§ 18. Such is the actual condition of the Alps at this moment. I do not say that they have in reality undergone any such process. But I think it right to put the supposition before the reader, more with a view of explaining what the appearance of things actually is, than with any wish that he should adopt either this or any other theory on the subject. It facilitates a description of the Brèche de Roland to say, that it looks as if the peer had indeed cut it open with a swordstroke; but it would be unfair to conclude that the describer gravely wished the supposition to be adopted as explanatory of the origin of the ravine. In like manner, the reader who has followed the steps of the theory I have just offered, will have a clearer conception of the real look and anatomy of the Alps than I could give him by any other means. But he is welcome to accept in seriousness just as much or as little of the theory as he likes.56Only Iam well persuaded that the more familiar any one becomes with the chain of the Alps, the more, whether voluntarily or not, the idea will force itself upon him of their being mere remnants of large masses,—splinters and fragments, as of a stranded wreck, the greater part of which has been removed by the waves; and the more he will be convinced of the existence of two distinct regions, one, as it were, below the ice, another above it,—one of subjected, the other of emergent rock; the lower worn away by the action of the glaciers and rains, the higher splintering and falling to pieces by natural disintegration.
§ 19. I press, however, neither conjecture nor inquiry farther; having already stated all that is necessary to give the reader a complete idea of the different divisions of mountain form. I proceed now to examine the points of pictorial interest in greater detail; and in order to do so more conveniently, I shall adopt the order, in description, which Nature seems to have adopted in formation; beginning with the mysterious hardness of the central crystallines, and descending to the softer and lower rocks which we see in some degree modified by the slight forces still in operation. We will therefore examine: 1. the pictorial phenomena of the central peaks; 2. those of the summits of the lower mountains round them, to which we shall find it convenient to give the distinguishing name of crests; 3. the formation of Precipices, properly so called; then, the general aspect of the Banks and Slopes, produced by the action of water or of falling débris, on the sides or at the bases of mountains; and finally, remove, if it may be, a few of the undeserved scorns thrown upon our most familiar servants, Stones. To each of these subjects we shall find it necessary to devote a distinct chapter.
52It may be thought I should have reversed these sentences, and written where the hills are low and safe, the climate is soft, &c. But it is not so. No antecedent reason can be shown why the Mont Cervin or Finsteraarhorn should not have risen sharp out of the plains of Lombardy, instead of out of glaciers.53I use the terms "pyramid" and "peak" at present, in order to give a rough general idea of the aspect of these hills. Both terms, as we shall see in the next chapter, are to be accepted under limitation.54This coarse sketch is merely given for reference, as I shall often have to speak of the particular masses of mountain, indicated by the letters in the outline below it; namely—b.Aiguille Blaitière.M.Mont Blanc (summit).T.Tapia.p.Aiguille du Plan.d.Dôme du Gouté.C.Montagne de la Côte.m.Aiguille du Midi.g.Aiguille du Gouté.t.Montagne de Taconay.qandrindicate stations only.55The glacier tracks on the gneiss of the great angle opposite Martigny are the most magnificent I ever saw in the Alps; those above the channel of the Trient, between Valorsine and the valley of the Rhone, the most interesting.56For farther information respecting the glaciers and their probable action, the reader should consult the works of Professor Forbes. I believe this theory of the formation of the upper peaks has been proposed by him, and recently opposed by Mr. Sharpe, who believes that the great bank spoken of in the text was originally a sea-bottom. But I have simply stated in this chapter the results of my own watchings of the Alps; for being without hope of getting time for available examination of the voluminous works on these subjects, I thought it best to read nothing (except Forbes's most important essay on the glaciers, several times quoted in the text), and therefore to give, at all events, the force of independent witness to such impressions as I received from the actual facts; De Saussure, always a faithful recorder of those facts, and my first master in geology, being referred to, occasionally, for information respecting localities I had not been able to examine.
52It may be thought I should have reversed these sentences, and written where the hills are low and safe, the climate is soft, &c. But it is not so. No antecedent reason can be shown why the Mont Cervin or Finsteraarhorn should not have risen sharp out of the plains of Lombardy, instead of out of glaciers.
53I use the terms "pyramid" and "peak" at present, in order to give a rough general idea of the aspect of these hills. Both terms, as we shall see in the next chapter, are to be accepted under limitation.
54This coarse sketch is merely given for reference, as I shall often have to speak of the particular masses of mountain, indicated by the letters in the outline below it; namely—
55The glacier tracks on the gneiss of the great angle opposite Martigny are the most magnificent I ever saw in the Alps; those above the channel of the Trient, between Valorsine and the valley of the Rhone, the most interesting.
56For farther information respecting the glaciers and their probable action, the reader should consult the works of Professor Forbes. I believe this theory of the formation of the upper peaks has been proposed by him, and recently opposed by Mr. Sharpe, who believes that the great bank spoken of in the text was originally a sea-bottom. But I have simply stated in this chapter the results of my own watchings of the Alps; for being without hope of getting time for available examination of the voluminous works on these subjects, I thought it best to read nothing (except Forbes's most important essay on the glaciers, several times quoted in the text), and therefore to give, at all events, the force of independent witness to such impressions as I received from the actual facts; De Saussure, always a faithful recorder of those facts, and my first master in geology, being referred to, occasionally, for information respecting localities I had not been able to examine.
§ 1.I haveendeavored in the preceding chapters always to keep the glance of the reader on the broad aspect of things, and to separate for him the mountain masses into the most distinctly comprehensible forms. We must now consent to take more pains, and observe more closely.
§ 2. I begin with the Aiguilles. InFig. 24,p. 170, ata, it was assumed that the mass was raised highest merely where the elevating force was greatest, being of one substance with the bank or cliff below. But it hardly everisof the same substance. Almost always it is of compact crystallines, and the bank of slaty crystallines; or if it be of slaty crystallines the bank is of slaty coherents. The bank is almost always the softer of the two.57
Is not this very marvellous? Is it not exactly as if the substance had been prepared soft or hard with a sculpturesque view to what had to be done with it; soft, for the glacier to mould, and the torrent to divide; hard, to stand for ever, central in mountain majesty.
§ 3. Next, then, comes the question, How do these compact crystallines and slaty crystallines join each other? It has long been a well recognized fact in the science of geology, that the most important mountain ranges lift up and sustain upon their sides the beds of rock which form the inferior groups of hills around them in the manner roughly shown in the sectionFig. 25, where the dark mass stands for the hard rock of the greatmountains (crystallines), and the lighter lines at the side of it indicate the prevalent direction of the beds in the neighboring hills (coherents), while the spotted portions represent the gravel and sand of which the great plains are usually composed. But it has not been so universally recognized, though long ago pointed out by De Saussure, that the great central groups are often themselves composed of beds lying in a precisely opposite direction; so that if we analyze carefully the structure of the dark mass in the centre ofFig. 25, we shall find it arranged in lines which slope downwards to the centre; the flanks of it being of slaty crystalline rock, and the summit of compact crystallines, as ata,Fig. 26.
In speaking of the sculpture of the central peaks in the last chapter, I made no reference to thenatureof the rocks in the banks on which they stood. The diagram ata,Fig. 27, as representative of the original condition, andb, of the resultant condition will, compared withFig. 24,p. 170, more completely illustrate the change.58
§ 4. By what secondary laws this structure may ultimately be discovered to have been produced is of no consequence to us at present; all that it is needful for us to note is the beneficencewhich appointed it for the mountains destined to assume the boldest forms. For into whatever outline they may be sculptured by violence or time, it is evident at a glance that their stability and security must always be the greatest possible under the given circumstances. Suppose, for instance, that the peak is in such a form asainFig. 26, then, however steep the slope may be on either side, there is still no chance of one piece of rock sliding off another; but if the same outline were given to beds disposed as atb, the unsupported masses might slide off those beneath them at any moment, unless prevented by the inequalities of the surfaces. Farther, in the minor divisions of the outline, the tendency of the peak atawill be always to assume contours like those atainFig. 28, which are, of course, perfectly safe; but the tendency of the beds atbinFig. 27will be to break into contours such as atbhere, which are all perilous, not only in the chance of each several portion giving way, but in the manner in which they woulddeliver, from one to the other, the fragments which fell. A stone detached from any portion of the peak atawould be caught and stopped on the ledge beneath it; but a fragment loosened frombwould not stay till it reached the valley by a series of accelerating bounds.
§ 5. While, however, the secure and noble form representedatain Figs. 26 and 28 is for the most part ordained to be that of the highest mountains, the contours atb, in each figure, are of perpetual occurrence among the secondary ranges, in which, on a smaller scale, they produce some of the most terrific and fantastic forms of precipice; not altogether without danger, as has been fearfully demonstrated by many a "bergfall" among the limestone groups of the Alps; but with far less danger than would have resulted from the permission of such forms among the higher hills; and with collateral advantages which we shall have presently to consider. In the meantime, we return to the examination of the superior groups.
§ 6. The reader is, no doubt, already aware that the chain of the Mont Blanc is bordered by two great valleys, running parallel to each other, and seemingly excavated on purpose that travellers might be able to pass, foot by foot, along each side of the Mont Blanc and its aiguilles, and thus examine every peak in succession. One of these valleys is that of Chamouni, the other that of which one half is called the Allée Blanche, and the other the Val Ferret, the town of Cormayeur being near its centre, where it opens to the Val d'Aosta. Now, cutting the chain of Mont Blanc right across, from valley to valley, through the double range of aiguilles, the section would be59asFig. 29here, in whichais the valley of Chamouni,bthe range of aiguilles of Chamouni,cthe range of the Géant,dthe valley of Cormayeur.
The little projection underMis intended to mark approximately the position of the so well-known "Montanvert." It is a great weakness, not to say worse than weakness, on the partof travellers, to extol always chiefly what they think fewest people have seen or can see. I have climbed much, and wandered much, in the heart of the high Alps, but I have never yet seen anything which equalled the view from the cabin of the Montanvert; and as the spot is visited every year by increasing numbers of tourists, I have thought it best to take the mountains which surround it for the principal subjects of our inquiry.
§ 7. The little eminence left underMtruly marks the height of the Montanvert on the flanks of the Aiguilles, but not accurately its position, which is somewhat behind the mass of mountain supposed to be cut through by the section. But the top of the Montanvert is actually formed, as shown atM, by the crests of the oblique beds of slaty crystallines. Every traveller must remember the steep and smooth beds of rock like sloping walls, down which, and over the ledges of which, the path descends from the cabin to the edge of the glacier. These sloping walls are formed by the inner sides of the crystalline beds,60as exposed in the notch behind the letterM.
§ 8. To these beds we shall return presently, our object just now being to examine the aiguille, which, on the Montanvert, forms the most conspicuous mass of mountain on the right of the spectator. It is known in Chamouni as the Aiguille des Charmoz, and is distinguished by a very sharp horn or projection on its side, which usually attracts the traveller's attention as one of the most singular minor features in the view from the Montanvert. The larger masses of the whole aiguille, and true contour of this horn, are carefully given inplate30, Fig. 2, as they are seen in morning sunshine. Theimpressionwhich travellers usually carry away with them is, I presume, to be gathered from Fig. 1, a fac simile of one of the lithographs purchased with avidity by English travellers, in the shops of Chamouni and Geneva, as giving a faithful representation of this aiguille seen from the Montanvert. It is worth while to perpetuate this example of the ideal landscape of the nineteenth century, popular at the time when the works of Turner were declared by the public to be extravagant and unnatural.
§ 9. This example of the common ideal of aiguilles is, however,useful in another respect. It shows the strong impression which these Chamouni mountains leave, of their being above all others sharp-peaked and splintery, dividing more or less into arrowy spires; and it marks the sense of another and very curious character in them, that these spires are apt to be somewhat bent or curved.
Both these impressions are partially true, and need to be insisted upon, and cleared of their indistinctness, or exaggeration.
First, then, this strong impression of their peakedness and spiry separateness is always produced with the least possibledangerto the travelling and admiring public; for if in reality these granite mountains were ever separated into true spires or points, in the least resembling this popular ideal inPlate30, the Montanvert and Mer de Glace would be as inaccessible, except at the risk of life, as the trenches of a besieged city; and the continual fall of the splintering fragments would turn even the valley of Chamouni itself into a stony desolation.
§ 10. Perhaps in describing mountains with any effort to give some idea of their sublime forms, no expression comes oftener to the lips than the word "peak." And yet it is curious how rarely, even among the grandest ranges, an instance can be found of a mountain ascertainably peaked in the true sense of the word,—pointed at the top, and sloping steeply on all sides; perhaps not more than five summits in the chain of the Alps, the Finster-Aarhorn, Wetterhorn, Bietschhorn, Weisshorn, and Monte Viso presenting approximations to such a structure. Even in the case of not very steep pyramids, presenting themselves in the distance under some such outline as that at the top ofFig. 30, it almost invariably happens, when we approach and examine them, that they do not slope equally on all their sides, but are nothing more than steep ends of ridges, supported by far-extended masses of comparatively level rock, which, seen in perspective, give the impression of a steep slope, though in reality disposed in a horizonal, or nearly horizontal, line.
§ 11. Supposing the central diagram inFig. 30to be the apparent contour of a distant mountain, then its slopes may indeed, by singular chance, be as steep as they appear; but, in all probability, several of them are perspective descents of its retiring lines; and supposing it were formed as the gable roof of theold French house below, and seen under the same angle, it is evident that the part of the outlinea b(in lettered reference line below) would be perfectly horizontal;b can angle slope, in retiring perspective, much less steep than it appears;c d, perfectly, horizontal;d e, an advancing or foreshortened angle slope, less steep than it appears; ande f, perfectly horizontal.
But if the pyramid presents itself under a more formidable aspect, and with steeper sides than those of the central diagram, then it may be assumed (as far as I know mountains) for next to a certainty, that it is not a pointed obelisk, but the end of a ridge more or less prolonged, of which we see the narrow edge or section turned towards us.
For instance, no mountain in the Alps produces a more vigorous impression of peakedness than the Matterhorn. In ProfessorForbes's work on the Alps, it is spoken of as an "obelisk" of rock, and represented with little exaggeration in his seventh plate under the outlineFig. 31. Naturally, in glancing, whether at the plate or the mountain, we assume the mass to be a peak, and suppose the linea bto be the steep slope of its side. But that line is a perspective line. It is in realityperfectlyhorizontal, corresponding toe fin the penthouse roof,Fig. 30.
§ 12. I say "perfectly horizontal," meaning, of course, in general tendency. It is more or less irregular and broken, but so nearly horizontal that, after some prolonged examination of the data I have collected about the Matterhorn, I am at this moment in doubtwhich is its top. For as, in order to examine the beds on its flanks, I walked up the Zmutt glacier, I saw that the linea binFig. 31gradually lost its steepness; and about half-way up the glacier, the conjectural summitathen bearing nearlyS. E.(forty degrees east of south), I found the contour was as inFig. 32. InFig. 33, I have given the contour as seen from Zermatt; and in all three, the same letters indicate the same points. In the Figures 32 and 33 I measured the angles with the greatest care,61from the base linesx y, whichare accurately horizontal; and their general truth, irrespective of mere ruggedness, may be depended upon. Now in this flank view,Fig. 32, whatwasthe summit at Zermatt,a, becomes quite subordinate, and the pointb, far down the flank in Forbes's view taken from the Riffelhorn, is here the apparent summit. I was for some time in considerable doubt which of the appearances was most trustworthy; and believe now that they arebothdeceptive; for I found, on ascending the flank of the hills on the other side of the Valais, to a height of about five thousand feet above Brieg, between the Aletsch glacier and Bietsch-horn; being thus high enough to get a view of the Matterhorn on something like distant terms of equality, up the St. Nicholas valley, it presented itself under the outlineFig. 34, which seems to be conclusive for the supremacy of the pointe, betweenaandbinFig. 33. But the impossibility of determining, at the foot of it, without a trigonometrical observation,which is the topof such an apparent peak as the Matterhorn, may serve to show the reader how little the eye is to be trusted for the verification of peaked outline.
§ 13. In like manner, the aiguilles of Chamouni, which present themselves to the traveller, as he looks up to them from the village, under an outline approximating to that rudely indicated atCin the next figure, are in reality buttresses projecting from an intermediate ridge. LetAbe supposed to be a castle wall, with slightly elevated masses of square-built buttresses at intervals. Then, by a process of dilapidation, these buttresses might easily be brought to assume in their perspective of ruin the forms indicated at B, which, with certain modifications, is the actual shape of the Chamouni aiguilles. The top of theAiguille Charmoz is not the point underd, but that undere. The deception is much increased by the elevation of the whole castle wall on the green bank before spoken of, which raises its foundation several thousand feet above the eye, and thus, giving amazing steepness to all the perspective lines, produces an impression of the utmost possible isolation of peaks, where, in reality, there is a well-supported, and more or less continuous, though sharply jagged, pile of solid walls.
§ 14. There is, however, this great difference between the castle wall and aiguilles, that the dilapidation in the onewould take place by the fall ofhorizontalbricks or stones; in the aiguilles it takes place in quite an opposite manner by the flaking away of nearlyverticalones.
This is the next point of great interest respecting them. Observe, the object of their construction appears to be the attainment of the utmost possible peakedness in aspect, with the least possible danger to the inhabitants of the valleys. As, therefore, they are first thrown into transverse ridges, which take, in perspective, a more or less peaked outline, so, in their dilapidation, they split into narrow flakes, which, if seen edgeways, look as sharp as a lance-point, but are nevertheless still strong; being each of them, in reality, not a lance-point or needle, but a hatchet edge.
§ 15. And since if these sharp flakes brokestraightacross the masses of mountain, when once the fissure took place, all hold would be lost between flake and flake, it is ordered (and herein is the most notable thing in the whole matter) that they shall not break straight, butin curves, round the bodyof the aiguilles, somewhat in the manner of the coats of an onion; so that, even after fissure has taken place, the detached film or flake clings to and leans upon the central mass, and will not fall from it till centuries of piercing frost have wedged it utterly from its hold; and, even then, will not fall all at once, but drop to pieces slowly, and flake by flake. Consider a little the beneficence of this ordinance;62supposing the cliffs had been built like the castle wall, the mouldering away of a few bricks, more or less, at the bottom would have brought down huge masses above, as it constantly does in ruins, and in the mouldering cliffs of the slaty coherents; while yet the top of the mountain would have been always blunt and rounded, as ata,Fig. 36, when seen against the sky. But the aiguille being built in these nearly vertical curved flakes, the worst that the frost can do to it is to push its undermost rocks asunder into forms such as atb, of which, when many of the edges have fallen, the lower ones are more or less supported by the very débris accumulated at their feet; and yet all the while the tops sustain themselves in themost fantastic and incredible fineness of peak against the sky.
§ 16. I have drawn the flakes inFig. 36, for illustration's sake, under a caricatured form. Their real aspect will be understood in a moment by a glance at the opposite plate,31, which represents the central aiguille in the woodcut outlineFig. 35(Aiguille Blaitière, called by Forbes Greppond), as seen from within about half a mile of its actual base. The white shell-like mass beneath it is a small glacier, which in its beautifully curvedoutline63appears to sympathize with the sweep of the rocks beneath, rising and breaking like a wave at the feet of the remarkable horn or spur which supports it on the right. The base of the aiguille itself is, as it were, washed by this glacier, or by the snow which covers it, till late in the season, as a cliff is by the sea; except that a narrow chasm, of some twenty or thirty feet in depth and two or three feet wide, usually separates the rock from the ice, which is melted away by the heat reflected from the southern face of the aiguille. The rock all along this base line is of the most magnificent compactness and hardness, and rings under the hammer like a bell; yet, when regarded from a little distance, it is seen to be distinctly inclined to separate into grand curved flakes or sheets, of which the dark edges are well marked in the plate. The pyramidal form of the aiguille, as seen from this point, is, however, entirely deceptive; the square rock which forms its apparent summit is not the real top, but much in advance of it, and the slope on the right againstthe sky is a perspective line; while, on the other hand, the precipice in light, above the three small horns at the narrowest part of the glacier, is considerably steeper than it appears to be, the cleavage of the flakes crossing it somewhat obliquely. But I show the aiguille from this spot that the reader may more distinctly note the fellowship between its curved precipice and the little dark horn or spur which bounds the glacier; a spur the more remarkable because there is just such another, jutting in like manner from the corresponding angle of the next aiguille (Charmoz), both of them looking like remnants or foundations of the vaster ancient pyramids, of which the greater part has been by ages carried away.
§ 17. The more I examined the range of the aiguilles the more I was struck by this curved cleavage as their principal character. It is quite true that they have other straighter cleavages (noticed in the Appendix, as the investigation of them would be tiresome to the general reader); but it is this to which they owe the whole picturesqueness of their contours; curved as it is, not simply, but often into the most strange shell-like undulations, as will be understood by a glance atFig. 37, which shows the meregoverninglines at the base of this Aiguille Blaitière, seen,with its spur, from a station some quarter of a mile nearer it, and more to the east than that chosen inPlate31. These leading lines are rarely well shown in fine weather, the important contour fromadownwards being hardly relieved clearly from the precipice beyond (b), unless a cloud intervenes, as it did when I made this memorandum; while, again, the leading lines of the Aiguille du Plan, as seen from the foot of it, close to the rocks, are as atFig. 38, the generally pyramidal outline being nearly similar to that of Blaitière, and a spur being thrown out to the right, undera, composed in exactly the same manner of curved folia of rock laid one against the other. The hollow in the heart of the aiguille is as smooth and sweeping in curve as the cavity of a vast bivalve shell.
§ 18. I call these the governing or leading lines, not because they are the first which strike the eye, but because, like those of the grain of the wood in a tree-trunk, they rule the swell and fall and change of all the mass. In Nature, or in a photograph, a careless observer will by no means be struck by them, any more than he would by the curves of the tree; and an ordinary artist would draw rather the cragginess and granulation of the surfaces, just as he would rather draw the bark and moss of the trunk. Nor can any one be more steadfastly adverse than I to every substitution of anatomical knowledge for outward and apparent fact; but so it is, that as an artist increases in acuteness of perception, the facts whichbecomeoutward and apparent tohim are those which bear upon the growth or make of the thing. And, just as in looking at any woodcut of trees after Titian or Albert Durer, as compared with a modern water-color sketch, we shall always be struck by the writhing and rounding of the tree trunks in the one, and the stiffness, and merely blotted or granulated surfaces of the other; so, in looking at these rocks, the keenness of the artist's eye may almost precisely be tested by the degree in which he perceives the curves that give them their strength and grace, and in harmony with which the flakes of granite are bound together, like the bones of the jaw of a saurian. Thus the ten years of study which I have given to these mountains since I described them in the first volume as "traversed sometimes by graceful curvilinear fissures, sometimes by straight fissures," have enabled me to ascertain, and now generally at a glance to see, that the curvilinear ones aredominant, and that even the fissures or edges which appear perfectly straight havealmostalways some delicate sympathy with the curves. Occasionally, however, as in the separate beds which form the spur or horn of the Aiguille Blaitière, seen in true profile inPlate29, Fig. 3, the straightness is so accurate that, not having brought a rule with me up the glacier, I was obliged to write under my sketch, "Not possible to draw it straight enough." Compare also the lines sloping to the left inFig. 38.
§ 19. "But why not give everything just as it is; without caring what is dominant and what subordinate?"
You cannot. Of all the various impossibilities which torment and humiliate the painter, none are more vexatious than that of drawing a mountain form. It is indeed impossible enough to draw, by resolute care, the foam on a wave, or the outline of the foliage of a large tree; but in these cases, when care is at fault, carelessness will help, and the dash of the brush will in some measure give wildness to the churning of the foam, and infinitude to the shaking of the leaves. But chance will not help us with the mountain. Its fine and faintly organized edge seems to be definitely traced against the sky; yet let us set ourselves honestly to follow it, and we find, on the instant, it has disappeared: and that for two reasons. The first, that if the mountain be lofty, and in light, it is so faint in color that the eye literally cannot trace its separation from the hues next to it.The other day I wanted the contour of a limestone mountain in the Valais, distant about seven miles, and as many thousand feet above me; it was barren limestone; the morning sun fell upon it, so as to make it almost vermilion color, and the sky behind it a bluish green. Two tints could hardly have been more opposed, but both were so subtle, that I found it impossible to see accurately the line that separated the vermilion from the green. The second, that if the contour be observed from a nearer point, or looked at when it is dark against the sky, it will be found composed of millions of minor angles, crags, points, and fissures, which no human sight or hand can draw finely enough, and yet all of which have effect upon the mind.
§ 20. The outline shown as dark against the sky inPlate29, Fig. 2 is about a hundred, or a hundred and twenty, yards of the top of the ridge of Charmoz, running from the base of the aiguille down to the Montanvert, and seen from the moraine of the Charmoz glacier, a quarter of a mile distant to the south-west.64It is formed of decomposing granite, thrown down in blocks entirely detached, but wedged together, so as to stand continually in these seemingly perilous contours (being a portion of such a base of aiguille as that inb,Fig. 36,p. 185).65The block forming the summit on the left is fifteen or eighteen feet long; and the upper edge of it, which is the dominant point of the Charmoz ridge, is the best spot in the Chamounidistrict for giving a thorough command of the relations of the aiguilles on each side of the Mer de Glace. Now put the book, with that page open, upright, at three yards distance from you, and try to draw this contour, which I have made as dark and distinct as it ever could be in reality, and you will immediately understand why it is impossible to draw mountain outlines rightly.
§ 21. And if not outlines,a fortiorinot details of mass, which have all the complexity of the outline multiplied a thousand fold, and drawn in fainter colors. Nothing is more curious than the state of embarrassment into which the unfortunate artist must soon be cast when he endeavors honestly to draw the face of the simplest mountain cliff—say a thousand feet high, and two or three miles distant. It is full of exquisite details, all seemingly decisive and clear; but when he tries to arrest one of them, he cannot see it,—cannot find where it begins or ends,—and presently it runs into another; and then he tries to draw that, but that will not be drawn, neither, until it has conducted him to a third, which, somehow or another, made part of the first; presently he finds that, instead of three, there are in reality four, and then he loses his place altogether. He tries to draw clear lines, to make his work look craggy, but finds that then it is too hard; he tries to draw soft lines, and it is immediately too soft; he draws a curved line, and instantly sees it should have been straight; a straight one, and finds when he looks up again, that it has got curved while he was drawing it. There is nothing for him but despair, or some sort of abstraction and shorthand for cliff. Then the only question is, what is the wisest abstraction; and out of the multitude of lines that cannot altogether be interpreted, which are the really dominant ones; so that if we cannot give the whole, we may at least give what will convey the most important facts about the cliff.
§ 22. Recurring then to our "public opinion" of the Aiguille Charmoz, we find the greatest exaggeration of, and therefore I suppose the greatest interest in, the narrow and spiry point on its left side. That is in reality a point at all but a hatchet edge; a flake of rock, which is enabled to maintain itself in this sharp-edged state by its writhing folds of sinewy granite. Its structure, on a larger scale, and seen "edge on," is shown inFig. 41. The whole aiguille is composed of a series of such flakes, liable, indeed, to all kinds of fissure in other directions, but holding, by their modes of vertical association, the strongest authority over the form of the whole mountain. It is not in all lights that they are seen plainly: for instance, in the morning effect inPlate30they are hardly traceable: but the longer we watch, the more they are perceived; and their power of sustaining themselves vertically is so great, that at the foot of the aiguille on the right a few of them form a detached mass, known as thePetitCharmoz, betweenEandcinFig. 60,p. 210, of which the height of the uttermost flake, betweencandd, is about five hundred feet.
Important, however, as this curved cleavage is, it is so confused among others, that it has taken me, as I said, ten years of almost successive labor to develope, in any degree of completeness, its relations among the aiguilles of Chamouni; and even of professed geologists, the only person who has described it properly is De Saussure, whosecontinualsojourn among the Alps enabled him justly to discern the constant from the inconstant phenomena. And yet, in his very first journey to Savoy, Turner saw it at a glance, and fastened on it as the main thing to be expressed in those mountains.
In the opposite Plate (32), the darkest division, on the right, is a tolerably accurate copy of Turner's rendering of the Aiguille Charmoz (etched and engraved by himself), in the plate called the "Mer de Glace," in the Liber Studiorum. Its outline is in local respects inaccurate enough, being modified by Turnerian topography; but the flaky character is so definite, that it looks as if it had been prepared for an illustrative diagram of the points at present under discussion.
§ 23. And do not let it be supposed that this was by chance, or that the modes of mountain drawing at the period would in any wise have helped Turner to discover these lines. The aiguilles had been drawn before this time, and the figure on the left inPlate32will show how. It is a facsimile of a piece of an engraving of the Mer de Glace, by Woollett, after William Pars, published in 1783, and founded on the general Wilsonian and Claudesque principles of landscape common at the time. There are, in the rest of the plate, some good arrangements of shadow and true aerial perspective; and the piece I have copied, which is an attempt to represent the Aiguille Dru, opposite the Charmoz, will serve, not unfairly, to show how totally inadequate the draughtsmen of the time were to perceive the character of mountains, and, also, how unable the human mind is by itself to conceive anything like the variety of natural form. The workman had not looked at the thing,—trusted to his "Ideal," supposed that broken and rugged rocks might be shaped better out of his own head than by Nature's laws,—and we see what comes of it.
§ 24. And now, lastly, observe, in the laws by which this strange curvilinear structure is given to the aiguilles, how the provision for beauty of form is made in the first landscape materials we have to study. We have permitted ourselves, according to that unsystematic mode of proceeding pleaded for in the opening of our present task, to wander hither and thither as this or that question rose before us, and demanded, or tempted, our pursuit. But the reader must yet remember that our special business in this section of the work is the observance of the nature ofbeauty, and of the degrees in which the aspect of any object fulfils the laws of beauty stated in the second volume. Now in the fifteenth paragraph of the chapter on infinity, it was stated that curvature was essential to all beauty, and that what we should "need more especially to prove, was the constancy of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever." And these aiguilles, which are the first objects we have had definitely to consider, appeared as little likely to fulfil the condition as anything we could have come upon. I am well assured that the majority of spectators see no curves in them at all, but an intensely upright, stern, spiry ruggedness and angularity. And we might even beforehandhave been led to expect, and to be contented in expecting, nothing else from them than this; for since, as we have said often, they are part of the earth's skeleton, being created to sustain and strengthen everything else, and yet differ from a skeleton in this, that the earth is not only supported by their strength, but fed by their ruin; so that they are first composed of the hardest and least tractable substance, and then exposed to such storm and violence as shall beat large parts of them to powder;—under these desperate conditions of being, I say, we might have anticipated some correspondent ruggedness and terribleness of aspect, some such refusal to comply with ordinary laws of beauty, as we often see in other things and creatures put to hard work, and sustaining distress or violence.
§ 25. And truly, at first sight, there is such refusal in their look, and their shattered walls and crests seem to rise in a gloomy contrast with the soft waves of bank and wood beneath; nor do I mean to press the mere fact, that, as we look longer at them, other lines become perceptible, because it might be thought no proof of their beauty that they needed long attention in order to be discerned. But I think this much at least is deserving of our notice, as confirmatory of foregone conclusions, that the forms which in other things are produced by slow increase, or gradual abrasion of surface,are here produced by rough fracture, when rough fracture is to be the law of existence. A rose is rounded by its own soft ways of growth, a reed is bowed into tender curvature by the pressure of the breeze; but we could not, from these, have proved any resolved preference, by Nature, of curved lines to others, inasmuch as it might always have been answered that the curves were produced, not for beauty's sake, but infallibly, by the laws of vegetable existence; and, looking at broken flints or rugged banks afterwards, we might have thought that we only liked the curved lines because associated with life and organism, and disliked the angular ones, because associated with inaction and disorder. But Nature gives us in these mountains a more clear demonstration of her will. She is here driven to make fracture the law of being. She cannot tuft the rock-edges with moss, or round them by water, or hide them with leaves and roots. She is bound to produce a form, admirable to human beings, by continualbreaking away of substance. And behold—so soon as she is compelled to do this—she changes the law of fracture itself. "Growth," she seems to say, "is not essential to my work, nor concealment, nor softness; but curvature is: and if I must produce my forms by breaking them, the fracture itself shall be in curves. If, instead of dew and sunshine, the only instruments I am to use are the lightning and the frost, then their forked tongues and crystal wedges shall still work out my laws of tender line. Devastation instead of nurture may be the task of all my elements, and age after age may only prolong the unrenovated ruin; but the appointments of typical beauty which have been made over all creatures shall not therefore be abandoned; and the rocks shall be ruled, in their perpetual perishing, by the same ordinances that direct the bending of the reed and the blush of the rose."