XXIII.

Through the Tete Noir to Mont Blaur.

"Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains,

They crowned him long ago,

On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With his diadem of snow."

Byron's Manfred.

SUN

It

UNDAY morning we awoke in Martigny. The chimes near our windows were playing-I verily believe-a waltz. sounded so spirited and jocund. We are in the Catholic canton of Vallais, and of course every body goes to church. The women in tidy little hats surrounded with a broad silvered ribbon, and with prayer-book modestly folded in white handkerchief; with their high waists—but I am encroaching upon forbidden ground! It is enough, that their "bon jour, monsieur"-every where given smilingly and sweetly, to say nothing of their Sunday best attire-won our admiration. The smallest urchin made his obeisance to the stranger, and the oldest inhabitant removed his hat and bent his silvered head in respectful salutation. How pleasant to meet these kind-hearted Republicans.. God bless these descendants of Tell! The English, especially Murray, in his guide-book, have maligned the Swiss, most infamously. There is more true manhood and breeding in these simple-hearted people, than could be expressed out of all England, if she lay under the Alps for a century. Go to! Roast beef, go to! Hurrah for your Queen and spend your gold; but let unostentatious simplicity live unlibelled in its happy valley.

Mont

A novel mode of travel awaited us at Martigny. Blanc must be seen from Chamouni, and the Tête Noir must be

passed. Twenty miles inaccessible to the carriage, and traversible only by the mule, or upon foot, must be overcome. Our ladies are ready upon the sure-footed animals, and one mule is reserved for three of the other sex, wherewith to ride and tie. A Sabbath day's journey to the greatest temple in the universe, with Coleridge's hymn for our melody, and the roaring torrents for our diapason; who so Puritanic as to object to such an excursion? Well, we have a goodly calvacade up the mountain. Thirteen mules besides our own join us, and on we go, only stopping at the cool fountain or to fill our basket with strawberries. The way up was among pleasant apple orchards, and harvest fields. We had no dangers to encounter, or gorges to tremble at; until we turned abruptly into the Tête Noir, or Black Head! Our mules then began to measure their steps cautiously, though they were evidently so familiar with the path as not to "snort suspicion."

ror.

The passes in the Alps have their grades of sublimity, terror, and beauty. The Simplon combines, in the greatest degree, all these qualities. The Splügen and the Gemmi have more of terThe Tête Noir is deservedly celebrated, as well for its wildness, as for being the path to Mont Blanc. Within its savage gorges, the torrent thunders as if from lowest depths opening to devour. Dr. Cheever considered it a concentration, though somewhat in miniature, of the grand features of the Simplon, but at the same time rich and beautiful beyond description. I could not do better than to compress its scenery into the picture which he furnishes. Abrupt precipices frowning at each other across the way like black thunder clouds, about to meet ; enormous crags overhanging you so far, that you tremble to pass under them; savage cliffs looking down upon you, and watching you on the other side, as if waiting to see the mountain fall upon you; a torrent thundering beneath you, masses of the richest verdure flung in wild drapery over the gorge; galleries hewn in the rock, by which you pass the angular perpendicular cliffs, as in rocky hammocks swung in air; villages suspended

above you, and looking sometimes as if floating in the clouds; snowy mountain ridges far above these; clusters of châlets almost as far below you, with the tinkling of bells, the hum of voices, and the war of the torrent, fitfully sweeping up to you on the wind; these are the combinations presented you in the Tête Noir." The picture is not exaggerated, nor unfaithful, save that we found but one gallery in the pass.

After passing a rude cross erected upon a fearful part of the road, to commemorate a young German who lost his life there in a storm by the falling of a pine, you perceive the "head," black and bushy with pines, rising out of the brown, twisted, craggy rocks. Turning toward Chamouni, and looking across the vale, not far from the Auberge, there appears a mount, less less perpendicular, but higher than the "Tête," and a valley deeper! I counted seven silver cascades playing from its top, separating and uniting, bursting into spray, and floating in the air, then joining in a torrent. I could liken the scene to none other than a parliament or a congress of cascades, whose speeches were all to one point-the glory of the pass. One like an oily-tongued persuader, glides smoothly down the rock without splash or spray, and gains his end just as surely as the showy declaimer who raves and stamps, and tears a passion to tatters. Another spreads out his oratory in fine threads, every interruption fretting him into new points of grace and beauty, but uniting at the base in a torrent full and free, while his cogent neighbor, with continuity and unbrokenness of column, falls with all his force in one master apothegm upon the thread of his theme; and so they speak from their lofty tribune, illustrating their eloquence with flowers of sweetness, and rocks of truth. A villa of an hundred châlets listens demurely to their debate, and the torrent below unanimously carries the question down the vale with a glad shout of triumph. Well, metaphor will run mad in such a scene; so do not criticise my consistency. I wrote it on the spot, and give it as I wrote; interrupted now and then by the rapture of a lady-companion, who was filling her basket with

flowers, and the shout of a gentleman, who had found high up in the rocks a Chamois nest (?) made of moss.

But why wreak one's thoughts upon expression, where there is so much to paint, and where words are not mountains, nor cascades, nor even the pictures of them? The monster back of that rock, breaking the vale in twain, but smiling in its shaggy grandeur with gardens along its sides, and lashed everlastingly by a torrent, at which it also smiles-where is the palette of wordy colors to paint that? Soon, through a perspective of snowy mounts, Mont Blanc, monarch of them all, lifts on high his blanched head. The view at first disappointed me. We were ourselves so high, that his 16,000 feet dwindled to half of that. The azure sky was unclouded, and the vast Gothic granite needles that pierce it around the monarch, were well defined and sharp. Far ahead of our party, I ran down through the Rouge and Verd mounts, leaving the Col de Balme behind-downdown-down-DOWN-past cattle feeding in the shadows which were creeping up the mountains on the east, and at last into the vale of Chamouni, with its lofty line of sublimities on either side. I knew the Arve-the bold brawler from the clouds and ice peaks, born amid thunder and storm, hastening by the humble cots from steep to steep,

Till mingling with the mighty Rhone

It rests beneath Geneva's walls."

The Mer de Glace, and its outlet, the Glacier de Bois, hung over the vale under the everlasting pinnacles, threatening in aspect, while out of its hollow ice halls, rolled the "five wild torrents fiercely glad," which join to form the Aveiron. The vale lies north and south. The evening sun has left the valley, but lingers in a faint pink upon the great ice and snow fields of the monarch's head. The village of Chamouni, a pretty place enough, seems but a handful in these immensities of matter. Long after the shadows of night hung darkling over its roofs, the white light played on the top of the mountains. Perpetual

layers of eternal whiteness, untracked and untainted by mortal tread, catch the last, and will gleam with the first light of heaven. The mind becomes oppressed with an overpowering sense of sublimity. There is the Hierarchy of Nature ministering between heaven and earth, in long white robes flowing down the enormous ravines, with a solemn silence which rebukes the noisy torrents at its feet, and the roar of the wavy pines midway up its sides. Dread ambassador! what a ministration between the Finite and Infinite is thine! Pomp of earthly kings!-how puerile and tame is your magnificence !

It is only a mighty mind like that of Coleridge, that could grasp and give expression to the spirit of this vale. I have read that he never visited this spot. It cannot be true. His hymn is the true worship of his lofty soul, uplifted through tears into this sublime serenity.

Raptures and exclamations are impotent and tame; the only style which befits the solemn significance of the scene at Chamouni, is that of the prophet who, wrapped in his mantle, bowed to the still small voice' in awe.

6

As I write now, the peaks and falls, glaciers and gorges, which surround me, have become familiar in name and position; but the spirit of the scene who can exhaust? Who can analyze its glories? Other travellers have essayed to do it as well beneath its shadow as upon the distant points of view. It is only to be felt by being seen. As I gazed upon it, while the day was departing, the lofty wish of the poet, seemed full of new meaning, when he prayed that he might grow more bright from commerce with the sun, at the approach of all involving night. And forgetful of the dear ones at home,-remembered ever upon all other occasions, the wish started to the light, that here, beneath these hoar, high peaks of God's own majesty, we would love to live, and live to love, and at last sleep in the 'all involving night' of death, among the blossoms and flowers of this lovely vale.

I would like to take you up one more ascent-the Montan