Читать книгу Letters from Switzerland and Travels in Italy - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Страница 16

We left Salenche behind us in a lovely open valley; during our noonday's rest the sky had become overcast with white fleecy clouds, about which I have here a special remark to make. We had seen them on a bright day rise equally fine, I if not still finer, from the glaciers of Berne. Here too it again seemed to us as if the sun, had first of all attracted the light mists which evaporated from the tops of the glaciers, and then a gentle breeze had, as it were, combed the fine vapours, like a fleece of foam over the atmosphere. I never remember at home, even in the height of summer, (when such phenomena do also occur with us,) to have seen any so transparent, for here it was a perfect web of light. Before long the ice-covered mountains from which it rose lay before us; the valley began to close in; the Arve was gushing out of the rock; we now began to ascend a mountain, and went up higher and higher, with the snowy summits right before us. Mountains and old pine forests, either in the hollows below or on a level with our track, came out one by one before the eye as we proceeded. On our left were the mountain-peaks, bare and pointed. We felt that we were approaching a mightier and more massive chain of mountains. We passed over a dry and broad bed of stones and gravel, which the watercourses tear down from the sides of the rocks, and in turn flow among and fill up. This brought us into an agreeable valley, flat, and shut in by a circular ridge of rocks, in which lies the little village of Serves. There the road runs round some very highly variegated rocks, and takes again the direction towards the Arve. After crossing the latter you again ascend; the masses become constantly more imposing, nature seems to have begun here with a light hand, to prepare her enormous creations. The darkness grew deeper and deeper as we approached the valley of Chamouni, and when at last we entered it, nothing but the larger masses were discernible. The stars came out one by one, and we noticed above the peaks of the summits right before us, a light which we could not account for. Clear, but without brilliancy, like the milky way, but closer, something like that of the Pleiades; it rivetted our attention until at last, as our position changed, like a pyramid illuminated by a secret light within, which could best be compared to the gleam of a glow-worm, it towered high above the peaks of all the surrounding mountains, and at last convinced us that it must be the peak of Mont Blanc. The beauty of this view was extraordinary. For while, together with the stars which clustered round it, it glimmered, not indeed with the same twinkling light, but in a broader and more continuous mass, it seemed to belong to a higher sphere, and one had difficulty in thought to fix its roots again in the earth. Before it we saw a line of snowy summits, sparkling as they rested on the ridges covered with the black pines, while between the dark forests vast glaciers sloped down to the valley below.

My descriptions begin to be irregular and forced; in fact, one wants two persons here, one to see and the other to describe.

Here we are in the middle village of the valley called "Le Prieuré," comfortably lodged in a house, which a widow caused to be built here in honour of the many strangers who visited the neighbourhood. We are sitting close to the hearth, relishing our Muscatel wine from the Vallée d'Aost far better than the lenten dishes which were served up to our dinner.

Nov. 5, 1779. Evening.

To take up one's pen and write, almost requires as great an effort as to take a swim in the cold river. At this moment I have a great mind to put you off, by referring you to the description of the glaciers of Savoy, given by that enthusiastic climber Bourritt.

Invigorated however by a few glasses of excellent wine, and by the thought that these pages will reach you much sooner than either the travellers or Bourritt's book, I will do my best. The valley of Chamouni, in which we are at present, lies very high among the mountains, and, from six to seven leagues long, runs pretty nearly from south to north. The characteristic features which to my mind distinguish it from all others, are its having scarcely any flat portion, but the whole tract, like a trough, slopes from the Arve gradually up the sides of the mountain. Mont Blanc and the line of mountains which runs off from it, and the masses of ice which fill up the immense ravines, make up the eastern wall of the valley, on which, throughout its entire length, seven glaciers, of which one is considerably larger than the others, run down to the bottom of the valley.