86 THE STONES OF VENICE CONSTRUCTION

§ 2. It has been falsely represented as a peak or tower. It is a vast ridged promontory, connected at its western root with the Dent d’Erin,¹ and lifting itself like a rearing horse with its face to the east. All the way along the flank of it, for half a day’s journey on the Zmutt glacier, the grim black terraces of its foundations range almost without a break; and the clouds, when their day’s work is done, and they are weary, lay themselves down on those foundation steps, and rest till dawn, each with his leagues of grey mantle stretched along the grisly ledge, and the cornice of the mighty wall gleaming in the moonlight, three thousand feet above.

§ 3. The eastern face of the promontory is hewn down, as if by the single sweep of a sword, from the crest of it to the base; hewn concave and smooth, like the hollow of a wave:

world. Southwards this wall, perhaps from one to two thousand feet in height, is overhung by enormous masses of nevé; westwards, it suddenly rises to the Matterhorn, which stands as it were on its edge, nodding over it; northwards, it terminates in the isolated promontory which I ascended. ...

“Saturday, August 4.-Looking back upon that scene of yesterday, the image which struck me at the time is suggested with still greater force. Byron’s line, of Soracte, applies only to the outline; but the resemblance to a breaking wave is traceable throughout the whole group of the Matterhorn and its snows. The hollow semi-circular precipice, nodding forwards at its crest, seems to roll round the gulph of glacier as a wild breaker bends round a level shore; the glacier itself, all traversed by curved and eddying fissures, looked like the sweeping sheet of foam left by the last wave, the receding remains of the last winter’s snow, covered as it seemed by broken wreaths of kneaded spray, separated here and there by bands of free ice-as the sea foam is by the grey water. The central Matterhorn rose like the crested summit of the breaker met by the recoil; and, to increase the likeness, the cloud drifted from the front of it like the spray caught by the wind, adding at the same time to its natural grace of curve; and even the red rocks at its base, surmounted by the band of livid green, bore no unapt resemblance to the stain in the hollow of a nodding wave, where the green deep water joins that which has been fouled by the sand. Far to the south, the nevé hung from the ridges of the dark rocks, and carried deep into the blue and serene sky the image of the blanched rage of endless ocean.”

The passage in Byron, referred to above, is in Childe Harold, canto iv. st. 74-75:

“Athos, Olympus, Ætna, Atlas, made

These hills seem things of lesser dignity,

All, save the lone Soracte’s height display’d,

Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman’s aid

“For our remembrance, and from out the plain

Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,

And on the curl hangs pausing: ...”]

¹ [i.e. the Dent d’Herens (otherwise known as “Mount Tabor”).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]