Once upon a spotless autumn day I was sketching there belated spring flowers next the snow. All was still, save for the _peek-peek_ of some small linnet-like mountain bird among the boulders by the glacier-stream, and the occasional shrill alarm-cry of marmots disturbed whilst collecting grass for making tight and snug their prospective winter quarters sounds which, with their echoes, merely accentuated the prevailing silence. Then of a sudden the air was rent as if by a terrible explosion, and, looking up, I saw tons upon tons of sea-green ice split from the glacier and come roaring, hurtling down over the rock-wall. The noise for a while was deafening. Then all once again was silent, with nothing to tell of the giant uproar but the amethyst-blue scar above the precipice. Never in my life have I felt solitude so acutely; never have I felt so insignificant and paltry. Not far off among the edelweiss, I knew, was a shepherd and his flock of three or four hundred sheep; but in the presence of this devastating force of “inert” nature, solitude and loneliness were mine in all their belittling power.
“I am just now, as you may see, Very unfit to put so strange a thought In an intelligible dress of words; But take it as my trust.”
[2] Champéry 1049 metres; Villars 1256 metres.
[4] This was at a time when the bulls were let out by day. Now there is restriction upon the liberty of these uneven-tempered animals.
[5] Geologists hold that in the remote past these two mountains were connected and formed a continuous chain.
[6] Goethe, who visited St. Maurice with the Duke of Weimar in 1779, probably saw this treasure, as do most visitors, but his mind seems to have been greatly occupied by the bad state of the roads.
[7] The Croix de Javernaz may be seen in the picture of the Dent de Morcles taken from Bex in spring.
[8] The hot, drying south wind from Italy. Sometimes up at Villars one can hear it roaring down below in the valley as it rushes through the gap at St. Maurice.
[10] Hopeless pessimists there are everywhere and in every domain, but if there is one quarter of the globe where their unqualified discourse is out of place it is in the Alps. On the fiftieth anniversary (1913) of the Swiss Alpine Club there were those who did not hesitate to say: “Close your doors; your usefulness is past!” Just fancy! Why, the club was never more virile in its life; never more youthful; never more useful! The Alps have still much to give and tell men; in fact, as regards the generality of mankind, they are a mine of physical health and mental wealth that so far has only been scratched. And the club is needed to this end.
