al
ranges. Other rocks, placed lower among the hills, receive color upon
their surfaces from all kinds of minute vegetation; but these higher and
more exposed rocks are liable to be in many parts barren; and the wild
forms into which they are thrown necessitate their being often freshly
broken, so as to bring their pure color, untempered in anywise, frankly
into sight. Hence it is appointed that this color shall not be raw or
monotonous, but composed--as all beautiful color must be composed--by
mingling of many hues in one. Not that there is any aim at _attractive_
beauty in these rocks; they are intended to constitute solemn and
desolate scenes; and there is nothing delicately or variously disposed
in their colors. Such beauty would have been inconsistent with their
expression of power and terror, and it is reserved for the marbles and
other rocks of inferior office. But their color is grave and perfect;
closely resembling, in many cases, the sort of hue reached by
cross-chequering in the ground of fourteenth-century manuscripts, and
peculiarly calculated for distant effects of light; being, for the most
part, slightly warm in tone, so as to receive with full advantage the
red and orange rays of sunlight. This warmth is almost always farther
aided by a glowing orange color, derived from the decomposition of the
iron which, though in small quantity, usually is an essential element in
them: the orange hue forms itself in unequal veins and spots upon the
surfaces which have been long exposed, more or less darkening them; and
a very minute black lichen,--so minute as to look almost like spots of
dark paint,--a little opposed and warmed by the golden Lichen
geographicus, still farther subdues the paler hues of the highest
granite rocks. Now, when a surface of this kind is removed to a distance
of four or five miles, and seen under warm light through soft air, the
orange becomes russet, more or less inclining to pure red, according to
the power of the rays: but the black of the lichen becomes pure dark
blue; and the result of their combination is that peculiar reddish
purple which is so strikingly the characteristic of the rocks of the
higher Alps. Most of the travellers who have seen the Valley of Chamouni
carry away a strong impression that its upper precipices are of red
rock. But they are, without exception, of a whitish grey, toned and
raised by this united operation of the iron, the lichen, and the light.

Sec. 15. I h