to the fortunate _beneficiares_--you
meet them all over New Zealand. Of course, the fame of the baths is
spreading: the region is only just made accessible by the opening of
the railway from Auckland to Rotorua--a ten hours’ run. The Waikari
and Taupo baths are very similar, and the situation is infinitely more
romantic, but the Government, on account of the railway, are pushing
the Rotorua baths.
I stole out about half-past ten at night; it was clear and frosty.
I made my way to a warm lake at the bottom of the hotel grounds, a
little shed and a tallow candle being the only accommodation provided.
Anything more weird than that starlight bath I never experienced. I
stepped in the deep night from the frosty bank into a temperature of
about 80°.
It was a large shallow lake. I peered into the dark, but I could not
see its extent by the dim starlight; no, not even the opposite banks.
I swam about until I came to the margin--a mossy, soft margin. Dark
branches of trees dipped in the water, and I could feel the fallen
leaves floating about. I followed the margin round till the light in my
wood cabin dwindled to a mere spark in the distance, then I swam out
into the middle of the lake. When I was upright the warm water reached
my chin; beneath my feet seemed to be fine sand and gravel. Then
leaning my head back I looked up at the Milky Way, and all the expanse
of the starlit heavens. There was not a sound; the great suns and
planets hung like golden balls above me in the clear air. The star dust
of planetary systems--whole universes--stretched away bewilderingly
into the unutterable void of boundless immensity, mapping out here and
there the trackless thoroughfares of God in the midnight skies. “_Dont
la poussière_,” as Lamartine finely writes in oft-plagiarised words,
“_sont les Étoiles qui remontent et tombent devant Lui_.”
How long I remained there absorbed in this super-mundane contemplation
I cannot say. I felt myself embraced simultaneously by three
elements--the warm water, the darkness, and the starlit air. They wove
a threefold spell about my senses, whilst my intellect seemed detached,
free. Emancipated from earthly trammels, I seemed mounting up and up
towards the stars. Suddenly I found myself growing faint, luxuriously
faint. My head sank back, my eyes closed, there was a humming as of
some distant waterfall in my ears. I seemed falling asleep, pillowed on
the warm water, but common sense rescued me just in time. I was alone
in an unknown hot lake in New Zealand at night, out of reach of human
call. I roused myself with a great effort of will. I had only just
time to make for the bank when I grew quite dizzy. The keen frosty air
brought me unpleasantly to my senses. My tallow dip was guttering in
its socket, and hastily resuming my garments, in a somewhat shivering
condition, I retraced the rocky path, then groped my way over the
little bridge under which rushed the hot stream that fed the lakelet,
and guided only by the dim starlight I regained my hotel.
I had often looked up at the midnight skies before--at Charles’s
Wain and the Pleiades on the Atlantic, at the Southern Cross on the
Pacific, and the resplendent Milky Way in the Tropics, at Mars and his
so-called canals, at “the opal widths of the moon” from the snowy top
of Mount Cenis, but never, no, never had I studied astronomy under
such extraordinary circumstances and with such peculiar and enchanted
environments as on this night at the Waikari hot springs.
_Travel and Talk_ (London and New York, 1896).
THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA
(_UNITED STATES_)
C. F. GORDON-CUMMING
At last we entered the true forest-belt, and anything more beautiful
you cannot conceive. We forgot our bumps and bruises in sheer delight.
Oh the loveliness of those pines and cedars, living or dead! For the
dead trees are draped with the most exquisite golden-green lichen,
which hangs in festoons many yards in length, and is unlike any other
moss or lichen I ever saw. I can compare it to nothing but gleams of
sunshine in the dark forest. Then, too, how beautiful are the long
arcades of stately columns, red, yellow, or brown, 200 feet in height,
and straight as an arrow, losing themselves in their own crown of
misty green foliage; and some standing solitary, dead and sunbleached,
telling of careless fires, which burnt away their hearts, but could not
make them fall!
There are so many different pines and firs, and cedars, that as yet I
can scarcely tell one from another. The whole air is scented with the
breath of the forests--the aromatic fragrance of resin and of dried
cones and pine-needles baked by the hot sun (how it reminds me of
Scotch firs!); and the atmosphere is clear and crystalline--a medium
which softens nothing, and reveals the farthest distance in sharpest
detail. Here and there we crossed deep gulches, where streams (swollen
to torrents by the melting snow on the upper hills) rushed down over
great boulders and prostrate trees and the victims of the winter gales.
Then we came to quiet glades in the forest, where the soft lawn-like
turf was all jewelled with flowers; and the sunlight trickled through
the dripping boughs of the feathery Douglas pines, and the jolly little
chip-munks played hide-and-seek among the great cedars, and chased
one another to the very tops of the tall pitch-pines, which stand
like clusters of dark spires, more than 200 feet in height. It was
altogether lovely; but I think no one was sorry when we reached a turn
in the road, where we descended from the high forest-belt, and crossing
a picturesque stream--“Big Creek”--by name--we found ourselves in this
comfortable ranch, which takes its name from one of the pioneers of the
valley.
We have spent a long day of delight in the most magnificent forest
that it is possible to imagine; and I have realized an altogether
new sensation, for I have seen the Big Trees of California, and have
walked round about them, and inside their cavernous hollows, and
have done homage as beseems a most reverent tree-worshipper. They
are wonderful--they are stupendous! But as to beauty--no. They shall
never tempt me to swerve from my allegiance to my true tree-love--the
glorious Deodara forest of the Himalayas.
[Illustration: THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA.]
If size alone were to be considered, undoubtedly the Sequoia stands
preëminent, for-to-day we have seen several trees at least three times
as large as the biggest Deodara in the cedar shades of Kunai;
but for symmetry, and grace, and exquisitely harmonious lines, the
“God-given” cedar of Himala stands alone, with its wide spreading,
twisted arms, and velvety layers of foliage studded with pale-green
cones,--its great red stem supporting a pyramid of green, far more
majestic than the diminutive crown of the Big Trees. So at first it was
hard to realize that the California cedars are altogether justified in
concentrating all their growing power in one steady upward direction,
so intent on reaching heaven that they could not afford to throw out
one kindly bough to right or left. They remind me of certain rigidly
good Pharisees, devoid of all loving sympathies with their fellows,
with no outstretched arms of kindly charity--only intent on regulating
their own lives by strictest unvarying rule.
Great Towers of Babel they seem to me, straining upward towards the
heaven which they will never reach.
There is nothing lovable about a Sequoia. It is so gigantic that I feel
overawed by it, but all the time I am conscious that I am comparing it
with the odd Dutch trees in a Noah’s Ark, with a small tuft of foliage
on the top of a large red stem, all out of proportion. And another
unpleasant simile forces itself on my mind--namely, a tall penguin, or
one of the wingless birds of New Zealand, with feeble little flaps in
place of wings, altogether disproportioned to their bodies.
But this is merely an aside--lest you should suppose that each new land
I visit wins my affections from earlier loves. The Deodara forests must
ever keep their place in my innermost heart: no sunlight can ever be
so lovely as that which plays among their boughs--no sky so blue--no
ice-peaks so glittering as those which there cleave the heaven; and
I am sure that these poor wretched-looking Digger Indians can never
have the same interest for me as the wild Himalayan highlanders--the
Paharis--who assemble at the little temples of carved cedar-wood in the
Great Forest Sanctuary, to offer their strange sacrifices, and dance in
mystic sunwise procession.
Having said this much, I may now sing the praises of a newly found
delight, for in truth these forests of the Sierras have a charm of
their own, which cannot be surpassed, in the amazing variety of
beautiful pines, firs, and cedars of which they are composed. The
white fir, the Douglas spruce, sugar-pine, and pitch-pine are the most
abundant, and are scattered singly or in singularly picturesque groups
over all the mountains hereabouts.
But the Big Trees are only found in certain favoured spots--sheltered
places watered by snow-fed streams, at an average of from 5,000 to
7,000 feet above the sea. Eight distinct groves have been discovered,
all growing in rich, deep, vegetable mould, on a foundation of
powdered granite. Broad gaps lie between the principal groves, and
it is observed that these invariably lie in the track of the great
ice-rivers, where the accumulation of powdered rock and gravel formed
the earliest commencement of the soil, which by slow degrees became
rich, and deep, and fertile. There is even reason to believe that these
groves are pre-Adamite. A very average tree (only twenty-three feet in
diameter) having been felled, its annual rings were counted by three
different persons, whose calculations varied from 2,125 to 2,137; and
this tree was by no means very aged-looking--probably not half the
age of some of its big relations, one of which (on King’s river) is
forty-four feet in diameter.
Then, again, some of the largest of these trees are lying prostrate
on the ground; and in the ditches formed by their crash, trees have
grown up of such a size, and in such a position, as to prove that
the fallen giants have lain there for centuries--a thousand years or
more; and although partially embedded in the earth, and surrounded by
damp forest, their almost imperishable timber is as sound as if newly
felled. So it appears that a Sequoia may lie on damp earth for untold
ages without showing any symptom of decay. Yet in the southern groves
huge prostrate trees are found quite rotten, apparently proving that
they must have lain there for an incalculable period.
Of the eight groves aforesaid, the most northerly is Calaveras, and the
most southerly is on the south fork of the Tule river. The others are
the Stanislaus, the Merced and Crane Flat, the Mariposa, the Fresno,
the King’s and Kaweah rivers, and the north fork of the Tule river.
It is worthy of note that the more northerly groves are found at the
lowest level, Calaveras being only 4,759 feet above the sea, while the
Tule and Kaweah belts range over the Sierras at about 7,000 feet.
The number of Sequoias in the northern groves is reckoned to be as
follows: Calaveras, ninety trees upwards of fifteen feet in diameter;
Stanislaus, or South Calaveras grove, distant six miles from North
Calaveras, contains 1,380 trees over one foot in diameter (many of them
being over thirty feet in diameter). Mariposa has its 600 Sequoias; and
the beautiful Fresno grove, some miles from Mariposa, has 1,200. Merced
has fifty, and Tuolumne thirty. The southern belts have not yet been
fully explored, but are apparently the most extensive.
The Mariposa grove, where we have been to-day, is the only one which
has been reserved by Government as a park for the nation. It lies five
miles from here. I should rather say there are two groves. The lower
grove lies in a sheltered valley between two mountain-spurs; the upper
grove, as its name implies, occupies a higher level, 6,500 feet above
the sea.
We breakfasted very early, and by 6 A. M. were in the saddle. Capital,
sure-footed ponies were provided for all who chose to ride. Some of the
gentlemen preferred walking. From this house we had to ascend about
2,500 feet.
As we gradually worked uphill through the coniferous belts, the trees
seemed gradually to increase in size, so that the eye got accustomed
by degrees; and when at length we actually reached the Big-Tree grove
we scarcely realized that we were in the presence of the race of
giants. Only when we occasionally halted at the base of a colossal
pillar, somewhere about eighty feet in circumference, and about 250
in height, and compared it with its neighbours, and, above all, with
ourselves--poor, insignificant pigmies--could we bring home to our
minds a sense of its gigantic proportions.
With all the reverence due to antiquity, we gazed on these Methuselahs
of the forest, to whom a few centuries more or less in the record
of their long lives are a trifle scarcely worth mentioning. But our
admiration was more freely bestowed on the rising generation, the
beautiful young trees, only about five or six hundred years of age, and
averaging thirty feet in circumference; while still younger trees, the
mere children of about a hundred years old, still retain the graceful
habits of early youth, and are very elegant in their growth--though, of
course, none but mere babies bear the slightest resemblance to the tree
as we know it on English lawns.
It really is heartbreaking to see the havoc that has been done by
careless fires. Very few of the older trees have escaped scathless.
Most of this damage has been done by Indians, who burn the scrub to
scare the game, and the fire spreads to the trees, and there smoulders
unheeded for weeks, till happily some chance extinguishes it. Many
lords of the forest have thus been burnt out, and have at last fallen,
and lie on the ground partly embedded, forming great tunnels, hollow
from end to end, so that in several cases two horsemen can ride abreast
inside the tree from (what was once) its base to its summit.
We halted at the base of the Grizzly Giant, which well deserves its
name; for it measures ninety-three feet in circumference, and looks so
battered and weather-worn that it probably is about the most venerable
tree in the forest. It is one of the most picturesque Sequoias I have
seen, just because it has broken through all the rules of symmetry,
so rigidly observed by its well conditioned, well-grown brethren; and
instead of being a vast cinnamon-coloured column, with small boughs
near the summit, it has taken a line of its own, and thrown out several
great branches, each about six feet in diameter--in other words, about
as large as a fine old English beech-tree!
This poor old tree has a great hollow burnt in it (I think the Indians
must have used it as a kitchen), and our half dozen ponies and mules
were stabled in the hollow--a most picturesque group. It seems strange
to see trees thus scorched and charred, with their insides clean burnt
out, yet, on looking far, far overhead, to perceive them crowned with
fresh blue-green, as if nothing ailed them, so great is their vitality.
Benjamin Taylor says of such a one, “It did not know that it ought to
be dead. The tides of life flowed so mightily up that majestic column!”
The Indians say that all other trees grow, but that the Big Trees are
the special creation of the Great Spirit. So here too, you see, we
have, not tree-worship, but something of the reverence accorded to the
cedar in all lands. The Hebrew poet sang of “the trees of the Lord,
even the cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted.” And the Hill tribes
of Northern India build a rudely carved temple beneath each specially
magnificent clump of Deodar, to mark that they are “God’s trees”;
while in the sacred Sanskrit poems they are called Deva dara or Deva
daru, meaning the gift, the spouse, the word of God, but in any case,
denoting the sanctity of the tree.
Whether these Californian Indians had any similar title for their Big
Trees, I have failed to learn; but the name by which they are known to
the civilized world is that of Sequoyah, a half-caste Cherokee Indian,
who distinguished himself by inventing an alphabet and a written
language for his tribe. It was a most ingenious alphabet, consisting of
eighty-six characters, each representing a syllable, and was so well
adapted to its purpose that it was extensively used by the Indians
before the white man had ever heard of it. Afterwards it was adopted
by the missionaries, who started a printing-press, with types of this
character, and issued a newspaper for the Cherokee tribe, by whom this
singular alphabet is still used.
When the learned botanist, Endlicher, had to find a suitable name for
the lovely redwood cedars, he did honour to Sequoyah, by linking his
memory forever with that of the evergreen forests of the Coast Range.
And when afterwards these Big Trees of the same race were discovered on
the Sierras, they of course were included under the same family name.
_Granite Crags_ (Edinburgh and London, 1884).
GERSOPPA FALLS
(_INDIA_)
W. M. YOOL
These, the most famous falls in India, are situated on the Siruvatti
(or _Sharavati_) river, which at that part of its course forms the
boundary between the north-west corner of the native state of Mysore
and the Bombay Presidency. The source of the river is in Mysore,
half-way up Koda Chadri, a hill about five thousand feet high, near the
famous old town of Nuggur, once the seat of the Rajahs of Mysore, where
are still to be seen the ruins of an old fort and palace, and the walls
of the town, eight miles in circumference.
The natives have a legend that the god Rama shot an arrow from his bow
on to Koda Chadri, and that the river sprang from the spot where the
arrow fell, and hence the name Siruvatti or “arrow-born.” From its
source the river flows north for nearly thirty miles through the heart
of the Western Ghauts, and then turns west and flows down through the
jungles of North Canara to the Indian Ocean--another thirty miles.
Shortly after taking the bend westwards there comes the fall, which,
on account of its height, is worthy of being reckoned amongst the
great waterfalls of the world. Here, at one leap, the river falls
eight hundred and thirty feet; and as, at the brink, it is about four
hundred yards wide, there are few, if any, falls in the world to
match it.
[Illustration: GERSOPPA FALLS.]
During the dry weather the river comes over in four separate falls,
but in the height of the monsoon these become one, and as at that time
the water is nearly thirty feet deep, the sight must be truly one of
the world’s wonders. It has been calculated that in flood-time more
horse-power is developed by the Gersoppa Falls than by Niagara. This
of course is from the much greater height of Gersoppa, eight hundred
and thirty feet against about one hundred and sixty feet of Niagara,
although the Niagara Falls are much wider and vaster in volume. The
Kaieteur Falls of the Essequibo in British Guiana are seven hundred and
forty-one feet sheer and eighty-eight more of sloping cataract, but the
river there is only one hundred yards wide. At the Victoria Falls, the
Zambesi, one thousand yards wide, falls into an abyss four hundred feet
deep.
My friend and I visited the falls in the end of September, about a
month after the close of the monsoon, when there were four falls
with plenty of water in them. The dry weather is the best for the
sight-seer, as, during the monsoon, the rain is so heavy and continuous
that there would not be much pleasure in going there, although
doubtless the sight would be grander and more awe-inspiring. The
drainage area above the falls is seven hundred and fifty square miles,
and the average yearly rainfall over this tract is two hundred and
twenty inches, nearly the whole of which falls in the three monsoon
months, June, July, August; so it can be imagined what an enormous body
of water comes down the river in these months. There is a bungalow for
the use of visitors on the Bombay side of the river, about a hundred
yards away from the falls, built on the very brink of the precipice
overhanging the gorge through which the river flows after taking the
leap. So close to the edge is it that one could jump from the veranda
sheer into the bed of the river nearly a thousand feet below.
The four falls are called _The Rajah_, _The Roarer_, _The Rocket_,
and _La Dame Blanche_. The _Rajah_ and _Roarer_ fall into a
horseshoe-shaped cavern, while the _Rocket_ and _La Dame Blanche_ come
over where the precipice is at right angles to the flow of the river,
and are very beautiful falls. The _Rajah_ comes over with a rush,
shoots clear out from the rock, and falls one unbroken column of water
the whole eight hundred and thirty feet. The _Roarer_ comes rushing
at an angle of sixty degrees down a huge furrow in the rock for one
hundred and fifty feet, making a tremendous noise, then shoots right
out into the middle of the horseshoe, and mingles its waters with
those of the _Rajah_ about half-way down. The _Rocket_ falls about
two hundred feet in sheer descent on to a huge knob of rock, where it
is dashed into spray, which falls in beautiful smoky rings, supposed
to resemble the rings formed by the bursting of rockets. _La Dame
Blanche_, which my friend and I thought the most beautiful, resembles
a snow-white muslin veil falling in graceful folds, and clothing the
black precipice from head to foot.
From the bungalow a fine view is got of the _Rocket_ and _La Dame
Blanche_, and when the setting sun lights up these falls and forms
numerous rainbows in the spray, it makes an indescribably beautiful
scene. Here one is alone with Nature, not a house or patch of
cultivation anywhere. In front is the river, and all around are
mountains and primeval forests, while the ceaseless roar of the
waterfall adds a grandeur and a solemnity not easily described.
Near where the _Rajah_ goes over is a projecting rock called the
_Rajah’s Rock_, so named because one of the Rajahs of Nuggur tried to
build a small pagoda on it, but before being finished, it was washed
away. The cutting in the rock for the foundation is still visible. To
any one who has a good head, a fine view of the horseshoe cavern can be
had from this rock. The plan is to lie down on your stomach, crawl to
the edge, and look over, when you can see straight down into the pool
where the waters are boiling and seething nearly a thousand feet below.
I took a few large stones to the edge and dropped them over, but they
were lost to view long before they reached the bottom. It was quite an
appreciable time after my losing sight of them before I observed the
faint splash they made near the edge of the pool.
In order to get to the foot of the falls it is necessary to cross the
river to the Mysore side, as there is no possibility of getting down to
the Bombay side. About half a mile above the falls there is a canoe,
dug out of the trunk of a tree, which belongs to the native who looks
after the bungalow, and ferries people across. A path has been made to
enable visitors to get to the foot of the falls, and many fine views
of all four are got while descending. The first half of the way down
is fairly easy, but after that the track is a succession of steps down
great boulders and across slabs of rock, rendered as slippery as ice
by the constant spray. Ere my friend and I reached the bottom we were
soaking wet, and realized when too late that we should have left the
greater part of our clothes behind us. By going to the bottom a much
better idea of the immense height of the falls is got, and the climb up
again helps still more to make one realize it. From the bungalow the
largest rocks in the bed of the river looked like sheep; but we found
them to be huge boulders, ten and twelve feet high and about twenty
feet across.
The falls seem to have become known to Europeans about 1840, but were
very seldom visited in those days. Even now the number of visitors is
small, as the nearest railway is eighty miles off, and there is no way
of procuring supplies with the exception of a little milk and a chicken
to be had from the above-mentioned native.
For a good many years there was great uncertainty about the height
of the falls, but the question was finally set at rest by two naval
lieutenants who plumbed them in 1857. The _modus operandi_ was as
follows: Their ship being off the coast near the mouth of the river,
they got a cable transported to the falls, and stretched it across the
horseshoe--a distance of seventy-four yards. Having seen that the cable
was properly secured at both ends, they got a cage fixed on, and one of
them got into it and was hauled out until he was in the centre. From
the cage he let down a sounding line with a buoy attached to the end
of it, and found the depth to the surface of the water to be eight
hundred and thirty feet. After satisfactorily accomplishing this feat,
they proceeded to the foot of the falls, and constructed a raft so
as to plumb the pools, which they did, and found the greatest depth
to be one hundred and thirty-two feet. This was done near the end of
the dry weather, when there was very little water in the river, and
they were able to temporarily divert the _Rajah_ and _Roarer_ into the
_Rocket_, without doing which it would have been impossible to plumb
the horseshoe pool--the deepest one--satisfactorily.
About a mile from the bungalow is a hill called Nishani Goodda or Cairn
Hill, from the top of which a magnificent view of the surrounding
country is got. To the east lie the table-lands of the Deccan and
Mysore, the flat expanse broken here and there by an occasional hill.
North and south stretches the chain of the Ghauts, rising peak after
peak as far as the eye can see (Koda Chadri, where the Siruvatti rises,
being very conspicuous); while to the west one looks down on the
lowlands of jungle-covered Canara, with glimpses of the river here and
there, and beyond them gleams the Indian Ocean.
The bungalow book in which visitors inscribe their names is very
interesting reading. The records go back to 1840, and many travellers
have written a record of what they did when there; while a few,
inspired by the scene, have expressed their feelings in poetry, some of
it well worth copying and preserving by any one who has seen the falls.
_Chambers’ Journal_ (London, 1896).
ETNA
(_SICILY_)
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
The word Etna, according to the _savants_, is a Phœnician word meaning
the _mouth of the furnace_. The Phœnician language, as you see, was
of the order of that one spoken of by Covielle to the _Bourgeois
Gentilhomme_, which expressed many things in a few words. Many poets of
antiquity pretend that it was the spot where Deucalion and Pyrrha took
refuge during the flood. Upon this score, Signor Gemellaro, who was
born at Nicolosì, may certainly claim the honour of having descended
in a direct line from one of the first stones which they threw behind
them. That would leave, as you see, the Montmorencys, the Rohans, and
the Noailles, far behind.
Homer speaks of Etna, but he does not designate it a volcano. Pindar
calls it one of the pillars of the sky. Thucydides mentions three great
explosions, from the epoch of the arrival of the Grecian colonies up
to his own lifetime. Finally, there were two eruptions in the time of
Denys; then they followed so rapidly that only the most violent ones
have been counted.[10]
Since the eruption of 1781, Etna has had some little desire to
overthrow Sicily; but, as these caprices have not had serious results,
Etna may be is permitted to stand upon what it has accomplished--it is
unique in its self-respect--and to maintain its eminence as a volcano.
Of all these eruptions, one of the most terrible was that of 1669. As
the eruption of 1669 started from Monte Rosso, and as Monte Rosso is
only half a mile to the left of Nicolosì, we took our way, Jadin and I,
to visit the crater, after having promised Signor Gemellaro to come to
dinner with him.
It must be understood beforehand that Etna regards itself too far above
ordinary volcanos to proceed in their fashion: Vesuvius, Stromboli, and
even Hekla pour the lava over their craters, just as wine spills over
a too-full glass; Etna does not give itself this trouble. Its crater
is only a crater for show, which is content to play cup and ball with
incandescent rocks large as ordinary houses, which one follows in their
aërial ascension as one would follow a bomb issuing from a mortar; but,
during this time the force of the eruption is really felt elsewhere.
In reality, when Etna is at work, it throws up very simply upon its
shoulders, at one place or another, a kind of boil about the size
of Montmartre; then this boil breaks, and out of it streams a river
of lava which follows the slope, descends, burning, or overturning
everything that it finds before it, and ends by extinguishing itself
in the sea. This method of procedure is the cause of Etna’s being
covered with a number of little craters which are formed like immense
hay-mows; each of these secondary volcanos has its date and its own
name, and all have occasioned in their time, more or less noise and
more or less ravage.
We got astride of our mounts and started on our way upon a night that
seemed to us of terrible darkness as we issued from a well-lighted
room; but, by degrees, we began to distinguish the landscape, thanks
to the light of the myriads of stars that sprinkled the sky. It seemed
from the way in which our mules sank beneath us that we were crossing
sand. Soon we entered the second region, or the forest region, that
is if the few scattered, poor, and crooked trees merit the name of
forest. We marched about two hours, confidently following the road our
guide took us, or rather our mules, a road which, moreover, to judge by
the eternal declivities and ascents, seemed terribly uneven. Already,
we realized the wisdom of Signor Gemellaro’s provisions against the
cold, and we wrapped ourselves in our hooded great-coats a full hour
before we arrived at a kind of roofless hovel where our mules stopped
of themselves. We were at the _Casa del Bosco_ or _della Neve_, that
is to say, the _Forest_ or the _Snow_, names which it merits in either
summer or winter. Our guide told us this was our halting-place. Upon
his invitation, we alighted and entered. We were half-way on the road
to the _Casa Inglese_.
[Illustration: ETNA.]
During our halt the sky was enriched by a crescent, which, although
slender, gave us a little light. We continued to march a quarter of an
hour longer between trees which became scarcer every twenty feet and
finally disappeared altogether. We were about to enter the third
region of Etna, and we knew from the steps of the mules when they
were passing over lava, crossing ashes, or when they trampled a kind
of moss, the only vegetation that creeps up to this point. As for our
eyes, they were of very little use, the sheen appearing to us more or
less coloured, and that was all, for we could not distinguish a single
detail in the midst of this darkness.
However, in proportion as we ascended, the cold became more intense,
and, notwithstanding our cloaks, we were freezing. This change of
temperature had checked conversation, and each of us, occupied in
trying to keep himself warm, advanced in silence. I led the way, and if
I could not see the ground on which we advanced, I could distinguish
perfectly on our right the gigantic escarpments and the immense peaks,
that reared themselves like giants, and whose black silhouettes stood
out boldly upon the deep blue of the sky. The further we advanced, the
stranger and more fantastic shapes did these apparitions assume; we
well understood that Nature had not originally made these mountains as
they are and that it was a long contest that had ravaged them. We were
upon the battle-field of the Titans; we clambered over Pelion piled
upon Ossa.
All this was terrible, sombre, and majestic; I saw and I felt
thoroughly the poetry of this nocturnal trip, and meanwhile I was so
cold that I had not the courage to exchange a word with Jadin to ask
him if all these visions were not the result of the weakness that I
experienced, and if I were not dreaming. From time to time strange
and unfamiliar noises, that did not resemble in the slightest degree
any noises that one is accustomed to hear, started from the bowels
of the earth, and seemed to moan and wail like a living being. These
noises had something so unexpectedly lugubrious and solemn about them
that they made your blood run cold.... We walked about three-quarters
of an hour upon the steep and rough road, then we found ourselves upon
a slightly inclined slope where every now and then we crossed large
patches of snow and in which I was plunged up to my knees, and these
finally became continuous. At length the dark vault of the sky began to
pale and a feeble twilight illumined the ground upon which we walked,
bringing with it air even more icy than we had heretofore breathed.
In this wan and uncertain light we perceived before us something
resembling a house; we approached it, Jadin trotting upon his mule, and
I coming as fast as possible. The guide pushed open the door and we
found ourselves in the _Casa Inglese_, built at the foot of the cone,
for the great relief of travellers.
It was half-past three o’clock in the morning; our guide reminded us
that we had still three-quarters of an hour’s climb at least, and, if
we wished to reach the top of the cone before sunrise, we had not a
moment to lose.
We left the _Casa Inglese_. We began to distinguish objects: all around
us extended a vast field of snow, in the centre of which, making an
angle of about forty-five degrees, the cone of Etna rose. Above us all
was in darkness; towards the east only a light tint of opal coloured
the sky on which the mountains of Calabria were vigorously outlined.
At a hundred feet from the _Casa Inglese_ we encountered the first
waves of the lava plateau whose black hue did not accord with the
snow, in the midst of which it rose like a sombre island. We had to
mount these solid waves, jumping from one to another, as I had done at
Chamouni and the Mer de Glace, with this difference, that the sharp
edges tore the leather of our shoes and cut our feet. This passage,
which lasted a quarter of an hour, was one of the most trying of the
route.
We were now about a third of the way up, and we had only taken about
half an hour to ascend four hundred feet; the east brightened more and
more; the fear of not arriving at the summit of the cone in time to see
the sunrise lent us courage, and we started again with new enthusiasm,
without pausing to look at the immense horizon which widened beneath
our feet at each step; but the further we advanced, the more the
difficulties increased; at each step the slope became more abrupt, the
earth more friable, and the air rarer. Soon, on our right, we began
to hear subterranean roarings that attracted our attention; our guide
walked in front of us and led us to a fissure from which came a great
noise and a thick sulphurous smoke blown out by an interior current of
air. Approaching the edges of this cleft, we saw at an unfathomable
depth a bottom of incandescent and red liquid; and when we stamped our
feet, the ground resounded in the distance like a drum. Happily it was
perfectly calm, for if the wind had blown this smoke over to our side,
we should have been asphyxiated, for it is charged with a terrible
fumes of sulphur.
We found ourselves opposite the crater,--an immense well, eight miles
in circumference and 900 feet deep; the walls of this excavation were
covered with scarified matter of sulphur and alum from top to bottom;
in the bottom as far as we could see at the distance from where we
stood, there was some matter in eruption, and from the abyss there
ascended a tenuous and tortuous smoke, resembling a gigantic serpent
standing on his tail. The edges of the crater were cut out irregularly
at a greater or less height. We were at one of the highest points.
Our guide permitted us to look at this sight for a moment, holding us
back, however, every now and then by our clothing when we approached
too near the precipice, for the rock is so friable that it could easily
give way beneath our feet, and we should repeat the joke of Empedocles;
then he asked us to remove ourselves about twenty feet from the crater
to avoid all accidents, and to look around us.
The east, whose opal tints we had noticed when leaving the _Casa
Inglese_, had changed to tender rose, and was now inundated with the
flames of the sun whose disc we began to perceive above the mountains
of Calabria. Upon the sides of these mountains of a dark and uniform
blue, the towns and villages stood out like little white points. The
strait of Messina seemed a simple river, while to the right and left
we saw the sea like an immense mirror. To the left, this mirror was
spotted with several black dots: these black dots were the islands
of the Lipariote archipelago. From time to time one of these islands
glimmered like an intermittent light-house; this was Stromboli,
throwing out flames. In the west, everything was in darkness. The
shadow of Etna cast itself over all Sicily.
For three-quarters of an hour the spectacle did nothing but gain in
magnificence. I have seen the sun rise on Rigi and the Faulhorn, those
two Titans of Switzerland: nothing is comparable to the view on Etna’s
summit; Calabria from Pizzo to Cape dell Armi, the pass from Scylla
to Reggio, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ionian Sea and the Æolian Islands
that seem within reach of your hand; to the right, Malta floating
on the horizon like a light mist; around us the whole of Sicily,
seen from a bird’s-eye view with its shores denticulated with capes,
promontories, harbours, creeks and roads; its fifteen cities and three
hundred villages; its mountains which seem like hills; its valleys
which we know are furrowed with ploughs; its rivers which seem threads
of silver, as in autumn they fall from the sky to the grasses of the
meadows; and, finally, the immense roaring crater, full of flames and
smoke, overhead Heaven and at its feet Hell: such a spectacle, made
us forget fatigue, danger, and suffering. I admired it all without
reservation, with my eyes and my soul. Never had God seemed so near
and, consequently, so great.
We remained there an hour, dominating all the old world of Homer,
Virgil, Ovid, and Theocritus, without the idea of touching a pencil
occurring to Jadin or myself, until it seemed to us that this picture
had entered deeply into our hearts and remained graven there without
the aid of ink or sketch. Then we threw a last glance over this horizon
of three hundred leagues, a sight seen once in a lifetime, and we began
our descent.
_Le Speronare: Impressions de Voyage_ (Paris, 1836.)
FOOTNOTE:
[10] The principal eruptions of Etna took place in the year 662, B. C.,
and in A. D. 225, 420, 812, 1169, 1285, 1329, 1333, 1408, 1444, 1446,
1447, 1536, 1603, 1607, 1610, 1614, 1619, 1634, 1669, 1682, 1688, 1689,
1702, 1766, and 1781.
PIKE’S PEAK AND THE GARDEN OF THE GODS
(_UNITED STATES_)
IZA DUFFUS HARDY
Colorado Springs--so called because the springs are at Manitou, five
miles off, is a prairie town on a plateau six thousand feet high,
above which Pike’s Peak stands sentinel, lifting his snow-capped head
fourteen thousand feet into the clear depths of azure light, in which
no fleck of cloud floats from morn to night and night to morn again. It
is April, and not a drop of rain has fallen since the previous August.
Mid-April, and not a leaf upon a tree. Not a flower or a bird seems to
flourish here. No spring-blossom scents the keen fresh life-giving air;
no warbler soars high up into the stainless sapphire sky. The leafless
cottonwood trees stand out white in the flood of sunlight like trees
of silver, their delicate bare branches forming a shining tangle of
silvery network against that intense blue background.
The place all looks bleak and barren to us; the wild grandeur of the
mountains is unrelieved by the rich shadows of the pine forests or the
sunny green glints of meadows that soften Alpine scenery. No flower
gardens, no smiling valleys, no velvet turf, no fragrant orchards, no
luxuriant hedge rows; only the lonely mountain range, the crowning
height of Pike’s Peak stern and solitary in his icy exaltation, and
the dead level of the prairie, stretching away eastward for hundreds
and hundreds of miles, declining always at a gradual and imperceptible
angle till it slopes down to the very banks of the great Mississippi,
over a thousand miles away.
But, although the spot does not seem altogether a Paradise to us, it is
a veritable Eden for consumptive invalids. Here they come to find again
the lost angel of Health, and seldom seek again, unless they come too
late. People live here who can live nowhere else. They long to return
to their far-off homes; but home to them means death. They must live
in this Colorado air, or die. There is a snake in the grass of this
Eden, where they have drunk the elixir of a new life, and its name is
Nostalgia. They long--some of them--for the snowy winters and flowery
summers of their eastern homes. Others settle happily and contentedly
in the endless sunshine of winterless, summerless Colorado.
[Illustration: THE GARDEN OF THE GODS.]
We rattled along cheerily in our light spring-waggon over the smooth,
fine roads, viewing the landscape from beneath the parasols which only
partially shielded us from the blazing sun. Although the gentleman from
Tennessee preserved a truly western taciturnity, our driver beguiled
the way with instructive and amusing converse. He pointed out to us,
flourishing by the wayside, the soap-weed, whose root is a perfect
substitute for soap, and taught us to distinguish between the blue
joint-grass--yellow as hay in winter, but now taking on its hue of
summer green--and the greyish neutral-tinted buffalo-grass, which is
most succulent and nutritious, although its looks belie it, for
a less tempting-looking herb I never had the pleasure of seeing. He
also pointed out the dead body of a cow lying on a desolate plain, and
informed us it would dry up to a mummy in no time; it was the effect of
the air; dead cattle speedily mummified, and were no nuisance. Another
dried-up bovine skeleton bore witness to the truth of his assertion.
We observed that the soil looked barren as desert sand; but he replied
that it only required irrigation to be extremely fertile, showed us the
irrigating ditches cut across the meadows, and described to us some of
the marvellous productions of Colorado--a single cabbage-head weighing
forty pounds, etc. He told us of the wondrous glories of the Arkansas
cañon and the Mount of the Holy Cross--which, alas! we were not to see,
the roads thither being as yet rough travelling for ladies. He sang the
praises of the matchless climate, and the joys of the free, healthful
life, far from the enervating and deteriorating influences of great
cities. Indeed, it appeared from his conversation that nowhere on the
face of the habitable globe could there be found any spot even remotely
emulating the charms of Colorado--an opinion shared by every Coloradian
with whom we held any intercourse.
Our way then led up the Ute Pass, once, in days not so far back
frequented by the Ute Indians. Now, not an Indian is to be seen for
miles; they have all been swept back on to a reservation, and the story
of the Ute outbreak there of the past autumn is yet fresh in the minds
of all. The Ute Pass is a winding, uphill road along the side of a
deep cañon, the rocks here and there overhanging it threateningly, and
affording a welcome shade from the piercing sun-rays, which follow us
even here. The steep walls of the cañon are partly clothed and crowned
with pine-trees, and along its depths a rapid, sparkling stream bubbles
and leaps over the rocks and boulders.
Up the pass a waggon-train is toiling on its way to the great new
mining centre--the giant baby city--Leadville, the youngest and most
wonderful child of the prolific west! In this train we get entangled,
and move slowly along with it--waggons and cattle before us, waggons
and cattle behind us--tourists, teamsters, miners, drivers, drovers,
dogs, all huddled together in seemingly inextricable confusion.
At the top of the pass, we tourists turn: and, while the waggon-train
plods on its slow way, we make the best of our way back down the hill,
and take the road to the Garden of the Gods.
Why the _Garden_ of the Gods? I do not myself perceive the
appropriateness of the appellation. There is not a flower in sight;
only a few stunted shrubs, and forlorn-looking, thin trees. It is a
natural enclosure, of fifty or more acres, such as in Colorado is
called a “park,” scattered with rocks of a rich red hue, and the
wildest and most grotesque shapes imaginable.
The giants might have made it their playground, and left their
playthings around them. Here, tossed and flung about as if by a
careless hand, lie the huge round boulders with which they played at
ball. Here they amused themselves by balancing an immense mass of
stone on a point so cunningly that it has stood there for centuries
looking as if a touch would overturn it. There they have hewn a high
rock into the rough semblance of a veiled woman--here they have
sculptured a man in a hat--there piled up a rude fortress, and there
built a church.
But the giants have deserted their playground ages ago, and trees have
grown up between the fantastic formations they left. It is a strange
weird scene, and suggested to us forcibly that if we would “view it
aright” we should
“Go view it by the pale moonlight!”
How spectral those strange shapes would look in the gloom! What ghostly
life would seem to breathe in them when the white moonbeams bathed
their eerie outlines in her light! There is a something lost in the
Garden of the Gods to us who only saw it with a flood of sunshine
glowing on its ruddy rocks. Most of these have been christened
according to their form--the Nun, the Scotchman, the Camel, and so on.
Two huge walls of red and white stone, rising perpendicularly a sheer
three hundred feet, form the gate of the Garden. Through this colossal
and for-ever-open gate we looked back with a sigh of farewell--our
glimpse of the scene seemed so brief!--and we half-fancied that the
veiled Nun bowed her dark head in the sunshine in parting salute as we
were whirled out of sight.
_Between Two Oceans, or Sketches of American Travel_ (London, 1884).
THE GREAT GEYSIR OF ICELAND
SIR RICHARD F. BURTON
On the eastern slope of the Frachytic pile and extending round the
north of the rock-wall are the Hvers and Geysirs. Nothing can be meaner
than their appearance, especially to the tourist who travels as usual
from Reykjavik; nothing more ridiculous than the contrast of this
pin’s point, this atom of pyritic formation, with the gigantic theory
which it was held to prove, earth’s central fire, the now obsolete
dream of classical philosophers and “celebrated academicians”; nothing
more curious than the contrast between Nature and Art, between what
we see in life and what we find in travellers’ illustrations. Sir
John Stanley, perpetuated by Henderson, first gave consistence to the
popular idea of “that most wonderful fountain, the Great Geysir;”
such is the character given to it by the late Sir Henry Holland, a
traveller who belonged to the “wunderbar” epoch of English travel,
still prevalent in Germany. From them we derive the vast background
of black mountain, the single white shaft of fifty feet high, domed
like the popular pine-tree of Vesuvian smoke, the bouquet of water,
the Prince of Wales feathers, double-plumed and triple-plumed, charged
with stones; and the minor jets and side squirts of the foreground,
where pigmies stand and extend the arm of illustration and the hand of
marvel.
On this little patch, however, we may still study the seven forms of
Geysir life. First, is the baby still sleeping in the bosom of Mother
Earth, the airy wreath escaping from the hot clay ground; then comes
the infant breathing strongly, and at times puking in the nurse’s lap;
third, is the child simmering with impatience; and fourth, is the youth
whose occupation is to boil over. The full-grown man is represented by
the “Great Gusher” in the plenitude of its lusty power; old age, by the
tranquil, sleepy “laug”; and second childhood and death, mostly from
diphtheria or quinsy, in the empty red pits strewed about the dwarf
plain. “Patheticum est!” as the old scholiast exclaimed.
It is hardly fair to enter deeply in the history of the Great Geysir,
but a few words may be found useful. The silence of Ari Fródi (A. D.,
1075), and of the Landnámabók, so copious in its details, suggests
that it did not exist in the Eleventh Century; and the notice of Saxo
Grammaticus in the preface to his History of Denmark proves that it had
become known before the end of the Thirteenth. Hence it is generally
assumed that the volcanic movements of A. D., 1294, which caused the
disappearance of many hot springs, produced those now existing. Forbes
clearly proved the growth of the tube by deposition of silex on the
lips; a process which will end by sealing the spring: he placed its
birth about 1060 years ago, which seems to be thoroughly reasonable;
and thus for its manhood we have a period of about six centuries.
In 1770 the Geyser spouted eleven times a day; in 1814 it erupted every
six hours; and in 1872 once between two and a week. Shepherd vainly
wasted six days; a French party seven; and there are legends of a
wasted fortnight.
Remains now only to walk over the ground, which divides itself into
four separate patches: the extinct, to the north-west, below and
extending round the north of the Laugarfjall buttress; the Great
Geysir; the Strokkr and the Thikku-hverar to the south.
In the first tract earth is uniformly red, oxidized by air, not as
in poetical Syria by the blood of Adonis. The hot, coarse bolus, or
trachytic clay, soft and unctuous, astringent, and adhering to the
tongue is deposited in horizontal layers, snowy-white, yellow-white,
ruddy, light-blue, blue-grey, mauve, purple, violet, and pale-green
are the Protean tints; often mixed and mottled, the effect of alum,
sulphuric acid, and the decomposition of bisulphide of iron. The
saucer of the Great Geysir is lined with Geysirite (silica hydraté),
beads or tubercles of grey-white silica; all the others want these
fungi or coral-like ornaments. The dead and dying springs show only
age-rusty moulds and broken-down piles, once chimneys and ovens,
resembling those of Reykir, now degraded and deformed to countless
heaps of light and dark grey. Like most of the modern features, they
drained to the cold rivulet on the east, and eventually to the south.
The most interesting feature is the Blesi (pronounced _Blese_), which
lies 160 feet north of the Great Geysir. This hot-water pond, a Grotto
Azurra, where cooking is mostly done, lies on a mound, and runs in
various directions. To the north it forms a dwarf river-valley flowing
west of the Great Geysir; eastward it feeds a hole of bubbling water
which trickles in a streak of white sinter to the eastern rivulet
and a drip-hole, apparently communicating underground with an ugly
little boiler of grey-brown, scum-streaked, bubbling mud, foul-looking
as a drain. The “beautiful quiescent spring” measures forty feet
by fifteen,[11] and is of reniform or insect shape, the waist being
represented by a natural arch of stone spanning the hot blue depths
below the stony ledges which edge them with scallops and corrugations.
Hence the name; this bridge is the “blaze” streaking a pony’s face.
Blesi was not sealed by deposition of silex; it suddenly ceased to
erupt in A. D., 1784, the year after the Skaptár convulsion, a fact
which suggests the origin of the Geysirs. It is Mackenzie’s “cave of
blue water”; and travellers who have not enjoyed the _lapis lazuli_ of
the Capri grotto, indulge in raptures about its colouration. North-west
of the Blesi, and distant 200 feet, is another ruin, situated on a much
higher plane and showing the remains of a large silicious mould: it
steams, but the breath of life comes feebly and irregularly. This is
probably the “Roaring Geysir” or the “Old Geysir,” which maps and plans
place eighty yards from the Great Geysir.
The Great Geysir was unpropitious to us, yet we worked hard to see one
of its expiring efforts. An Englishman had set up a pyramid at the edge
of the saucer, and we threw in several hundredweights, hoping that
the silex, acted upon by the excessive heat, might take the effect of
turf; the only effects were a borborygmus which sounded somewhat like
B’rr’rr’t, and a shiver as if the Foul Fiend had stirred the depths.
The last eruption was described to us as only a large segment of the
tube, not exceeding six feet in diameter. About midnight the veteran
suffered slightly from singultus. On Monday the experts mispredicted
that he would exhibit between 8 and 9 A. M., and at 1 A. M. on Tuesday
there was a trace of second-childhood life. After the usual eructation,
a general bubble, half veiled in white vapour, rose like a gigantic
glass-shade from the still surface, and the troubled water trickled
down the basin sides in miniature boiling cascades. There it flowed
eastwards by a single waste-channel which presently forms a delta of
two arms, the base being the cold, rapid, and brawling rivulet; the
northern fork has a dwarf “force,” used as a _douche_, and the southern
exceeds it in length, measuring some 350 paces.
We were more fortunate with the irascible Strokkr, whose name
has been generally misinterpreted. Dillon calls it the piston,
or “churning-staff”; and Barrow the “shaker”: it is simply the
“hand-churn” whose upright shaft is worked up and down--the churn-like
column of water suggested the resemblance. This feature, perhaps
the “New Geysir” of Sir John Stanley and Henderson, formerly erupted
naturally, and had all the amiable eccentricity of youth: now it must
be teased or coaxed. Stanley gave it 130 feet of jet, or 36 higher
than the Great Geysir; Henderson 50 to 80; Symington, 100 to 150 feet;
Bryson, “upwards of a hundred”; and Baring-Gould, “rather higher than
the Geysir.” We found it lying 275 feet (Mackenzie 131 yards) south of
the big brother, of which it is a mean replica. The outer diameter of
the saucer is only seven feet, the inner about eighteen; and it is too
well drained by its silex-floored channel ever to remain full.
The most interesting part to us was the fourth or southern tract. It
is known as the Thikku-hverar, thick caldrous (hot springs), perhaps
in the sense opposed to thin or clear water. Amongst its “eruptiones
flatuum,” the traveller feels that he is walking
“_Per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso._”
There are at least fifty items in operation over this big lime-kiln;
some without drains, others shedding either by sinter-crusted channels
eastward or westward through turf and humus to the swampy stream.
It shows an immense variety, from the infantine puff to the cold
turf-puddle; from Jack-in-the-box to the cave of blue-green water;
surrounded by ledges of silex and opaline sinter (hydrate of silica),
more or less broad: the infernal concert of flip-flopping, spluttering,
welling, fizzing, grunting, rumbling, and growling never ceases.
The prevalent tints are green and white, but livelier hues are not
wanting. One “gusherling” discharges red water; and there is a spring
which spouts, like an escape pipe, brown, high and strong. The “Little
Geysir,” which Mackenzie places 106 yards south of the Strokkr, and
which has been very churlish of late years, was once seen to throw up
ten to twelve feet of clean water, like the jet of a fire-play. The
“Little Strokkr of older travellers, a wonderfully amusing formation,
which darts its waters in numerous diagonal columns every quarter of an
hour,” is a stufa or steam-jet in the centre of the group, but it has
long ceased its “funning.”
_Ultima Thule; or, a Summer in Iceland_ (London and Edinburgh, 1875).
FOOTNOTE:
[11] More exactly the two divisions are each about twenty feet long;
the smaller is twelve and the greater is eighteen feet broad; the
extreme depth is thirty feet.
THE RAPIDS OF THE DANUBE
(_TURKEY_)
WILLIAM BEATTIE
A short way below Grein commences the rapid called “Greiner-schwall,”
where the river, suddenly contracting its channel, and walled in
by rugged precipices, assumes a new aspect of foam and agitation;
while the roar of its downward course breaks deeper and harsher on
the ear. This rugged defile is the immediate inlet to the Strudel
and Wirbel--the Scylla and Charybdis of the Danube. This is by far
the most interesting and remarkable region of the Danube. It is the
fertile theme of many legends and traditions; and in pages of history
and romance affords ample scope for marvellous incidents and striking
details. Not a villager but can relate a hundred instances of disasters
incurred, and dangers overcome, in this perilous navigation--of lives
sacrificed and cargoes sunk while endeavouring to weather the three
grand enemies of the passage--whirlpools, rocks, and robbers. But,
independently of these local traditions, and the difficulties and
dangers of the strait--the natural scenery which here arrests the
eye is highly picturesque, and even sublime. It is the admiration
of all voyagers on the Upper Danube, and keeps a firm hold of the
memory long after other scenes and impressions have worn off. Between
Ulm and the confines of the Ottoman Empire, there is only one other
scene calculated to make anything like so forcible an impression on
the tourist; and that is near the cataracts of the Iron Gate--a name
familiar to every German reader.
After descending the Greiner-schwall, or rapids of the Grein above
mentioned, the river rolls on for a considerable space, in a deep
and almost tranquil volume, which, by contrast with the approaching
turmoil, gives increased effect to its wild, stormy, and romantic
features. At first, a hollow, subdued roar, like that of distant
thunder strikes the ear and rouses the traveller’s attention. This
increases every second, and the stir and activity which now prevail
among the hands on board shows that additional force, vigilance, and
caution are to be employed in the use of helm and oars. The water
is now changed in its colour--chafed into foam, and agitated like a
seething cauldron. In front, and in the centre of the channel, rises
an abrupt, isolated, and colossal rock, fringed with wood, and crested
with a mouldering tower, on the summit of which is planted a lofty
cross, to which, in the moment of danger, the ancient boatmen were
wont to address their prayers for deliverance. The first sight of this
used to create no little excitement and apprehension on board; the
master ordered strict silence to be observed--the steersman grasped
the helm with a firm hand,--the passengers moved aside--so as to
leave free space for the boatmen, while the women and children were
hurried into the cabin, there to await, with feelings of no little
anxiety, the result of the enterprise. Every boatman, with his head
uncovered, muttered a prayer to his favourite saint; and away dashed
the barge through the tumbling breakers, that seemed as if hurrying it
on to inevitable destruction. All these preparations, joined by the
wildness of the adjacent scenery, the terrific aspect of the rocks,
and the tempestuous state of the water, were sufficient to produce a
powerful sensation on the minds even of those who had been all their
lives familiar with dangers; while the shadowy phantoms with which
superstition had peopled it, threw a deeper gloom over the whole scene.
Now, however, these ceremonies are only cold and formal; for the danger
being removed, the invocation of guardian saints has become less
fervent, and the cross on the Wörther Isle, we fear, is often passed
with little more than the common sign of obeisance.
Within the last fifty years the rocks in the bed of the river have been
blasted, and the former obstruction so greatly diminished, that in the
present day, the Strudel and Wirbel present no other dangers than what
may be caused by the ignorance or negligence of boatmen; so that the
tourist may contemplate the scene without alarm, and enjoy, in all its
native grandeur, the picture here offered to his eye and imagination--
Frowning o’er the weltering flood,
Castled rock and waving wood,
Monkish cell and robbers’ hold--
Rugged as in days of old,
From precipices, stern and grey,
Guard the dark and dreaded way.
The tourist who has happily escaped the perils of the Strudel rapids,
has still to encounter, in his descent, the whirlpool of the Wirbel,
which is distant from the former little more than five hundred
fathoms. Between the two perils of this passage in the Danube there is
a remarkable similarity--_magna componere parvis_--with that of the
Faro of Messina; where the hereditary terrors of Scylla and Charybdis
still intimidate the pilot, as he struggles to maintain a clear course
through the strait:
“There, in foaming whirls Charybdis curls,
Loud Scylla roars to larboard;
In that howling gulf, with the dog and wolf,
Deep moored to-night, with her living freight,
That goodly ship is harboured!”
The cause of the whirlpool is evident at first sight. In the centre
of the stream is an island called the Hansstein, about a hundred and
fifty yards long, by fifty in breadth, consisting of primitive rock,
and dividing the river--which at this point descends with tremendous
force--into the two separate channels of the Hössgang and the Strudel
already mentioned. In its progress to this point, it meets with that
portion of the river which runs smoothly along the northern shore,
and breaking it into a thousand eddies, forms the Wirbel. This has
the appearance of a series of foaming circles, each deepening as
it approaches the centre, and caused by the two opposite streams
rushing violently against each other. That such is the real cause of
the Wirbel is sufficiently proved by the fact, that, in the great
autumnal inundation of 1787, when the flood ran so high as to cover
the Hansstein, the Wirbel, to the astonishment of the oldest boatmen
and natives of the country, had entirely disappeared. For the obstacle
being thus counteracted by the depth of the flood, and the stream being
now unbroken by the rock, rushed down in one continuous volume, without
exhibiting any of those gyratory motions which characterize the Wirbel.
The sombre and mysterious aspects of the place, its wild scenery, and
the frequent accidents which occurred in the passage, invested it
with awe and terror; but above all, the superstitions of the time,
a belief in the marvellous, and the credulity of the boatmen, made
the navigation of the Strudel and the Wirbel a theme of the wildest
romance. At night, sounds that were heard far above the roar of the
Danube, issued from every ruin. Magical lights flashed through their
loop-holes and casements--festivals were held in the long-deserted
halls--maskers glided from room to room--the waltzers maddened to
the strains of an infernal orchestra--armed sentinels paraded the
battlements, while at intervals the clash of arms, the neighing of
steeds, and the shrieks of unearthly combatants smote fitfully on the
boatman’s ear. But the tower in which these scenes were most fearfully
enacted was that on the Longstone, commonly called the “Devil’s Tower,”
as it well deserved to be--for here, in close communion with his
master, resided the “Black Monk,” whose office it was to exhibit false
lights and landmarks along the gulf, so as to decoy the vessels into
the whirlpool, or dash them against the rocks.
Returning to Orsova, we re-embarked in boats provided by the Navigation
Company, and proceeded to encounter the perils of the Eisen Thor--the
Iron Gate of the Danube--which is so apt to be associated in the
stranger’s imagination with something of real personal risk and
adventure. The “Iron Gate” we conjecture, is some narrow, dark and
gloomy defile, through which the water, hemmed in by stupendous cliffs,
and “iron-bound,” as we say, foams and bellows, and dashes over a
channel of rocks, every one of which, when it cannot drag you into its
own whirlpool, is sure to drive you upon some of its neighbours, which,
with another rude shove, that makes your bark stagger and reel, sends
you smack upon a third! “But the ‘gate’?” “Why the gate is nothing more
or less than other gates, the ‘outlet’; and I dare say we shall be
very glad when we are ‘let out quietly.’” “Very narrow at that point,
s’pose?” “Very. You have seen an iron gate?” “To be sure I have.”
“Well, I’m glad of that, because you can more readily imagine what the
Iron Gate of the Danube is.” “Yes, and I am all impatience to see it;
but what if it should be locked when we arrive?” “Why, in that case,
we should feel a little awkward.” “Should we have to wait long?” “Only
till we got the key, although we might have to send to Constantinople
for it.” “Constantinople! well, here’s a pretty situation! I wish I
had gone by the ‘cart.’” “You certainly had your choice, and might
have done so--the Company provide both waggon and water conveyance
to Gladova; but I dare say we shall find the gate open.” “I hope we
shall; and as for the rocks and all that, why we got over the Wirbel
and Strudel and Izlay and twenty others, and s’pose we get over
this too. It’s only the gate that puzzles me--the Handbook says not
a word about that--quite unpardonable such an omission! Write to the
publisher.”
[Illustration: THE IRON GATES OF THE DANUBE.]
By this time we were ready to shoot the rapids; and certainly, at
first appearance, the enterprise was by no means inviting. The water,
however, was in good volume at the time; and although chafed and
fretted by a thousand cross, curling eddies, which tossed their crests
angrily against our bark, we kept our course with tolerable steadiness
to the left, and without apparent danger, unless it might have arisen
from sheer ignorance or want of precaution. More towards the centre of
the channel there would certainly have been some risk; for there the
river is tortured and split into numberless small threads of foam, by
the rocky spikes which line the channel, and literally tear the water
into shreds, as it sweeps rapidly over them--and these, more than the
declivity itself, are what present a more formidable appearance in
the descent. But when the river is full, they are not much observed,
although well-known by their effects in the cross-eddies, through
which, from the channel for boats being always intricate and irregular,
it demands more caution and experience to steer. The entire length
of these rapids is rather more than seventeen hundred yards, with
a perpendicular fall of nearly one yard in every three hundred,
and a velocity of from three to five yards in every second. Boats,
nevertheless, are seen from time to time, slowly ascending, close under
the left bank of the river, dragged by teams of oxen. “But the Iron
Gate?” said an anxious voice, again addressing his fellow-tourist.
“I see nothing like a gate--but of course we have to pass the gorge
first?” “We have passed both,” said his friend, “and here is Gladova.”
“Passed both! ‘Tell that to the marines!’ I know a gorge when I see
it, and a gate when I see it; but as yet we’ve passed neither.” “Why,
_there_ they are,” reiterated the other, pointing to the stern; “those
white, frothing eddies you see dancing in the distance--those _are_ the
‘Iron-Gate!’ and very luckily we found the ‘key.’”[12] The inquirer now
joined heartily in the laugh, and taking another view of the “Gate” we
glided smoothly down to the little straggling, thatch-clad village of
Gladova.
_The Danube_ (London, 1844).
FOOTNOTE:
[12] At the Iron Gate the Danube quits the Austrian Dominions and
enters those of Turkey. The country on the south continues for some
time mountainous, then hilly, and by degrees sinks into a plain: on
the north is the great level of Wallachia. In its course towards the
Black Sea, the Danube divides, frequently forming numerous islands,
especially below Silistria. Its width where undivided now averages from
fifteen hundred to two thousand yards, its depth above twenty feet.
Before reaching its mouth, several large rivers flow into it, as the
Alt, Sereth, and Pruth. On its junction with the last-mentioned river
it divides into several branches, which do not again unite, and it at
last terminates its long course by issuing through seven several mouths
into the Black Sea.
THE MAMMOTH CAVE
(_UNITED STATES_)
BAYARD TAYLOR
There was no outbreathing from the regions below as we stood at the
entrance to the cave, the upper atmosphere having precisely the same
temperature. We advanced in single file down the Main Avenue, which,
from the increased number of lamps, showed with greater distinctness
than on our first trip. Without pausing at any of the objects of
interest on the road, we marched to the Giant’s Coffin, crawled through
the hole behind it, passed the Deserted Chambers, and reached the
Bottomless Pit, the limit of our journey in this direction the previous
day.
Beyond the Pit we entered upon new ground. After passing from under its
Moorish dome the ceiling became low and the path sinuous and rough. I
could only walk by stooping considerably, and it is necessary to keep
a sharp look-out to avoid striking your head against the transverse
jambs of rock. This passage is aptly called the Valley of Humiliation.
It branches off to the right into another passage called Pensico
Avenue, which contains some curious stalactitic formations, similar to
the Gothic Gallery. We did not explore it, but turned to the left and
entered an extremely narrow, winding passage, which meanders through
the solid rock. It is called Fat Man’s Misery, and any one whose
body is more than eighteen inches in breadth will have trouble to get
through. The largest man who ever passed it weighed two hundred and
sixty pounds, and any gentleman weighing more than that must leave the
best part of the cave unexplored. None of us came within the scope of
prohibition (Nature, it seems, is opposed to corpulence), and after
five minutes’ twisting we emerged into a spacious hall called the
Great Relief. Its continuation forms an avenue which leads to Bandits’
Hall--a wild, rugged vault, the bottom of which is heaped with huge
rocks that have fallen from above. All this part of the cave is rich
in striking and picturesque effects, and presents a more rude and
irregular character than anything we had yet seen.
At the end of Bandits’ Hall is the Meat-Room, where a fine collection
of limestone hams and shoulders are suspended from the ceiling, as in
a smoke-house, the resemblance, which is really curious, is entirely
owing to the action of the water. The air now grew perceptibly damp,
and a few more steps brought us to the entrance of River Hall. Here
the ceiling not only becomes loftier, but the floor gradually slopes
away before you, and you look down into the vast depths and uncertain
darkness, and question yourself if the Grecian fable be not indeed
true. While I paused on the brink of these fresh mysteries the others
of the party had gone ahead under the charge of Mat; Stephen, who
remained with me, proposed that we should descend to the banks of the
Styx and see them crossing the river upon the Natural Bridge. We stood
on the brink of the black, silent water; the arch of the portal was
scarcely visible in the obscurity far above us. Now, as far below, I
saw the twinkle of a distant lamp, then another and another. “Is it
possible,” I asked, “that they have descended so much further?” “You
forget,” said Stephen, “that you are looking into the river and see
their reflected images. Stoop a little and you will find that they are
high above the water.” I stooped and looked under an arch, and saw the
slow procession of golden points of light passing over the gulf under
the eaves of a great cliff; but another procession quite as distinct
passed on below until the last lamp disappeared and all was darkness
again.
Five minutes more and the roughest and most slippery scrambling brought
us to the banks of the Lethe River, where we found the rest of the
party.
The river had risen since the previous day, and was at the most
inconvenient stage possible. A part of the River Walk was overflowed,
yet not deep enough to float the boats. Mat waded out and turned the
craft, which was moored to a projecting rock, as near to us as the
water would allow, after which he and Stephen carried us one by one
upon their shoulders and deposited us in it. It was a rude, square
scow, well plastered with river mud. Boards were laid across for the
ladies, the rest of us took our seats on the muddy gunwales, the guides
plied their paddles, and we were afloat on Lethe.
After a ferriage of about one hundred yards, we landed on a bank of
soft mud besides a small arm of the river, which had overflowed the
usual path. We sank to our ankles in the moist, tenacious soil,
floundering laboriously along until we were brought to a halt by Echo
River, the third and last stream. This again is divided into three or
four arms, which, meandering away under low arches, finally unite.
As we stood on the wet rocks, peering down into the black translucence
of the silent, mysterious water, sounds--first distant, then near,
then distant again--stole to us from under the groined vaults of rock.
First, the dip of many oars; then a dull, muffled peal, rumbling away
like the echoes of thunder; then a voice marvellously sweet, but
presently joined by others sweeter still, taking up the dying notes
ere they faded into silence, and prolonging them through remoter
chambers. The full, mellow strains rose until they seemed sung at our
very ears, then relapsed like ebbing waves, to wander off into solitary
halls, then approached again, and receded, like lost spirits seeking
here and there for an outlet from the world of darkness. Or was it a
chorus of angels come on some errand of pity and mercy to visit the
Stygian shores? As the heavenly harmonies thickened, we saw a gleam on
the water, and presently a clear light, floating above its mirrored
counterfeit, swept into sight. It was no angel, but Stephen, whose
single voice had been multiplied into that enchanting chorus.
The whole party embarked in two small boats, and after a last voyage
of about two hundred yards, were landed beyond the waters, and free to
explore the wonderful avenues of that new world of which Stephen is
the Columbus. The River Hall here terminates, and the passages are
broken and irregular for a short distance. A few minutes of rough
travel brought us to a large circular hall with a vaulted ceiling, from
the centre of which poured a cascade of crystal water, striking upon
the slant side of a large reclining boulder, and finally disappearing
through a funnel-shaped pit in the floor. It sparkled like a shower of
pearls in the light of our lamps, as we clustered around the brink of
the pit to drink from the stores gathered in those natural bowls which
seem to have been hollowed out for the uses of the invisible gnomes.
Beyond Cascade Hall commences Silliman’s Avenue, a passage about twenty
feet wide, forty or fifty in height, and a mile and a half in length.
Our lamps were replenished and we entered El Ghor, which is by far the
most picturesque avenue in the cave. It is a narrow, lofty passage
meandering through the heart of a mass of horizontal strata of
limestone, the broken edges of which assume the most remarkable forms.
Now there are rows of broad, flat shelves overhanging your head; now
you sweep around the stern of some mighty vessel with its rudder set
hard to starboard; now you enter a little vestibule with friezes and
mouldings of almost Doric symmetry and simplicity; and now you wind
away into a Cretan labyrinth most uncouth and fantastic, whereof the
Minotaur would be a proper inhabitant. It is a continual succession of
surprises, and, to the appreciative visitor, of raptures. The pass is
somewhat more than _a mile and a half in length_, and terminates in a
curious knot or entanglement of passages leading to two or more tiers
of avenues.
We were now, according to Stephen’s promises, on the threshold of
wonders. Before proceeding further we stopped to drink from a fine
sulphur spring which fills a natural basin in the bottom of a niche
made on purpose to contain it. We then climbed a perpendicular ladder,
passing through a hole in the ceiling barely large enough to admit our
bodies, and found ourselves at the entrance of a narrow, lofty passage
leading upwards. When all had made the ascent the guides exultingly
lifted their lamps and directed our eyes to the rocks overhanging
the aperture; there was the first wonder, truly! Clusters of grapes
gleaming with blue and violet tints through the water which trickled
over them, hung from the cliffs, while a stout vine, springing from the
base and climbing nearly to the top, seemed to support them. Hundreds
on hundreds of bunches clustering so thickly as to conceal the leaves,
hang forever ripe and forever unplucked in that marvellous vintage
of the subterranean world. For whose hand shall squeeze the black,
infernal wine from grapes that grow beyond Lethe?
Mounting for a short distance, this new avenue suddenly turned to the
left, widened, and became level; the ceiling is low, but beautifully
vaulted, and Washington’s Hall, which we soon reached, is circular, and
upwards of a hundred feet in diameter. This is the usual dining-room
of parties who go beyond the rivers. Nearly five hours had now elapsed
since we entered the cave, and five hours spent in that bracing,
stimulating atmosphere might well justify the longing glances which we
cast upon the baskets carried by the guides. Mr. Miller had foreseen
our appetites, and there were stores of venison, biscuit, ham, and
pastry, more than sufficient for all. We made our midday, or rather
midnight meal sitting, like the nymph who wrought Excalibur
“Upon the hidden bases of the hills,”
buried far below the green Kentucky forests, far below the forgotten
sunshine. For in the cave you forget that there is an outer world
somewhere above you. The hours have no meaning: Time ceases to be; no
thought of labour, no sense of responsibility, no twinge of conscience
intrudes to suggest the existence you have left. You walk in some limbo
beyond the confines of actual life, yet no nearer the world of spirits.
For my part, I could not shake off the impression that I was wandering
on the _outside_ of Uranus or Neptune, or some planet still more deeply
buried in the frontier darkness of our solar system.
Washington Hall marks the commencement of Elindo Avenue, a straight
hall about sixty feet wide, twenty in height, and _two miles_ long.
It is completely encrusted from end to end with crystallizations of
gypsum, white as snow. This is the crowning marvel of the cave, the
pride and the boast of the guides. Their satisfaction is no less than
yours, as they lead you through the diamond grottoes, the gardens of
sparry efflorescence, and the gleaming vaults of this magical avenue.
We first entered the “Snow-ball Room,” where the gnome-children in
their sports have peppered the grey walls and ceiling with thousands
of snow-white projecting discs, so perfect in their fragile beauty,
that they seem ready to melt away under the blaze of your lamp. Then
commences Cleveland’s Cabinet, a gallery of crystals, the richness
and variety of which bewilder you. It is a subterranean conservatory,
filled with the flowers of all the zones; for there are few blossoms
expanding on the upper earth but are mimicked in these gardens of
Darkness. I cannot lead you from niche to niche, and from room to room,
examining in detail the enchanted growths; they are all so rich and so
wonderful that the memory does not attempt to retain them. Sometimes
the hard limestone rock is changed into a pasture of white roses;
sometimes it is starred with opening daisies; the sunflowers spread
their flat discs and rayed leaves; the feathery chalices of the cactus
hang from the clefts; the night-blooming cereus opens securely her
snowy cup, for the morning never comes to close it; the tulip is here a
virgin, and knows not that her sisters above are clothed in the scarlet
of shame.
In many places the ceiling is covered with a mammary crystallization,
as if a myriad bubbles were rising beneath its glittering surface.
Even on this jewelled soil which sparkles all around you, grow the
lilies and roses, singly overhead, but clustering together towards the
base of the vault, where they give place to long, snowy, pendulous
cactus-flowers, which droop like a fringe around diamonded niches.
Here you see the passion-flower, with its curiously curved pistils;
there an iris with its lanceolate leaves; and again, bunches of celery
with stalks white and tender enough for a fairy’s dinner. There are
occasional patches of gypsum, tinged of a deep amber colour by the
presence of iron. Through the whole length of the avenue there is
no cessation of the wondrous work. The pale rock-blooms burst forth
everywhere, crowding on each other until the brittle sprays cannot
bear their weight, and they fall to the floor. The slow, silent
efflorescence still goes on, as it has done for ages in that buried
tropic.
What mostly struck me in my underground travels was the evidence of
_design_ which I found everywhere. Why should the forms of the earth’s
outer crust, her flowers and fruits, the very heaven itself which
spans her, be so wonderfully reproduced? What laws shape the blossoms
and the foliage of that vast crystalline garden? There seemed to be
something more than the accidental combinations of a blind chance in
what I saw--some evidence of an informing and directing Will. In the
secret caverns, the agencies which produced their wonders have been at
work for thousands of years, perhaps thousands of ages, fashioning the
sparry splendours in the womb of darkness with as exquisite a grace,
as true an instinct of beauty as in the palm or the lily, which are
moulded by the hands of the sun. What power is it which lies behind
the mere chemistry of Nature, impregnating her atoms with such subtle
laws of symmetry? What but Divine Will, which first gave her being, and
which is never weary of multiplying for man the lessons of His infinite
wisdom?
At the end of Elindo Avenue the floor sinks, then ascends, and is at
last blocked up by a huge pile of large, loose rocks. When we had
reached the foot, the roof of the avenue suddenly lifted and expanded,
and the summit of the Rocky Mountains, as they are called, leaned
against a void waste of darkness. We climbed to the summit, about a
hundred feet above, whence we looked down into an awful gulf, spanned
far above our heads by a hollow dome of rock. The form of this gigantic
hall was nearly elliptical. It was probably 150 feet in height, by
500 in length, the ends terminating near the roof in the cavernous
mouths of other avenues. The guides partly descended the hill and there
kindled a brilliant Bengal light, which disclosed more clearly the
form of the hall, but I thought it more impressive as its stupendous
proportions were first dimly revealed by the light of our lamps.
Stephen, who discovered this place, gave it the name of the Dismal
Hollow.
Scrambling along the ridge of the Rocky Mountains, we gained the
entrance to the cavern opening on the left, which we followed for about
two hundred yards, when it terminated in a lofty circular dome, called
Crogan’s Hall. The floor on one side dropped suddenly into a deep pit,
around which were several cushions of stalagmite, answering to short
stalactites, hanging from the ceiling far above. At the extremity of
the hall was a sort of recess, formed by stalactitic pillars. The wall
behind it was a mass of veined alabaster. “Here,” said Stephen, “is
your Ultima Thule. This is the end of the Mammoth Cave, nine miles
from daylight.” But I doubt whether there is really an end of the cave
any more than an end of the earth. Notwithstanding the ground we had
traversed, we had left many vast avenues unexplored, and a careful
search would no doubt lead to further discoveries.
We retraced our steps slowly along Elindo Avenue, stopping every few
minutes to take a last look at the bowers of fairy blossoms. After
reaching Washington’s Hall we noticed that the air was no longer still,
but was flowing fresh and cool in our faces. Stephen observed it also,
and said: “There has been a heavy rain outside.” Entering the pass of
El Ghor again at Martha’s Vineyard, we walked rapidly forward, without
making a halt, to its termination at Silliman’s Avenue. The distance
is reckoned by the guides at a little more than a mile and a half,
and we were just forty minutes in walking it. We several times felt
fatigue, especially when passing the rougher parts of the cave, but
the sensation always passed away in some unaccountable manner, leaving
us fresh and buoyant. The crossing of the rivers was accomplished with
some labour, but without accident. I accompanied Stephen on his return
through the second arch of Echo River. As I sat alone in the silent,
transparent darkness of the mysterious stream, I could hear the tones
of my boatman’s voice gliding down the caverns like a wave, flowing
more and more faintly until its vibrations were too weak to move the
ear. Thus, as he sang, there were frequently three or four notes, each
distinctly audible, floating away at different degrees of remoteness.
At the last arch there was only a space of eighteen inches between the
water and the rock. We lay down on our backs in the muddy bottom of the
boat, and squeezed through to the middle branch of Echo River, where
we found the rest of the party, who had gone round through Purgatory.
After again threading Fat Man’s Misery, passing the Bottomless Pit and
the Deserted Chambers, we at last emerged into the Main Avenue at the
Giant’s Coffin. It was six o’clock, and we had been ten hours in the
cave.
When we heard the tinkling drops of the little cascade over the
entrance, I looked up and saw a patch of deep, tender blue set in the
darkness. In the midst of it twinkled a white star--whiter and more
dazzling than any star I ever saw before. I paused and drank at the
trough under the waterfall, for, like the Fountain of Trevi at Rome, it
may be that those who drink there shall return again. When we ascended
to the level of the upper world we found that a fierce tornado had
passed along during the day; trees had been torn up by the roots and
hurled down in all directions; stunning thunders had jarred the air,
and the wet earth was fairly paved with leaves cut off by the heavy
hail--yet we, buried in the heart of the hills, had heard no sound, nor
felt the slightest tremour in the air.
The stars were all in their places as I walked back to the hotel. I had
been twelve hours under ground, in which I had walked about twenty-four
miles. I had lost a day--a day with its joyous morning, its fervid
noon, its tempest, and its angry sunset of crimson and gold; but I
had gained an age in a strange and hitherto unknown world--an age of
wonderful experience, and an exhaustless store of sublime and lovely
memories.
_At Home and Abroad_ (New York, 1864).
STROMBOLI
(_SICILY_)
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
As we advanced, Stromboli became more and more distinct every moment,
and through the clear evening air we could perceive every detail; this
mountain is formed exactly like a hay-mow, its summit being surmounted
by a peak; it is from this summit that the smoke escapes, and, at
intervals of a quarter of an hour, a flame; during the daytime this
flame does not apparently exist, being lost in the light of the sun;
but when evening comes, and the Orient begins to darken, this flame
becomes visible and you can see it dart forth from the midst of the
smoke which it colours, and fall again in jets of lava.
Towards seven o’clock we reached Stromboli; unfortunately the port is
in the east, and we came from the west; so that we had to coast along
the whole length of the island where the lava descended down a sharp
slope into the sea. For a breadth of twenty paces at its summit and a
hundred and fifty at its base, the mountain at this point is covered
with cinders and all vegetation is burned.
The captain was correct in his predictions: we arrived half an hour
after the port had been closed; all we could say to make them open to
us was lost eloquence.
However, the entire population of Stromboli had run to the shore. Our
_Speronare_ was a frequent visitor to this harbour and our sailors were
well known in the island.... It was in Stromboli that Æolus held bound
the _luctantes ventos tempestatesque sonoras_. Without doubt, at the
time of the song of Æneas, and when Stromboli was called Strongyle,
the island was not known for what it really is, and hid within its
depths the boiling masses and periodical ejaculations which make this
volcano the most obliging one in the world. In sooth, you know what
to expect from Stromboli: it is not like Vesuvius or Etna, which make
the traveller wait sometimes three, five or even ten years for a poor
little eruption. I have been told that this is doubtless owing to the
position they hold in the hierarchy of fire-vomiting mountains, a
hierarchy that permits them to be aristocratic at their own pleasure:
this is true enough; and we must not take it amiss if Stromboli allows
her social position to be assailed an instant, and to have understood
that it is only a little toy volcano to which one would not pay the
slightest attention if it made itself so ridiculous as to put on airs.
Moreover, it did not keep us waiting. After scarcely five minutes’
expectation, a heavy rumbling was heard, a detonation resembling twenty
cannon fired in succession, and a long jet of flame leaped into the air
and fell again in a shower of lava; a part of this shower fell again
into the crater of the volcano, while the other, rolling down the slope
hurried like a brooklet of flame to extinguish itself, hissing, into
the sea. Ten minutes later the same phenomenon was repeated, and at
every succeeding ten minutes throughout the night.
I admit that this was one of the most curious nights I ever spent in my
life; neither Jadin nor I could tear ourselves away from this terrible
and magnificent spectacle. There were such detonations that the very
atmosphere seemed excited, and you imagined the whole island trembling
like a frightened child; it was only Milord that these fire-works put
into a state of exaltation impossible to describe; he wanted to jump
into the water every moment to devour the burning lava which sometimes
fell ten feet from us, like a meteor precipitating itself into the sea.
As for our boatswain, he was so accustomed to this spectacle, that,
after asking if we needed anything and upon our reply in the negative,
he retired between decks and neither the lightnings that illuminated
the air nor the thunders that shook it had power to disturb his
slumbers.
We stayed here until two o’clock; finally, overcome with fatigue and
sleep, we decided to retire to our cabin. As for Milord, nothing would
persuade him to do as we did and he stayed all night on deck, growling
and barking at the volcano.
We woke in the morning at the first movement of the _Speronare_. With
the return of daylight the mountain lost all its fantastic appearance.
We constantly heard the detonations; but the flame had become
invisible; and that burning lava stream of the night was confused in
the day with the reddish ashes over which it rolls.
Ten minutes more and we were again in port. This time we had no
difficulty in entering. Pietro and Giovanni got off with us; they
wished to accompany us on our ascent.
We entered, not an inn (there are none in Stromboli), but a house whose
proprietors were related to our captain. As it would not have been
prudent to have started on our way fasting, Giovanni asked permission
of our hosts to make breakfast for us while Pietro went to hunt for
guides,--a permission not only accorded to us with much grace but
our host also went out and came back in a few moments with the most
beautiful grapes and figs that he could find.
After we had finished our breakfast, Pietro arrived with two
Stromboliotes who consented, in consideration of half a piastre each,
to serve as guides. It was already nearly eight o’clock: to avoid a
climb in the greatest heat of the day, we started off immediately.
The top of Stromboli is only twelve or fifteen hundred feet above the
level of the sea; but its slope is so sharp that you cannot climb in
a direct manner, but must zigzag eternally. At first, on leaving the
village, the road was easy enough; it rose in the midst of those vines
laden with grapes that make the commerce of the island and from which
the fruit hangs in such great quantity that any one may help himself
to all he wants without asking the permission of the owner; however,
upon leaving the region of the vineyards, we found no more roads, and
we had to walk at random, looking for the best ground and the easiest
slopes. Despite all these precautions, there came a moment when we were
obliged to scramble on all fours: there was nothing to do but climb up;
but this place once passed, I vow that on turning around and seeing
it, jutting almost perpendicularly over the sea, I asked in terror how
we could ever descend; our guides then said that we would come down
by another road: that pacified me a little. Those who like myself are
unhappy enough to have vertigo when they see a chasm below their feet
will understand my question and still more the importance I attached to
it.
This break-neck spot passed, the ascent became easier for a quarter
of an hour; but soon we came to a place which at the first glance
seemed impassable; it was a perfectly sharp-pointed angle that formed
the opening of the first volcano, and part of which was cut out
perpendicularly upon the crater while the other fell with so sharp a
slope to the sea that it seemed to me if I should fall perpendicularly
on the other side I could not help rolling from top to bottom. Even
Jadin, who ordinarily climbs like a chamois without ever troubling
about the difficulties of the ground, stopped short when we came to
this passage, asking if there was not some way to avoid it. As you may
imagine, this was impossible.
The crater of Stromboli is formed like a vast funnel, from the bottom
and the centre of which is an opening through which a man can enter a
little way, and which communicates with the internal furnace of the
mountain; it is through this opening, resembling the mouth of a canon,
that the shower of projectiles darts forth, which, falling again
into the crater, sweeps with it down the inclined slope of stones the
cinders and lava that, rolling to the bottom, block up that funnel.
Then the volcano seems to gather its forces together for several
minutes, compressed as it is by the stoppage of its valve; but after a
moment its smoke trembles like a breath; you hear a deep roaring run
through the hollow sides of the mountain; then the cannonade bursts
forth again, throwing up two hundred feet above the summit new stones
and new lava, which, falling back and closing the orifice of the
passage anew, prepare for a new outburst.
Seen from where we were, that is from top to bottom, this spectacle was
superb and terrifying; at each internal convulsion that the mountain
essayed, you felt it tremble beneath you, and it seemed as if it would
burst asunder; then came the explosion, similar to a gigantic tree of
flame and smoke that shook its leaves of lava.
Finally, we reached the extremity of this new lake of Sodom, and we
found ourselves in an oasis of vines, pomegranates and olives. We had
not the courage to go any farther. We lay down in the grass, and our
guides brought us an armful of grapes and a hatful of figs.
It was marvellous to us; but there was not the smallest drop of water
for our poor Milord to drink, and we perceived him devouring the skin
of the figs and grapes. We gave him part of our repast, and for the
first, and probably for the last, time in his life he dined off figs
and grapes.
I have often a desire to put myself in the place of Milord and write
his memoirs as Hoffmann wrote those of his cat, Murr. I am convinced
that he must have had, seen from the canine point of view, (I beg the
Académie’s pardon for the expression) extremely new impressions of the
people and countries that he has visited.
A quarter of an hour after this halt we were in the village, writing
upon our tablets this judicious observation--that the volcanoes follow
but do not resemble each other: we were nearly frozen when ascending
Etna, and we were nearly roasted when descending Stromboli.
Jadin and I each extended a hand towards the mountain and swore
that notwithstanding Vesuvius, Stromboli was the last volcano whose
acquaintance we would make.
_Le Capitaine Aréna: Impressions de Voyage_ (Paris, 1836).
THE HIGH WOODS
(_SOUTH AMERICA_)
CHARLES KINGSLEY
In the primeval forest, looking upon that which my teachers and
masters, Humboldt, Spix, Martius, Schomburgk, Waterton, Bates, Wallace,
Gosse, and the rest, had looked already, with far wiser eyes than mine,
comprehending somewhat at least of its wonders, while I could only
stare in ignorance. There was actually, then, such a sight to be seen
on earth; and it was not less, but far more wonderful than they had
said.
My first feeling on entering the high woods was helplessness,
confusion, awe, all but terror. One is afraid at first to venture in
fifty yards. Without a compass or the landmark of some opening to or
from which he can look, a man must be lost in the first ten minutes,
such a sameness is there in the infinite variety. That sameness and
variety make it impossible to give any general sketch of a forest.
Once inside, “you cannot see the woods for the trees.” You can only
wander on as far as you dare, letting each object impress itself on
your mind as it may, and carrying away a confused recollection of
innumerable perpendicular lines, all straining upwards, in fierce
competition, towards the light-food far above; and next on a green
cloud, or rather mist, which hovers round your head, and rises,
thickening and thickening to an unknown height. The upward lines
are of every possible thickness, and of almost every possible hue;
what leaves they bear, being for most part on the tips of the twigs,
give a scattered, mist-like appearance to the under-foliage. For the
first moment, therefore, the forest seems more open than an English
wood. But try to walk through it, and ten steps undeceive you. Around
your knees are probably Mamures, with creeping stems and fan-shaped
leaves, something like those of a young cocoanut palm. You try to brush
among them, and are caught up instantly by a string or wire belonging
to some other plant. You look up and round: and then you find that
the air is full of wires--that you are hung up in a network of fine
branches belonging to half-a-dozen different sorts of young trees, and
intertwined with as many different species of slender creepers. You
thought at your first glance among the tree-stems that you were looking
through open air; you find that you are looking through a labyrinth of
wire-rigging, and must use the cutlass right and left at every five
steps. You push on into a bed of strong sedge-like Sclerias, with
cutting edges to their leaves. It is well for you if they are only
three, and not six feet high. In the midst of them you run against
a horizontal stick, triangular, rounded, smooth, green. You take a
glance along it right and left, and see no end to it either way, but
gradually discover that it is the leaf-stalk of a young Cocorite palm.
The leaf is five-and-twenty feet long, and springs from a huge ostrich
plume, which is sprawling out of the ground and up above your head a
few yards off. You cut the leaf-stalk through right and left, and walk
on, to be stopped suddenly (for you get so confused by the multitude
of objects that you never see anything till you run against it) by a
grey lichen-covered bar, as thick as your ankle. You follow it up with
your eye, and find it entwine itself with three or four other bars, and
roll over with them in great knots and festoons and loops twenty feet
high, and then go up with them into the green cloud over your head, and
vanish, as if a giant had thrown a ship’s cable into the tree-tops. One
of them, so grand that its form strikes even the Negro and the Indian,
is a Liantasse. You see that at once by the form of its cable--six or
eight inches across in one direction, and three or four in another,
furbelowed all down the middle into regular knots, and looking like a
chain cable between two flexible iron bars. At another of the loops,
about as thick as your arm, your companion, if you have a forester
with you, will spring joyfully. With a few blows of his cutlass he
will sever it as high up as he can reach, and again below, some three
feet down; and, while you are wondering at this seemingly wanton
destruction, he lifts the bar on high, throws his head back, and pours
down his thirsty throat a pint or more of pure cold water. This hidden
treasure is, strange as it may seem, the ascending sap, or rather the
ascending pure rain-water which has been taken up by the roots, and
is hurrying aloft, to be elaborated into sap, and leaf, and flower,
and fruit, and fresh tissue for the very stem up which it originally
climbed; and therefore it is that the woodman cuts the Watervine
through first at the top of the piece which he wants, and not at the
bottom; for so rapid is the ascent of the sap that if he cut the stem
below, the water would have all fled upwards before he could cut it
off above. Meanwhile, the old story of Jack and the Bean-stalk comes
into your mind. In such a forest was the old dame’s hut; and up such a
bean-stalk Jack climbed, to find a giant and a castle high above. Why
not? What may not be up there? You look up into the green cloud, and
long for a moment to be a monkey. There may be monkeys up there over
your head, burly red Howler, or tiny peevish Sapajou, peering down at
you; but you cannot peer up at them. The monkeys, and the parrots,
and the humming-birds, and the flowers, and all the beauty, are
upstairs--up above the green cloud. You are in “the empty nave of the
cathedral,” and “the service is being celebrated aloft in the blazing
roof.”
[Illustration: THE HIGH WOODS.]
We will hope that as you look up, you have not been careless enough
to walk on; for if you have you will be tripped up at once: nor to
put your hand out incautiously to rest it against a tree, or what
not, for fear of sharp thorns, ants, and wasps’ nests. If you are all
safe, your next steps, probably, as you struggle through the bush
between the tree-trunks of every possible size, will bring you face to
face with huge upright walls of seeming boards, whose rounded edges
slope upward till, as your eye follows them, you will find them enter
an enormous stem, perhaps round, like one of the Norman pillars of
Durham nave, and just as huge; perhaps fluted, like one of William of
Wykeham’s columns at Winchester. There is the stem: but where is the
tree? Above the green cloud. You struggle up to it, between two of
the broad walls, but find it not so easy to reach. Between you and
it, are a half-a-dozen tough strings which you had not noticed at
first--the eye cannot focus itself rapidly enough in this confusion
of distances--which have to be cut through ere you can pass. Some of
them are rooted in the ground, straight and tense; some of them dangle
and wave in the wind at every height. What are they? Air-roots of
wild Pines, or of Matapalos, or of Figs, or of Seguines, or of some
other parasite? Probably: but you cannot see. All you can see is, as
you put your chin close against the trunk of the tree and look up, as
if you were looking up against the side of a great ship set on end,
that some sixty or eighty feet up in the green cloud, arms as big as
English forest trees branch off; and that out of their forks a whole
green garden of vegetation has tumbled down twenty or thirty feet, and
half climbed up again. You scramble round the tree to find whence this
aërial garden has sprung: you cannot tell. The tree-trunk is smooth and
free from climbers; and that mass of verdure may belong possibly to
the very cables which you meet ascending into the green cloud twenty
or thirty yards back, or to that impenetrable tangle, a dozen yards
on, which has climbed a small tree, and then a taller one again, and
then a taller still, till it has climbed out of sight and possibly into
the lower branches of the big tree. And what are their species? What
are their families? Who knows? Not even the most experienced woodman
or botanist can tell you the names of plants of which he only sees
the stems. The leaves, the flowers, the fruit, can only be examined
by felling the tree; and not even always then, for sometimes the tree
when cut refuses to fall, linked as it is by chains of liane to all the
trees around. Even that wonderful water-vine which we cut through just
now may be one of three or even four different plants.
Soon, you will be struck by the variety of the vegetation; and will
recollect what you have often heard, that social plants are rare in
the tropic forests. Certainly they are in the Trinidad; where the
only instances of social trees are the Moras (which I have never
seen growing wild) and the Moriche palms. In Europe, a forest is
usually made up of one dominant plant of firs or of pines, of oaks or
of beeches, of birch or of heather. Here no two plants seem alike.
There are more species on an acre here than in all the New Forest,
Savernake, or Sherwood. Stems rough, smooth, prickly, round, fluted,
stilted, upright, sloping, branched, arched, jointed, opposite-leaved,
alternate-leaved, leafless, or covered with leaves of every conceivable
pattern, are jumbled together, till the eye and brain are tired of
continually asking “What next?” The stems are of every colour--copper,
pink, grey, green, brown, black as if burnt, marbled with lichens, many
of them silvery white, gleaming afar in the bush, furred with mosses
and delicate creeping film-ferns, or laced with air-roots of some
parasite aloft. Up this stem scrambles a climbing Seguine with entire
leaves; up the next another quite different, with deeply-cut leaves;
up the next the Ceriman spreads its huge leaves, latticed and forked
again and again. So fast do they grow, that they have not time to
fill up the spaces between their nerves, and are consequently full of
oval holes; and so fast does its spadix of flowers expand, that (as do
some other Aroids) an actual genial heat, and fire of passion, which
may be tested by the thermometer, or even by the hand, is given off
during fructification. Beware of breaking it, or the Seguines. They
will probably give off an evil smell, and as probably a blistering
milk. Look on at the next stem. Up it, and down again, a climbing fern
which is often seen in hothouses has tangled its finely-cut fronds. Up
the next, a quite different fern is crawling, by pressing tightly to
the rough bark its creeping root-stalks, furred like a hare’s leg. Up
the next, the prim little Griffe-chatte plant has walked, by numberless
clusters of small cats’-claws, which lay hold of the bark. And what is
this delicious scent about the air? Vanille? Of course it is; and up
that stem zigzags the green fleshy chain of the Vanille Orchis. The
scented pod is far above, out of your reach; but not out of the reach
of the next parrot, or monkey, or Negro hunter, who winds the treasure.
And the stems themselves: to what trees do they belong? It would be
absurd for one to try to tell you who cannot tell one-twentieth of
them himself. Suffice it to say, that over your head are perhaps a
dozen kinds of admirable timber, which might be turned to a hundred
uses in Europe, were it possible to get them thither: your guide (who
here will be a second hospitable and cultivated Scot) will point with
pride to one column after another, straight as those of a cathedral,
and sixty to eighty feet without branch or knob. That, he will say,
is Fiddlewood; that a Carapo, that a Cedar, that a Roble (oak); that,
larger than all you have seen yet, a Locust; that, a Poui; that, a
Guatecare; that an Olivier, woods which, he will tell you, are all
but incorruptible, defying weather and insects. He will show you,
as curiosities, the smaller but intensely hard Letter wood, Lignum
vitæ, and Purple heart. He will pass by as useless weeds, Ceibas and
Sandbox-trees, whose bulk appalls you. He will look up, with something
like a malediction, at the Matapalos, which, every fifty yards, have
seized on mighty trees, and are enjoying, I presume, every different
stage of the strangling art, from the baby Matapalo, who, like one
which you saw in the Botanic Garden, has let down his first air-root
along his victim’s stem, to the old sinner whose dark crown of leaves
is supported, eighty feet in air, on innumerable branching columns
of every size, cross-clasped to each other by transverse bars. The
giant tree on which his seed first fell has rotted away utterly, and
he stands in its place, prospering in his wickedness, like certain
folk whom David knew too well. Your guide walks on with a sneer. But
he stops with a smile of satisfaction as he sees lying on the ground
dark green glossy leaves, which are fading into a bright crimson; for
overhead somewhere there must be a Balata, the king of the forest;
and there, close by, is his stem--a madder-brown column, whose head
may be a hundred and fifty feet or more aloft. The forester pats the
side of his favourite tree, as a breeder might that of his favourite
race-horse. He goes on to evince his affection, in the fashion of West
Indians, by giving it a chop with his cutlass; but not in wantonness.
He wishes to show you the hidden virtues, of this (in his eyes)
noblest of trees--how there issues out swiftly from the wound a flow
of thick white milk, which will congeal, in an hour’s time, into a gum
intermediate in its properties between caoutchouc and gutta-percha. He
talks of a time when the English gutta-percha market shall be supplied
from the Balatas of the northern hills, which cannot be shipped away
as timber. He tells you how the tree is a tree of a generous, virtuous
and elaborate race--“a tree of God, which is full of sap,” as one said
of old of such--and what could he say better, less or more? For it is
a Sapota, cousin to the Sapodilla, and other excellent fruit-trees,
itself most excellent even in its fruit-bearing power; for every
five years it is covered with such a crop of delicious plums, that
the lazy Negro thinks it worth his while to spend days of hard work,
besides incurring the penalty of the law (for the trees are Government
property), in cutting it down for the sake of its fruit. But this tree
your guide will cut himself. There is no gully between it and the
Government station; and he can carry it away; and it is worth his while
to do so; for it will square, he thinks, into a log more than three
feet in diameter, and eighty, ninety--he hopes almost a hundred--feet
in length of hard, heavy wood, incorruptible, save in salt water;
better than oak, as good as teak, and only surpassed in this island
by the Poui. He will make a stage round it, some eight feet high, and
cut it above the spurs. It will take his convict gang (for convicts
are turned to some real use in Trinidad) several days to get it down,
and many more days to square it with the axe. A trace must be made to
it through the wood, clearing away vegetation for which a European
millionaire, could he keep it in his park, would gladly pay a hundred
pounds a yard. The cleared stems, especially those of the palms, must
be cut into rollers; and the dragging of the huge log over them will be
a work of weeks, especially in the wet season. But it can be done, and
it shall be; so he leaves a significant mark on his new-found treasure,
and leads you on through the bush, hewing his way with light strokes
right and left, so carelessly that you are inclined to beg him to hold
his hand, and not destroy in a moment things so beautiful, so curious,
things which would be invaluable in an English hothouse.
And where are the famous Orchids? They perch on every bough and stem;
but they are not, with three or four exceptions, in flower in the
winter; and if they were, I know nothing about them--at least, I
know enough to know how little I know. Whosoever has read Darwin’s
_Fertilization of Orchids_, and finds in his own reason that the book
is true, had best say nothing about the beautiful monsters till he has
seen with his own eyes more than his master.
And yet even the three or four that are in flower are worth going many
a mile to see. In the hothouse, they seem almost artificial from their
strangeness: but to see them “natural,” on natural boughs, gives a
sense of their reality, which no unnatural situation can give. Even
to look up at them perched on bough and stem, as one rides by; and
to guess what exquisite and fantastic form may issue, in a few months
or weeks, out of those fleshy, often unsightly leaves, is a strange
pleasure; a spur to the fancy which is surely wholesome, if we will but
believe that all these things were invented by A Fancy, which desires
to call out in us, by contemplating them, such small fancy as we
possess; and to make us poets, each according to this power, by showing
a world in which, if rightly looked at, all is poetry.
Another fact will soon force itself on your attention, unless you wish
to tumble down and get wet up to your knees. The soil is furrowed
everywhere by holes; by graves, some two or three feet wide and deep,
and of uncertain length and shape, often wandering about for thirty
or forty feet, and running confusedly into each other. They are not
the work of man, nor of an animal; for no earth seems to have been
thrown out of them. In the bottom of the dry graves you sometimes see
a decaying root: but most of them just now are full of water, and of
tiny fish also, who burrow in the mud and sleep during the dry season,
to come out and swim during the wet. These graves are some of them,
plainly quite new. Some, again, are very old; for trees of all sizes
are growing in them and over them.
What makes them? A question not easily answered. But the shrewdest
foresters say that they have the roots of trees now dead. Either the
tree has fallen and torn its roots out of the ground, or the roots and
stumps have rotted in their place, and the soil above them has fallen
in.
But they must decay very quickly, these roots, to leave their quite
fresh graves thus empty; and--now one thinks of it--how few fallen
trees, or even dead sticks, there are about. An English wood, if left
to itself, would be cumbered with fallen timber; and one has heard of
forests in North America, through which it is all but impossible to
make way, so high are piled up, among the still-growing trees, dead
logs in every stage of decay. Such a sight may be seen in Europe, among
the high Silver-fir forests of the Pyrenees. How is it not so here?
How indeed? And how comes it--if you will, look again--that there are
few or no fallen trees, and actually no leaf-mould? In an English wood
there would be a foot--perhaps two feet--of black soil, renewed every
autumn leaf fall. Two feet? One has heard often enough of bison-hunting
in Himalayan forests among Deodaras one hundred and fifty feet high,
and scarlet Rhododendrons thirty feet high, growing in fifteen or
twenty feet of leaf-and-timber mould. And here in a forest equally
ancient, every plant is growing out of the bare yellow loam, as it
might in a well-hoed garden bed. Is it not strange?
Most strange; till you remember where you are--in one of nature’s
hottest and dampest laboratories. Nearly eighty inches of yearly rain
and more than eighty degrees of perpetual heat make swift work with
vegetable fibre, which, in our cold and sluggard clime, would curdle
into leaf-mould, perhaps into peat. Far to the north, in poor old
Ireland, and far to the south, in Patagonia, begin the zones of peat,
where dead vegetable fibre, its treasures of light and heat locked up,
lies all but useless age after age. But this is the zone of illimitable
sun-force, which destroys as swiftly as it generates, and generates
again as swiftly as it destroys. Here, when the forest giant falls,
as some tell me that they have heard him fall, on silent nights, when
the cracking of the roots below the lianes aloft rattles like musketry
through the woods, till the great trunk comes down, with a boom as of a
heavy gun, re-echoing on from mountain-side to mountain-side; then--
“Nothing in him that doth fade
But doth suffer an _air_! change
Into something rich and strange.”
Under the genial rain and genial heat the timber tree itself, all
its tangled ruin of lianes and parasites, and the boughs and leaves
snapped off not only by the blow, but by the very wind, of the falling
tree--all melt away swiftly and peacefully in a few months--say almost
a few days--into the water, and carbonic acid, and sunlight, out of
which they were created at first, to be absorbed instantly by the
green leaves around, and, transmuted into fresh forms of beauty, leave
not a wrack behind. Explained thus--and this I believe to be the true
explanation--the absence of leaf-mould is one of the grandest, as it is
one of the most startling, phenomena, of the forest.
Look here at a fresh wonder. Away in front of us a smooth grey pillar
glistens on high. You can see neither the top nor the bottom of it.
But its colour, and its perfectly cylindrical shape, tell you what it
is--a glorious Palmiste; one of those queens of the forest which you
saw standing in the fields; with its capital buried in the green cloud
and its base buried in that bank of green velvet plumes, which you must
skirt carefully round, for they are prickly dwarf palm, called Black
Roseau. Close to it rises another pillar, as straight and smooth, but
one-fourth of the diameter--a giant’s walking cane. Its head, too, is
in the green cloud. But near are two or three younger ones only forty
or fifty feet high, and you see their delicate feather heads, and are
told that they are Manacques; the slender nymphs which attend upon the
forest queen, as beautiful, though not as grand, as she.
The land slopes down fast now. You are tramping through stiff mud,
and those Roseaux are a sign of water. There is a stream or gulley
near: and now for the first time you can see clear sunshine through
the stems; and see, too, something of the bank of foliage on the other
side of the brook. You can catch sight, it may be, of the head of a
tree aloft, blazing with golden trumpet flowers, which is a Poui; and
of another low-one covered with hoar-frost, perhaps a Croton; and of
another, a giant covered with purple tassels. That is an Angelim.
Another giant overtops even him. His dark glossy leaves toss off sheets
of silver light as they flicker in the breeze; for it blows hard aloft
outside while you are in the stifling calm. That is a Balata. And
what is that on high? Twenty or thirty square yards of rich crimson
a hundred feet above the ground. The flowers may belong to the tree
itself. It may be Mountain-mangrove, which I have never seen in
flower: but take the glasses and decide. No. The flowers belong to a
liane. The “wonderful” Prince of Wales’ feather has taken possession
of the head of a huge Mombin, and tiled it all over with crimson combs
which crawl out to the ends of the branches, and dangle twenty or
thirty feet down, waving and leaping in the breeze. And all over blazes
the cloudless blue.
You gaze astounded. Ten steps downward, and the vision is gone. The
green cloud has closed again over your head, and you are stumbling in
the darkness of the bush, half blinded by the sudden change from the
blaze to the shade. Beware. “Take care of the Croc-chien!” shouts your
companion: and you are aware of, not a foot from your face, a long,
green, curved whip, armed with pairs of barbs some four inches apart;
and you are aware also, at the same moment, that another has seized you
by the arm, another by the knees, and that you must back out, unless
you are willing to part with your clothes, and your flesh afterwards.
You back out, and find that you have walked into the tips--luckily only
into the tips--of the fern-like fronds of a trailing and climbing palm
such as you see in the Botanic Gardens. That came from the East, and
furnishes the rattan-canes. This furnishes the gri-gri-canes, and is
rather worse to meet, if possible, than the rattan. Your companion,
while he helps you to pick the barbs out, calls the palm laughingly by
another name, “Suelta-mi-Ingles”; and tells you the old story of the
Spanish soldier at San Josef. You are near the water now; for here is
a thicket of Balisiers. Push through, under their great plantain-like
leaves. Slip down the muddy bank to that patch of gravel. See first,
though, that it is not tenanted already by a deadly Mapepire, or
rattlesnake, which has not the grace, as his cousin in North America
has, to use his rattle.
The brooklet, muddy with last night’s rain, is dammed and bridged by
winding roots, in the shape like the jointed wooden snakes which we
used to play with as children. They belong probably to a fig, whose
trunk is somewhere up in the green cloud. Sit down on one, and look,
around and aloft. From the soil to the sky, which peeps through here
and there, the air is packed with green leaves of every imaginable
hue and shape. Round our feet are Arums, with snow-white spadixes and
hoods, one instance among many here of brilliant colour developing
itself in deep shade. But is the darkness of the forest actually as
great as it seems? Or are our eyes, accustomed to the blaze outside,
unable to expand rapidly enough, and so liable to mistake for darkness
air really full of light reflected downwards, again and again, at every
angle, from the glossy surfaces of a million of leaves? At least we
may be excused; for a bat has made the same mistake, and flits past us
at noonday. And there is another--No; as it turns, a blaze of metallic
azure off the upper side of the wings proves this one to be no bat, but
a Morpho--a moth as big as a bat. And what was that second larger flash
of golden green, which dashed at the moth, and back to yonder branch
not ten feet off? A Jacamar--kingfisher, as they miscall her here,
sitting fearless of man, with the moth in her long beak. Her throat is
snowy white, her under-parts rich red brown. Her breast, and all her
upper plumage and long tail, glitter with golden green. There is light
enough in this darkness, it seems. But now look again at the plants.
Among the white-flowered Arums are other Arums, stalked and spotted, of
which beware; for they are the poisonous Seguine-diable, the dumb-cane,
of which evil tales were told in the days of slavery. A few drops of
its milk, put into the mouth of a refractory slave, or again into the
food of a cruel master, could cause swelling, choking, and burning
agony for many hours.
Over our heads bend the great arrow leaves and purple leaf-stalks of
the Tanias; and mingled with them, leaves often larger still: oval,
glossy, bright, ribbed, reflecting from their underside a silver light.
They belong to Arumas; and from their ribs are woven the Indian baskets
and packs. Above these, again, the Balisiers bend their long leaves,
eight or ten feet long apiece; and under the shade of the leaves their
gay flower-spikes, like double rows of orange and black-birds’ beaks
upside down. Above them, and among them, rise stiff upright shrubs,
with pairs of pointed leaves, a foot long some of them, pale green
above, and yellow or fawn-coloured beneath. You may see, by the three
longitudinal nerves in each leaf, that they are Melastomas of different
kinds--a sure token that you are in the Tropics--a probable token that
you are in Tropical America.
And over them, and among them, what a strange variety of foliage. Look
at the contrast between the Balisiers and that branch which has thrust
itself among them, which you take for a dark copper-coloured fern,
so finely divided are its glossy leaves. It is really a Mimosa-Bois
Mulâtre as they call it here. What a contrast again, the huge feathery
fronds of the Cocorite palms which stretch right away hither over our
heads, twenty and thirty feet in length. And what is that spot of
crimson flame hanging in the darkest spot of all from an under-bough
of that low weeping tree? A flower-head of the Rosa del Monte. And
what that bright straw-coloured fox’s brush above it, with a brown
hood like that of an Arum, brush and hood nigh three feet long each?
Look--for you require to look more than once, sometimes more than
twice--here, up the stem of that Cocorite, or as much of it as you can
see in the thicket. It is all jagged with the brown butts of its old
fallen leaves; and among the butts perch broad-leaved ferns, and fleshy
Orchids, and above them, just below the plume of mighty fronds, the
yellow fox’s brush, which is its spathe of flower.
What next? Above the Cocorites dangle, amid a dozen different kinds of
leaves, festoons of a liane, or of two, for one has purple flowers, the
other yellow--Bignonias, Bauhinias--what not? And through them a Carat
palm has thrust its thin bending stem, and spread out its flat head
of fan-shaped leaves twenty feet long each: while over it, I verily
believe, hangs eighty feet aloft the head of the very tree upon whose
roots we are sitting. For amid the green cloud you may see sprigs of
leaf somewhat like that of a weeping willow; and there, probably, is
the trunk to which they belong, or rather what will be a trunk at last.
At present it is like a number of round edged boards of every size,
set on end, and slowly coalescing at their edges. There is a slit down
the middle of the trunk, twenty or thirty feet long. You may see the
green light of the forest shining through it. Yes, that is probably the
fig; or, if not, then something else. For who am I, that I should know
the hundredth part of the forms on which we look?
And above all you catch a glimpse of that crimson mass of Norantea
which we admired just now; and, black as yew against the blue sky and
white cloud, the plumes of one Palmiste, who has climbed towards the
light, it may be for centuries, through the green cloud; and now, weary
and yet triumphant, rests her dark head among the bright foliage of a
Ceiba, and feeds unhindered on the sun.
There, take your tired eyes down again; and turn them right, or left,
or where you will, to see the same scene, and yet never the same. New
forms, new combinations; wealth of creative Genius--let us use the wise
old word in its true sense--incomprehensible by the human intellect
or the human eye, even as He is who makes it all, Whose garment, or
rather Whose speech, it is. The eye is not filled with seeing, or the
ear with hearing; and never would be, did you roam these forests for
a hundred years. How many years would you need merely to examine and
discriminate the different species? And when you had done that, how
many more to learn their action and reaction on each other? How many
more to learn their virtues, properties, uses? How many more to answer
that perhaps ever unanswerable question--How they exist and grow at
all? By what miracle they are compacted out of light, air, and water,
each after its kind. How, again, those kinds began to be, and what
they were like at first? Whether those crowded, struggling, competing
shapes are stable or variable? Whether or not they are varying still?
Whether even now, as we sit here, the great God may not be creating,
slowly but surely, new forms of beauty round us. Why not? If He chose
to do it, could He not do it? And even had you answered that question,
which would require whole centuries of observation as patient and
accurate as that which Mr. Darwin employed on Orchids and climbing
plants, how much nearer would you be to the deepest question of all--Do
these things exist, or only appear? Are they solid realities, or a mere
phantasmagoria, orderly indeed, and law-ruled, but a phantasmagoria
still; a picture-book by which God speaks to rational essences, created
in His own likeness? And even had you solved that old problem, and
decided for Berkeley or against him, you would still have to learn from
these forests a knowledge which enters into man not through the head,
but through the heart; which (let some modern philosophers say what
they will) defies all analysis, and can be no more defined or explained
by words than a mother’s love. I mean, the causes and effects of their
beauty; that “Æsthetic of plants,” of which Schleiden has spoken so
well in that charming book of his _The Plant_, which all should read
who wish to know somewhat of “The Open Secret.”
But when they read it, let them read with open hearts. For that same
“Open Secret” is, I suspect, one of those which God may hide from the
wise and prudent, and yet reveal to babes.
At least, so it seemed to me, the first day that I went, awe-struck,
into the High Woods; and so it seemed to me, the last day that I came,
even more awe-struck, out of them.
_At Last: a Christmas in the West Indies_ (London and New York, 1871).
THE YO-SEMITÉ VALLEY
(_UNITED STATES_)
C. F. GORDON-CUMMING
The valley can be approached from several different points. That by
which we entered is, I think, known as Inspiration Point. When we
started from Clarke’s Ranch, we were then at about the same level as
we are at this moment--namely, 4,000 feet above the sea. The road
gradually wound upwards through beautiful forest and by upland valleys,
where the snow still lay pure and white: and here and there, where
it had melted and exposed patches of dry earth, the red flame-like
blossoms of the snow-plant gleamed vividly.
It was slow work toiling up those steep ascents, and it must have taken
us much longer than our landlord had expected, for he had despatched us
without a morsel of luncheon; and ere we reached the half-way house,
where we were to change horses, we were all ravenous. A dozen hungry
people, with appetites sharpened by the keen, exhilarating mountain
air! No provisions of any sort were to be had; but the compassionate
horse-keeper, hearing our pitiful complaints, produced a loaf and a pot
of blackberry jelly, and we all sat down on a bank, and ate our “piece”
(as the bairns in Scotland would say) with infinite relish, and drank
from a clear stream close by. So we were satisfied with bread here in
the wilderness. I confess to many qualms as to how that good fellow
fared himself, as loaves cannot grow abundantly in those parts.
Once more we started on our toilsome way across mountain meadows and
forest ridges, till at last we had gained a height of about 7,000 feet
above the sea. Then suddenly we caught sight of the valley lying about
3,000 feet below us, an abrupt chasm in the great rolling expanse
of billowy granite ridges--or I should rather describe it as a vast
sunken pit, with perpendicular walls, and carpeted with a level meadow,
through which flows a river gleaming like quicksilver.
Here and there a vertical cloud of spray on the face of the huge crags
told where some snow-fed stream from the upper levels had found its way
to the brink of the chasm--a perpendicular fall of from 2,000 to 3,000
feet.
The fall nearest to where we stood, yet a distance of seven miles, was
pointed out as the Bridal Veil. It seemed a floating film of finest
mist, on which played the loveliest rainbow lights. For the sun was
already lowering behind us, though the light shown clear and bright on
the cold white granite crags, and on the glittering snow-peaks of the
high Sierras.
Each mighty precipice, and rock-needle, and strange granite dome was
pointed out to us by name as we halted on the summit of the pass ere
commencing the steep descent. The Bridal Veil falls over a granite
crag near the entrance of the valley, which, on the opposite side, is
guarded by a stupendous square-cut granite mass, projecting so far as
seemingly to block the way. These form the gateway of this wonderful
granite prison. Perhaps the great massive cliff rather suggests the
idea of a huge keep wherein the genii of the valley braved the siege of
the Ice-giants.
The Indians revere it as the great chief of the valley, but white
men only know it as El Capitan. If it must have a new title, I think
it should at least rank as a field-marshal in the rock-world, for
assuredly no other crag exists that can compare with it. Just try
to realize its dimensions: a massive face of smooth cream-coloured
granite, half a mile long, half a mile wide, three-fifths of a mile
high. Its actual height is 3,300 feet--(I think that 5,280 feet go to
a mile). Think of our beautiful Castle Rock in Edinburgh, with its 434
feet; or Dover Castle, 469 feet; or even Arthur’s Seat, 822 feet,--what
pigmies they would seem could some wizard transport them to the base of
this grand crag, on whose surface not a blade of grass, not a fern or a
lichen, finds holding ground, or presumes to tinge the bare, clean-cut
precipice, which, strange to tell, is clearly visible from the great
San Joaquin Valley, a distance of sixty miles!
Imagine a crag just the height of Snowdon, with a lovely snow-stream
falling perpendicularly from its summit to its base, and a second and
larger fall in the deep gorge where it meets the rock-wall of the
valley. The first is nameless, and will vanish with the snows; but the
second never dries up, even in summer. It is known to the Indians as
Lung-oo-too-koo-ya, which describes its graceful length; but white men
call it The Virgin’s Tears or The Ribbon Fall--a blending of millinery
and romance doubtless devised by the same genius who changed the Indian
name of Pohono to The Bridal Veil.
We passed close to the latter as we entered the valley--in fact, forded
the stream just below the fall--and agreed that if Pohono be in truth,
as the Indian legend tells, the spirit of an evil wind, it surely must
be repentant glorified spirit, for nothing so beautiful could be evil.
It is a sight to gladden the angels--a most ethereal fall, light as
steam, swaying with every breath.
It falls from an overhanging rock, and often the current produced by
its own rushing seems to pass beneath the rock, and so checks the whole
column, and carries it upward in a wreath of whitest vapour, blending
with the true clouds.
When the rainbow plays on it, it too seems to be wafted up, and floats
in a jewelled spray, wherein sapphires and diamonds and opals, topaz
and emeralds, all mingle their dazzling tints. At other times it
rushes down in a shower of fairy-like rockets in what appears to be a
perpendicular column 1,000 feet high, and loses itself in a cloud of
mist among the tall dark pines which clothe the base of the crag.
A very accurate gentleman has just assured me that it is not literally
perpendicular, as, after a leap of 630 feet, it strikes the rock, and
then makes a fresh start in a series of almost vertical cascades, which
form a dozen streamlets ere they reach the meadows. He adds that the
fall is about fifty feet wide at the summit.
The rock-mass over which it falls forms the other great granite portal
of the valley, not quite so imposing as its massive neighbour, but far
more shapely. In fact, it bears so strong a resemblance to a Gothic
building that it is called the Cathedral Rock. It is a cathedral for
the giants, being 2,660 feet in height; and two graceful rock-pinnacles
attached to the main rock, and known as the Cathedral Spires, are each
500 feet in height.
Beyond these, towers a truly imposing rock-needle, which has been well
named The Sentinel. It is an obelisk 1,000 feet in height, rising from
the great rock-wall, which forms a pedestal of 2,000 more.
As if to balance these three rock-needles on the right-hand side,
there are, on the left, three rounded mountains which the Indians call
Pompompasus--that is, the Leaping-Frog Rocks. They rise in steps,
forming a triple mountain 3,630 feet high. Tall frogs these, even for
California. Imaginative people say the resemblance is unmistakable, and
that all the frogs are poised as if in readiness for a spring, with
their heads all turned the same way. For my own part, I have a happy
knack of not seeing these accidental likenesses, and especially those
faces and pictures (generally grotesque) which some most aggravating
people are always discovering among the lines and weather-stains on
the solemn crags, and which they insist on pointing out to their
unfortunate companions. Our coachman seemed to consider this a
necessary part of his office, so I assume there must be some people who
like it.
Farther up the valley, two gigantic Domes of white granite are built
upon the foundation of the great encompassing wall. One stands on each
side of the valley. The North Dome is perfect, like the roof of some
vast mosque; but the South, or Half Dome, is an extraordinary freak of
nature, very puzzling to geologists, as literally half of a stupendous
mass of granite has disappeared, leaving no trace of its existence,
save a sheer precipitous rock-face, considerably over 4,000 feet in
height, from which the corresponding half has evidently broken off, and
slipped down into some fearful chasm, which apparently it has been the
means of filling up.
Above the Domes, and closing in the upper end of the valley, is a
beautiful snow mountain, called Cloud’s Rest, which, seen from afar, is
the most attractive point of all, and one which I must certainly visit
some day. But meanwhile there are nearer points of infinite interest,
the foremost being the waterfall from which the valley takes its name,
and which burst suddenly upon our amazed vision when we reached the
base of the Sentinel Rock.
It is so indescribably lovely that I altogether despair of conveying
any notion of it in words, so shall not try to do so yet a while.
[Illustration: THE YOSEMITÉ VALLEY.]
But from what I have told you, you must perceive that each step in
this strange valley affords a study for weeks, whether to an artist, a
geologist, or any other lover of beautiful and wonderful scenes; and
more than ever, I congratulate myself on having arrived here while
all the oaks, alders, willows, and other deciduous trees, are bare
and leafless, so that no curtain of dense foliage conceals the
countless beauties of the valley. Already I have seen innumerable most
beautiful views, scarcely veiled by the filmy network of twigs, but
which evidently will be altogether concealed a month hence, when these
have donned their summer dress. To me these leafless trees rank with
fires and snows. I have not seen one since I left England, so I look at
them with renewed interest, and delight in the beauty of their anatomy,
as you and I have done many a time in the larch woods and the “birken
braes” of the Findhorn (where the yellow twigs of the larch, and the
grey aspen, and claret-coloured sprays of birch, blend with russet oak
and green Scotch firs, and produce a winter colouring well-nigh as
varied as that of summer).
Here there is an enchanting reminder of home in the tall
poplar-trees--the Balm of Gilead--which are just bursting into leaf,
and fill the air with heavenly perfume. They grow in clumps all along
the course of the Merced, the beautiful “river of Mercy,” which flows
through this green level valley so peacefully, as if it was thankful
for this quiet interval in the course of its restless life.
There is no snow in the valley, but it still lies thickly on the
hills all round. Very soon it will melt, and then the falls will all
be in their glory, and the meadows will be flooded and the streams
impassable. I am glad we have arrived in time to wander about
dry-footed, and to learn the geography of the country in its normal
state.
The valley is an almost dead level, about eight miles long, and varies
in width from half a mile to two miles. It is like a beautiful park of
greenest sward, through which winds the clear, calm river--a capital
trout-stream, of about eighty feet in width. In every direction are
scattered picturesque groups of magnificent trees, noble old oaks,
and pines of 250 feet in height! The river is spanned by two wooden
bridges; and three neat hotels are well placed about the middle of the
valley, half a mile apart--happily not fine, incongruous buildings, but
wooden bungalows, well suited to the requirements of such pilgrims as
ourselves....
_May-day, 1877._
May-day! What a vision of langsyne! Of the May-dew we used to gather
from off the cowslips by the sweet burnside, in those dear old days
“When we all were young together,
And the earth was new to me.”
I dare say you forgot all about May-day this morning, in the prosaic
details of town life. But here we ran no such risk, for we had
determined to watch the Beltane sunrise, reflected in the glassiest of
mountain-tarns, known as the Mirror Lake; and as it lies about three
miles from here, in one of the upper forks of the valley, we had to
astir betimes.
So, when the stars began to pale in the eastern sky, we were astir,
and with the earliest ray of dawn set off like true pilgrims bound to
drink of some holy spring on May morning. For the first two miles our
path lay across quiet meadows, which as yet are only sprinkled with
blossom. We found no cowslips, but washed our faces in Californian
May-dew, which we brushed from the fresh young grass and ferns. Soon,
they tell me, there will be violets, cowslips, and primroses. We passed
by the orchard of the first settler in the valley; his peach and cherry
trees were laden with pink and white blossoms, his strawberry-beds
likewise promising an abundant crop.
It was a morning of calm beauty, and the massive grey crags all around
the valley lay “like sleeping kings” robed in purple gloom, while the
pale yellow light crept behind them, the tall pines forming a belt of
deeper hue round their base.
About two miles above the Great Yo-semité Falls, the valley divides
into three branches--canyons, I should say, or, more correctly cañons.
The central one is the main branch, through which the Merced itself
descends from the high Sierras, passing through the Little Yo-semité
Valley, and thence rushing down deep gorges, and leaping two precipices
of 700 and 400 feet (which form the Nevada and the Vernal Falls), and
so entering the Great Valley, where for eight miles it finds rest.
The canyon which diverges to the right is that down which rushes the
South Fork of the Merced, which bears the musical though modern name of
Illillouette. It rises at the base of Mount Starr King, and enters the
valley by the graceful falls which bear this pretty name.
At the point where we left the main valley to turn into the Tenaya
Fork, the rock-wall forms a sharp angle, ending in a huge columnar mass
of very white granite 2,400 feet in height. The Indians call it Hunto,
which means one who keeps watch; but the white men call it Washington
Column.
Beside it, the rock-wall has taken the form of gigantic arches. The
lower rock seems to have weakened and crumbled or split off in huge
flakes, while the upper portions remain, overhanging considerably, and
forming regularly arched cliffs 2,000 feet in height. I cannot think
how it has happened that in so republican a community these mighty
rocks should be known as the Royal Arches, unless from some covert
belief that they are undermined, and liable to topple over. Their
original name is To-coy-œ, which describes the arched hood of an Indian
baby’s cradle--a famous nursery for giants.
The perpendicular rock-face beneath the arches is a sheer, smooth
surface, yet seamed with deep cracks as though it would fall, were it
not for the mighty buttresses of solid rock which project for some
distance, casting deep shadows across the cliff. As a test of size, I
noticed a tiny pine growing from a crevice in the rock-face, and on
comparing it with another in a more accessible position, I found that
it was really a very large, well-grown tree.
Just at this season, when the snows on the Sierras are beginning to
melt, a thousand crystal streams find temporary channels along the high
levels till they reach the smooth verge of the crags, and thence leap
in white foam, forming temporary falls of exceeding beauty. Three such
graceful falls at present overleap the mighty arches, and, in their
turn, produce pools and exquisitely clear streams, which thread their
devious way through woods and meadows, seeking the river of Mercy.
So the air is musical with the lullaby of hidden waters, and the murmur
of the unseen river rippling over its pebbly bed.
Turning to the right, we next ascended Tenaya valley, which is
beautifully wooded, chiefly with pine and oak, and strewn with the
loveliest mossy boulders. Unfortunately, the number of rattlesnakes
is rather a drawback to perfect enjoyment here. I have so long been
accustomed to our perfect immunity from all manner of noxious creatures
in the blessed South Sea Isles, that I find it difficult at first to
recall my wonted caution, and to “gang warily.” However, to-day we saw
no evil creatures--only a multitude of the jolliest little chip-munks,
which are small grey squirrels of extreme activity. They are very tame,
and dance about the trees close to us, jerking their brush, and giving
the funniest little skips, and sometimes fairly chattering to us!
Beyond this wood we found the Mirror Lake. It is a small pool, but
exquisitely cradled in the very midst of stern granite giants, which
stand all around as sentinels, guarding its placid sleep. Willows,
already covered with downy tufts, and now just bursting into slender
leaflets, fringe its shores, and tall cedars and pines overshadow its
waters, and are therein reflected in the stillness of early dawn, when
even the granite crags far overhead also find themselves mirrored in
the calm lakelet. But with the dawn comes a whispering breeze; and just
as the sun’s first gleam kisses the waters, the illusion vanishes, and
there remains only a somewhat muddy and troubled pool.
It lies just at the base of that extraordinary Half-Dome of which I
told you yesterday--a gigantic crest of granite, which rises above
the lake almost precipitously to a height of 4,737 feet. Only think
of it!--nearly a mile! Of this the upper 2,000 feet is a sheer face
of granite crag, absolutely vertical, except that the extreme summit
actually projects somewhat; otherwise it is as clean cut as if the
mighty Dome had been cloven with a sword. A few dark streaks near
the summit (due, I believe, to a microscopic fungus or lichen) alone
relieve the unbroken expanse of glistening, creamy white.
The lower half slopes at a very slight incline, and is likewise a solid
mass of granite--not made up of broken fragments, of which there are a
wonderfully small proportion anywhere in the valley. So the inference
is, that in the tremendous convulsion this mighty chasm was created,
the great South Dome was split from the base to the summit, and that
half of it slid down into the yawning gulf: thus the gently rounded
base, between the precipice and the lake, was doubtless originally the
summit of the missing half mountain.
I believe that geologists are now satisfied that this strange valley,
with its clean-cut, vertical walls, was produced by what is called in
geology “a fault,”--namely, that some of the earth’s ribs having given
away internally, a portion of the outer crust has subsided, leaving an
unoccupied space. That such was the case in Yo-semité, is proved by
much scientific reasoning. It is shown that the two sides of the valley
in no way correspond, so the idea of a mere gigantic fissure cannot
be entertained. Besides, as the valley is as wide at the base as at
the summit, the vertical walls must have moved apart bodily,--a theory
which would involve a movement of the whole chain of the Sierras for a
distance of a half a mile.
There is not trace of any glacier having passed through the valley, so
that the Ice-giants have had no share in making it. Neither can it have
been excavated by the long-continued action of rushing torrents, such
as have carved great canyons in many parts of the Sierra Nevada. These
never have vertical walls; and besides, the smoothest faces of granite
in Yo-semité are turned towards the lower end of the valley, proving at
once that they were never produced by forces moving downward.
So it is simply supposed that a strip of the Sierras caved in, and
that in time the melting snows and streams formed a great deep lake,
which filled up the whole space now occupied by the valley. In the
course of ages the _débris_ of the hills continually falling into the
lake, must have filled up the chasm to a level with the canyon, which
is the present outlet from the valley; and as the glaciers on the
upper Sierras disappeared, and the water-supply grew less, the lake
must have gradually dried up (and that in comparatively recent times),
and its bed of white granite sand, mingled with vegetable mould, was
transformed into a green meadow, through which the quiet river now
glides peacefully.
This evening the sun set in a flood of crimson and gold--such a
glorious glow as would have dazzled an eagle. It paled to a soft
primrose, then ethereal green. Later, the pearly-grey clouds were
rose-flushed by an afterglow more vivid than the sunset itself--a rich
full carmine, which quickly faded away to the cold, intense blue of a
Californian night. It was inexpressibly lovely.
Then the fitful wind rose in gusts--a melancholy, moaning wail,
vibrating among rocks, forests, and waters, with a low, surging
sound--a wild mountain melody.
No wonder the Indians reverence the beautiful Yo-semité Falls. Even the
white settlers in the valley cannot resist their influence, but speak
of them with an admiration that amounts to love. Some of them have
spent the winter here, and seem almost to have enjoyed it.
They say that if I could see the falls in their winter robes, all
fringed with icicles, I should gain a glimpse of fairyland. At the base
of the great fall the fairies build a real ice-palace, something more
than a hundred feet high. It is formed by the ever falling, freezing
spray; and the bright sun gleams on this glittering palace of crystal,
and the falling water, striking upon it, shoots off in showers like
myriad opals and diamonds.
Now scarcely an icicle remains, and the falls are in their glory. I had
never dreamt of anything so lovely.... Here we stand in the glorious
sunlight, among pine-trees a couple of hundred feet in height; and
they are pigmies like ourselves in presence of even the lowest step of
the stately fall, which leaps and dashes from so vast a height that it
loses all semblance of water. It is a splendid bouquet of glistening
rockets, which, instead of rushing heavenward, shoot down as if from
the blue canopy, which seems to touch the brink nearly 2,700 feet above
us.
Like myriad falling stars they flash, each keeping its separate course
for several hundred feet, till at length it blends with ten thousand
more, in the grand avalanche of frothy, fleecy foam, which for ever and
for ever falls, boiling and raging like a whirlpool, among the huge
black boulders in the deep cauldron below, and throwing back clouds of
mist and vapour.
The most exquisite moment occurs when you reach some spot where the
sun’s rays, streaming past you, transform the light vapour into
brilliant rainbow-prisms, which gird the falls with vivid iris-bars. As
the water-rockets flash through these radiant belts, they seem to carry
the colour onwards as they fall; and sometimes it wavers and trembles
in the breeze, so that the rainbow knows not where to rest, but forms a
moving column of radiant tri-colour.
So large a body of water rushing through the air, naturally produces
a strong current, which, passing between the face of the rock and the
fall, carries the latter well forward, so that it becomes the sport of
every breeze that dances through the valley; hence this great column is
forever vibrating from side to side, and often it forms a semi-circular
curve.
The width of the stream at the summit is about twenty to thirty feet,
but at the base of the upper fall it has expanded to a width of fully
300 feet; and, as the wind carries it to one side or the other, it
plays over a space of fully 1,000 feet in width, of a precipitous
rock-face 1,600 feet in depth. That is the height of the upper fall.
As seen from below the Yo-semité, though divided into three distinct
falls, is apparently all on one plane. It is only when you reach
some point from which you see it sideways, that you realize that the
great upper fall lies fully a quarter of a mile farther back than the
middle and lower falls, and that it rushes down this space in boiling
cascades, till it reaches a perpendicular rock, over which it leaps
about 600 feet, and then gives a third and final plunge of about 500,
making up a total of little under 2,700 feet.
When we came to the head of the valley, whence diverge the three rocky
canyons, we bade adieu to the green meadows, and passing up a most
exquisite gorge, crossed the Illillouette by a wooden bridge, and
followed the main fork of the Merced, up the central canyon. I do not
anywhere know a lovelier mile of river scenery than on this tumultuous
rushing stream, leaping from rock to rock, sweeping around mossy
boulders and falling in crystalline cascades--the whole fringed with
glittering icicles, and overshadowed by tall pine-trees, whose feathery
branches fringe the steep cliffs and wave in the breeze.
Presently a louder roar of falling water told us that we were nearing
the Vernal Falls, and through a frame of dark pines we caught a glimpse
of the white spirit-like spray-cloud. Tying up my pony, we crept to
the foot of the falls, whence a steep flight of wooden steps has been
constructed, by which a pedestrian can ascend about 400 feet to the
summit, and thence resume his way, thus saving a very long round. But
of course four-footed creatures must be content to go by the mountain;
and so the pony settled our route, greatly to our advantage, for the
view thence, looking down the canyon and across to Glacier Point,
proved to be about the finest thing we had seen, as an effect of
mountain gloom.
Just above the Vernal Falls comes a reach of the river known as The
Diamond Race,--a stream so rapid and so glittering, that it seems like
a shower of sparkling crystals, each drop a separate gem. I have never
seen a race which, for speed and dazzling light, could compare with
these musical, glancing waters.
For half a mile above it, the river is a tumultuous raging flood,
rushing at headlong speed down a boulder-strewn channel. At the most
beautiful point it is crossed by a light wooden bridge; and on the
green mountain-meadow just beyond, stands the wooden house, to which a
kindly landlord gave us a cheery, hearty welcome.
Here the lullaby for the weary is the ceaseless roar of the mighty
Nevada Falls, which come thundering down the cliffs in a sheer leap
of 700 feet, losing themselves in a deep rock-pool, fringed with
tall pines, which loom ghostly and solemn through the ever-floating
tremulous mists of fine spray.
It is a fall so beautiful as fairly to divide one’s allegiance to
Yo-semité, especially as we first beheld it at about three in the
afternoon, when the western rays of the lowering sun lighted up
the dark firs with a golden glow, and dim rainbows played on the
spray-clouds. It was as if fairy weavers had woven borders of purple
and blue, green and gold, orange and delicate rose-colour, on a tissue
of silvery gauze; and each dewy drop that rested on the fir-needles
caught the glorious light, and became a separate prism, as though the
trees were sprinkled with liquid radiant gems.
Anything more wonderful than the beauty of the Diamond Race in the
evening light, I never dreamt of. It is like a river in a fairy tale,
all turned to spray--jewelled, glittering spray--rubies, diamonds, and
emeralds, all dancing and glancing in the sunlight.
Just below this comes a little reach of the smoothest, clearest water,
which seems to calm and collect itself ere gliding over the edge of a
great square-hewn mass of granite 400 feet deep, forming the Vernal
Falls. Along the summit of this rock there runs a very remarkable
natural ledge about four feet in height, so exactly like the stone
parapet of a cyclopean rampart that it is scarcely possible to believe
it is not artificial. Here you can lean safely within a few feet of the
fall, looking straight down the perpendicular crag. But for this ledge,
it would be dangerous even to set foot on that smooth, polished rock,
which is as slippery as ice.
Early rising here is really no exertion, and it brings its own reward,
for there is an indescribable charm in the early gloaming as it steals
over the Sierras--a freshness and an exquisite purity of atmosphere
which thrills through one’s being like a breath of the life celestial.
If you would enjoy it to perfection, you must steal out alone ere the
glory of the starlight has paled,--as I did this morning, following a
devious pathway between thickets of azalea, whose heavenly fragrance
perfumed the valley. Then, ascending a steep track through the
pine-forest, I reached a bald grey crag, commanding a glorious view of
the valley, and of some of the high peaks beyond. And thence I watched
the coming of the dawn.
A pale daffodil light crept upward, and the stars faded from heaven.
Then the great ghostly granite domes changed from deep purple to a
cold dead white, and the far-distant snow-capped peaks stood out in
a glittering light, while silvery-grey mists floated upward from the
canyons, as if awakening from their sleep. Here, just as in our own
Highlands, a faint chill breath of some cold current invariably heralds
the daybreak, and the tremulous leaves quiver, and whisper a greeting
to the dawn.
Suddenly a faint flush of rosy light just tinged the highest
snow-peaks, and, gradually stealing downward, overspread range beyond
range; another moment, and the granite domes and the great Rock
Sentinel alike blazed in the fiery glow, which deepened in colour till
all the higher crags seemed aflame, while the valley still lay shrouded
in purple gloom, and a great and solemn stillness brooded over all.
_Granite Crags_ (Edinburgh and London, 1884).
THE GOLDEN HORN
(_TURKEY_)
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
The land breeze begins to rise, and we make use of it to approach
nearer and nearer to the Dardanelles. Already several large ships,
which like us are trying to make this difficult entrance, come near us;
their large grey sails, like the wings of night-birds, glide silently
between our brig and Tenedos; I go down below and fall asleep.
Break of day: I hear the rapid sailing of vessels and the little
morning waves that sound around the sides of the brig like the song of
birds; I open the port-hole, and I see on a chain of low and rounded
hills the castles of the Dardanelles with their white walls, their
towers, and their immense mouths for the cannon; the canal is scarcely
more than a league in width at this place; it winds, like a beautiful
river, between the exactly similar coasts of Asia and Europe. The
castles shut in this sea just like the two wings of a door; but in the
present condition of Turkey and Europe, it would be easy to force a
passage by sea, or to make a landing and take the forts from the rear;
the passage of the Dardanelles is not impregnable unless guarded by the
Russians.
The rapid current carries us on like an arrow before Gallipoli and the
villages bordering the canal; we see the isles in the Sea of Marmora
frowning before us; we follow the coast of Europe for two days and
two nights, thwarted by the north winds. In the morning we perceive
perfectly the isles of the princes, in the Sea of Marmora, and the
Gulf of Nicæa, and on our left the castle of the Seven Towers, and the
aërial tops of the innumerable minarets of Stamboul, in front of the
seven hills of Constantinople. At each tack, we discover something new.
At the first view of Constantinople, I experienced a painful emotion of
surprise and disillusion. “What! is this,” I asked myself, “the sea,
the shore, and the marvellous city for which the masters of the world
abandoned Rome and the coast of Naples? Is this that capital of the
universe, seated upon Europe and Asia; for which all the conquering
nations disputed by turns as the sign of the supremacy of the world? Is
this the city that painters and poets imagine queen of cities seated
upon her hills and her twin seas; enclosed by her gulfs, her towers,
her mountains, and containing all the treasures of nature and the
luxury of the Orient?” It is here that one makes comparison with the
Bay of Naples bearing its white city upon its hollowed bosom like a
vast amphitheatre; with Vesuvius losing its golden brow in the clouds
of smoke and purple lights, the forest of Castellamare plunging its
black foliage into the blue sea, and the islands of Procida and Ischia
with their volcanic peaks yellow with vine-branches and white with
villas, shutting in the immense bay like gigantic moles thrown up by
God himself at the entrance of this port? I see nothing here to compare
to that spectacle with which my eyes are always enchanted; I am
sailing, it is true, upon a beautiful and lovely sea, but from the low
coasts, rounded and monotonous hills rear themselves; it is true that
the snows of Olympus of Thrace whiten the horizon, but they are only a
white cloud in the sky and do not make the landscape solemn enough. At
the back of the gulf I see nothing but the same rounded hills of the
same height without rocks, without coves, without indentations, and
Constantinople, which the pilot points out with his finger, is nothing
but a white and circumscribed city upon a large knoll on the European
coast. Is it worth while having come so far to be disenchanted? I did
not wish to look at it any longer; however, the ceaseless tackings of
the ship brought us sensibly nearer; we coasted along the castle of the
Seven Towers, an immense mediæval grey block, severe in construction,
which faces the sea at the angle of the Greek walls of the ancient
Byzantium, and we came to anchor beneath the houses of Stamboul in the
Sea of Marmora, in the midst of a host of ships and boats delayed like
ourselves from port by the violence of the north winds. It was five
o’clock, the sky was serene and the sun brilliant; I began to recover
from my disdain of Constantinople; the walls that enclosed this portion
of the city picturesquely built of the _débris_ of ancient walls and
surmounted by gardens, kiosks and little houses of wood painted red,
formed the foreground of the picture; above, the terraces of numerous
houses rose in pyramid-like tiers, story upon story, cut across with
the tops of orange-trees and the sharp, black spires of cypress;
higher still, seven or eight large mosques crowned the hill, and,
flanked by their open-work minarets and their mauresque colonnades,
lifted into the sky their gilded domes, flaming with the palpitating
sunlight; the walls, painted with tender blue, the leaden covers of
the cupolas that encircled them, gave them the appearance and the
transparent glaze of monuments of porcelain. The immemorial cypresses
lend to these domes their motionless and sombre peaks; and the various
tints of the painted houses of the city make the vast hill gay with
all the colours of a flower-garden. No noise issues from the streets;
no lattice of the innumerable windows opens; no movement disturbs
the habitation of such a great multitude of men: everything seems to
be sleeping under the broiling sunlight; the gulf, furrowed in every
direction with sails of all forms and sizes, alone gives signs of life.
Every moment we see vessels in full sail clear the Golden Horn (the
opening of the Bosphorus), the true harbour of Constantinople, passing
by us flying towards the Dardanelles; but we can not perceive the
entrance of the Bosphorus, nor even understand its position. We dine
on the deck opposite this magical spectacle; Turkish _caïques_ come to
question us and to bring us provisions and food; the boatmen tell us
that there is no longer any plague; I send my letters to the city; at
seven o’clock, M. Truqui, the consul-general of Sardaigne, accompanied
by officers of his legation, comes to pay us a visit and offer us the
hospitality of his house in Pera; there is not the slightest hope of
finding a lodging in the recently burned city; the obliging cordiality,
and the attraction that M. Truqui inspires at the first moment,
induces us to accept. The contrary wind still blows, and the brigs
cannot raise anchor this evening: we sleep on board.
[Illustration: THE GOLDEN HORN.]
At five o’clock I am standing on the deck; the captain lowers a boat; I
descend with him, and we set sail towards the mouth of the Bosphorus,
coasting along the walls of Constantinople, which the sea washes. After
half an hour’s navigation through a multitude of ships at anchor, we
reach the walls of the Seraglio, which stand next to those of the city,
and form, at the extremity of the hill that bears Stamboul, the angle
that separates the Sea of Marmora from the canal of the Bosphorus and
the Golden Horn, or the grand inner roadstead of Constantinople. It
is here that God and man, nature and art, have placed, or created,
in concert the most marvellous view that human eyes may contemplate
upon the earth. I gave an involuntary cry, and I forgot for ever the
Bay of Naples and all its enchantments; to compare anything to this
magnificent and gracious combination would be to insult creation.
The walls supporting the circular terraces of the immense gardens of
the great Seraglio were a few feet from us to our left, separated from
the sea by a narrow sidewalk of stone flags washed by the ceaseless
billows, where the perpetual current of the Bosphorus formed little
murmuring waves, as blue as those of the Rhône at Geneva; these
terraces that rise in gentle inclines up to the Sultan’s palace,
where you perceive the gilded domes across the gigantic tops of the
plantain-trees and the cypresses, are themselves planted with enormous
cypresses and plantains whose trunks dominate the walls and whose
boughs, spreading beyond the garden, hang over the sea in cascades of
foliage shadowing the _caïques_; the rowers stop from time to time
beneath their shade; every now and then these groups of trees are
interrupted by palaces, pavilions, kiosks, doors sculptured and gilded
opening upon the sea, or batteries of cannon of copper and bronze in
ancient and peculiar shapes.
Several pulls of the oar brought us to the precise point of the Golden
Horn where you enjoy at once a view of the Bosphorus, the Sea of
Marmora, and, finally, of the entire harbour, or, rather, the inland
sea of Constantinople; there we forgot Marmora, the coast of Asia, and
the Bosphorus, taking in with one glance the basin of the Golden Horn
and the seven cities seated upon the seven hills of Constantinople,
all converging towards the arm of the sea that forms the unique and
incomparable city, that is at the same time city, country, sea,
harbour, bank of flowers, gardens, wooded mountains, deep valleys,
an ocean of houses, a swarm of ships and streets, tranquil lakes,
and enchanted solitudes,--a view that no brush can render except by
details, and where each stroke of the oar gives the eye and soul
contradictory aspects and impressions.
We set sail towards the hills of Galata and Pera; the Seraglio receded
from us and grew larger in receding in proportion as the eye embraced
more and more the vast outlines of its walls and the multitude of
its roofs, its trees, its kiosks and its palaces. Of itself it is
sufficient to constitute a large city. The harbour hollows itself out
more and more before us; it winds like a canal between the flanks of
the curved mountains, and increases as we advance. The harbour does
not resemble a harbour in the least; it is rather a large river like
the Thames, enclosing the two coasts of the hills laden with towns,
and covered from one bank to the other with an interminable flotilla
of ships variously grouped the entire length of the houses. We pass by
this innumerable multitude of boats, some riding at anchor and some
about to set sail, sailing before the wind towards the Bosphorus,
towards the Black Sea, or towards the Sea of Marmora; boats of all
shapes and sizes and flags, from the Arabian barque, whose prow springs
and rises like the beak of antique galleys, to the vessel of three
decks with its glittering walls of bronze. Some flocks of Turkish
_caïques_, managed by one or two rowers in silken sleeves, little boats
that serve as carriages in the maritime streets of this amphibious
town, circulate between the large masses, cross and knock against each
other without overturning, and jostle one another like a crowd in
public places; and clouds of gulls, like beautiful white pigeons, rise
from the sea at their approach, to travel further away and be rocked
upon the waves. I did not try to count the vessels, the ships, the
brigs, the boats of all kinds and the barks that slept or travelled
in the harbour of Constantinople, from the mouth of the Bosphorus and
the point of the Seraglio to Eyoub and the delicious valleys of sweet
waters. The Thames at London offers nothing in comparison. It will
suffice to say that independently of the Turkish flotilla and the
European men-of-war at anchor in the centre of the canal, the two
sides of the Golden Horn are covered two or three vessels deep for
about a mile in length. We could only see the ocean by looking between
the file of prows and our glance lost itself at the back of the gulf
which contracted and ran into the shore amid a veritable forest of
masts.
I have just been strolling along the Asian shore on my return this
evening to Constantinople, and I find it a thousand times more
beautiful than the European shore. The Asian shore owes almost nothing
to man; everything here has been accomplished by nature. Here there is
no Buyukdere, no Therapia, no palace of ambassadors, and no town of
Armenians or Franks; there are only mountains, gorges that separate
them, little valleys carpeted with meadows that seem to dig themselves
out of the rocks, rivulets that wind about them, cascades that whiten
them with their foam, forests that hang to their flanks, glide into
their ravines, and descend to the very edges of the innumerable coast
gulfs; a variety of forms and tints, and of leafy verdure, which the
brush of a landscape-painter could not even hope to suggest. Some
isolated houses of sailors or Turkish gardeners are scattered at great
distances on the shore, or thrown on the foreground of a wooded hill,
or grouped upon the point of rocks where the current carries you,
and breaks into waves as blue as the night sky; some white sails of
fishermen, who creep along the deep coves, which you see glide from
one plane-tree to another, like linen that the washerwomen fold;
innumerable flights of white birds that dry themselves on the edge of
the meadows; eagles that hover among the heights of the mountains near
the sea; mysterious creeks entirely shut in between rocks and trunks of
gigantic trees, whose boughs, overcharged with leaves, bend over the
waves and form upon the sea cradles wherein the _caïques_ creep. One or
two villages hidden in the shadow of these creeks with their gardens
behind them on those green slopes, and their group of trees at the foot
of the rocks, with their barks rocked by the gentle waves before their
doors, their clouds of doves on the roofs, their women and children at
the windows, their old men seated beneath the plane-trees at the foot
of the minaret; labourers returning from the fields in their _caïques_;
others who have filled their barks with green faggots, myrtle, or
flowering heath to dry it for fuel in the winter; hidden behind these
heaps of slanting verdure that border and descend into the water, you
perceive neither the bark nor the rower, and you believe that a portion
of the bank detached from the earth by the current is floating at
haphazard on the sea with its green foliage and its perfumed flowers.
The shore presents this same appearance as far as the castle of Mahomet
II., which from this coast also seems to shut in the Bosphorus like a
Swiss lake; there, it changes its character; the hills, less rugged,
sink their flanks and more gently hollow into narrow valleys; the
Asiatic villages extend more richly and nearer together; the Sweet
Waters of Asia, a charming little plain shadowed by trees and sown with
kiosks and Moorish fountains opens out to the vision.
Beyond the palace of Beglierby, the Asian coast again becomes wooded
and solitary as far as Scutari, which is as brilliant as a garden
of roses, at the extremity of a cape at the entrance of the Sea of
Marmora. Opposite, the verdant point of the Seraglio presents itself
to the eye; and between the European coast, crowned with its three
painted towns, and the coast of Stamboul, all glittering with its
cupolas and minarets, opens the immense port of Constantinople, where
the ships anchored at the two banks leave only one large water-way
for the _caïques_. I glide through this labyrinth of buildings, as
in a Venetian gondola under the shadow of palaces, and I land at the
_échelle des Morts_, under an avenue of cypresses.
_Voyage en Orient_ (Paris, 1843).
THE YELLOWSTONE[13]
(_UNITED STATES_)
RUDYARD KIPLING
“That desolate land and lone
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
Roar down their mountain path.”
Twice have I written this letter from end to end. Twice have I torn it
up, fearing lest those across the water should say that I had gone mad
on a sudden. Now we will begin for the third time quite solemnly and
soberly. I have been through the Yellowstone National Park in a buggy,
in the company of an adventurous old lady from Chicago and her husband,
who disapproved of scenery as being “ongodly.” I fancy it scared them.
[Illustration: COATING SPRINGS, YELLOWSTONE.]
We began, as you know, with the Mammoth Hot Springs. They are only
a gigantic edition of those pink and white terraces not long ago
destroyed by earthquake in New Zealand. At one end of the little valley
in which the hotel stands the lime-laden springs that break from
the pine-covered hillsides have formed a frozen cataract of white,
lemon, and palest pink formations, through and over and in which
water of the warmest bubbles and drips and trickles from pale-green
lagoon to exquisitely fretted basin. The ground rings hollow as a
kerosene-tin, and some day the Mammoth Hotel, guests and all, will sink
into the caverns below and be turned into a stalactite. When I set
foot on the first of the terraces, a tourist-trampled ramp of scabby
grey stuff, I met a steam of iron-red hot water, which ducked into a
hole like a rabbit. Followed a gentle chuckle of laughter, and then
a deep, exhausted sigh from nowhere in particular. Fifty feet above
my head a jet of steam rose up and died out in the blue. It was worse
than the boiling mountain at Myanoshita. The dirty white deposit gave
place to lime whiter than snow; and I found a basin which some learned
hotel-keeper has christened Cleopatra’s pitcher, or Mark Antony’s
whisky-jug, or something equally poetical. It was made of frosted
silver; it was filled with water as clear as the sky. I do not know the
depth of that wonder. The eye looked down beyond grottoes and caves of
beryl into an abyss that communicated directly with the central fires
of earth. And the pool was in pain, so that it could not refrain from
talking about it; muttering and chattering and moaning. From the lips
of the lime-ledges, forty feet under water, spurts of silver bubbles
would fly up and break the peace of the crystal atop. Then the whole
pool would shake and grow dim, and there were noises. I removed myself
only to find other pools all equally unhappy, rifts in the ground, full
of running red-hot water, slippery sheets of deposit overlaid with
greenish grey hot water, and here and there pit-holes dry as a rifled
tomb in India, dusty and waterless. Elsewhere the infernal waters had
first boiled dead and then embalmed the palms and underwood, or the
forest trees had taken heart and smothered up a blind formation with
greenery, so that it was only by scraping the earth you could tell what
fires had raged beneath. Yet the pines will win the battle in years
to come, because Nature, who first forges all her work in her great
smithies, has nearly finished this job, and is ready to temper it in
the soft brown earth. The fires are dying down; the hotel is built
where terraces have overflowed into flat wastes of deposit; the pines
have taken possession of the high ground whence the terraces first
started. Only the actual curve of the cataract stands clear, and it is
guarded by soldiers who patrol it with loaded six-shooters, in order
that the tourist may not bring up fence-rails and sink them in a pool,
or chip the fretted tracery of the formations with a geological hammer,
or, walking where the crust is too thin, foolishly cook himself....
Next dawning, entering a buggy of fragile construction, with the
old people from Chicago, I embarked on my perilous career. We ran
straight up a mountain till we could see sixty miles away, the white
houses of Cook City on another mountain, and the whiplash-like trail
leading thereto. The live air made me drunk. If Tom, the driver, had
proposed to send the mares in a bee-line to the city, I should have
assented, and so would the old lady, who chewed gum and talked about
her symptoms. The tub-ended rock-dog, which is but the translated
prairie-dog, broke across the road under our horses’ feet, the rabbit
and the chipmunk danced with fright; we heard the roar of the river,
and the road went round a corner. On one side piled rock and shale,
that enjoined silence for fear of a general slide-down; on the other
a sheer drop, and a fool of a noisy river below. Then, apparently
in the middle of the road, lest any should find driving too easy, a
post of rock. Nothing beyond that save the flank of a cliff. Then my
stomach departed from me, as it does when you swing, for we left the
dirt, which was at least some guarantee of safety, and sailed out round
the curve, and up a steep incline, on a plank-road built out from the
cliff. The planks were nailed at the outer edge, and did not shift
or creak very much--but enough, quite enough. That was the Golden
Gate. I got my stomach back again when we trotted out on to a vast
upland adorned with a lake and hills. Have you ever seen an untouched
land--the face of virgin Nature? It is rather a curious sight, because
the hills are choked with timber that has never known an axe, and the
storm has rent a way through this timber, so that a hundred thousand
trees lie matted together in swathes; and since each tree lies where it
falls, you may behold trunk and branch returning to the earth whence
they sprang--exactly as the body of man returns--each limb making its
own little grave, the grass climbing above the bark, till at last there
remains only the outline of a tree upon the rank undergrowth.
Then we drove under a cliff of obsidian, which is black glass, some two
hundred feet high; and the road at its foot was made of black glass
that crackled. This was no great matter, because half an hour before
Tom had pulled up in the woods that we might sufficiently admire a
mountain who stood all by himself, shaking with laughter or rage....
Then by companies after tiffin we walked chattering to the uplands of
Hell. They call it the Norris Geyser Basin on Earth. It was as though
the tide of dissolution had gone out, but would presently return,
across innumerable acres of dazzling white geyser formation. There
were no terraces here, but all other horrors. Not ten yards from the
road a blast of steam shot up roaring every few seconds, a mud volcano
spat filth to Heaven, streams of hot water rumbled under foot, plunged
through the dead pines in steaming cataracts and died on a waste of
white where green-grey, black-yellow, and link pools roared, shouted,
bubbled, or hissed as their wicked fancies prompted. By the look of the
eye the place should have been frozen over. By the feel of the feet it
was warm. I ventured out among the pools, carefully following tracks,
but one unwary foot began to sink, a squirt of water followed, and
having no desire to descend quick into Tophet I returned to the shore
where the mud and the sulphur and the nameless fat ooze-vegetation of
Lethe lay. But the very road rang as though built over a gulf; and
besides how was I to tell when the raving blast of steam would find
its vent insufficient and blow the whole affair into Nirvana? There
was a potent stench of stale eggs everywhere, and crystals of sulphur
crumbled under the foot, and the glare of the sun on the white stuff
was blinding....
We curved the hill and entered a forest of spruce, the path
serpentining between the tree-boles, the wheels running silent on
immemorial mould. There was nothing alive in the forest save ourselves.
Only a river was speaking angrily somewhere to the right. For miles we
drove till Tom bade us alight and look at certain falls. Wherefore we
stepped out of that forest and nearly fell down a cliff which guarded a
tumbled river and returned demanding fresh miracles. If the water had
run uphill, we should perhaps have taken more notice of it; but ’twas
only a waterfall, and I really forget whether the water was warm or
cold. There is a stream here called Firehole River. It is fed by the
overflow from the various geysers and basins,--a warm and deadly river
wherein no fish breed. I think we crossed it a few dozen times in the
course of the day.
Then the sun began to sink, and there was a taste of frost about, and
we went swiftly from the forest into the open, dashed across a branch
of the Firehole River and found a wood shanty, even rougher than the
last, at which, after a forty mile drive, we were to dine and sleep.
Half a mile from this place stood, on the banks of the Firehole River
a “beaver-lodge,” and there were rumours of bears and other cheerful
monsters in the woods on the hill at the back of the building....
Once upon a time there was a carter who brought his team and a friend
into the Yellowstone Park without due thought. Presently they came upon
a few of the natural beauties of the place, and that carter turned his
friend’s team, howling: “Get back o’ this, Tim. All Hell’s alight under
our noses.” And they call the place Hell’s Half-acre to this day. We,
too, the old lady from Chicago, her husband, Tom, and the good little
mares came to Hell’s Half-acre, which is about sixty acres, and when
Tom said: “Would you like to drive over it?” we said: “Certainly no,
and if you do, we shall report you to the authorities.” There was a
plain, blistered and puled and abominable, and it was given over to
the sportings and spoutings of devils who threw mud and steam and dirt
at each other with whoops and halloos and bellowing curses. The place
smelt of the refuse of the Pit, and that odour mixed with the clean,
wholesome aroma of the pines in our nostrils throughout the day. Be
it known that the Park is laid out, like Ollendorf, in exercises of
progressive difficulty. Hell’s Half-acre was a prelude to ten or twelve
miles of geyser formation. We passed hot streams boiling in the forest;
saw whiffs of steam beyond these, and yet other whiffs breaking through
the misty green hills in the far distance; we trampled on sulphur, and
sniffed things much worse than any sulphur which is known to the upper
world; and so came upon a park-like place where Tom suggested we should
get out and play with the geysers.
Imagine mighty green fields splattered with lime beds: all the flowers
of the summer growing up to the very edge of the lime. That was the
first glimpse of the geyser basins. The buggy had pulled up close to
a rough, broken, blistered cone of stuff between ten and twenty feet
high. There was trouble in that place--moaning, splashing, gurgling,
and the clank of machinery. A spurt of boiling water jumped into the
air and a wash of water followed. I removed swiftly. The old lady from
Chicago shrieked. “What a wicked waste!” said her husband. I think
they call it the Riverside Geyser. Its spout was torn and ragged like
the mouth of a gun when a shell has burst there. It grumbled madly for
a moment or two and then was still. I crept over the steaming lime--it
was the burning marl on which Satan lay--and looked fearfully down its
mouth. You should never look a gift geyser in the mouth. I beheld a
horrible slippery, slimy funnel with water rising and falling ten feet
at a time. Then the water rose to lip level with a rush and an infernal
bubbling troubled this Devil’s Bethesda before the sullen heave of the
crest of a wave lapped over the edge and made me run. Mark the nature
of the human soul! I had begun with awe, not to say terror. I stepped
back from the flanks of the Riverside Geyser saying: “Pooh! Is that all
it can do?” Yet for aught I knew the whole thing might have blown up at
a minute’s notice; she, he, or it, being an arrangement of uncertain
temper.
We drifted on up that miraculous valley. On either side of us were
hills from a thousand to fifteen feet high and wooded from heel to
crest. As far as the eye could range forward were columns of steam in
the air, misshapen lumps of lime, most like preadamite monsters, still
pools of turquoise blue, stretches of blue cornflowers, a river that
coiled on itself twenty times, boulders of strange colours, and ridges
of glaring, staring white.
The old lady from Chicago poked with her parasol at the pools as though
they had been alive. On one particularly innocent-looking little
puddle she turned her back for a moment, and there rose behind her a
twenty-foot column of water and steam. Then she shrieked and protested
that “she never thought it would ha’ done it,” and the old man chewed
his tobacco steadily, and mourned for steam power wasted. I embraced
the whitened stump of a middle-sized pine that had grown all too close
to a hot pool’s lip, and the whole thing turned over under my hand as a
tree would do in a nightmare. From right and left came the trumpetings
of elephants at play. I stepped into a pool of old dried blood rimmed
with the nodding cornflowers; the blood changed to ink even as I trod;
and ink and blood were washed away in a spurt of boiling sulphurous
water spat out from the lee of a bank of flowers. This sounds mad,
doesn’t it?...
We rounded a low spur of hills, and came out upon a field of aching
snowy lime, rolled in sheets, twisted into knots, riven with rents
and diamonds and stars, stretching for more than half a mile in every
direction. In this place of despair lay most of the big geysers who
know when there is trouble in Krakatoa, who tell the pines when
there is a cyclone on the Atlantic seaboard, and who--are exhibited
to visitors under pretty and fanciful names. The first mound that I
encountered belonged to a goblin splashing in his tub. I heard him
kick, pull a shower-bath on his shoulders, gasp, crack his joints, and
rub himself down with a towel; then he let the water out of the bath,
as a thoughtful man should, and it all sank down out of sight till
another goblin arrived. Yet they called this place the Lioness and the
Cubs. It lies not very far from the Lion, which is a sullen, roaring
beast, and they say that when it is very active the other geysers
presently follow suit. After the Krakatoa eruption all the geysers went
mad together, spouting, spurting, and bellowing till men feared that
they would rip up the whole field. Mysterious sympathies exist among
them, and when the Giantess speaks (of her more anon) they all hold
their peace.
I was watching a solitary spring, when, far across the fields, stood up
a plume of spun glass, iridescent and superb against the sky. “That,”
said the trooper, “is Old Faithful. He goes off every sixty-five
minutes to the minute, plays for five minutes, and sends up a column of
water a hundred and fifty feet high. By the time you have looked at all
the other geysers he will be ready to play.”
So we looked and we wondered at the Beehive, whose mouth is built up
exactly like a hive; at the Turban (which is not in the least like a
turban); and at many, many other geysers, hot holes, and springs. Some
of them rumbled, some hissed, some went off spasmodically, and others
lay still in sheets of sapphire and beryl.
Would you believe that even these terrible creatures have to be guarded
by troopers to prevent the irreverent American from chipping the cones
to pieces, or worse still, making the geysers sick? If you take of
soft-soap a small barrelful and drop it down a geyser’s mouth, that
geyser will presently be forced to lay all before you and for days
afterwards will be of an irritated and inconsistent stomach. When they
told me the tale I was filled with sympathy. Now I wish that I had
stolen soap and tried the experiment on some lonely little beast of a
geyser in the woods. It sounds so probable--and so human.
Yet he would be a bold man who would administer emetics to the
Giantess. She is flat-lipped, having no mouth, she looks like a pool,
fifty feet long and thirty wide, and there is no ornamentation about
her. At irregular intervals she speaks, and sends up a column of water
over two hundred feet high to begin with; then she is angry for a day
and a half--sometimes for two days. Owing to her peculiarity of going
mad in the night not many people have seen the Giantess at her finest;
but the clamour of her unrest, men say, shakes the wooden hotel, and
echoes like thunder among the hills. When I saw her; trouble was
brewing. The pool bubbled seriously, and at five-minute intervals, sank
a foot or two, then rose, washed over the rim, and huge steam bubbles
broke on the top. Just before an eruption the water entirely disappears
from view. Whenever you see the water die down in a geyser-mouth get
away as fast as you can. I saw a tiny little geyser suck in its breath
in this way, and instinct made me retire while it hooted after me.
Leaving the Giantess to swear, and spit, and thresh about, we went
over to Old Faithful, who by reason of his faithfulness has benches
close to him whence you may comfortably watch. At the appointed hour we
heard the water flying up and down the mouth with the sob of waves in a
cave. Then came the preliminary gouts, then a roar and a rush, and that
glittering column of diamonds rose, quivered, stood still for a minute;
then it broke, and the rest was a confused snarl of water not thirty
feet high. All the young ladies--not more than twenty--in the tourist
band remarked that it was “elegant,” and betook themselves to writing
their names in the bottoms of shallow pools. Nature fixes the insult
indelibly, and the after-years will learn that “Hattie,” “Sadie,”
“Mamie,” “Sophie,” and so forth, have taken out their hair-pins, and
scrawled in the face of Old Faithful....
Next morning Tom drove us on, promising new wonders. He pulled up after
a few miles at a clump of brushwood where an army was drowning. I
could hear the sick gasps and thumps of the men going under, but when
I broke through the brushwood the hosts had fled, and there were only
pools of pink, black, and white lime, thick as turbid honey. They shot
up a pat of mud every minute or two, choking in the effort. It was an
uncanny sight. Do you wonder that in the old days the Indians were
careful to avoid the Yellowstone? Geysers are permissible, but mud is
terrifying. The old lady from Chicago took a piece of it, and in half
an hour it died into lime-dust and blew away between her fingers. All
_maya_--illusion,--you see! Then we clinked over sulphur in crystals;
there was a waterfall of boiling water; and a road across a level park
hotly contested by the beavers....
As we climbed the long path the road grew viler and viler till it
became without disguise, the bed of a torrent; and just when things
were at their rockiest we emerged into a little sapphire lake--but
never sapphire was so blue--called Mary’s lake; and that between eight
and nine thousand feet above the sea. Then came grass downs, all on a
vehement slope, so that the buggy following the new-made road ran on
to the two off-wheels mostly, till we dipped head-first into a ford,
climbed up a cliff, raced along a down, dipped again and pulled up
dishevelled at “Larry’s” for lunch and an hour’s rest....
The sun was sinking when we heard the roar of falling waters and
came to a broad river along whose banks we ran. And then--oh, then!
I might at a pinch describe the infernal regions, but not the other
place. Be it known to you that the Yellowstone River has occasion to
run through a gorge about eight miles long. To get to the bottom of
the gorge it makes two leaps, one of about 120 and the other of 300
feet. I investigated the upper or lesser fall, which is close to the
hotel. Up to that time nothing particular happens to the Yellowstone,
its banks being only rocky, rather steep, and plentifully adorned with
pines. At the falls it comes round a corner, green, solid, ribbed with
a little foam, and not more than thirty yards wide. Then it goes over
still green and rather more solid than before. After a minute or two
you, sitting on a rock directly above the drop, begin to understand
that something has occurred; that the river has jumped a huge distance
between the solid cliff walls and what looks like the gentle froth of
ripples lapping the sides of the gorge below is really the outcome of
great waves. And the river yells aloud; but the cliffs do not allow the
yells to escape.
That inspection began with curiosity and finished in terror, for it
seemed that the whole world was sliding in chrysolite from under my
feet. I followed with the others round the corner to arrive at the
brink of the cañon; we had to climb up a nearly perpendicular ascent
to begin with, for the ground rises more than the river drops. Stately
pine woods fringe either lip of the gorge, which is--the Gorge of the
Yellowstone.
All I can say is that without warning or preparation I looked into a
gulf 1,700 feet deep with eagles and fish-hawks circling far below.
And the sides of that gulf were one wild welter of colour--crimson,
emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber, honey splashed with port-wine,
snow-white, vermilion, lemon, and silver-grey, in wide washes. The
sides did not fall sheer, but were graven by time and water and air
into monstrous heads of kings, dead chiefs, men and women of the old
time. So far below that no sound of its strife could reach us, the
Yellowstone River ran--a finger-wide strip of jade-green. The sunlight
took these wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to those that nature had
already laid there. Once I saw the dawn break over a lake in Rajputana
and the sun set over Oodey Sagar amid a circle of Holman Hunt hills.
This time I was watching both performances going on below me--upside
down you understand--and the colours were real! The cañon was burning
like Troy town; but it would not burn forever, and, thank goodness,
neither pen nor brush could ever portray its splendours adequately. The
Academy would reject the picture for a chromo-lithograph. The public
would scoff at the letter-press for _Daily Telegraphese_. “I will
leave this thing alone,” said I; “’tis my peculiar property. Nobody
else shall share it with me.” Evening crept through the pines that
shadowed us, but the full glory of the day flamed in that cañon as we
went out very cautiously to a jutting piece of rock--blood-red or pink
it was--that overhung the deepest deeps of all. Now I know what it is
to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset. Giddiness took away all
sensation of touch or form; but the sense of blinding colour remained.
When I reached the mainland again I had sworn that I had been floating.
_From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel_ (New York, 1899).
FOOTNOTE:
[13] Published by permission of Rudyard Kipling. Copyright, 1899, by
Rudyard Kipling.
Transcriber’s Notes
Several minor punctuation errors have been fixed.
Page vi: changed “Fusi San” to “Fuji-San”.
Page vii: changed “Murdock” to “Murdoch”.
Page 44: changed “Rhone” to “Rhône”.
Page 50: changed “distined” to “destined”.
Page 107: changed “vendure” to “verdure”.
Page 142: changed “destoy” to “destroy”.
Page 144: moved the second Gibraltar illustration to the appropriate
chapter.
Page 148: “Oxeraa” left in place; modern spelling is Öxará.
Page 152: changed “obsure” to “obscure”.
Pages 160 and 168: Both Tindafjall and Tindfjall have been retained
as printed in the original publication.
Page 166: changed “aneriod” to “aneroid”.
Page 205: changed “verdue” to “verdure”.
Page 208: changed “guage” to “gauge”.
Page 216: The open quotation mark before “There was a roaring ... has
been left unmatched as published.
Page 255: “Etna may be is” retained per original publication.
Page 269: changed “Gramnaticus” to “Grammaticus”.
Page 271: changed “quiescient” to “quiescent”.
Page 358: changed “preclude” to “prelude”.
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