s, and which is of a
different character, but astonishingly fine too. Mont Blanc, and the
Valley of Chamounix, and the Mer de Glace, and all the wonders of that
most wonderful place, are above and beyond one's wildest expectations. I
cannot imagine anything in nature more stupendous or sublime. If I were
to write about it now, I should quite rave--such prodigious impressions
are rampant within me. . . . You may suppose that the mule-travelling is
pretty primitive. Each person takes a carpet-bag strapped on the mule
behind himself or herself: and that is all the baggage that can be
carried. A guide, a thorough-bred mountaineer, walks all the way,
leading the lady's mule; I say the lady's par excellence, in compliment
to Kate; and all the rest struggle on as they please. The cavalcade
stops at a lone hut for an hour and a half in the middle of the day, and
lunches brilliantly on whatever it can get. Going by that Col de Balme
pass, you climb up and up and up for five hours and more, and
look--from a mere unguarded ledge of path on the side of the
precipice--into such awful valleys, that at last you are firm in the
belief that you have got above everything in the world, and that there
can be nothing earthly overhead. Just as you arrive at this conclusion,
a different (and oh Heaven! what a free and wonderful) air comes blowing
on your face; you cross a ridge of snow; and lying before you (wholly
unseen till then), towering up into the distant sky, is the vast range
of Mont Blanc, with attendant mountains diminished by its majestic side
into mere dwarfs tapering up into innumerable rude Gothic pinnacles;
deserts of ice and snow; forests of firs on mountain sides, of no
account at all in the enormous scene; villages down in the hollow, that
you can shut out with a finger; waterfalls, avalanches, pyramids and
towers of ice, torrents, bridges; mountain upon mountain until the very
sky is blocked away, and you must look up, overhead, to see it. Good
God, what a country Switzerland is, and what a concentration of it is to
be beheld from that one spot! And (think of this in Whitefriars and in
Lincoln's-inn!) at noon on the second day from here, the first day being
but half a one by the bye and full of uncommon beauty, you lie down on
that ridge and see it all! . . . I think I must go back again (whether you
come or not!) and see it again before the bad weather arrives. We have
had sunlight, moonlight, a perfectly transparent atmosp