Modern Painters Volume IV Part 12

-- 2. I begin with the Aiguilles. In Fig. 24, p. 170, at _a_, it was a.s.sumed that the ma.s.s was raised highest merely where the elevating force was greatest, being of one substance with the bank or cliff below.

But it hardly ever _is_ of 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 25.]

-- 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 section Fig. 25, where the dark ma.s.s stands for the hard rock of the great mountains (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 a.n.a.lyze carefully the structure of the dark ma.s.s in the centre of Fig. 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 at _a_, Fig. 26.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 26.]

In speaking of the sculpture of the central peaks in the last chapter, I made no reference to the _nature_ of the rocks in the banks on which they stood. The diagram at _a_, Fig. 27, as representative of the original condition, and _b_, of the resultant condition will, compared with Fig. 24, p. 170, more completely ill.u.s.trate the change.[58]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 27.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 28.]

-- 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 beneficence which appointed it for the mountains destined to a.s.sume 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 circ.u.mstances. Suppose, for instance, that the peak is in such a form as _a_ in Fig. 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 at _b_, the unsupported ma.s.ses 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 at _a_ will be always to a.s.sume contours like those at _a_ in Fig. 28, which are, of course, perfectly safe; but the tendency of the beds at _b_ in Fig. 27 will be to break into contours such as at _b_ here, which are all perilous, not only in the chance of each several portion giving way, but in the manner in which they would _deliver_, from one to the other, the fragments which fell. A stone detached from any portion of the peak at _a_ would be caught and stopped on the ledge beneath it; but a fragment loosened from _b_ would not stay till it reached the valley by a series of accelerating bounds.

-- 5. While, however, the secure and n.o.ble form represented at _a_ in Figs. 26 and 28 is for the most part ordained to be that of the highest mountains, the contours at _b_, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 29.]

-- 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 pa.s.s, 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 Allee 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 be[59] as Fig. 29 here, in which _a_ is the valley of Chamouni, _b_ the range of aiguilles of Chamouni, _c_ the range of the Geant, _d_ the valley of Cormayeur.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 30. The Aiguille Charmoz.]

Ideal. Actual.

The little projection under M is 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 part of 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 princ.i.p.al subjects of our inquiry.

-- 7. The little eminence left under M truly marks the height of the Montanvert on the flanks of the Aiguilles, but not accurately its position, which is somewhat behind the ma.s.s of mountain supposed to be cut through by the section. But the top of the Montanvert is actually formed, as shown at M, 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,[60] as exposed in the notch behind the letter M.

-- 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.ses of the whole aiguille, and true contour of this horn, are carefully given in plate +30+, Fig. 2, as they are seen in morning sunshine. The _impression_ which 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 possible _danger_ to 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 in Plate +30+, 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 of Fig. 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 ma.s.ses 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 in Fig. 30 to 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 the old French house below, and seen under the same angle, it is evident that the part of the outline _a b_ (in lettered reference line below) would be perfectly horizontal; _b c_ an 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; and _e f_, perfectly horizontal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 30.]

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 a.s.sumed (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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 31.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 32.

Angles with the horizon _x y_.

Of the line _a b_ 17 " _b c_ 20 " _d y_ (general slope, exclusive of inequalities) 35 " _a x_ (ditto, ditto, to point of cliff above _x_) 23 ]

For instance, no mountain in the Alps produces a more vigorous impression of peakedness than the Matterhorn. In Professor Forbes'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 outline Fig. 31. Naturally, in glancing, whether at the plate or the mountain, we a.s.sume the ma.s.s to be a peak, and suppose the line _a b_ to be the steep slope of its side. But that line is a perspective line. It is in reality _perfectly horizontal_, corresponding to _e f_ in the penthouse roof, Fig. 30.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 33.

Angles with the horizon _x y_.

_a f_ 56 _a e_ 12 _e b_ (from point to point) 44 _b c_ ( ditto, ditto ) 67 _c d_ (overhanging) 79 _a x_ (irrespective of irregularities) 56 _a y_ 38 ]

-- 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 doubt _which is its top_. For as, in order to examine the beds on its flanks, I walked up the Zmutt glacier, I saw that the line _a b_ in Fig. 31 gradually lost its steepness; and about half-way up the glacier, the conjectural summit _a_ then bearing nearly S. E. (forty degrees east of south), I found the contour was as in Fig. 32. In Fig. 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,[61] from the base lines _x y_, which are accurately horizontal; and their general truth, irrespective of mere ruggedness, may be depended upon. Now in this flank view, Fig. 32, what _was_ the summit at Zermatt, _a_, becomes quite subordinate, and the point _b_, 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 are _both_ deceptive; 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 Bietschhorn; 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 outline Fig. 34, which seems to be conclusive for the supremacy of the point _e_, between _a_ and _b_ in Fig. 33. But the impossibility of determining, at the foot of it, without a trigonometrical observation, _which is the top_ of 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 34.]

-- 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 at C in the next figure, are in reality b.u.t.tresses projecting from an intermediate ridge.

Let A be supposed to be a castle wall, with slightly elevated ma.s.ses of square-built b.u.t.tresses at intervals. Then, by a process of dilapidation, these b.u.t.tresses might easily be brought to a.s.sume 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 the Aiguille Charmoz is not the point under _d_, but that under _e_.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 35.]

-- 14. There is, however, this great difference between the castle wall and aiguilles, that the dilapidation in the one would take place by the fall of _horizontal_ bricks or stones; in the aiguilles it takes place in quite an opposite manner by the flaking away of nearly _vertical_ ones.

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 broke _straight_ across the ma.s.ses 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, but _in curves, round the body_ of 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 ma.s.s, 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;[62] supposing 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 ma.s.ses 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 at _a_, 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 at _b_, of which, when many of the edges have fallen, the lower ones are more or less supported by the very debris acc.u.mulated at their feet; and yet all the while the tops sustain themselves in the most fantastic and incredible fineness of peak against the sky.

[Ill.u.s.tration: J. Ruskin. J. C. Armytage.

31. The Aiguille Blaitiere.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 36.]

-- 16. I have drawn the flakes in Fig. 36, for ill.u.s.tration'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 outline Fig. 35 (Aiguille Blaitiere, called by Forbes Greppond), as seen from within about half a mile of its actual base. The white sh.e.l.l-like ma.s.s beneath it is a small glacier, which in its beautifully curved outline[63] appears 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 against the 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 37.]

-- 17. The more I examined the range of the aiguilles the more I was struck by this curved cleavage as their princ.i.p.al 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 sh.e.l.l-like undulations, as will be understood by a glance at Fig. 37, which shows the mere _governing_ lines at the base of this Aiguille Blaitiere, seen, with its spur, from a station some quarter of a mile nearer it, and more to the east than that chosen in Plate +31+. These leading lines are rarely well shown in fine weather, the important contour from _a_ downwards 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 at Fig.

38, the generally pyramidal outline being nearly similar to that of Blaitiere, and a spur being thrown out to the right, under _a_, 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 sh.e.l.l.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 38.]

-- 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 ma.s.s. 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 subst.i.tution of anatomical knowledge for outward and apparent fact; but so it is, that as an artist increases in acuteness of perception, the facts which _become_ outward and apparent to him are those which bear upon the growth or make of the thing. And, just as in looking at any woodcut of trees after t.i.tian 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 are _dominant_, and that even the fissures or edges which appear perfectly straight have _almost_ always some delicate sympathy with the curves. Occasionally, however, as in the separate beds which form the spur or horn of the Aiguille Blaitiere, seen in true profile in Plate +29+, 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 in Fig. 38.

-- 19. "But why not give everything just as it is; without caring what is dominant and what subordinate?"