444 PRÆTERITA-II

In several turns of the valley the lateral cliffs go plumb down into these fields as if into a green lake; but usually, slopes of shale, now forest-hidden, ascend to heights of six or seven hundred feet before the cliffs begin; then the mountain above becomes partly a fortress wall, partly banks of turf ascending around its bastions or between, but always guarded from avalanche by higher woods or rocks; the snows melting in early spring, and falling in countless cascades, mostly over the cliffs, and then in broken threads down the banks. Beautiful always, and innocent, the higher summits by midsummer are snowless, and no glacial moraine or torrent defaces or disturbs the solitude of their pastoral kingdom.

Leaving the carriage at Cluse, I always used to walk, through this valley, the ten miles to St. Martin’s, resting awhile at the springs of Magland, where, close under the cliff, the water thrills imperceptibly through the crannies of its fallen stones, deeper and deeper every instant; till, within three fathoms of its first trickling thread, it is a deep stream of dazzling brightness, dividing into swift branches eager for their work at the mill, or their ministry to the meadows.

Contrary again to the customs of less enchanted vales, this one opens gradually as it nears the greater mountain, its own lateral cliffs rising also in proportion to its width-those on the left, as one approaches St. Martin’s, into the vast towers and promontories of the Aiguille de Varens; those on the right into a mountain scarcely marked in any Alpine chart, yet from which, if one could climb its dangerous turf and mural diadem, there must be commanded precisely the most noble view of Mont Blanc granted by any summit of his sentinel chains.

215. In the only map of Switzerland which has ever been executed with common sense and intelligence (Original von Keller’s Zweiter Reisekarte der Schweitz, 1844), this peak is, nevertheless, left without distinction from that called the “Croix de Fer,” of which it is only a satellite.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]