“Bring me for my ride to-morrow the easiest of all the mules in Martigny,” I said to Antonio, on the evening after my return from the pass of St. Bernard. I was knocked up nearly, done over certainly, and contemplated another trip with a sort of shrink. But there is nothing in Martigny to see, after you have looked at the measures of the various heights to which the water has risen in times of inundation, to which these valley-villages are sadly subject. So in the morning—a bright glad day it was—Antonio came in to tell me that he had a lady’s mule for me, so easy I should be in danger of falling asleep on his back; but this hazard I was willing to risk. The past few days of walking and riding had made me so stiff in the joints that I was awkward about mounting, and my host of the Poste, a huge man as well as an admirable publican, put his hands under my shoulders, and with all ease placed me astride of the beast in a moment. The feat was received with applause by a score of rough-looking peasants, guides, beggars, &c., of whom there are plenty in this unwholesome valley; and we were off for the vale of Chamouni.

Following up the river Drance, we turned off to the right, and slowly worked our way by a bad pathway, meeting people now and then coming down with their truck to sell below. One man had a log of wood with a string tied around it, dragging it behind him, women with baskets of knick-knacks, all intent upon driving a trade in a very small way, but industriously, and that commends a people to you wherever you see them. On the left were terrible precipices, along the edge of which the path often led us; till we came to a lovely reach of pasturages, a wide plain where cottages were scattered, and flocks were grazing—a peaceful scene in the midst of rugged mountains. Crossing this plain we ascended the Forclaz, and from the ridge looked back on the valley of the Rhone. The great road over the Simplon stretches for many a long mile up this vale, and Sion in the distance is seen; and around us more than fifty snowy peaks of the Alps with the morning sun gilding their crowns. Among them, but in beauty above them all is Mount Rosa, admired even more than Mont Blanc; and now that peculiar tint of pink was spread all over it with uncommon lustre. “Great glory” was the exclamation which often rose to my lips as from one and another point of observation I looked at these white mountains, and the “excessive brightness” blazing from every summit. But we cannot always be on the mountain tops looking at still higher mountains. We descend into the valley of Trient, into which a glacier extends, bringing its perpetual ice into the bosom of a sweet vale, where green meadows were rejoicing, and the peasants were busy with a scant harvest.

We have our choice of two roads from this valley to Chamouni. The one by the Tete Noire is the easiest, and we resolved in the freshness of our strength to take this road first, and having pursued it to the Tete, to enjoy the view, and then come back and go by the Col de Balm. By this extra effort we accomplished a noble day’s work, and were richly repaid for the fatigue. In no part of Switzerland are the precipices grander and more fearful, and for an hour we rode along the edge; and when the rocks shoot out over the path, a tunnel or gallery as they call it, is cut through; and near by a rude inscription cut into the rock celebrates an English lady who contributed something to improve the pass. The Tete or Head, Black Head, is given to the dark mountain, whose overhanging rocks present a gloomy front which has given its name to this narrow defile. Hundreds of feet down in the dark abyss on whose verge we are travelling, the Trient is roaring and leaping along its rocky way to the Rhone. At every turn in our zigzag single-file march, we are tempted to pause and study the scenes of sublime and terrible that break upon us: for when we are in no danger ourselves, there is a fascination in looking upon scenes where the fearful makes us shudder. But we returned from these out-of-the-way places and were at noon in the valley of Trient again, gazing at the lofty crags from which Escher de Berg fell in 1791, when, like many more fortunate travellers, he disregarded the advice of his guides, and lost his life in showing his temerity and strength in making a leap.

The ascent of the Col de Balm has been described by the most of travellers as one of the most difficult, and we are told it seems incredible that mules can work their way up where travellers are obliged to climb by the roots and shrubs. But over this hill lies the road to Chamouni, and over this hill we are going. For an hour we did have hard work, and Heinrich and I amused ourselves with digging up some Greek roots, while the mules were slowly picking their way among the stones up a path sometimes all but perpendicular. And when at last we emerged from the forest, and reached the high pasturages, we had still a long hour of travel before us, through the open country.

Our party had been enlarged during the morning by the accession of others on the same route, and as we were nearing the ridge, there began to be quite a strife among us as to whose eyes should have the first sight of Mont Blanc. For a month we had been on and under the mountains of Switzerland; gazing successively upon higher and yet higher heights; and when the Jungfrau, and Mount Rosa, and other of the lesser kings of the country had stood before us, we could not believe that any other could be a monarch in the midst of such mountains as these. But Mont Blanc was always to come. It was the last, for we had seen them all, rejoiced in them all, looked up through them all to Him who holds them in his hand, and counts them only as dust in the balance; and still one more wonderful than they was just before us, on the other side of the ridge, and in a few moments more would stand up and meet us face to face. Over the pasturages there were many paths, and we scattered in our attempts to gain upon each other. The mules seemed to catch somewhat of the inspiration of the occasion, and did their best, till we came out together, neck and neck, and we stood on the summit, with the vale of Chamouni, the steeple-like Aiguilles of Charmoz and Midi, Argentiere and Verte, and others shooting up cold and black, sentinels around the hoary old monarch of the Alps lying there with a crown of mist on his head, which rises as we look at it, and Mont Blanc is before us.

“Disappointed of course,” you say. Perhaps so. It does not stand in the middle of a plain, and rise right up like a pyramid, till its apex touches the blue sky. In fact, you must be assured by your guide that the round summit to the South of two or three that seem to be higher is actually Mont Blanc, the loftiest of them all; and as you sit here and take in the wonderful panorama of the glaciers, needles, and majestic summits, the grandeur gradually steals into your soul and takes quiet possession. I wanted to be still and absorb the scene, which I should soon leave and never see again. I would expose my heart to it, till a sort of daguerreotype was made, which I could carry with me, and look at when I should sit down at Niagara, or among the White Hills of New Hampshire.

“’Pon my honor, ’tis very fine,” said a very red-faced, red-whiskered Englishman, who had followed me to my solitary stand-point. “What do you think of it? Is it not fine: very fine?” And so he kept chattering on, till I crept off gently a few rods, and again essayed to be alone. But my tormentor followed up, and renewed his attack, as if it were impossible for him to see the prospect with any satisfaction unless he could keep talking to somebody all the while. A small house of entertainment stands here, and while my Englishman went in to have some brandy and water, I managed to get a few moments of undisturbed possession of the scene. Of all the points of observation in this country of stupendous scenes, there is no one that furnishes a more sublime and glorious spectacle than this. It is the crowning hour of the tour of Switzerland. I felt that I had reached the climax, and with reverence I could make a parody on the words of old Simeon. All my feelings have been of reverence in this country. The Alps and God have been around me for a month, and my soul has been rising in high converse with Him who covers these hills with his presence, and is glorious in the solitudes of these vales. And now as I look off at these glistening glaciers, so many miles of resplendent ice, a Mer de Glace, a sea of glass, lying among those mountains, and extending far down into the vales below; when I look up at these precipitous peaks actually piercing the clouds, and then at the solemn brows of those giant mountains, where the foot of man has seldom trod, and the glory of God is forever shining, I feel a sense of the presence of the Infinite and Eternal as no other scene has ever yet awakened in my soul. With the disciples on another Mount, I feel “it is good to be here.”

That was my first sight of Mont Blanc. The day could not have been more favorable, and that evening as the sun went down, I stood in the vale of Chamouni and saw his last rays lingering on the summit, the stars trooping around it at night, and the next morning before sunrise I was out again to see the first beams of day as they kissed his brow.