GLETSCH

Varied and uncertain as the weather was in Switzerland during July of the year 1910, it showed a more decided character when I returned there at the end of August. For three weeks there was no flood of sunshine, no blazing of a cloudless blue sky, which is the one condition necessary to the perfection of the beauty of Swiss mountains, valleys and lakes. The Oberland was grey and shapeless, the LauterbrÜnnen valley chilly and threatening; even the divine Jungfrau herself, when not altogether obliterated by the monotonous, impenetrable cloud, loomed in steely coldness—"a sterile promontory." Crossing the mountains from the Lake of Thun, we came to Montreux, only to find the pearl-like surface of the great Lake Leman transformed into lead. Not once in eight days did the celestial fortress called Les Dents du Midi reveal its existence, although we knew it was there, immensely high and remote, far away above the great buttresses of the Rhone valley. So completely was it blotted out by the conversion of that most excellent canopy, the air, into a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours, that it was difficult to imagine that it was still existing, and perhaps even glowing in sunshine above the pall of cloud. Italy, surely, we thought, would be free from this dreadful gloom.

The southern slopes of the Alps are often cloudless when the colder northern valleys are overhung with impenetrable mist. In four hours you can pass now from the Lake of Geneva through the hot Simplon Tunnel to the Lago Maggiore. So, hungering for sunshine, we packed, and ran in the ever-ready train through to Baveno. Thirty years ago we should have had to drive over the Simplon—a beautiful drive, it is true—but we should have taken sixteen hours in actually travelling from Montreux, and have had to pass a night en route at Brieg! A treacherous gleam of sunshine lasting half an hour welcomed us on emerging from the Simplon tunnel, and then for eight days the same leaden aspect of sky, mountain, and lake as that which we had left in Switzerland was maintained. Even this could not spoil altogether the beauty and interest of the fine old garden of the Borromeo family on the Isola Bella. Really big cypress trees, magnificent specimens of the Weymouth pine—the white pine of the United States, Pinus strobus, first brought from the St. Lawrence in 1705, and planted in Wiltshire by Lord Weymouth—a splendid camphor tree, strange varieties of the hydrangea, and many other old-fashioned shrubs adorn the quaint and well-designed terraces of that seat of ancient peace. The granite quarries close behind Baveno, and the cutting and chiselling of the granite by a population of some 2,000 quarrymen and stonemasons, were not deprived of their human interest by rain and skies more grey than the granite itself. But, at last, we gave up Italy in despair, retreated through the tunnel one morning, and an hour after mid-day were careering in a carriage along the Rhone valley—with jingling of bells and much cracking of a harmless whip—upwards on a drive of seven hours to the Rhone glacier, to the hotel called "Gletsch," staking all on the last chance of a change in the weather.

We passed the enclosed meadow near Brieg, whence three days later the splendidly daring South-American aviator started on his flight across the Alps, only to die after victory—a hero, whose courage and fatal triumph were worthy of a better cause. After some hours, passing many a black-timbered mountain village—the houses of which, set on stone piles, are the direct descendants of the pile-supported lake dwellings of the Stone Age on the shores of the Lake of Neuchatel—we came to the upper and narrower part of the valley. The road ascended by zig-zags through pine forests, in which the large blue gentian, with flowers and leaves in double rows on a gracefully bowed stem, were abundant. In open places the barberry, with its dense clusters of crimson fruit, was so abundant as actually to colour the landscape, whilst a huge yellow mullen nearly as big as a hollyhock, and bright Alpine "pinks," were there in profusion. Before the night fell, a long, furry animal, twice the size of a squirrel, and of dark brown colour, crossed the road with a characteristic undulating movement, a few feet in front of our carriage. It was a pine-marten, the largest of the weasel and pole-cat tribe, still to be found in our own north country. It must not be confused with the paler beech-marten of Anne of Brittany, which often takes up its abode in the roofs of Breton houses, according to my own experience in Dinard and the neighbourhood. Night fell, and our horses were still toiling up the mountain road. Impenetrable chasms lay below, and vast precipices above us. We crossed a bridge, and seemed in the darkness to plunge into the sheer rock itself, and, though thrilled with a delightful sense of mystery and awe, were feeling a little anxiety at the prospect of another hour among these gloomy, intangible dangers, when we rounded a projecting rock, and suddenly a brilliant constellation burst into view in the sky. It was the electric outfit of the Belvedere Hotel, 7,500 feet above the sea, and far up more than a thousand feet above us and the glacier's snout. In another minute the great arc lamps of the Gletsch Hotel, close to us, blazed forth, and we were welcomed into its snug hall and warmed by the great log-fire burning on its hospitable hearth.

The next day we were early afoot in the most brilliant sunshine, under a cloudless sky—really perfect Alpine weather. In the shade the persisting night-frost told of the great height of the marvellous amphitheatre which lay before us. The valley by which we had mounted the previous night abruptly abandons its steep gradient and gorge-like character, and widens into a flat, boulder-strewn plain, a little over a mile in diameter, surrounded, except for the narrow gap by which we had entered, by the steep, rocky sides of huge mountains. At the far end of the plain, a mile off, the great Rhone glacier comes toppling over the precipice, a snowy white, frozen cascade of a thousand feet in height. It looks even nearer than it is, and the gigantic teeth of white ice at the top of the fall seem no bigger than sentry-boxes, though we know they are more nearly the size of church steeples. The celebrated Furca road zig-zags up the mountain side for a thousand feet close to the glacier, and when you drive up it and reach the height of the Belvedere, you can step on to the ice close to the road. Then you can mount on to the flat, unbroken surface of the broad glacier stream above the fall, and trace the glacier to the snow-covered mountain-tops in which it originates. There is no such close and intimate view of a glacier to be had elsewhere in Europe by the traveller in diligence or carriage. We walked by the side of the infant Rhone, among the pebbles and boulders, to the overhanging snout of the great glacier from beneath which the river emerges. A very beautiful wine-red species of dwarf willow-herb (Epilobium Fleischeri) was growing abundantly in tufts among the pebbles, and many other Alpine plants greeted our eyes. The heat of the sun was that of midsummer, whilst a delicate air of icy freshness diffused itself from the great frozen mass in front of us.

Some large blocks of the glacier ice had fallen from above, and lay conveniently for examination. Whilst the walls of the ice-caves which have been cut into this and other glaciers present a perfectly smooth, continuous surface of clear ice, these fragments which had fallen from the surface exposed to the heat of the sun, were, as seen in the mass, white and opaque. When a stick was thrust into the mass, it broke into many-sided lumps of the size of a tennis-ball, which separated, and fell apart in a heap, like assorted coals thrown from a scuttle, though white instead of black. These were the curious glacier nodules, "grains du glacier," or "GletcherkÖrne," characteristic of glacier ice as contrasted with lake ice. This structure of the glacier ice is peculiar to it, and is only made evident where the sun's rays penetrate it and melt the less pure ice which holds together the crystalline nodules. According to Dr. J. Young Buchanan, these nodules are masses of ice crystals comparatively free from mineral matter, whilst the water around them, which freezes less readily, contains mineral impurities in solution. The presence of saline matter in solution lowers, in proportion to its amount, the freezing-point of the water. Accordingly, although frozen into one solid mass with the nodules, the cementing ice melts under the heat of the penetrating rays of the sun sooner—that is, at a lower temperature—than do the purer crystalline nodules, and allows them to separate. It is owing to this that the exposed surface of glacier ice is white and powdery, disintegrated by the superficial heat, and forming a rough surface, on which one can safely walk. Lake ice does not break up in this manner under the sun's rays, but as it melts retains its smooth, slippery surface. It is formed in water, and not from the cementing and regelation of the powdery crystalline snow, as is glacier ice.

Pictures of the Rhone glacier published in the year 1820 and in the eighteenth century show that in old days the terminal ice-fall did not end abruptly in a narrowed "snout," as it does now, but spread out into a very broad half-dome or fan-shaped, apron-like expanse, some 700 feet high and a quarter of a mile broad at the base. It was considered one of the wonders of Switzerland, and was pictured in an exaggerated way in travellers' books. In 1873, when I first drove down the Furka road and saw the Rhone glacier, this wonderful, apron-like, terminal expansion of the glacier was still in existence. It has now completely disappeared. In those days, and for many years later, there was only a mule-path over the adjacent Grimsel Pass, but now there is a carriage road leading out of the Rhone glacier's basin northwards to Meiringen, whilst the old-established Furka road, at the other side of the amphitheatre, leads eastward to Andermatt, the St. Gothard, and the Lake of Lucerne. Hence three great roads now meet at Gletsch. Before leaving this wondrous spot we inspected some plump marmots, who were leading a happy life of ease and plenty in a large cage erected in front of the hotel; then in absolutely perfect weather we mounted the Grimsel road. We heard the frequent whistling of uncaged marmots as we ascended, and saw many of the little beasts sitting up on the rocks and diving into concealing crevices as we approached, just as do their smaller but closely allied cousins the prairie marmots (so-called "prairie dogs") of North America. The view, as one ascends the Grimsel, of the snow-peaks around Gletsch is a fine one in itself, but is vastly enhanced in beauty by the plunge downwards of the rocky gorge made by the Rhone as it leaves the flat-bottomed amphitheatre of its birth. The top of the Grimsel Pass, which is a little over 7,000 feet above sea-level, is the most desolate and bare of all such mountain passes. The rock is dark grey, almost black, and of unusually hard character. It is unstratified, and so resistant that it is everywhere worn into smooth, rounded surfaces, instead of being splintered and shattered. A small, black-looking lake at the top of the pass contains to this day the bones of 500 Austrians and French who fought here in 1799. It is called the Totensee, or Dead Men's Lake. At this point one stands on a great watershed, dividing the rivers of the north from the rivers of the south. You may put one foot in a rivulet which is carrying water down the Aar Valley, and through the Lakes of Brienz and of Thun to the Rhine and North Sea, whilst you keep the other in another little stream, whose particles will pass by the Rhone gorge and valley through the Lake of Geneva to the great Rhone and the Mediterranean. Three incomparably fine days—September 17th, 18th, and 19th—atoned for three weeks of sunless cloud. One of them we spent in the high valley of Rosenlaui, where are hairy-lipped gentians and the blue-iced glacier, but of these I have not space to tell. Then the clouds and the rain resumed their odious domination, and we left Lucerne and its lakes invisible, overwhelmed in grey fog, and made for Paris.

October, 1910