Page:The Geologist, volume 5.djvu/98

78 be able to construct for his imagination a right measure of their colossal relations; and yet all these granite giants are far exceeded as to the impression which they make upon the eye by that steep abyss unto which the Monte Rosa sinks at the head of the valley of Macugnaga. It is the greatest vertical magnitude of the European continent. The limestone Alps, the Diablerets, Dolden and Gespaltenhorn, and Blumlis Alps show mighty rock-fronts, but they shrink in presence of these granite walls to masses of the second order.

"We called granite the historic stone of the earth. It is so in the Alps in more than one respect. Its solemn rock-walls were often memorials of great deeds, which may be compared to the sublimest moments of classical antiquity. The undaunted Russian SuwarofF, a modern Epaminondas, who would rather have been buried in the clefts of the rocks than have given up his post, when his columns had repulsed the French under Gaudin in the narrow valley of Tremolu, left the heroic words 'Suwarovv Victor' carved on the granite wall for an everlasting remembrance. Next day the cliffs of gneiss were witnesses of equally heroic deeds, where the Devil's Bridge spans the stormy waters of the Reuss with its bold arch. Over the granitic deserts of the St. Bernard, Bonaparte led his army to the victory of Marengo, in May, 1800; and when the Simplon Pass, the first great Alpine road, had been pierced by his orders, he had carved in the opening of the gallery of Gondo the words 'Aere Italo,, Nap. Imp.' Andreas Hofer, the host of Passeyr, was born in the granite country, and between granite rocks he fought his glorious fights for the freedom of the Tyrol. . . . Benedict Fontana breathed out his hero-soul upon the gneiss crystals of the Malser-haide. . . . And then the mighty December fight of 1478, in the Livinenthal, when a handful of herdsmen destroyed ten times their number of Milanese under Count Borelli, till the snows of Bellinzona were red with their blood. Then the hero-graves of the three thousand Confederates at Arbeno, who sank in a despairing fight before twenty-four thousand Lombards in 1422. The double blood-baptism of the Valaisans at Ulrichen and on the Grimsel in 1422, and many other proofs of manly courage and bold deeds—are they not remembrances which have carved their memorial in letters of flame for men's hearts on the rock-tablets of these granite colossi?

"But the dull stone tells us of still more, of times lying further back, of an epoch when the Alps stood as they stand to-day, but when the human race was not. These memorial stones are the 'erratic blocks.'"

The quotations we have given will show the eloquent turn of the author's mind; but from them it will be readily seen that while admitting that we like the boldness of his speculations, and admire the truthfulness of some of his remarks, we cannot always assure the soundness of his geological statements.

Erratic blocks, the Nagelfluh, landslips, ban-forests, the Wettertanne, prostrate firs, and Alpine roses, chestnut-woods, cloud pictures, waterfalls and mountain snow-storms, avalanches, glaciers and Alpine summits, mountain passes and Alpine roads, hospices, chalet-life, the goat-boy, the wieldheuer, the Alpine feast, timber-fellers and floaters, mountaineers and village-life in the Alps, all form topics equally delightful, treated in language as fanciful or as wild as the subjects themselves, and containing a great amount of facts and observations, to be read with interest by geologists. To the general reader this must prove a charming book; but dealing as we do with a speciality, we can nevertheless recommend it to the votaries of our science as an admirable description of Alpine scenery and conditions, from the perusal of which they will rise with new thoughts and ideas for deep reflection.