Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1873-11-19
Mont Blanc.

The view from Mont Blanc is not ordi-
narlly specially picturesque-and for a
sufficient reason, The architect has con-
centrated his whole energies in producing
a single impression. Everything has been
so arranged as to intensity the sense of
vast height and illimitable horizon The
effect is perfectly unique in the bps but
it is produced at certain sacrifice. All
dangerous rivals have been removed to
such distance as to become apparently
insignificant. No grand mass can be ad-
mltted into the foreground for the sense
of vast size is gradually forced upon you
by the infinite multiplicity of detail
Mont Blanc must be like an Asiatic des-
pot, alone and supreme, with all inferior
peaks reverently couched at his feet. If
man, previously as ignorant of geogra-
ply boy who has just left Il public
school, could be transported for moment
to the summit, bis impression would be
that the A ps resembled a village of fifty
novels grouped round a stupendous cathe~
dral. Fully to appreciate this effect, re-
qures a certain familiarity with Alpine
scenery, for otherwise the effect produced
is a dwarfing of the inferior mountains into
pettiness instead Of an exaltation of Mont
Blanc into almost portentous magniticence.
Grouped around you at unequal distances
are series Of white patches, looking like
the tented encampments of scattered army
corps. Hold up a glove at arm slength,
and it will ever the whole of such a
group. On the boundess plain beneath
Il say " plain !" for the greatest mountain
system OF Europe seems to have subsidized
into a rather uneven plain, it is mere
spot, triaing dent upon the huge shield
on whose central boss you are placed. But
you know, though a. first you can hardly
realize the knowledge, that that insignif-
cant discoloration represents a whole
mountain district. One spot, for example,
represents the clustered peaks of the
Bernese Oberland +; block, as big as "a
pebble, is the soaring Jungfrau, the terri
BILE mother of avalanches; barely dis
tinguishabe wrinkle is the reverse of those
snowy wastes of the Blumlis Alp, which
seems to be suspended above the terrace
of Berne, thirty miles away and that
little whitish streak represents the greatest
ice stream of the Alps, the huge Aletsch
glacier, whose monstrous proportions have
been impressed upon you by hours of la.
borious ploddiug. One patch contains the
main sources from which the Rhine des-
cends to the German ocean, two or three
more overlook the Italian plains and en-
circle the basin of the Pc; from a more
distant group flows the Danube, and from
your feet the SHOWS melt to supply the
Rhone. You feel that you are in some
sense looking down upon Europe from
Rotterdam to Venice and from Varna to
Marseilles. The vividness of the impress
sion depends entirely upon the degree t.
!; which you can realize the immense size o
; all these Unreasonable details. Now, il
the morning, the usual time for ascent, the
details are necessarily vague, because the
noblest part of the view lies between thu
sun and the spectator. But in the evening
light each ridge and peak and glacie
J stands out with startling distinctness, and
, each, therefore, is laden with its weight o
old assoc alton. There, for example, wa
the grim Matterhorn; its angular dimen
sions were of infnitesimal minuteness i
would puzzle a mathematician to say how
small space its image would occupy Oh
his retina but. within that small space
|, , its form was defined with exquisite accu
t racy; and We could recognize the precis
q confguration of the wild labyrinth o
rocky ridges up which the earlier adven