Alps

“ I find it in the immense range of the moods in which Nature is seen in the Alps, as least by those who have fully absorbed all the forms, sights, sounds, wonders, and adventures they offer. An hour's walk will show them all in profound contrast and yet in exquisite harmony. The Alps form a book of Nature as wide and as mysterious as Life. ”

“ Every now and then we caught beautiful glimpses of the distant Alps, abruptly rising from the green level of the valley, beyond the hills clad with the dark verdure of the pine forests, piled curiously one over another, which run the whole length of the plain, forming the first steps, as it were, of those mighty Alpine mountains which rear their magnificent heights, shrouded in eternal glaciers, behind these graduated ranges. ”

“ Better acquaintance has led to the discovery of all the beauties and benefits the Alps offer to those who seek them in a proper mood. We have learnt thoroughly to appreciate the variety imparted to all nature by the accidents of hill scenery, to know and love the thousand forms of peaks, the changing charm of lakes and forests, the rush of the grey Swiss torrent under the upright pines, and the blue repose of the Italian stream under the beech shadows. ”

“ If you are fortunate, and have one of the bright, soft afternoons that sometimes show the Alps in their full beauty, as you descend the slope of the Jura, from which you command the whole panorama of the opposite range, you may see, as the day dies, the last shadow pass with strange rapidity from peak to peak of the Alpine summits. ”

“ I had never before realized the great depth of feeling that a mountain range is capable of evoking. The Alps are majestic beyond description. They awe the observer to a sense of his own utter insignificance as he gazes upon that glistening majestic sky-line, and feels the overwhelming influence of those mighty mountains upon him. ”

“ The sun will shine on a glistening world and the clouds will melt away. Then we see the low-lying fresh snow shining on the green alps, and all the great rock-peaks glittering aloft in a new-shed glory. ”

“ A hundred country seats, a hundred delightful gardens, ornament the borders of the lakes and rivers. The Alps at a great distance rise and terminate the horizon, and among their prodigious precipices, twenty leagues extent of mountain are beheld covered with eternal snows. ”

“ Dreamily her mind contrasted them with the Alps, where from all time man has laboured and sheltered, blending his life, his births and deaths, his loves and hates with the glaciers and the forests, wresting his food from the valleys, creeping height over height to the snow line, writing his will on the country, so that in our thought of it he stands first, and Nature second. ”

“ Indeed, all these Alps are in shape more abrupt and fantastic than any I ever saw.
I wish I could by my imperfect words bring before you not only the grander features, but every minute peculiarity, every varying hue, of this matchless scene. The progress of each day brings with it its appropriate change. When I rise in the morning and look out, our own side is bathed in sunshine, and we see the opposite mountains raising 68their black masses in sharp relief against the eastern sky, while dark shadows are flung by the abrupt precipices on the fair lake beneath. ”

“ The spirit of the world hath here not yet grown old. She is as young as on the first day; and the Alps are a symbol of the self-creating, self-sufficing, self-enjoying universe which lives for its own ends. For why do the slopes gleam with flowers, and the hillsides deck themselves with grass, and the inaccessible ledges of black rock bear their tufts of crimson primroses and flaunting tiger-lilies? Why, morning after morning, does the red dawn flush the pinnacles of Monte Rosa above cloud and mist unheeded? ”

“ The mountains, though not high, have all the beauty of the Alps; their varied outline, their abrupt gorges, and their swift torrents being yet more beautiful because embowered in a vegetation of softer aspect than the monumental pineries which close-clothe the Alps. ”

“ Even in the sternest scenery of the Alps some sign of vegetation lingers; and I remember to have found a tuft of lichen growing on the only rock which pierced through the ice on the summit of the Jungfrau. The absolute solitude, the intense stillness of the upper Alps is most impressive; no cattle, no pasturage, no bird, nor any sound of life,—and, indeed, even if there were, the rarity of the air in these high regions is such that sound is hardly transmissible. ”

“ THOUGH the faithful climber is, in his essence, a thoroughly domesticated man and rarely strays from his own home, the Alps, a spirit of unrest occasionally takes hold upon him and drives him forth to more distant regions. Seized with such a fit of wandering, the first days of July, 1888, found me camped on the right bank of the Berzingi glacier, where, in the cool air of the snow fields, on slopes white with rhododendron and with the silent unclimbed peaks above, I could rest from the rattle and roar of trains, the noise of buffets and the persecutions of the Custom-houses. ”

“ The landscape had nothing of the bright smiling beauty of the south, nor the overpowering grandeur of the Alps, but there rested upon it a peculiar charm, dreamy and melancholy as its legendary world.
Deep down lay the valleys, wrapt in bluish shadows, while the heights round about were flooded by bright sunshine, and over the valleys and hills spread an infinite expanse of green forest, out of which, only here and there, a bare wall of rock emerged, or a brook plunged wildly downward, splashing and foaming as it went. ”

“ Ascending the ridge we looked off upon a sleeping world. Mists lay beneath like waves, clouds, like a sea. On one side the Oberland Alps stretched along the horizon their pale, blue-white peaks. Other mountains, indistinct in color and outline, chained round the whole horizon. ”

“ Many people and animals inhabit them, and almost every metal is dug out of the Alps, especially silver. 'Mid such charms as these men live among the mountains, and Nature blooms as if Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres reigned there. No one who saw the Alps from afar would believe what a delicious Paradise is to be found amid the eternal snow and mountains of perpetual winter and never-melting ice.'
Very limited praise only extended to the valleys! ”

“ The rugged sides of mountains often gave us views on almost as grand a scale as that of the Alps. Only there, height above height, rise those rocky ramparts where snowy cascades leap hundreds of feet, then leap again where those chaotic and fantastic rocks and immeasurable sweep of terraced hills stretch away like another world. ”

“ At length the dawn really appeared, brightening the blue of the eastern firmament; at first it was a mere augmentation of cold light, but by degrees it assumed a warmer tint. The long uniform incline of the glacier being passed, we reached the first eminences of snow which heave like waves around the base of the Jungfrau. This is the region of beauty in the higher Alps—beauty pure and tender, out of which emerges the savage scenery of the peaks. ”

“ But, lo! the mists are rising, and yonder are the Alps. Now that the curtain is rent, one flashing peak bursts upon you after another. They come not in scores, but in hundreds. And now the whole chain, from the snowy dome of the Ortelles in the far-off Tyrol, to the beauteous pyramid of Monte Viso in the south-western sky, is before you in its noble sweep of many hundreds of miles, with thousands of snowy peaks, amid which, pre-eminent in glory, rises Monte Rosa. Turning to the south, you have the purple summits of the Apennines rising above the plain. ”

“ As we wearily climb, in this survey, from expenditure to expenditure, from waste to waste, we seem to pass beyond the region of ordinary calculation; Alps on Alps arise, on whose crowning heights of everlasting ice, far above the habitations of man, where no green thing lives, where no creature draws its breath, we behold the cold, sharp, flashing glacier of War. ”

“ The snow-capped Alps rise around, in tier after103 tier, deep pellucid lakes lie in the shadows of the hills, and thick forests clothe the slopes. As the sunlight wanders from peak to peak living beauties are revealed, and the contrast of the glittering snow shining through the blue-black sharp-pointed firs is one to stir the artist soul to life. ”

“ It is a spot which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of 301 a deep and majestic concord in the rise of the long low lines of piny hills,—the first utterance of those mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken along the battlements of the Alps. ”

“ One cannot even guess the place where they have been. Here sit Silence and Immobility, terrifically enthroned and close to heaven.
The Alps, tainted in summer with vulgarity, in winter are set free; for the hordes of human beings that scuttle about the fields at their base are ignored by the upper regions. Those few who dare the big peaks are perforce worthy, and the bold ski-runners who challenge the hazards of the long, high courses are themselves, like the birds, almost a part of the mountain life. The Alps, as a whole, retire into their ancient splendour. ”

“ It is not by the splendor of far-off views, which have lent such a glory to the Alps, that these impress the mind, but by a gigantic disorder of enormous masses and a savage sublimity of naked rock in wonderful contrast with innumerable green spots of a rich floral beauty shut up in their stern recesses. Their wildness seems well suited to the character of the people who inhabit the country. ”

“ Let the snow-storm blow the reek of the oil-can from our nostrils, and the thundering avalanche and the roaring tempest drown the puny tinkle of cast-iron bells and the blare of cheap German bands. Let us even cherish a hope that the higher Alps will resist the navvy and the engineer for our time, and that we may still be left to worship peacefully at the great shrines of our fathers. ”

“ The vivid hue of pasturages and broad-leaved trees is belted by the heavier shade of pine-woods, and both are capped by a dazzling snow-crown, producing an effect to a painter's eye crude and unmanageable. The Alps have, in common with most great natures, rough and rugged places, such as are not found in more everyday lives or landscapes. ”

“ True, the mountains did not rise so high, as mountains go, and did not affect one as do the sublimity and grandeur of the snow-clad Alps, yet the warm light falling here and there in streaks and bars on beautiful fern gardens that nodded and swayed in the cool forest depths, where springs gushed forth in crystal clearness, "brought that tone that all mountains have." ”

“ How unlike the Alps is the prospect you obtain from its summit. True, you will see no snow-capped peaks and shining glaciers, but what a chaos of gray and green mountains extend as far as the eye can reach. ”

“ On the plain all is monotony. Summer and winter, the same landmarks, the same sky, the same sounds, surround the man. But around the dweller in the mountains,—and especially such mountains as these,—all is variety and grandeur. Now the Alps are seen with their sunlight summits and their shadowless sides; anon they veil their mighty forms in clouds and tempests. The living machinery of the mist, too, is continually varying the landscape, now engulphing valleys, now blotting out crags and mountain peaks, and suspending before the eye a cold and cheerless curtain of vapour ”

“ Rainbows stand over all the falls of the Alps, whenever the sun shines.
On the second day (Sept. 4th) of my ascend of the Alps, I could look upwards and see the eternal snows, or look down into the valleys, and see the people in the meadows and fields making hay or cutting grain! Haymakers may drink the water that was an hour before part of the mass of ice and snow which they see hanging near the top of the mountains several thousand feet above their heads! ”

“ Instinctively we summon up recollections of the Alps for comparison with the mountains we are leaving. And the comparison is not found to be entirely a sacrilege. The Alps are first and preeminent among European mountains; the repose of their immensity, the sense of power, the indefinable, spell they exert, lesser ranges cannot in general features attempt to rival. But this is not to say that a lesser range, is a wholly inferior range,—that even in this effect of immensity, of power, it may not at certain points bear almost full comparison. ”

“ Over the distant Italian Alps rose clouds of the most fantastic forms, jutting forth into the heavens like enormous trees, thrusting out umbrageous branches which bloomed and glistened in the solar rays. Along the whole southern heaven these fantastic masses were ranged close together, but still perfectly isolated, until on reaching a certain altitude they seemed to meet a region of wind which blew their tops like streamers far away through the air. Warmed and tinted by the morning sun those unsubstantial masses rivalled in grandeur the mountains themselves. ”

“ In picturesque beauty, when seen near at hand, these mountains are not nearly equal to the Pyrenees and to many minor chains; with rounded summits, they are bare and denuded of wood, and are entirely without the glacier forms, and the lakes and rushing streams, which delight us in the Alps. ”

“ So, pleased at first the towering Alps we try, Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky, The eternal snows appear already past, And the first clouds and mountains seem the last: But, those attain'd, we tremble to survey The growing labours of the lengthen'd way, 230 The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes, Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! ”