The Alps Part 3

Nowhere are the rocks and lofty snow-peaks set in more fascinating frames of unexpected foreground. It is a valley of endless surprises and delights. Moreover, its waters are clear and glancing. They burst from the hillsides, tumble in crystalline brilliance over clifflets, dance through the meadows, and race-along beneath the shadow of beeches and chestnuts. No ogres, we may be sure, lurk in the fastnesses of these hills, but only the most delicate fairies, glittering with dew. And then the views from the peaks--how memorable they are, how unlike those of the Central Alps! For from these summits you behold always the sea, far stretching, and ever apparently calm. It looks indeed like any other sea, but you know that it is the Mediterranean with all Africa beyond it, away there in the sunny south. On the other side, far, far off to the north, is the great Alpine wall, and at your feet the sea-like Lombard plain. Those sweeps of flatness on either hand, how they tell in the midst of a mountain view! They bring into it a sense of repose.

There Nature has finished her work of pulling down, and man can rest upon the fertile soil in peace. Sweet indeed is Valdieri, but it is no sweeter than its neighbouring glens. He that loves mountains in less savage mood than the great giants are wont to bear, let him fly to the Maritimes and he will not be disappointed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 24. LOCARNO FROM THE BANKS OF THE LAKE. Madonna del Sa.s.so on the slope above.]

Proceeding northward, the Cottians and the Tarentaise and Graians present loftier peaks and valleys beautiful, though lacking the richness and luxuriance of the Maritimes. In fact these groups stand between the Pennines and the Maritimes alike in position and in character. From the Pennines the fertile valleys are so far removed as scarcely to enter into the normal scenery of the region. In the Maritimes the chestnut woods are at the very foot of the peaks. They are further away in the Cottians, but not absolutely removed from the Alpine area. You may sleep near a vineyard one night and yet be on the snows next day. The great glory of the Cottians is the fine pyramid of Monte Viso, which so many climbers in the Swiss Alps know from afar off. It stands splendidly alone and commands one of the most superb panoramas in the Alps, wide ranging as Mont Blanc's, but seen as from the top of a tower instead of a slowly curving dome with a large white foreground that hides the depth beneath. From the Viso the sight plunges down and then flies away and yet away over the Lombard plain to peaks so remote as practically to defy identification by unaided skill of recognition.

We cannot linger in the west, for our s.p.a.ce is limited and more than half of it is spent. Flying eastward, then, we come next to the Italian valleys of the Monte Rosa group, to which indeed they belong, though I purposely omitted reference to them when writing of that, for in style of scenery they are widely different and frequented by travellers of another sort. Here are mountain centres indeed--Breuil, Gressoney, Alagna, and so forth--whence great climbs may be made. It is not in these centres, however, that the beauty of the valleys culminates, but further down. There are in fact three zones in each valley: the upper, which is purely Alpine though lacking the grandeur of the northern slope; the middle, where on either hand are found peaks that just reach the snow level and rise from luxuriantly afforested bases: and the lower, which in summer time is too hot and fly-infested to be an agreeable resort. The middle zone is the region of fine scenery, of beautiful low pa.s.ses, and of superb points of view, whence the whole Pennine range to the north is gloriously beheld.

At the lower limit of this zone stands Varallo, in the Sesia valley, a most beautiful resort for one jaded with the austere scenery of the snow and ice world. Here art and nature together claim the traveller's attention. The remarkable lifelike sculptures of the Sacro Monte and the frescoes of Gaudenzio Ferrari well deserve their wide repute, whilst the walk over the Col della Colma to the lake of Orta is one of the most charming known to me the wide world over. Once I beheld from the crest of the pa.s.s a cloudless sunrise on Monte Rosa, when the rosy glow of the snows was not more beautiful than the rich and rare violets and purples of the lower foreground hills.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 25. PALLANZA--EVENING. South end of Lago Maggiore.

Campanile of the Church of St. Leonardo, mountains of Saas in the background.]

By this pa.s.s we may well enter the Italian Lake districts, whose fame is known to all. He would be a n.i.g.g.ard indeed who should refuse to reckon as Alpine this gem of scenery. Many of us regard, and rightly, a drop down into the land of the lakes as a necessary part of a full Alpine holiday, the contrast between their luxuriance and high Alpine asceticism serving best to display the charms of each. It is indeed the distant prospects of the snowy range that give a finishing touch of utter perfection to the scenery of the lakes, the finest view-point of all for comprehension and perfect composition being, perhaps, the terrace of Santa Catarina del Sa.s.so. The climber, however, will not really learn to know the lakes if he remains, as most do, idly on their sh.o.r.es. Here, if anywhere, he should ascend. Down below, save for the water, the scenery may be matched all round the Italian plain and in many a valley, but up aloft on Monte Mottarone, Monte Nudo, Monte Generoso, and hills of that size, you are in the presence of panoramas nowhere else to be matched. The Rigi, the Niesen, and their fellows offer corresponding but not equal prospects north of the main range; for though lakes and snows and wide stretches of landscape are visible from them, they lack vision of the Lombard plain and the magic opalescence of the Italian atmosphere. The mountaineer who has no experience, or if experienced, no joy in the gra.s.s-crowned foot-hills that flank the great ranges is no true mountain-lover. For such persons this book is not written. They have their own kinds of pleasure and reward, pleasures which are not low and rewards well worth the winning, but they are not those that I have sought after or can rightly estimate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 26. THE MADONNA DEL Sa.s.sO, LOCARNO. A Pilgrimage Church, picturesquely situated on a wooded rocky cliff high above the town and Lago Maggiore.]

Some of the fair qualities of Italian lake scenery mingle with the bolder forms of the mountains of Ticino, and something of the softness of Maggiore's air tempers the fresh breezes falling from Ticino snows.

Here lies the peerless Val Maggia, whose orchard-bearing floor sweeps up between mile after mile of n.o.ble cliffs. Here every village church and almost every cottage seems to have been designed and planted for picturesque effect. It is a valley of many gardens, trimly kept, of much emigrant-won prosperity, a home of the vine and the fig-tree, also of trout-streams and other bright-glancing waters. Comfortably habitable and home-suggesting is it; a place to fall in love with, which every visitor hopes to see again, and every native promises himself that he will return to for the evening of his days. Such as it is, such also are its neighbours. Its upper reaches are more splendid than I can suggest.

There is a grace in their many waterfalls, a majesty in their great steps and verdant levels, a relative wealth in their vegetation, and a charm about their villages, that must be seen to be understood. Even the Maritimes can boast no more beautiful valley scenery.

The Bergamasque Alps are, I believe, not dissimilar in character, but I know only the mere outskirts of them. What I have seen does not equal Ticino. These carry us by a natural transition to the Adamello group, which yields a remarkable long traverse over high-planted snows commanding a stupendous depth and comprehensiveness of outlook, which culminates in the extraordinary panorama visible from the highest point.

We are thus brought back again to the dominantly snowy groups, whereof a number remain yet uncharacterised. First among these secondary ma.s.ses the Ortler and its fellows call for mention--a group far better known by our German and Italian colleagues than by ourselves. The chief peaks, though built on a smaller scale, have much of the apparent bulk and grandeur of the greater ma.s.ses of the Central Alps. Their ice-walls and their glacier scenery in general are of the grand type. Like the great peaks, too, they are withdrawn from southern luxury. When all is said, however, they remain second-rate, nor can I recall any special note of beauty by which this district is distinguished.

The Oetzthal, Stubaithal, and Zillerthal groups, which follow one another to the eastward, are, I think, in better case; though they have lost in charm by the rapid shrinkage of their glaciers since I first knew them almost thirty years ago. The average height of the peaks is small when the large area of glacier they support is considered.

Formerly the glaciers were much larger. Several that I knew have utterly vanished, and the largest are greatly reduced. The snow-fields, however, still retain their wide expanse. In consequence of the smallness of the peaks, a greater number of them exist in a given area than elsewhere in the snowy Alpine regions. This makes the foregrounds in the summit views more complex. As the scale does not obtrude itself, the eye magnifies it, and the result is an imposing effect. A similar effect of complexity struck me in Spitsbergen, where the peaks are very much smaller still, and group themselves so closely together that they seem to form a spiny tangle at once puzzling to the topographer and pleasing to the lover of mountain varieties. Owing to the smallness of scale of the Stubai peaks, for instance, you can climb two or three of them in a single day from a high-planted hut, and thus behold in the afternoon a peak you climbed in the morning. Such wandering about at high levels is a new and agreeable experience to mountaineers accustomed to the long scrambles that the greater ranges afford.

The Hohe Tauern, which splits into the two groups, dominated respectively by the Gross Glockner and Gross Venediger, scarcely calls for other remark, from a scenic point of view, than what was said about the Ortler. The panoramas from the two chief peaks are unusually fine, a quality which they share with three or four of the main elevations of the three groups just referred to. The glacier scenery of the northern slope of the Venediger and the southern of the Glockner group is the finest in Tirol, whilst the Glockner itself is built on great lines, has the qualities of a true giant, and affords some climbing of a high order. If the reader, however, will consent to descend from these superior considerations to others of a more practical character, his attention may be called to the fact that, in this many-hutted district, facilities are afforded to a climber which he will not often find equalled elsewhere except in one or two minor Tirolese groups. So numerous and large are the huts, and so well provided with all the necessaries for life and reasonable comfort, that it is almost superfluous to carry food, or for a party of moderately experienced climbers to require the services of a guide. There are huts where you can breakfast, lunch, dine, and sleep at convenient intervals. If this tends to destroy the charm of solitude, which is one of the greatest that the regions of snow usually afford, it enables even the average climber to wander more freely than he can elsewhere, and less burdened with baggage or the often unsympathetic companionship of a guide. The gain more than compensates most men for the loss, and makes this district specially deserving of the guideless amateur's attention.

Of regions further east and south I cannot write, knowing only from personal acquaintance the mountains near the Semmering pa.s.s, and the hills between them and Vienna. Here the forest scenery is the great charm. The forest-clad hills and deep hidden lakes of the Salzkammergut, North Tirol, and the Bavarian uplands must at least be mentioned. They belong to what we English may describe as the Scotland of the Alps. No lover of mountains will deny the potent charm of forests, especially in hilly country richly watered. Their sombre gloom matches many a human mood.

Not all scenery is alike grateful to every one, or to any one at all times. It behoves a traveller to know his own mood and to choose a resort that matches it. If he wants solitude, he should not select Zermatt or Chamonix. If he abounds in energy, he should not look to lakes and mild climates for its satisfaction. If he loves variety, he should not plant himself in the midst of a mainly snow-clad region. One district will suit him best in one year, another in another. That will not delight him equally in maturity which enlists the strongest enthusiasm of his youth. But the variety that is in the Alps at large is infinite. There will always be discoverable the right thing for each who cares to search it out.

The habit of constantly returning to the same spot may almost be regarded as a vice to be avoided.

"To give s.p.a.ce for wandering is it That the world was made so wide."

a.s.suredly the wanderer has most rewards. The more he knows of other regions, the more is the significance increased of the view which he at any moment beholds, and so much the more capable does his eye become of recognising all sorts and varieties of beauty. But this is only true of one who travels with observant eyes and receptive understanding. It is possible to travel far and wide without ever really seeing anything.

Such travel is the merest waste of energy. To travel should be to learn; but travelling is only learning when the traveller makes learning his purpose.

Discrimination is the quality that distinguishes intelligence from brutal greed. It differentiates the _gourmet_ from the _gourmand_. It divides the mountain-lover from the common peak peak-hunter. It is the quality that continues growing longest, whose exercise is never wearisome, whose reward is always increasing. To be able to discriminate between the qualities of different Alpine regions and to appreciate all their varied merits is to know the Alps. All that it has been possible to do in the present chapter is to indicate in briefest terms some of the characteristic charms of the princ.i.p.al regions, known incompletely to the present writer, and by him but feebly grasped. He ventures to hope that even this sketch, slight and falteringly drawn as it is, may yet serve to suggest to some readers a whole world of delights, which, if they choose, they may immediately enter into and possess.

By all means visit the famous centres. A true instinct has marked them out and made them widely known as specially calculated to awaken the imagination of the town-dwelling modern world. But do not regard them as the whole Alps; do not start with the a.s.surance that there alone is Alpine beauty to be found in highest perfection. For you, perhaps, the highest Alpine beauty resides in less well advertised localities. Let each seek out for himself that which he can most keenly enjoy. It will be his possession and not another's. Let him take it to his soul. But let him also remember that there are other capacities, which he does not possess or has not yet developed, and that for them also the mountains great and small possess powers of satisfaction as rich and manifold as any he has himself experienced.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 27. LOCARNO AT SUNSET, AND NORTH END OF LAGO MAGGIORE]

CHAPTER V

THE MOODS OF THE MOUNTAINS

Mountains do not merely vary from district to district, but from time to time. Were it not so, how soon should we tire of any single outlook or the neighbourhood of any one centre! They change from hour to hour with the incidence of sunlight, and from day to day with the pa.s.sing season of the year. They change also, often from moment to moment, with the inconstancy of the weather. In fact they are never twice absolutely the same. In the heyday of our scrambling enthusiasm, we perhaps regarded this variability of the mountains with less satisfaction than it obtains from us later. We should have chosen an unbroken series of long and cloudless days, with the snow all melted from the rocks, and the summit views all complete in cloudless, transparent visibility. Yet even then we found a singular joy in s.n.a.t.c.hing an ascent in some brief fine interval between two spells of bad weather. Whereas the details of many a featurelessly fine ascent have pa.s.sed from our minds, which of us does not remember, and recall with a keen delight, climbs accomplished in the teeth of storms, when Nature seemed to stand forth as an antagonist whom we wrestled fiercely with, and joyously overcame?

We may regard mountain moods from two points of view; as experienced by the climber, and as affecting the aspect of mountain scenery when beheld from a greater or less distance. The circ.u.mstances of his sport, though in most cases they restrict the climber to one season of the year, fortunately compel him to be on mountains at almost all hours of the twenty-four. Most sports are functions of daylight; the climber must travel by night as frequently as by day. None better than he, unless it be the astronomer, knows the full secrets of midnight beauty. What climber's memory is not stored with priceless recollections of the night and its myriad voices, its n.o.ble diapason. By day the eye is supreme; by night the ear. Then it is, when marching along upland valleys, that one hears the full chorus of the rushing torrent, now booming close at hand, accompanied by infinite ripplings and splashings of little waves, now fainter and more sibilant but no less musical in the distance. Then, too, it is that the breezes sing most sweetly among the trees; then that the glaciers are most melodious, the moulins most tuneful; then, too, on the highest levels, that the ultimate silences are most impressive. The hum of a falling stone, the rattle of a discharge of rocks, the boom of an avalanche, the crack of an opening creva.s.se, all these sounds should be heard framed in the silence of night, when the sense of hearing is most alert and the imagination most easily stirred.

Who does not recall the velvety darkness of the sleeping valleys through which he pa.s.sed near the midnight hour when just setting forth for some long ascent? How that contrasted with and set off the brilliancy of the star-spangled sky, where Orion, the Alpine climber's heavenly guide, shone over some col or darkly perceptible ridge, and bade him expect the coming of the day. Then, as the trees are left behind and the open alp is reached, while night still reigns in her darkest hour, how sweet are the airs, how uplifting the sense of widening s.p.a.ce and enlarging sky, how stimulating the wonder of the vaguely felt glaciers and mountain-presences around!

Oftenest perhaps it is moonlight when the climber starts earliest upon his way; then indeed he beholds glorious scenes and revels in the sight, nor envies his sleeping friends in the valley below. Ah! dearly remembered splendours of full moonshine upon the snow! how gladly we retain the images of you in the very treasury of our hearts! Yet who shall attempt to draw them forth for another, or write down even a faint suggestion of their beauty for those by whom they have never been beheld? Surely at no time are the great snows endowed with more dignity, more of the impressiveness of visible size, more aspect of aloofness, of belonging to another and a n.o.bler world, than when the full moon shines perfectly upon them. And then, too, how the snow-fields glisten over all their wide expanse, yet with a pale effulgence that does not paralyse the eye! What velvet blackness embellishes the shadows! How the rocks are fretted against the snow! How clear are the foregrounds of glacier; how spiritual are the distant peaks; how softly lies the faint light in the deep hollows! Surely Night, the ancient Mother, speaks with a voice which all her children understand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 28. MOONLIGHT IN THE VAL FORMAZZA FROM THE TOSA FALLS.]

At such hours and amidst such scenes the mere onlooker oftenest shivers and suffers, so that half the beauty escapes him; but the active mountaineer, keenly awake, with the blood alive within him and a day of hopes ahead, misses no sight that he is capable of seeing, yet dreams, who shall say what visions of beauty that flit before his mind and vanish in swift succession. And then--suddenly--he turns his head and there in the east--always unexpected--is the bed of white that heralds the day. The night is dying. Her rich darks and whites grow pallid. Each moment a layer of darkness peels off. The sky turns blue before one knows it; the rocks grow brown; there is blue in the creva.s.ses, and green upon the swards--all low-toned yet distinct. Faint puffs of warm air come, we know not whence, touch our faces, and are gone. The lantern has been extinguished; we stride out more freely; the day awakens within us also.

Now is displayed in all its magnificence the daily drama of the dawn.

While the mists yet lie cold and grey in the deep valleys, they glow against the eastern horizon, where all the spectrum is slowly uprolled, more and more fiery beneath, as it tends to red, and cut off below by the jagged outline of countless peaks, looking tiny, away off there on the margin of the world. Low floating cloudlets turn to molten gold. The horizon flames along all its fretted eastern edge, a narrow band of lambent light, a smokeless crimson fire. The belt of colour grows broader; it swamps and dyes the cloudlets crimson. Long pink streamers of soft light strike up from where the sun is presently to appear. The great moment is at hand. All eyes rove around the view. At last some near high peak salutes the day; its summit glowing like a live coal drawn from a furnace. Another catches the light and yet another. The glory spreads downwards, turning from pink to gold, and from gold to pure daylight, and then--lo! the sun himself upon the horizon! a point of blinding light, soon changing to the full round orb. The day has come, and the long shadows gather in their skirts and prepare to flee away.

Now comes the climber's most perfect hour. He shares the strength and promise of the young day. The fresh crisp air seems to lift him from the earth. The sense of the very possibility of fatigue vanishes. He rejoices in his might. He looks forward with confidence to no matter what difficulties may lie ahead. The snow is hard and crisp beneath his feet. The ice-crystals merrily crepitate as they break up, when the bonds of frost are withdrawn. And now the patch of rocks, or other convenient resting place, where breakfast is to be taken, is soon attained. Packs are cast off. It is an hour of perfect delight. The heart of the upper regions has been reached. The fair world of snow opens on every side. The valleys and habitable places are all forgotten.

The scenery is superb. At such a time and place who would exchange with folks below, be they never so prosperous?

It is soon time to be on the way once more. The fulness of the day gradually comes on with all its pains and glories. The sun climbs triumphantly aloft and sheds its burning radiance all around. Foreground details vanish in excess of light, but the distances grow more distinct.

What is nearer stands out before what is more remote. The eye ranges afar and feasts upon the widening panorama, which about noon, let us hope, suddenly becomes complete, for we are on the top. No daylight is now too brilliant to reveal all the mult.i.tudinous effect of what is spread abroad to be beheld. The burning snowfields are below. The mere foreground of our vision is miles away. We look down into sunlit valleys sprinkled with tiny dots of houses and narrow lines of roads. We gaze afar over ridge beyond ridge, it may be to some wide-stretching plain or ultimate crest of remotest ranges. All swims in light, and we triumph in its very exuberance.

Then follows the afternoon of our descent. We plunge into ever-thickening air as we go down. It is penetrated with the dust and flurry of the day. As the hours advance it sheds an ever mellower tone upon the views. Fatigue seems to invade the earth itself as it does our own limbs. We gain the gra.s.sy places once more, as the sun begins to lose its towering eminence of place. The rope and all its strenuous suggestions has been discarded, and at length the most toilsome parts of the expedition are over. We can fling ourselves upon the gra.s.s by some babbling brook, with the clanging of cattle-bells not far away, and the haunts of men pleasantly adjacent. The peaks we have sought out are not yet very far away. We can still follow the traces of our own footsteps upon their flanks. Their spirit is in us. All that we have so recently seen and felt is still present in our minds, as we gaze with newly instructed eyes upon the places we have visited.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 29. A MOUNTAIN PATH, GRINDELWALD]

The last walk remains, down through the gathering trees, through new-mown hay-fields, past little farms cl.u.s.tering on the hillside--down and ever down into the embrace of the narrowing earth, which holds out arms of recognition to us, her children and the special votaries of her shrines. When at length the mellow evening light is warm upon the hillsides, and the rich shadows are creeping down upon it, we reach the village where we are to rest. There, as we sit before some hospitable inn, and gaze yet once again back to the heights whence we have come, the sunset fires are lit upon them when the shades of night already fill the valleys. For a moment the topmost summits facing west glow with the gold and fade to the rose that ushered in the day and now glorify its close. The colour is withdrawn. The warmth fades out of all the view.

Pallor supervenes, and "layer on layer the night comes on."

Such are the normal effects and sequences of a fine Alpine summer day; but days of that sort are rare. Usually what we call "weather"

intervenes to break the normal sequence with surprises that should not be unwelcome. I have thus far referred mainly to the drama of the sunshine; but more varied, more fascinating, more adventurous is the drama of the clouds, those mist mountains that come and go, forming ranges loftier than the hills, whiter than the snows, but endowed with the two-fold gifts of inaccessibility and evanescence. Them we can neither climb nor map. Clouds we have with us everywhere, but it is among mountains that we learn to know them, how they form and fade, mount aloft or drift asunder. The mountain clouds have a plainlier realised individuality than those that pa.s.s over cities and plains.

Their positions and relative alt.i.tudes are more easy to fix, their changes more readily perceived.

It is not my intention here to a.n.a.lyse at length the characters and forms of clouds from the picturesque point of view. That has been most suggestively and eloquently attempted by Ruskin in various chapters of _Modern Painters_, which every mountain-lover should have read. One correction only of that fine description of mountain-clouds will I venture to make, the point being of some importance. "I believe," wrote Ruskin, "the true c.u.mulus is never seen in a great mountain region, at least never a.s.sociated with hills. It is always broken up and modified by them.... The quiet, thoroughly defined, infinitely divided and modelled pyramid never develops itself. It would be very grand if one ever saw a great mountain peak breaking through the domed shoulders of a true c.u.mulus; but this I have never seen."

Whether it be true that c.u.mulus cloud is never formed in the Alps I cannot say, my own notes not being accessible to me at this moment and my memory at fault; but this I can a.s.sert, that, in the heart of the great ranges, Himalayas and Andes, they frequently and magnificently occur. Never shall I forget the piled splendours, the divided and involved intricacies of rounded forms, the stupendous ma.s.s of the great towers of white cloud which I have often seen, with their level bases just upon or just above the summits of mountains more than 20,000 feet high, and their sharply outlined crests 15,000 or even 20,000 feet higher. Such clouds are only formed in warm uniformly ascending air currents, undisturbed by variable winds. They never form about peaks, but they form beside or above them. Often in Bolivia have I seen these great towers of mist rise with majestic deliberation behind the long white crest of the Cordillera Real, till they reduced the snowy peaks to mere pigmies at their feet. Then the afternoon wind would take them and bend them over the range like waves about to break. White island ma.s.ses would sever themselves one by one and, pa.s.sing the crest of the watershed, would drift away over the high plateau. If c.u.mulus is formed in the Alpine region, its base would doubtless there also lie above the level of the snows, and the form of the clouds would not be realised by an observer in the mountain region. From Turin or Milan, gazing northward, immense ma.s.ses of c.u.mulus are often seen, but I have never yet been able to discover whether their bases rest on the snows or whether they merely lie above the foothills and lake-district.

The clouds that belong to mountains, that arise upon their slopes and crests, and are the vestments they wear in the great ceremonies of Nature, these are of another sort. The climber knows them from within and has a very different sense of their meaning from his who merely watches them from afar off. Mr. Whymper in a well-known pa.s.sage describes how he spent the best part of two days on the Matterhorn, wrestling with a violent storm. On his arrival at Zermatt, he learned from the inn-keeper that the weather had been fine but for "that small cloud" on the Matterhorn's flank. Such is the difference between being in some clouds and seeing them from below.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 30. THE ALETSCHHORN. Clouds gathering at sunset.]

Climbers, as a rule, begin their ascents by night, in weather which they at least hope will prove fine. In doubtful weather nights are relatively cloudless, unless it be in valleys. Not infrequently, indeed, a bed of cloud will lie in a valley when all the upper regions are clear. I well remember once starting from Zermatt for an ascent of one of Monte Rosa's peaks at as black a midnight as can be conceived. Not a star shone in the heavy sky. An hour's walking brought us into a thick fog, but we pushed on and up. It lay quite still. Just before dawn we rose above it and could almost feel our pa.s.sing out through its clearly defined upper surface. We looked abroad over its level surface as a leaping fish may be imagined to see around it the surface of a lake. All above was absolutely clear. The day that followed was radiantly fine and the mist lake presently faded away. Such views of mountains rising out of a level sea of cloud are always felt to be wonderful. Sella's photograph of the Caucasus range thus islanded is the best-known example of that kind of view. It is not uncommon in mountain regions. I have described examples of it in Spitsbergen and the Andes which need not be quoted here.