The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1893-09-15


To Hon. j. w. TURNER.
Owosso, Mich.
My Dear Mr.. Turner Midst all my
trials, vexations and delights | am not
entirely unlnindlu of my friends or
forgetful of the things that bring to them
the greatest pleasure. Now to man of
your temperament and poetic fancy, who
delights in imaginings and ,idealizes
nature, "who sees sermons in stones and
books in running brooks" l can imagine
of no sweeter place than Chamouny.
Nature simply runs riot here has
scattered beauties with q liberal hand,
from the tiniest little fowret that bios
SONS modestly in the shade of some
small boulder to the great glaciers rest
ing like fleecy cloud banks on the
mountain sides, great thunder splintered
pinnacles" of rock that pierce the sky and
finally the grand and beautiful Mount
Blanc, King of all, above all, crowned
with perpetual snow that never loses its
whiteness and purity.
1t is delight simply to be here and
look at it all, even if one does not try the
climbs that are SO attractive and afford
better views than the valley. This morn
ing | have been up a thousand feet or so
on glacier just for Il little exercise and
to take the little stiffness out of my Joints
that walk of 20 miles and climb of
600 feet put into them yesterday. |
never was on such intimate terms with a
glacier as have been this morning. /
started at its base where the water
rushes out from under it and climbed up
for a mile or more along its side, a great
wedge of ice that has thrust itself out into
the valley, ploughing up the land in two
great burrows as it goes. This glacier is
100 feet thick at the end and is, know
not, how many hundred feet thick farther
up the mountain.
One wonders, living in Owosso with
the mercury at 900, why glaciers do not
melt entirely away. but here the wonder
ceases. One of them would last five
years in the great Sahara. / went into a
cave that has been cut into it some 200
feet. Solid. hard blue ice with little
r lis of cold water trickling down
through assures; the light filtered
through so many feet of ice is most
peculiar and gives one corpse like APP
pearance that is not entirely comforting
particularly when you think of what
would happen if the monster should slip
little and close up the passage and You
should find yourself imprisoned. But
then there would be one small comfort
even in that. You would be perfectly
preserved for the next generation to find
and wonder at when you had travelled
the mile or so to the melting point. No
line. no hair, no wrinkle even would be
changed in the % years the corpse was
making the journey. If was It resurrec-
tionest-not of the Jerv Cruncher type
literal resurrectionest, that is the way
Ia want to die. The body wonld be all
ready when Gabriel blows his horn.
scrambled over this ice monster,
quarter of a mile wide at this point,
crawling carefully up steep ice slopes,
creeping around crevices, peeping into
them sometimes to find them apparently
bottomless, then digging my boot nails
trusty alpenstock (no toy this time /
assure YOU with firmer hold, go somewhat
nervously and carefully on. That was
most interesting experience; the walk
back to Chamouny through the woods,
the path winding by the side of mountain
rills that bubble along and glacier
streams that rush and roar and tumble
over precipices was not less delightful.
This is a daytime experience. The
bright sunlight in an almost cloudless
sky and the reflection from snow banks
and glaciers bringing everything out in
bold relief. If Chamouny is beautiful
then, you can imagine what it is as day
light merges into twilight and twilight
slowly fades away. 1t is simply the acme
of enjoyment to stretch ones self out on
grassy slope and watch the coming night.
The shadows creep into the valley then
slowly crawl up the mountain sides con.
verting erstwhile seeming ravines intogob-
Inns dens and splintered and pinnacled
glaciers into fairies palaces. The tinkle of
distant bells comes to you like music ming
led with the shouts of boyish voices-all
fairy music-and then soon after the
herds of goats come pattering up the
street, bringing genuine Swiss odor
with them that is not fairy like at all, and
night has come. e. night has come in
the valley, but the peaks to the east are
still aglOw and Mount Blanc is yet
bathed in sunshine, natures Pharos to
the late wanderers of the valley. Then
the morning has delights that are its
own, the tall peaks in silhoutte against
the rosy morning sky looking black and
ugly but for the thread Of silver along
each edge. In fact there is no moment,
day or night, when Chamouny is not full
of delight to the traveller, or when your
soul could not fill itself with that serene
satisfaction that comes when viewing
nature at her best.
This is but one of many beautiful spots
L have been in, sometimes above the
clouds with winter all about me, some
times by lovely Italian lakes where para
disc is reproduced, sometimes wandering
in the awful stiffness of high mountain
passes and again walking through deep
ravines that are full of music. This is
especially the land for day dreams and
night reveries not for the actual, but of
the ideal. 1t is where a man longs for
companionship that is. sympathetic
rather than practical, and knows when
to talk and what to talk about and
| when to keep its peace.
Tomorrow we go to Geneva and then
direct to Paris. We are rushing from
nature al her best to human nature at it's
worst, from the quiet of the valleys to the
busiest and gayest of European capitals.
| 1t is this sudden change in extremes that
gives zest to travel.
l hope this will find you well d
possessed of enough patience and time to
L "a - n