Ligeia

“ And its hero, the conqueror Worm.
"O God!" half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines—"O God! O Divine Father!—shall these things be undeviatingly so?—shall this conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who—who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." ”

“ We may pursue this comparison one step farther back and see in the great nebula, which glows dimly in the middle of the constellation, between Rigel triumphant and Betelgeuse languishing, a still earlier cosmical condition—the germ of suns whose infant rays may illuminate space when Rigel itself is growing dim.
Turn your glass upon the three stars forming the Belt. You will not be likely to undertake to count all the twinkling lights that you will see, especially as many of them appear and disappear as you turn your attention to different parts of the field. ”

“ Glaisher, 'rises a noble roof, a vast dome of the deepest blue. In the east may perhaps be seen the tints of a rainbow on the point of vanishing; in the west, the sun silvering the edges of broken clouds. Below these light vapours may rise a chain of mountains, the Alps of the sky, rearing themselves one above the other, mountain above mountain, till the highest peaks are coloured by the setting sun. Some of these compact masses look as if ravaged by avalanches, or rent by the irresistible movement of glaciers. ”

“ Suppose the depression to have been at the rate of five feet in a century in the mountains, and only as many inches in the same time nearer the coast, still, in such areas as the eye could survey at once, comprising a small part only of Switzerland or of the basin of the Rhine, the movement might appear to be uniform, and the pre-existing valleys and heights might seem to remain relatively to each other as before. ”

“ Sometimes it seemed almost to succeed; suddenly, when they most needed light to guide their six-foot runners between the great boulders, the light would go out like a torch in the water. The gusts lay in wait for them at the corners, to leap out and lash their faces with a shriek that chattered their teeth. The lulls between the gusts were even worse; it seemed as though the whole world were holding its breath in dread. They held theirs, darting uneasy glances at the glacier wall glittering far ahead of them.
When a long, low wail smote their ears, their hearts leaped into their throats. ”

“ You may find among the Alps many views that are more extensive, and many that in some one feature, or other, are more striking than this. What, however, is before you from this point is in a very high degree impressive. It is a wondrous scene of Alpine architecture, simple in its elements, but grand in its simplicity. To your left is one of the exits of the Gries. The branch glacier in it terminates abruptly, not after a gentle declivity, such as that of the body of the glacier, but in the mid descent of a precipitous outfall. ”

“ These accumulations of rocky fragments and detrital matter are left at the termination of the glacier, where it melts in a confused heap called the "terminal moraine," which is unstratified, because all the blocks, large and small, as well as the sand and the finest mud, are carried to equal distances and quietly deposited in a confused mass without being subjected to the sorting power of running water, which would convey the finer materials farther than the coarser ones, and would produce, as the strength of the current varied from time to time in the same place, a stratified arrangement. ”

“ The City of Liege is about five Leagues from Maestricht. A Vessel goes thither, and returns every Day. But to go against the Stream of a River so rapid as the Maese, and which in the Summer-time often wants Water, is what I shall never advise any Friend of mine.
The Generality of the Antiquarians will have it, that Liege was built by that Ambiorix King of the Eburons, a great Enemy of the Romans who cut in Pieces one of their Legions, commanded by two of Cæsar’s Lieutenants ”

“ It was over an hour since we had landed, and a full night would be scarcely two hours and a half. If we were in a summer latitude, the shorter period of darkness was natural enough. And yet it was still hard to believe as, within ten minutes, it was as bright as Earth-light on the moon. Still clearer and clearer grew the light. The stars were almost gone, the center of the nebula only a faint wisp. There were no clouds to give the colors of sunrise, but a bluish-white radiance seemed to be trembling on the eastern horizon.
And then, like a shot, Rigel came up into the sky. ”

“ But if a great glacier fill the lower part of the valley, all the conditions of the problem are altered. Instead of the mud, sand, and stones drifted down from the higher regions being left behind in the incipient basin, they all travel onwards in the shape of moraines on the top of the ice, passing over and beyond the new depression, so that when, at the end of fifty or a thousand centuries, the glacier melts, a large and deep basin representing the difference in the movement of two adjoining mountain areas—namely, the central and the circumferential—is for the first time rendered visible. ”

“ On each side of the glacier, quite near the shore, there is usually found a ridge of rocks and stones extending up and down the glacier for the whole length of it, as if an immense wall formed of blocks of granite of prodigious magnitude had been built by giants to fence the glacier in, and had afterwards been shaken down by an earthquake, so as to leave only a confused and shapeless ridge of rocks and stones. ”

“ From this vomitory, the old glacier poured into the plains of the Po that wonderful accumulation of mud, gravel, boulders, and large erratics, which extend for fifteen miles from above Ivrea to below Caluso, and which, when seen in profile from Turin, have the aspect of a chain of hills. In many countries, indeed, they might rank as an important range of hills, for where they join the mountains they are more than 1,500 feet high, and retain more than half that height for a great part of their course, rising very abruptly from the plain, often with a slope of from 20° to 30°. ”

“ See, the whole of the Tyrol is spread out before us in wondrous splendour, as we stand on this snowy ridge; and at our feet the Schlatten glacier, like a long, white snake, curls down into the valley.
There is still a little peak above us; an overhanging horn of snow which the wind has built against the mountain-top. I would like to stand there, just for a moment. The guide protests it would be dangerous, for if the snow should break it would be a fall of a thousand feet to the glacier on the northern side. But let us dare the few steps upward. How our feet sink! Is the snow slipping? ”

“ The sky that so often had been darkened with storms of cinders and ashes and lighted by the glare of volcanic fires was filled with crystal snow-flowers, which, loading the cooling mountain, gave birth to glaciers that, uniting edge to edge, at length formed one grand conical glacier--a down-crawling mantle of ice upon a fountain of smouldering fire, crushing and grinding its brown, flinty lavas, and thus degrading and remodeling the entire mountain from summit to base. ”

“ Art lives in the night; the sun sets for its inhabitants at two o’clock.
“A moment later the sun had disappeared, the wind blew cold, the mountains were grey. Not a cloud was in the sky. The Rigi had become solitary once more, with a boundless blue sky arching above.
“In one of my earlier letters I spoke of [Pg 310] ‘these granite waves called Alps.’ I had no idea I had hit it so accurately. The image which came into my mind appeared to me in all its vividness on the summit of the Rigi after the sun had gone down. These mountains are really billows, but giant billows. ”

“ The stone of Istien in the lands of Lybia is found in the brains of dragons after their death. The pools and the great lakes boil up by reason of it over their borders; it shines through water; it is like thunder in the winter time but in summer it has the sound of the winds. The stone of Fanes in the lands of Aulol out of the stream of Dam. Twelve stars there are seen in its side and the wheel of the moon and the fiery journey of the sun. in the hearts of the dragons it is always found that make their journey under the sea. ”

“ We climbed up on to the top of it, and proceeded over a slippery surface, rather sloppy in the hot sunshine, till we stood below the waterfall which shoots in unbroken volume into a round, black hole. A cloud like steam rises out of it, and hangs around the opening. Looking upwards you see the fall comes down in a succession of three grand leaps, having their beginnings in a glacier poised some thousands of feet above. I don’t know whether it is more weirdly strange to stand up there at the edge of the uncanny pot-hole, or in the dimness of the cave to hear the water thundering down without. ”

“ And he described more carefully than preceding writers the long lines of these stones, which settle on the sides of the glacier, and are called the lateral moraines; those found at the lower end of the ice being called terminal moraines. Such heaps of earth and boulders every glacier pushes before it when advancing, and leaves behind it when retreating. When the Alpine glacier reaches a lower and a warmer situation, about 3,000 or 4,000 feet above the sea, it melts so rapidly that, in spite of the downward movement of the mass, it can advance no farther. ”

“ The hills below rocked and roared to the repeated shock. Trees fell in crashing ruin as lightning-bolt or infra-sound shivered them to bits; great cars of burned earth and molten rock marked the spots where the gravity-beam struck the ground. All round was a maze of yellow rays, lightning flashes, and green globes that reeled, rose, fell, sometimes blowing up, sometimes giving ground, but always fighting back sternly and vigorously and always rising through the clear spring evening. ”

“ The slopes of the Rigi are now all covered with orchards and rich pastures, for although snow frequently falls on its summit even in mid-summer, it never lingers there long, owing to the warm rays of the sun striking directly upon it. There are countless points of interest to be seen on this mountain, but the most characteristic of all its legends is connected with the gushing spring of ice-cold water at Rigi-Kaltbad. ”

“ Acte showed Lygia senators in wide-bordered togas, in colored tunics, in sandals with crescents on them, and knights, and famed artists; she showed her Roman ladies, in Roman, in Grecian, in fantastic Oriental costume, with hair dressed in towers or pyramids, or dressed like that of the statues of goddesses, low on the head, and adorned with flowers. Many men and women did Acte call by name, adding to their names histories, brief and sometimes terrible, which pierced Lygia with fear, amazement, and wonder. ”

“ Others have fallen down the numerous fissures which intersect the glacier, where, being subject to the pressure of the whole mass of ice, they have been forced along, and either well rounded or ground down into sand, or even the finest mud, of which the moraine is largely constituted.
As the terminal moraines are the most prominent of all the monuments left by a receding glacier, so are they the most liable to obliteration ”

“ Just as he was in the act of jumping down from the top of a boulder, his vision altered and he came to an automatic standstill. He was perceiving two worlds simultaneously. With his own eyes he saw the gorge as before, with its rocks, brook, plant-animals, sunshine, and shadows. But with his acquired eyes he saw differently. All the details of the valley were visible, but the light seemed turned down, and everything appeared faint, hard, and uncoloured. The sun was obscured by masses of cloud which filled the whole sky. This vapour was in violent and almost living motion. ”

“ I have dwelt upon the recent work of geologists in the peripheral areas of the drift-covered regions of northern Europe, because I think the results obtained are of great interest to glacialists in this country. And for the same reason I wish next to call attention to what has been done of late years in elucidating the glacial geology of the Alpine Lands of central Europe—and more particularly of the low-grounds that stretch out from the foot of the mountains. Any observations that tend to throw light upon the history of the complex drifts of our own peripheral areas cannot but be of service. ”

“ Black night soon falls upon us, changing at short intervals momentarily into day as the forked flashes of lightning stab the earth, sky, and sea. The beach men, bending double under the downfall of water and the struggle against the wind as they walk, appear in vivid detail and disappear in the fraction of a second as the lightning plays overhead. ”

“ RAILWAY UP THE RIGI.
Sunrise as seen from the Rigi Kulm is said to be one of the most magnificent sights imaginable. One enthusiastic German writer gives a very glowing account of it, which has been literally translated and is sold in all the book-stores in Lucerne. The translation is so good (?) that it should be universally read. A portion of it is reproduced:
“The starlight night far expanded and aromatic with the herbs of the Alps and the meadow ground, now begins to assume a gray and hazy veil. ”