Montagnards

“ The scenery becomes grander and wilder every mile as the special hurries on as well as it can over the sinuous line, which is piercing a mountain region savage and sterile, and climbing by the sides of ravines and creeping upwards in rocky valleys with pine-clad hill-tops and frowning cliffs above. ”

“ I cannot understand what fixed this bourne, nor yet why a certain slope of scree and slag leading up to a cluster of rock and pine should even now seem laden with brooding fear. So, too, though we did not believe in the ice maiden, we yet felt that certain mountains were, so to speak, healthy and others provokingly sinister. The child in touch with Nature finds his own fairy land, and the mountains are the most potent magicians. ”

“ When the men are out hunting I know not where, or at night, when storms sweep down from Long's Peak, and the air is full of stinging, tempest-driven snow, and there is barely a probability of any one coming, or of any communication with the world at all, then the stupendous mountain ranges which lie between us and the plains grow in height till they become impassable barriers, and the bridgeless rivers grow in depth, and I wonder if all my life is to be spent here in washing and sweeping and baking, To-day has been one of manual labour. ”

“ There is nothing of the grandeur of snow, or glaciers, or deep forests, to excite curiosity or adventure; no trace of gardens or waterfalls. From base to summit all seems gray, barren, silent--dead, bleached bones of mountains, overgrown with scrubby bushes, like gray moss. ”

“ Beyond this we got into the rocks and climbing became arduous. Long zigzags up the slope brought us to the top of a notch, where at the right lay a patch of snow. The top of the mountain was comparatively flat, but it had timbered ridges and bare plains and little lakes, with dark domes, rising beyond. We rode around to the right, climbing out of the timber to where the dwarf spruces and brush had a hard struggle for life. The great gulf below us was immense, dark, and wild, studded with lakes and parks, and shadowed by moving clouds.
Sheep tracks, old and fresh, afforded us thrills. ”

“ Happy the showers that fall on so fair a wilderness,—scarce a single drop can fail to find a beautiful spot,—on the tops of the peaks, on the shining glacier pavements, on the great smooth domes, on forests and gardens and brushy moraines, plashing, glinting, pattering, laving. Some go to the high snowy fountains to swell their well-saved stores; some into the lakes, washing the mountain windows, patting their smooth glassy levels, making dimples and bubbles and spray; some into the waterfalls and cascades, as if eager to join in their dance and song and beat their foam yet finer ”

“ And further, although there scarce remains a great Alpine ridge untrodden by man, though the magic words—‘No information’—are rapidly vanishing from the pages of the Climber’s Guides, yet as subjects for literary, artistic, and philosophic inquiry, the mountains are far from exhausted. The basic emotions of the hills, at once bold and subtle, remain an almost untouched field, and many a curious by-path in the psychology of mountaineering has yet to be explored. ”

“ The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but of men. Therefore we are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and going to the mountains is going home. Yet how many are doomed to toil in town shadows while the white mountains beckon all along the horizon! ”

“ Looking down from the summit, the forest is a closely woven vesture, which has fallen over the body of the range, clinging closely to its form, sinking into the deep cañons, covering the hill-tops with even velvety folds, and only lost here and there where a bold mass of rock gives it no foothold, or where around the margin of the mountain lakes bits of alpine meadow lie open to the sun. ”

“ Thus for long miles, hour after hour, and, in large mountain regions, day after day, the character of the scenery slowly changes. The mountains grow bigger; vegetation varies with level and aspect; [200] Nature grows more austere, and therewith more magnificent. You traverse some vast defile, like the gorge of Gondo perhaps, where road and river find passage beneath opposite cliffs, water-worn and of imposing height. You enter secluded basins, where the valley widens to close again; you pass round the margin of lakes that hold the hill-tops, as it were, in their depths. ”

“ The broad snow-fields over which I have often hunted the mountain-goat offer an inviting path. But above them you will have to climb over steep rocks overhanging deep gorges, where a misstep would hurl you far down—down to certain death. You must creep over steep snow-banks and cross deep crevasses where a mountain-goat would hardly keep his footing. You must climb along steep cliffs where rocks are continually falling to crush you or knock you off into the bottomless depths. ”

“ On the shores of one of these mountain lakes, in the genial warmth of lower altitudes, where the water is hemmed in, and encroached upon, by the trees and luxuriant vegetation fostered by a moist climate, the explorer beholds each mountain peak as the central point of interest in every view. Each cliff or massive snow-covered mountain then appears an unscalable height reaching upward toward the heavens,—a most inspiring work of nature, raising the eyes and the thoughts above the common level of our earth. ”

“ All is forgotten: those murky clouds which in town life dispute the serenity of one’s spiritual air drift beyond view, and over you broods only the quiet sky of night, her white stars moving beyond fragrant pine-tops or lost in the dim tangle of their feathery foliage. Such is the mountaineer’s evening spent contemplatively before his fire; the profound sense of Nature’s tranquillity filling his mind with its repose till the flames give way to embers, and guardian pines spread dusky arms over his sleep. ”

“ In the stillness of the mountain-glen, he will see on every side traces of the waves of ocean, and when dipping his oars into the unruffled sea among groups of wasted rocks, miles from shore, he will bethink him, perchance, of some old forest-covered land, of which these battered islets are the sole memorials. His enjoyment of the scenery of nature is thus increased manifold, and he carries about with him a power of making even the tamest landscape interesting. ”

“ No vegetation covers the steep declivities of the hills, except the moss and lichen upon the rocks, a few willows upon the banks of streams, the dwarf birch-tree or the scrub-pines, rising only to the height of a few inches, and often straggling over the earth like vines. Every hill has its valley, and every valley its lake—dark, and deep, and silent—in winter scarce to be distinguished under the snow-covered ice. The prospect in every direction exhibits a surface of rocks, or bleak hills, half covered with snow. The traveller looks around and sees no life. ”

“ Probably most mountaineers would agree that the charm of mountain scenery is to be found in every step taken in the upper world. The strange interfolding of the snows, the gaunt, weird crags of the ridges, the vast, blue, icicle-fringed crevasse, or the great smooth slabs sloping-downwards through apparently bottomless space, are each and all no less lovely than the boundless horizon of the summit view. ”

“ None of your half-mile swamps, none of your mile-wide woods merely, as on the skirts of our towns, without hotels, only a dark mountain or a lake for guide-board and station, over ground much of it impassable in summer! ”

“ The shivering of mountain pinnacles tells you something about lightning, storms, and frosts. Excavated valleys, and lakes, polished rocks, and striated mountain flanks, and old moraine mounds are a lesson to you upon glacier action, and its greater activity in former epochs. Excised ravines, filled-up lakes, avalanches of débris, mountainside slips, burying villages and blocking up valleys, roads you are traversing cut through, and bridges you were to have crossed carried away, fields buried, or washed away, or lately formed, are chapters on the action of running water. ”

“ Back from the shores, the forests rise in successive terraces as they climb the mountain sides, and soften their rugged outlines clear to their summits, save where here and there some giant snow peak thrusts its hoary head far above the green mantle of the mountains, and challenges the traveler’s eye from whatever direction he may be approaching. ”

“ Making your way along any of the wide gray valleys that stretch from north to south, seldom will your eye be interrupted by a single mark of cultivation. The smooth lake-like ground sweeps on indefinitely, growing more and more dim in the glowing sunshine, while a mountain range from eight to ten thousand feet high bounds the view on either hand. No singing water, no green sod, no moist nook to rest in—mountain and valley alike naked and shadowless in the sun-glare ”

“ They will go through a vast and lonely land travelling along the wide valleys of frozen rivers, up long narrow gulches filled with snow, over miles of wind-swept mesas, and across high, treeless, mountain ridges. "All goes well, if all goes well," is a proverb of the trail, for in winter-time there, death is always near. ”

“ Mountains spring from the sea and climb, mount on mount, three miles into the air, or sloping sea-washed sands stretch dry and barren and forbidding, to rise at length in verdure-clad hills and snow-capped mountains. In the mountains are savage beasts and more savage men. On the plains a few straggling herds of cattle, with uncouth vaqueros, cluster around a seeping spring of bitter water. Here and there white-washed adobe mission houses, all but hidden in a clamber of vines and trees, mark a feeble stream that trickles from the distant mountains. ”

“ Over high plains and pleasant valleys, through deep, dark gorges and ravines, to whose lowest depths the sun but seldom reaches, and then but for an hour or two, along narrow pathways cut into the living rock on the mountain side, with precipices on one hand falling thousands of feet into the dark abysses, where the torrents roared and foamed, and on the other the great rock-walls of the mountain soaring up into the sky yet more thousands of feet above us. ”

“ There is a scattering of lakes, gentle slopes, stretches of rolling moorlands, and bits of wet meadow or arctic tundra. In this high and far-extending mountain land one may travel day after day always above the uppermost reaches of the forest. In this strange treeless realm there is a largeness of view. Up close to the clouds and the sky, the big world far below, the scene stretches away in boundless, magnificent distances.
The snow-fall of this region varies with locality, and ranges from a few feet up to fifty feet annually. ”

“ At a certain altitude in the mountains, much frequented by game because undisturbed by storms, snow falls—falls—falls, without ceasing, heaping the pines with snow mushrooms, blotting out the sun, cloaking in heavy white flakes the notched bark blazed as a trail, transforming the rustling green forests to a silent spectral world without a mark to direct the hunter. ”

“ The rocks themselves bear witness to the intense heat which has either cracked them wide open, crumbled them in pieces, or divested them, like oysters, of their outer shell, all along the path of the conflagration.
The walk over the lower summits to the base of the peak occupied another hour, and is a most profitable feature of the ascent. On each side a superb panorama of mountains and lakes, of towns, villages, and hamlets, is being slowly unrolled; while every forward step develops the inaccessible character of the high summit more and more. ”

“ The rugged mountains, rising in some places almost perpendicular to the road, the stupendous rocks above jutting out from their bases, seeming to threaten destruction to all below, and the mountain streams pouring over rock and crag, with ceaseless noise, added to the grandeur of the entire scene. ”

“ Long I sat upon a promontory and marveled. Dimly, only, did I grasp the significance of what lay before me! The ranks of primeval forest waiting to aid civilization; snow, that white magic eventually destined to water crops on the distant plains; and, above all, woods, the final refuge of the big game; the sanctuary of the birds.
Everywhere were scattered unnamed lakes. These edged out and around the rock peninsulas, folded back into dark coves and swung out of sight behind the timbered bends. Some were almost pinched in half by the crowding cliffs till they formed giant hour-glasses ”

“ On the mountain slopes, with their deep, wild coverts, never yet disturbed by the woodman's axe, and where wild creatures still linger in their haunts, we feel that a few of the native stock might still find a refuge. In the shaded valleys, coursed by babbling brooks or rushing rivulets, on the green and pebbly shores of tranquil lakes, into which push out the sedgy and wooded tongues of land, circled with creeping vines and the mild fragrance of the wild-flowers, — we should meet without surprise the dusky loiterers whose moccasoned feet might tread noiselessly before us. ”

“ To ride on well constructed bridle roads up mountain slopes, winding in and out on diversified paths, through and by bowers of fragrant trees, shrubs and flowers, looking up through towering pines to majestic cliffs and ponderous rocks, looking down into the depths of vast canyons, where deer find shady coverts, and looking out upon scenes of perfect beauty and sublimity—these things fill the body with vigor and buoyant enthusiasm, and the mind with lasting pictures of increasing interest. ”