Part 24

Superadded to this source of general rain, we have at Killarney local condensers in the neighbouring mountains. Round the cool crests of Carrantual and his peaked and craggy brothers the moist and tilted south-west wind curdles ceaselessly into clouds, which nourish the moss and heather whose decomposition produces the peat which clothes the disintegrated rocks. Grandly the vast cumuli build themselves in the atmosphere, hanging at times lazily over the mountains and mottling with their shadows the brown sides of the hills. Reddened by the evening sun, these clouds cast their hues upon the lakes, the crisped surface of which breaks up their images into broad spaces of diffused crimson light. On other days the cumuli seem whipped into dust, and scattered through the general air, mixing therewith as the smoke of London mingles with the supernatant atmosphere. Day by day the guides prophesy fine weather--the blackest cloud is ‘all for hate.’ You are assured that if you start to-day you will not get ‘a single dhrop’ of rain; you go, and are drenched; but the guide’s purpose is accomplished, the moderate sum of three and sixpence being added to his private store.

In ages past these mountain condensers acted differently. The wet winds of the ocean, which now descend in liquid showers upon the hills, once discharged their contents as snow. And a famous deposit they must have made. In addition to the charms which this region presents to every eye, the mind of him who can read the rocks aright is carried back to a time when deep snowbeds cumbered the mountain-slopes, and vast glaciers filled the vales. In neither England nor Wales do the traces of glacial action reach the magnitude which they exhibit here.

The Gap of Dunloe is the channel of an ancient glacier; and all through it the scratching and polishing may be traced. The flanks of the Purple Mountain have been planed down by the moving ice, and the rocky amphitheatre which the guides choose for the production of echoes has been scooped and polished by the same agency. Near the point where the road from the Gap joins that up the Black Valley is a slab of rock, which rivals the famous _Höllen Platte_ in Haslithal. The Black Valley, indeed, was the mould through which a great glacier from the adjacent mountains moved, ‘unhasting, unresting,’ grinding the rocks right and left, and filling the entire basin now occupied by the waters of the Upper Lake. All the islands of this lake are glacier domes. The shapes, moreover, which have suggested the fanciful names given to some of the rocks are entirely due to the planing of the ice. The ‘Cannon Rock,’ the ‘Giant’s Coffin,’ the ‘Man-of-War,’ and others, owe their forms to the mighty moulding-plane which in bygone ages passed over them.

I have spoken of the echoes in the Gap of Dunloe. They are very fine, and are usually awakened by a guide who plays a bugle, and to whom extra wages are paid on this account. The man times his operations so that the echo and the original sound shall not overlap, and he usually places his guests behind a hill-brow, which partially cuts away the direct sound, but offers no impediment to the echoes. He flourishes his trumpet, and pauses; the rocks respond, the first return of the sound being almost as strong as the blast itself; the sonorous pulses leap from crag to crag, and from them to the listener’s ear, diminishing in intensity and augmenting in softness the oftener they are reflected. Moore’s melody of ‘The Meeting of the Waters,’ suitably played, is thus returned with exquisite sweetness by the reflecting rocks.

The rain here is pitiless, but the march of the showering clouds over the mountains is sometimes very grand. One really good day is all that I have been able to number out of six spent on the banks of the Lower Lake, and even that day was ushered in by heavy rain. Afterwards, however, the cloud field broke, and the condensed vapours rolled themselves up into sphered masses, which sailed majestically through the ether. With some other visitors I rowed to the Upper Lake, landed at the base of the Purple Mountain, and with one companion climbed the latter to its crest. This is covered by loose masses of stone of a purplish hue, from which the mountain derives its name.

A few days previously I had been on the top of Mangerton, a spot selected by the guides as affording a prospect of the entire region of the Lakes. But Mangerton is a stupid mountain, and it is climbed by a wearisome pony track. It is incomparably inferior to the Purple Mountain. From the latter, on one side, we look into the heart of Magillicuddy’s Reeks, and shake hands with Carrantual across the Gap of Dunloe. It commands a splendid mountain panorama, and on the occasion of my visit showed the Reeks in their true character, as cloud-generators. A light wind swept across them. Far to westward, towards the sea, the air was cloudless; but over the Reeks its moisture was densely precipitated, and formed there a canopy which threw an inky gloom upon the mountains. The clouds sometimes descended so as to touch the summits, but for the most part they floated a little way above them, leaving the jagged outlines clear. From the Reeks the clouds were wafted westward; but here, meeting with warmer air, they diminished in size, the smaller ones melting quite away. Below us gleamed the Upper Lake, running in and out amid the mountains, fringed with woods and studded with islands covered with sunny foliage. From this lake a long, sinuous, and narrow outlet, called the Long Range, runs to the Middle Lake. The suddenness with which this lovely sheet of water opens on quitting the Long Range constitutes perhaps the greatest surprise which the traveller here encounters.

We walked along the ridge of the Purple Mountain ankle deep in elastic moss, with glorious views at either side. Arrived at the end of its greatest spur, the Middle and Lower Lakes with their islands, and the wooded and tortuous peninsula between them, lay before us. No view of the English lakes known to me could compete in loveliness with this one. We passed onward through the heather to the brow above the Bay of Glena, and there clambered down the mountain, helping ourselves by the trees which grasped with gnarled roots the mossed and slippy crags. At Glena we met our boat, and were rowed over the jerking waves to the island of Innisfallen, and thence to our hotel. Various bits of climbing were accomplished during my stay, and almost in every case in opposition to the guides. The Eagle Rock, for example, a truly noble mass, and others, were climbed, amid emphatic enunciations of ‘impossible.’ Yet these guides and boatmen are fine, hardy fellows, and of great endurance, but they appear averse to trying their strength under new conditions.

I write on a drenching day, and a strong wind which wails dismally round the house has roused the Lower Lake to foam and fury. Innisfallen looms feebly through the grey haze, but the opposite Toumies mountains are plunged in impenetrable gloom. All round the horizon is built a black cloud-wall, but the zenithal heaven is clear. Over the coping of this thunderous bulwark the sun shoots his rays, which, meeting the dropping cloud of the opposite heaven, paint upon it a complete and magnificent bow. Here the white beam enters the front of the falling drop, and is reflected at its back, emerging unravelled to its component hues. But the condition is, that after being thus unravelled, the coloured rays shall not diverge on quitting the drop. If they did, they would be lost immediately to the senses; but they are squeezed together to parallel sheaves, and thus their intensity is preserved through long aërial distances. Above the vivid bow hangs its spectral secondary brother, in which a double reflection within each raindrop enfeebles the colours, and inverts the order of succession.

Touched by the wand of law, the dross of facts becomes gold, the meanest being raised thereby to brotherhood with the highest. Thus the smoke of an Irish cabin lifts our speculations to the heavenly dome. We look through the cloudless air at the darkness of infinite space, and are met by the azure of the firmament--we look through a long reach of the same atmosphere at the bright sun or moon and see them orange or red. We look through the peat-smoke at a black rock, or at the dark branches of a yew, and see the smoke blue--we look through the same smoke at a cloud illuminated to whiteness by the sun and find the smoke red. The selfsame column of smoke may be projected against a bright and a dark portion of the same cloud, and thus made to appear blue and red at the same time. The blue belongs to the light _reflected_ from the smoke; the red to the light _transmitted_ through it. In like manner, the hues of the atmosphere are not due to colouring matter, but to the fact of its being a turbid medium. Through this we look at the blackness of unillumined space and see the blue; at the western heaven at sunset, and meet that light which steeps the clouds of evening in orange and crimson dyes.

VII.

_SNOWDON IN WINTER._

Tainted by the city air, and with gases not natural even to the atmosphere of London, I gladly chimed in with the proposal of an experienced friend to live four clear days at Christmas on Welsh mutton and mountain air. On the evening of the 26th of December 1860 Mr. Busk, Mr. Huxley, and I found ourselves at the Penryhn Arms Hotel in Bangor. Next morning we started betimes. The wind had howled angrily during the night. It now swept over the frozen road, carrying the looser snow along with it, shooting the crystals with projectile force against our faces, and compelling us to lean forward at a considerable angle to keep upon our feet. Our destination was Capel Curig, with a prospective design upon Snowdon; but we had no bâtons fit for the ascent. At Bethesda, however, after many vain enquiries in Welsh and English about walking-sticks, we found a shop which embraced among its multitudinous contents a sheaf of rake-handles. Two of these we purchased at fourpence each, and had them afterwards furnished with rings and iron spikes, at the total cost of one shilling. Thus provided, we hoped that ‘old Snowdon’s craggy chaos’ might be invaded with a hope of success.

On the morning of the 28th we issued from our hotel. A pale blue, dashed with ochre, and blending to a most delicate green, overspread a portion of the eastern sky. Grey cumuli, tinged ruddily here and there as they caught the morning light, swung aloft, but melted more and more as the day advanced. The eastern mountains were all thickly covered with newly fallen snow. The effect was unspeakably lovely. In front of us was Snowdon; over it and behind it the atmosphere was closely packed with dense brown haze, the lower filaments of which reached almost half-way down the mountain, but still left all its outline clearly visible through the attenuated fog. No ray of sunlight fell upon the hill, and the face which it turned towards us, too steep to hold the snow, exhibited a precipitous slope of rock, faintly tinted by the blue grey of its icy enamel. Below us was Llyn Mymbyr, a frozen plain; behind us the hills were flooded with sunlight, and here and there from the shaded slopes, which were illuminated chiefly by the light of the firmament, shimmered a most delicate blue.

This beautiful effect deserves a word of notice; many doubtless have observed it during the late snow. Ten days ago, in driving from Kirtlington to Glympton, the window of my cab became partially opaque by the condensation of the vapour of respiration. With the finger-ends little apertures were made in the coating, and when viewed through these the snow-covered landscape flashed incessantly with blue gleams. They rose from the shadows of objects along the road, which shadows were illuminated by the light of the sky. The blue light is best seen when the eye is in motion, thus causing the images of the shadows to pass over different parts of the retina. The whole shadow of a tree may thus be seen with stem and branches of the most delicate blue. I have seen similar effects upon the fresh _névés_ of the Alps, the shadow being that of the human body looked at through an aperture in a handkerchief thrown over the face. The same splendid effect was once exhibited in a manner never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it, on the sudden opening of a tent-door at sunrise on the summit of Mont Blanc.

At Pen-y-Gwrid Busk halted, purposing to descend to Llanberis by the road, while Huxley and I went forward to the small public-house known as Pen Pass. Here our guide, Robert Hughes, a powerful but elderly man, refreshed himself, and we quitted the road and proceeded for a short distance along a car-track which seemed to wind round a spur of Snowdon. ‘Is there no shorter way up?’ we demanded. ‘Yes; but I fear it is now impracticable,’ was the reply. ‘Go straight on,’ said Huxley, ‘and do not fear us.’

Up the man went with a spurt, suddenly putting on all his steam. The whisky of Pen Pass had given him a flash of energy, which we well knew could not last. In fact, the guide, though he acquitted himself admirably during the day, had at first no notion that we should reach the summit; and this made him careless of preserving himself at the outset. Toning him down a little, we went forward at a calmer pace. Crossing the spur, we came upon a pony-track on the opposite side. It was rendered conspicuous by the unbroken layer of snow which rested on it. Huxley took the lead, wading knee-deep for nearly an hour.

I, wishing to escape this labour, climbed the slopes to the right, and sought a way over the less loaded bosses of the mountain. On our remarking to Hughes that he had never assailed Snowdon under such conditions, he replied that he had, and under worse. The 12th of April last, he affirmed, was a worse day, and he had led a lady on that day almost to the summit. Unluckily for him, there was a smack of ‘bounce’ in the reply. It caused us to conclude that the same energy which had led the lady could lead us, and hence, when Huxley fell back, the guide was sent to the front, to break the way. He did this manfully for nearly an hour, at the end of which he seemed very jaded, and as he sat resting on a corner of rock I asked him whether he was tired. ‘I am,’ was his reply. Huxley gave him a sip of brandy, and I came for a short time to the front.

I had no gaiters, and my boots were incessantly filled with snow. My own heat sufficed for a time to melt the snow; but this clearly could not go on for ever. My left heel first became numbed and painful; and this increased till both feet were in great distress. I sought relief by quitting the track and trying to get along the impending shingle to the right. The high ridges afforded me some relief, but they were separated by couloirs in which the snow had accumulated, and through which I sometimes floundered waist-deep. The pain at length became unbearable; I sat down, took off my boots and emptied them; put them on again, tied Huxley’s pocket handkerchief round one ankle, and my own round the other, and went forward once more. It was a great improvement--the pain vanished, and did not return.

The scene was grand in the extreme. Before us were the buttresses of Snowdon, crowned by his conical peak; while below us were three llyns, black as ink, and contracting additional gloom from the shadow of the mountain. The lines of weathering had caused the frozen rime to deposit itself upon the rocks, as on the tendrils of a vine, the crags being fantastically wreathed with runners of ice. The summit, when we looked at it, damped our ardour a little; it seemed very distant, and the day was sinking fast. From the summit the mountain sloped downward to a col which linked it with a bold eminence to our right. At the col we aimed, and half an hour before reaching it we passed the steepest portion of the track. This I quitted, seeking to cut off the zig-zags, but gained nothing but trouble by the attempt. This difficulty conquered, the col was clearly within reach; on its curve we met a fine snow cornice, through which we broke at a plunge, and gained safe footing on the mountain-rim. The health and gladness of that moment were a full recompense for the entire journey into Wales.

We went upward along the edge of the cone with the noble sweep of the snow cornice at our left. The huts at the top were all cased in ice, and from their chimneys and projections the snow was drawn into a kind of plumage by the wind. The crystals had set themselves so as to present the exact appearance of feathers, and in some cases these were stuck against a common axis, so as accurately to resemble the plumes in soldiers’ caps. It was 3 o’clock when we gained the summit. Above and behind us the heavens were of the densest grey; towards the western horizon this was broken by belts of fiery red, which nearer the sun brightened to orange and yellow. The mountains of Flintshire were flooded with glory, and later on, through the gaps in the ranges, the sunlight was poured in coloured beams, which could be tracked through the air to the places on which their radiance fell. The scene would bear comparison with the splendours of the Alps themselves.

Next day we ascended the pass of Llanberis. The waterfalls, stiffened into pillars of blue ice, gave it a grandeur which it might not otherwise exhibit. The wind, moreover, was violent, and shook clouds of snow-dust from the mountain-heads. We descended from Pen-y-Gwrid to Beddgelert. What splendid skating surfaces the lakes presented--so smooth as scarcely to distort the images of the hills! A snow-storm caught us before we reached our hotel. This melted to rain during the night. Next day we engaged a carriage for Carnarvon, but had not proceeded more than two miles when we were stopped by the snow. Huge barriers of it were drifted across the road; and not until the impossibility of the thing was clearly demonstrated did we allow the postilion to back out of his engagement. Luckily our luggage was portable. Strapping our bags and knapsacks on our shoulders, partly through the fields, and partly along the less encumbered portions of the road, we reached Carnarvon on foot, and the evening of the 31st of December saw us safe in London.

VIII.

_VOYAGE TO ALGERIA TO OBSERVE THE ECLIPSE._

The opening of the Eclipse Expedition was not propitious. Portsmouth, on the 5th of December 1870, was swathed by a fog, which was intensified by smoke, and traversed by a drizzle of fine rain. At six P.M. I was on board the ‘Urgent.’ On Tuesday morning the weather was too thick to permit of the ship’s being swung and her compasses calibrated. The Admiral of the port, a man of very noble presence, came on board. Under his stimulus the energy which the weather had damped appeared to become more active, and soon after his departure we steamed down to Spithead. Here the fog had so far lightened as to enable the officers to swing the ship.

At three P.M. on Tuesday the 6th of December we got away, gliding successively past Whitecliff Bay, Bembridge, Sandown, Shanklin, Ventnor, and St. Catherine’s Lighthouse. On Wednesday morning we sighted the Isle of Ushant, on the French side of the Channel. The northern end of the island has been fretted by the waves into detached tower-like masses of rock of very remarkable appearance. In the Channel the sea was green, and opposite Ushant it was a brighter green. On Wednesday evening we committed ourselves to the Bay of Biscay. The roll of the Atlantic was full, but not violent. There had been scarcely a gleam of sunshine throughout the day, but the cloud-forms were fine, and their apparent solidity impressive. On Thursday morning I rose refreshed, and found the green of the sea displaced by a deep indigo blue. The whole of Thursday we steamed across the bay. We had little blue sky, but the clouds were again grand and varied--cirrus, stratus, cumulus, and nimbus, we had them all. Dusky hairlike trails were sometimes dropped from the distant clouds to the sea. These were falling showers, and they sometimes occupied the whole horizon, while we steamed across the rainless circle which was thus surrounded. Sometimes we plunged into the rain, and once or twice, by slightly changing course, avoided a heavy shower. From time to time perfect rainbows spanned the heavens from side to side. At times a bow would appear in fragments, showing the keystone of the arch midway in air, and its two buttresses on the horizon. In all cases the light of the bow could be quenched by a Nicol’s prism, with its long diagonal tangent to the arc. Sometimes gleaming patches of the firmament were seen amid the clouds. When viewed in the proper direction, the gleam could be quenched by a Nicol prism, a dark aperture being thus opened into stellar space.

At sunset on Thursday the denser clouds were fiercely fringed, while through the lighter ones seemed to issue the glow of a conflagration. On Friday morning we sighted Cape Finisterre, the extreme end of the arc which sweeps from Ushant round the Bay of Biscay. Calm spaces of blue, in which floated quietly scraps of cumuli, were behind us, but in front of us was a horizon of portentous darkness. It continued thus threatening throughout the day. Towards evening the wind strengthened to a gale, and at dinner it was difficult to preserve the plates and dishes from destruction. Our thinned company hinted that the rolling had other consequences. It was very wild when we went to bed. I slumbered and slept, but after some time was rendered actively conscious that my body had become a kind of projectile, which had the ship’s side for a target. I gripped the edge of my berth to save myself from being thrown out. Outside, I could hear somebody say that he had been thrown from his berth, and sent spinning to the other side of the saloon. The screw laboured violently amid the lurching; it incessantly quitted the water, and, twirling in the air, rattled against its bearings, and caused the ship to shudder from stem to stern. At times the waves struck us, not with the soft impact which might be expected from a liquid, but with the sudden solid shock of battering-rams. ‘No man knows the force of water,’ said one of the officers, ‘until he has experienced a storm at sea.’ These blows followed each other at quicker intervals, the screw rattling after each of them, until, finally, the delivery of a heavier stroke than ordinary seemed to reduce the saloon to chaos. Furniture crashed, glasses rang, and alarmed enquiries immediately followed. Amid the noises I heard one note of forced laughter; it sounded very ghastly. Men tramped through the saloon, and busy voices were heard aft, as if something there had gone wrong.