nd that they may
go to bed. Still grander is the sight when the mountaineer has already
reached some lofty ridge, and, as the sun rises, stands between the day
and the night--the valley still in deep sleep, with the mists lying
between the folds of the hills, and the snow-peaks standing out clear
and pale white just before the sun reaches them, whilst a broad band of
orange light runs all round the vast horizon. The glory of sunsets is
equally increased in the thin upper air. The grandest of all such sights
that live in my memory is that of a sunset from the Aiguille du Goute.
The snow at our feet was glowing with rich light, and the shadows in our
footsteps a vivid green by the contrast. Beneath us was a vast
horizontal floor of thin level mists suspended in mid air, spread like a
canopy over the whole boundless landscape, and tinged with every hue of
sunset. Through its rents and gaps we could see the lower mountains, the
distant plains, and a fragment of the Lake of Geneva lying in a more
sober purple. Above us rose the solemn mass of Mont Blanc in the richest
glow of an Alpine sunset. The sense of lonely sublimity was almost
oppressive, and although half our party was suffering from sickness, I
believe even the guides were moved to a sense of solemn beauty.

These grand scenic effects are occasionally seen by ordinary travellers,
though the ordinary traveller is for the most part out of temper at 3
A.M. The mountaineer can enjoy them, both because his frame of mind is
properly trained to receive the natural beauty, and because he alone
sees them with their best accessories, amidst the silence of the eternal
snow, and the vast panoramas visible from the loftier summits. And he
has a similar advantage in most of the great natural phenomena of the
cloud and the sunshine. No sight in the Alps is more impressive than the
huge rocks of a black precipice suddenly frowning out through the chasms
of a storm-cloud. But grand as such a sight may be from the safe
verandahs of the inn at Grindelwald, it is far grander in the silence of
the Central Alps amongst the savage wilderness of rock and snow.
Another characteristic effect of the High Alps often presents itself
when one has been climbing for two or three hours, with nothing in sight
but the varying wreaths of mist that chased each other monotonously
along the rocky ribs up whose snow-covered backbone we were laboriously
fighting our way. Suddenly there is a puff of wind, an