Alpine region

“ Yet there are some who refuse to believe that sun, frost, and water have played an important part in modelling the Alps, and hold it as an article of their faith that the Alpine region "owes its present conformation mainly to the action of its ancient glaciers"! [13] ”

“ In Europe, the familiar Alpine district is constantly quoted as an illustration of the nature of a glaciated region, with its center of dispersion. Small ice-tributaries now cover the slopes of the Rhône Valley, where formerly the solid mass pressed down from the Bernese Oberland and the region of Mont Blanc, over Lake Geneva and the broad valley of Switzerland to the flanks of the Jura, forming an ice surface fifty miles wide, one hundred and fifty miles long, and two thousand feet deep. ”

“ It is the great good fortune of the Alps, beyond all other snowy ranges, to possess both the region of utterly untamed nature above, and a larger area of humanly modified land below. A normal Alpine view includes parts of both regions. Looking up from beneath, you have the gardened world for [273] foreground and the wild world for distance. Looking down from above the reverse is the case. The contrast is always charming. What more beautiful setting for a snow mountain can be conceived than that which surrounds the Jungfrau as beheld from near Interlaken? ”

“ MEN AND MOUNTAINS—MOUNTAIN-HATERS—A LITERARY EXAMPLE—POETS AND PAINTERS—THE PLACE OF ART—ALPINE SCENERY AND ART—THE VARIETY OF THE ALPS—THE SNOW WORLD—MONS. LOPPÉ'S PICTURES—CONCLUSION.
Switzerland, from a distance practically beyond that of the Caucasus at the present day, has in the last thirty years been brought within a few hours of our homes. Increased facilities of travel and of residence in Alpine regions, acting in unison with many less obvious but equally real influences, have extended human sympathy to Nature in her wildest forms and created a new sentiment, the Love of the Alps. ”

“ The Subalpine is the region which mainly determines the manner of life of the population of the Alps. On a rough estimate we may reckon that, of the space lying between the summits of the Alps and the low country on either side, one-quarter is available for cultivation, of which about one-half may be vineyards and corn-fields, while Subalpine region, or region of coniferous trees.the remainder produces forage and grass. About another quarter is utterly barren, consisting of snow-fields, glaciers, bare rock, lakes and the beds of streams. ”

“ It divides the mountain-lover from the common peak peak-hunter. It is the quality that continues growing longest, whose exercise is never wearisome, whose reward is always increasing. To be able to discriminate between the qualities of different Alpine regions and to appreciate all their varied merits is to know the Alps. ”

“ They resist our best climbing qualifications and are as inaccessible as the mists above our highest tops. And we prefer, naturally, our talking companions, those who shrink not from the task of ready interpretation.
“The Alps form a book of nature as wide and mysterious as Life,” says Frederic Harrison in his Alpine Jubilee, in one of those clear-cut and well-measured passages of mountain homage, which are balm to the tormented hearts of those who feel themselves afloat on the clouds of mystery. “To know, to feel, to understand the Alps is to know, to feel, to understand Humanity.” ”

“ The Swiss Alps have their chief worshippers in the summer for the climbing, in the winter for the sports. A few insist that the rich colouring of autumn is the best season of all. A larger and a growing number visit the Alps in the spring for the flowers. They are wise, for truly the sight of an Alpine meadow in bloom is the most joyous manifestation of Nature in a sunny mood that man can know. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rocks thus polished by the ice itself are so exceedingly smooth and slippery that it is impossible to stand on them where their inclination is at all considerable. But what a world it must have been when the valleys were thus filled! We can restore the state of things in thought, and in doing so we submerge many a mass which now lifts its pinnacle skyward. Switzerland in those days could not be so grand as it is now. Pour ice into those valleys till they are filled, and you eliminate those contrasts of height and depth on which the grandeur of Alpine scenery depends. ”

“ Between the lofty peaks which rise skyward into the very vault of heaven, as it seems to the wayfarer at their feet, stretch lovely, winding Alpine valleys, often well-wooded and with turf of a most delightful greenness strewn with myriads of Alpine blossoms. Through valleys sweet with the odours of pinewoods and flowers run rushing torrents or more quietly flowing streams, which often have their origin in tiny, dark-blue Alpine lakes set amid environing pine forests, in whose tranquil waters are reflected the towering rocks and secluded woods which surround them. ”

“ The works of our living poets abound with sketches of mountain scenery the precision of which may satisfy even a literal-minded enthusiast. In the exquisite Alpine idyll in the 'Princess' we have brought before us one after another the scenes of the Bernese Oberland; Grindelwald with its firths of ice, Lauterbrunnen with its monstrous ledges and 'thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,' or the gentler beauties of the vale of Frutigen and the Lake of Brienz. ”

“ For those with means and time sufficient to indulge their love of climbing among the great Alps, the old snow ways of the mountains still remain sufficient in number and in sensation. But for the ever-increasing number of men whom circumstances limited to the lesser hills of our own islands or to the lower alpine ranges, the grass and snow ways began to prove too unexciting as their novelty became exhausted, and the rock peaks and the sheer rock faces of the Lake Fells, Skye or the Dolomites offered a new temptation. ”

“ Though not high, as heights go in the European Alps or in the Himalaya, they are imposing mountains. It is only within comparatively recent years that passes have been discovered between the lakes and the sounds; and although these passes do not lead the traveller beyond the sub-Alpine heights, they take him through scenery that is no less remarkable for its beauty than for its grandeur—a fitting introduction to those greater marvels in the heart of the Southern Alps. ”

“ Mountains are always regions of late occupation. Even in the Stone Age, we find the long-headed race of Mediterranean stock, who originally populated Europe, distributed over the continent close up to the foot of the high Alps, but not in the mountains themselves, and only scantily represented in the Auvergne Plateau of France. The inhospitable highlands of Switzerland, the German Alps, and the Auvergne received their first population later when the Alpine race began to occupy western Europe.1187 The Mittelgebirge of Germany were not settled till the Middle Ages. ”

“ Is mind powerless where mere reflection can succeed not once but repeatedly? Can it be impossible to put on canvas subjects which readily adapt themselves to modest-sized photographs? So long as form as well as colour is a source of pleasure, the Alps will offer a store of the most valuable material for art.
Nevertheless, a certain amount of truth underlies all the current criticisms on Alpine scenery. ”

“ Which, I wonder, borrows most from the other—the Lake of Lucerne from the old Tell legend, or the legends from the landscape of the lake?
An essential part of the human interest in the Alps grows out of the length of time through which history has concerned herself with them. The history of the Alpine valleys has only been written, or begun to be written, in recent years. Early visitors to Zermatt no doubt were conscious of the deep impress made by man upon the valley landscape, but they could not interpret, as we now can, the meaning of much that they saw. ”

“ It would be impossible within our limits to furnish even a moiety of the details and evidences by which the intricate structure of the Alps has been so successfully unraveled, and the arrangement of nature in the due order of superposition so persistently maintained. We shall simply advert to the equivalents of the English strata which have been satisfactorily ascertained, and shall then consider some of the more interesting phenomena connected with the age, elevation, erratic blocks, and glaciers of this Alpine country. ”

“ But if we confine the meaning of the term Alps to those parts of the chain that are what is commonly called “Alpine,” where the height is sufficient to support a considerable mass of perpetual snow, our boundaries to the west and to the east must be placed at spots other than those mentioned above. To the west the limit will then be the Col de Tenda (6145 ft.) ”

“ For the Alps cover a much larger area than most people realise. Ordinary persons think of the Alps and Switzerland as almost identical, [75] yet less than a third of the Alpine area is in Switzerland. By the Alps I mean the whole mountain area between the Mediterranean and the plains of North Italy, France, and Northern Europe, from where they begin at an arbitrary point of offshoot from the Apennines, called the Colle di Tenda, to where they fade out along a curved line, which may be vaguely described as joining Vienna to Fiume. ”

“ Literally speaking, "alps" are high pastures where cattle go to graze in summer-time. We here use the name with no such meaning, but to designate the mountains in general. The Alps, par excellence, to the normal man are the great groups of snowy peaks in the heart of the Alpine area. Let us in the first place confine our attention to them. In popular estimation these groups are the following, the Dauphiny, Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, Oberland, and Engadine masses. In the second rank come others we will refer to later. ”

“ Looked at from the plains of Piedmont and Lombardy, these glaciers and snow-fields present the appearance of sparkling diadems encircling the mountain summits.
In the eastern portion of the Alpine system—that is to say, between the Me­di­ter­ra­nean and Mont Blanc, the culminating point of Europe—the average height of the mountain groups gradually increases from 6,500 to more than 13,000 feet. To the east of Mont Blanc the Alps change in direction, and, beyond the vast citadels represented by Monte Rosa and the Bernese Oberland, they gradually decrease in height. ”

“ This mountain region has little in common with the Swiss Alps. The low elevation of the valleys, their sunny exposure, and the gentle slope of their hillsides, give the scenery an air of richness rarely found at the very base of great snow-mountains. The frequent and gay-looking villages, the woods of chestnuts, the knots of walnut-trees, the great fields of yellow-podded maize, the luxuriant vines and orchards, have the charm which the spontaneous bounty and colour of southern nature always exercise on the native of the more reserved and sober North. ”

“ Except in the Roman period, the southern face of the Alps has been an enclosing wall to the Italians. The southern cultivator penetrated its high but sunny valleys only when forced by poverty, while the harsh climate on the long northern slope effectively repelled him. On the other hand, Switzerland has overstepped the Alpine crest in the province of Ticino and thrust its political boundary in a long wedge down to the lowland of the Po near Como ”

“ I have been in Alpine villages where, at the end of every squalid alley, there towered up a great, pure, silent, white peak. That is what our lives may be; however noisome, crowded, petty the little lane in which we live, the Alp is at the end of it there, if we only choose to lift our eyes and look. ”

“ The people of the inland villages contain a goodly proportion of the Alpine stock, although, as our maps show, it is more attenuated than in either Savoy or Auvergne. To the eye this Alpine lineage appears in a
roundness of the face, a concave nose in profile, and broad nostrils. Along the coast intermixture has narrowed the heads, lightened the complexion, and, perhaps more than all, increased the stature. For an example of these contrasts our maps will serve as an illustration. ”

“ There had been before him some few Alpine climbers, and there were after him some few more; but the twentieth-century tourist to Switzerland—who is chiefly interested in the Alps as difficult mountains to climb, presenting great problems of ice and cliff traverses, seasoning the joy of difficult achievement with a pronounced spice of danger—follows a sport so modern that there are men now living who were born before the passion for Alpine climbing came to birth. ”

“ All the less jagged heights are mantled in snows, from which glacier streams descend. The largest of these ice streams are the Aletsch glacier from the group of the Finsteraarhorn, and those of the frequented valley of Chamounix, descending from Mont Blanc, the monarch of the Alps.
FAMOUS ALPINE
PASSES The passes of the Alps have always had importance as the gates of traffic from North Italy to the rest of Europe ”