Avarice

“ The avalanche, shaken from its glittering steep, if it rolls to the bosom of the earth, melts away, and is lost in vapor; but if it plunge into the embrace of the ocean, this mountain mass of ice and hail is borne about for ages in tumult and terror; it is the drifting monument of the ocean's dead. The tempest on land is impeded by forests, and broken by mountains; but on the plain of the deep it rushes unresisted; and when its strength is at last spent, ten thousand giant waves still roll its terrors onward. ”

“ Having collected all this hard winter, it has rolled over the edge of Arc to complete my destruction for my daring temerity. Resolving to retain consciousness, I look downward at the sun spot. It has changed; is changing, as does the ice-mass above me. Can that mass, in eclipse from the light above, be the spot? I believe it is, and that it will now strike us.
Hitting only on the edge of our anchor, ice, it spins the globe off into space, over and over, vapor spouts adhering. But I have seen behind us a slim stationary object. Is it? Oh, is it a fixture to hold the earth flame? ”

“ Deceiving; and men, horses, arms, fall in heaps, in confusion.
And see! Now the clouds, by an icy gale smitten, their burden
Discharge! Lo! the gusts of the whirlwind swirl fiercely about them;
The sky in convulsions, with swollen hail buffets them sorely.
Already the clouds themselves rupture and smother their weapons,
An avalanche icy roars down like a billow of ocean;
Earth lay overwhelmed by the drifts of the snow and the planets
Of heaven are blotted from sight ”

“ Leaping, bounding, thundering down the scarred side of the mountain, rolls a huge rock, torn from its bed by some unknown power and sent crashing into the yawning gulf below. The slumbering echoes thunder back the sound, and nature quakes under the fearful rush of the avalanche. ”

“ As it advances with ever-increasing rapidity the air in front is more and more compressed as the avalanche rushes on with lightning-like speed behind it. The wind sweeps everything before it, and many are the tales related by those who have survived or witnessed a display of its power. ”

“ We looked, we saw, and trembled; for, even as we gazed, the whole belt of aurora began to be alive with flashes. Then each pile or bank of light became myriads; some now dropping down the great pathway or belt, others springing up, others leaping with lightning flash from one side, while more as quickly passed into the vacated space; some, twisting themselves into folds, entwining with others like enormous serpents, and all these movements as quick as the eye could follow. ”

“ It draws up vapours from the sea and land, retains them dissolved in itself or suspended in cisterns of clouds, and throws them down again, as rain or dew, when they are required. It bends the rays of the sun from their path to give us the aurora of the morning and twilight of evening ”

“ It was like an aurora borealis, a continuous cosmical phenomenon, filling a cavern of sufficient extent to contain an ocean.
The vault that spanned the space above, the sky, if it could be called so, seemed composed of vast plains of cloud, shifting and variable vapours, which by their condensation must at certain times fall in torrents of rain. I should have thought that under so powerful a pressure of the atmosphere there could be no evaporation ”

“ For as much as thereby happeneth yearly a great destruction of the Brood of Wild-fowle, and Moore-game, and by the multitude of grosse vapours, and Clouds arising from those great fires, the Aer is so distemper'd, and such unseasonable and unnatural storms are ingendred, as that the Corn, and the Fruites of the Earth are thereby in divers places blasted, and greatly hindered in their due course of ripening and reaping. ”

“ Those incidents were now present, in a peculiarly plaintive murmur of the ocean, the kindling waves, and a delicate play of the Aurora Borealis. When we reached our vessel it was almost midnight, and still there was sweet daylight in the far north-west, moving along the circle of the northern horizon to brighten into morning before we were half through our light and dreamy slumbers. Weary and drowsy, all have crept to their berths ”

“ The thicker the atmosphere the more slowly the matter would fall; the mist would be frozen, as is the water in all the higher-lying clouds, even on a summer day, and, entangling the volcanic dust in its meshes, would fall into the region of the air currents, and so journey over all the lands and seas. ”

“ Stretched full length on the smooth ice, let us look through into that strange nether world, 209 where the stress of storm is unknown. Far beneath us sinuous black forms undulate through the water,—from tunnel to house and back again. As we gaze down through the crystalline mass, occasional fractures play pranks with the objects below. The animate shapes seem to take unto themselves greater bulk; their tails broaden, their bodies become many times longer. For a moment the illusion is perfect; thousands of centuries have slipped back, and we are looking at the giant beavers of old. ”

“ After these illustrations of the phenomena attendant on the aurora, some attention may be directed to an inquiry into its causes.
Whatever may be its origin, that the auroral action takes place within the limits of the atmosphere, scarcely higher than the region of cirri, and that it participates” in the movement of the earth, appears from the fact that the diurnal rotation, at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, effects no perceptible change in its aspect. ”

“ Tendency of air when put in motion to move in the plane of a great circle.—This tendency to move in great circles is checked by the forces of diurnal rotation, or by the pressure of the wind when it blows towards a common centre, as in a cyclone. In no case is it entirely overcome in its tendency, but in all it is diverted from the great circle path and forced to take up its line of march either in spirals about a point on the surface of the earth, or in loxodromics about its axis. ”

“ Rising clouds of vapor conceal the exact limits of the invasion, and points of contact, but the coarse rumble, the intermittent gushes of water upward, the far away reverberations of the earth’s opening crust, and the quivering pulsations that shake the table rock on which our spectators are standing, announce the new geological chapter in the world’s making, the last catastrophe before the earth lies quiet and smiling at the feet of men. ”

“ It will now be perceived that the fluid of the vortex, which we shall still term ether, is neither more nor less than the electric fluid,—the mighty energising principle of space,—the source of motion,—the cause of magnetism, galvanism, light, heat, gravity, of the aurora, the lightning, the zodiacal light, of the tails and nebulosities of comets, of the great currents of our atmosphere, of the samiel, the hurricane, and the earthquake. It will be perceived that we treat it as any other fluid, in relation to its law of motion and condensation. ”

“ The ether evaporates the water, the wind carries it about and fills the air with dust, and the dust and vapor again fall to the earth as rain, and the falling becomes a process of disintegration in part, but mainly an agency for the transportation of material of the rocky cellate by sheets of water into streams and by streams into the larger bodies. Then gravity acts as a process, throwing the load of transportation to the bottom in assorted layers. ”

“ Reason suggests, and philosophy teaches, that, going from a lower to a higher temperature, the evaporating powers of these winds are increased; that they have to travel, in their oblique course toward the equator, a distance of nearly three thousand miles; that, as a general rule, they evaporate all the time, and all the way, and precipitate little or none on their route; investigations have proved that they are not saturated with moisture until they have arrived fully up to the regions of equatorial calms, a zone of constant precipitation. ”

“ For by degrees the black water, leaving its natural motion, seemed to pile up under the black cloud, and then, very suddenly, before one could see how it happened, either the cloud stretched out a trunk to the sea, or the sea to the cloud, and two funnel-shaped masses were joined together by a long, twisting, whirling column of water that neither sea nor sky seemed able to break away from. ”

“ Avalanches of great extent often take place on the sides of the mountains, when a vast amount of material, equal to three or four hundred million cubic feet of earth, will fall several thousand feet. Often an avalanche of this kind will produce a wind, which is confined, of course, to a restricted area, that is said to be so violent as to tear one's clothes into shreds. This is not caused by any difference of temperature, but by a violent compression. ”

“ I have myself seen a row of telegraph posts in an Alpine valley in winter thrown flat on the ground by the air preceding an enormous avalanche, which itself did not come within 300 yards of them. It is a very wonderful thing that persons buried beneath an avalanche can sometimes hear every word spoken by a search party, and yet not a sound that they utter reaches the ears of those outside. A great deal of air is imprisoned between the particles of snow, and so it is possible for those overwhelmed by an avalanche to live inside it for hours. ”

“ Rarely could one see the popular idea of an avalanche realized. Most people, I find, think of avalanches as broad tracts of snow which are transferred from the upper part of a mountain into a valley at its foot, keeping their general shape all the way. The Silberhorn specimen corresponded to this ideal for a short distance, as I have said. But all the others trickled down in a water-like way from top to bottom. The behavior of the falling ice and snow was so much like that of water that one could be convinced that he was beholding an avalanche only when he saw what took place at its terminus. ”

“ Over this exquisitely neat earth there lay an enveloping atmosphere, greatly thinner and less dense than the air at present is, and incapable, in consequence, of being agitated by storms; while directly over the northern and southern extremities of the world the polar auroras, now so fitful and broken, extended in a permanent arch, and gave light, during the long dark winters, to the regions lying below. ”

“ But a firm resolve with me is almost always like the avalanche which is being precipitated from the lofty summits of the Alps—beginning with but an insignificant ball of snow set in motion by a favourable breeze, but soon swelling into a tremendous mass which carries before it every impediment, crushing and driving before it with irresistible force everything standing in its way. ”

“ The internal and external development of the great Northern Empire seems to partake of the nature of the avalanche. At widely-parted intervals we have a sudden displacement of the centre of gravity, resulting in a swift movement forward, followed by a more or less lengthy period of immobility. ”

“ In a thousand spots the traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie broken and strewed on the ground; some entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning upon the jutting rocks of the mountain, or transversely upon other trees. The path, as you ascend higher, is intersected by ravines of snow, down which stones continually roll from above; one of them is particularly dangerous, as the slightest sound, such as even speaking in a loud voice, produces a concussion of air sufficient to draw destruction upon the head of the speaker. ”

“ A wall of ice more than sixty feet high, already partly detached from the Goûter, to which it only clung by one of its angles, overhung the path which we should follow. This great mass seemed to hold itself in equilibrium. What if our passing, by disturbing the air, should hasten its fall? Our guides held a consultation. Each of them examined with a spy-glass the fissure which had been formed between the mountain and this alarming ice-mass. The sharp and clear edges of the cleft betrayed a recent breaking off, evidently caused by the fall of the avalanche. ”

“ Bores, eagres, and the earthquake wave of Lisbon.—But, besides tide-rips, bores, and eagres, [2] there are the sudden disruptions in the ice which arctic voyagers tell of, the immense icebergs which occasionally appear in groups near certain latitudes, the variable character of all the currents of the sea—now fast, now slow (§ 401) , now running this way, then that—all of which may be taken as so many signs of the tremendous throes which occur in the bosom of the ocean. ”

“ When about half way or more up the mountain we crossed the track of the avalanches, a strip or trail, which looks from beneath like a mower's swath through a field of tall grass. It is a clean path, about fifty rods wide, without trees, with few rocks, smooth and steep, and with a bottom of ice covered with gravel.
"Hurrah, William," said I, "let's have an avalanche!"
"Agreed," said he; "there's a big rock."
"Monsieur le Guide, Monsieur le Guide!" I shouted, "stop a moment. H., stop; we want you to see our avalanche." ”

“ But we look down the deeps and mark
Silent workers in the dark,
Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs,
Old instincts hardening to new beliefs:
Patience, a little; learn to wait;
Hours are long on the clock of Fate.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
But only God endures forever!
* * * * *
THE AURORA BOREALIS. The aurora borealia, or rather, the polar aurora,—for there are aurorae australes as well as aurorae boreales,—has been an object of wonder and admiration from time immemorial. ”