Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

The sheik has sent three Arabs over the route to the Cedars to learn if the snow will permit us to approach those trees; the Arabs returning say that access is impracticable; there are fourteen feet of snow in a narrow valley which must be crossed before reaching the trees;--wishing to get as near as possible, I entreat the sheik to give me his son and several horsemen; I leave my wife and my caravan at Eden; I mount the strongest of my horses, _Scham_, and we are _en route_ at break of day;--a march of three hours over the crests of the mountains, or in the fields softened with melting snow. I arrive at the edge of the valley of the Saints, a deep gorge where the glance sweeps from the rocky height to a valley more confined, more sombre and more solemn even than that of Hamana; at the top of this valley, at the place where, after continually rising, it reaches the snows, a superb sheet of water falls, a hundred feet high and two or three _toises_ wide; the entire valley resounds with this waterfall and the leaping torrents that it feeds; on every side the rocky flanks of the mountain stream with foam; we see almost beyond our vision, in the depths of the valley, two large villages the houses of which can scarcely be distinguished from the rocks rolled down by the torrent; the tops of the poplars and the mulberries from here look like tufts of reed or grass; we descend to the village of Beschieraï by paths cut in the rock, and so abrupt that one can hardly imagine that men will risk themselves upon them; people do perish sometimes; a stone thrown from the crest where we stand would fall upon the roofs of these villages where we shall arrive after an hour’s descent; above the cascade and the snows, enormous fields of ice extend, undulating like vapours in tints greenish and blue by turns; in about a quarter of an hour towards the left in a half circular valley formed by the last mounts of Lebanon, we see a large, black blot upon the snow,--the famous group of cedars; they crown the brow of the mountain like a diadem; they mark the branching off of numerous and large valleys that descend from there; the sea and the sky are their horizon.

We put our horses to a gallop over the snow to get as near as possible to the forest; but on arriving five or six hundred steps from the trees, we plunge our horses up to their shoulders; we realize that the report of the Arabs is correct, and we must renounce the hope of touching these relics of the centuries and of nature; we alight and sit upon a rock to contemplate them.

These trees are the most celebrated natural monuments in the whole universe. Religion, poetry, and history have equally consecrated them. Holy Writ celebrates them in several places. They are one of the favourite images which the prophets employ. Solomon wished to consecrate them--doubtless on account of the renown of magnificence and sanctity that these prodigies of vegetation enjoyed at this epoch--to the ornamentation of the temple that he was the first to elevate to the one God. These were certainly the trees; for Ezekiel speaks of the cedars of Eden as the most beautiful of Lebanon. The Arabs of all sects have a traditional veneration for them. They attribute to these trees, not only a vegetative force that gives them eternal life, but even a soul that makes them give signs of wisdom, of foresight, similar to those of instinct in animals and intelligence in men. They know the seasons in advance; they move their enormous branches like human limbs, they spread or contract their boughs, they raise their branches towards the sky or incline them to the earth, according as the snow is preparing to fall or to melt. They are divine beings under the form of trees. They grow on this single spot of the mounts of Lebanon; they take root far beyond the region where all prolific vegetation dies. All this strikes the imagination of the Oriental people with astonishment, and I do not know that science is not even more astonished. Alas! however, Basan languishes and Carmel and the flower of Lebanon fade.--These trees diminish every century. Travellers formerly counted thirty or forty, later seventeen, and still later, about a dozen.--There are now only seven of those whose massive forms can presume to be contemporaneous with Biblical times. Around these old memorials of past ages, which know the history of the ground better than history herself, and which could tell us, if they could speak, of many empires, religions, and vanished human races, there remains still a little forest of cedars more yellow it appears to me than a group of four or five hundred trees or shrubs. Each year in the month of June the population of Beschieraï, Eden, and Kanobin, and all the villages of the neighbouring valleys, ascend to the cedars and celebrate mass at their feet. How many prayers have resounded beneath their branches! And what more beautiful temple, what nearer altar than the sky! What more majestic and holier daïs than the highest plateau of Lebanon, the trunks of the cedars and the sacred boughs that have shaded and that will still shade so many human generations pronouncing differently the name of God, but who recognize him everywhere in his works and adore him in his manifestations of nature! And I, I also prayed in the presence of those trees. The harmonious wind that resounded through their sonorous branches played in my hair and froze upon my eyelids those tears of sorrow and adoration.

_Voyage en Orient_ (Paris, 1843).

THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY

(_IRELAND_)

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The road to the Causeway is bleak, wild, and hilly.

The cabins along the road are scarcely better than those of Kerry, the inmates as ragged, and more fierce and dark-looking. I never was so pestered by juvenile beggars as in the dismal village of Ballintoy. A crowd of them rushed after the car, calling for money in a fierce manner, as if it was their right; dogs as fierce as the children came yelling after the vehicle; and the faces which scowled out of the black cabins were not a whit more good-humoured. We passed by one or two more clumps of cabins, with their turf and corn-stacks lying together at the foot of the hills; placed there for the convenience of the children, doubtless, who can thus accompany the car either way, and shriek out their “Bonny gantleman, gi’e us a ha’p’ny.” A couple of churches, one with a pair of its pinnacles blown off, stood in the dismal open country, and a gentleman’s house here and there: there were no trees about them, but a brown grass round about--hills rising and falling in front, and the sea beyond. The occasional view of the coast was noble; wild Bengore towering eastwards as we went along; Raghery Island before us, in the steep rocks and caves of which Bruce took shelter when driven from yonder Scottish coast, that one sees stretching blue in the northeast.

I think this wild gloomy tract through which one passes is a good prelude for what is to be the great sight of the day, and got my mind to a proper state of awe by the time we were near the journey’s end. Turning away shorewards by the fine house of Sir Francis Macnaghten, I went towards a lone handsome inn, that stands close to the Causeway. The landlord at Ballycastle had lent me Hamilton’s book to read on the road; but I had not time then to read more than half-a-dozen pages of it. They described how the author, a clergyman distinguished as a man of science, had been thrust out of a friend’s house by the frightened servants one wild night, and butchered by some Whiteboys who were waiting outside and called for his blood. I had been told at Belfast that there was a corpse in the inn: was it there now? It had driven off, the car-boy said, “in a handsome hearse and four to Dublin the whole way.” It was gone, but I thought the house looked as if the ghost was there. See, yonder are the black rocks stretching to Portrush: how leaden and grey the sea looks! how grey and leaden the sky! You hear the waters rushing evermore, as they have done since the beginning of the world. The car drives us with a dismal grinding noise of the wheels to the big lone house: there’s no smoke in the chimneys; the doors are locked. Three savage-looking men rush after the car: are they the men who took out Mr. Hamilton--took him out and butchered him in the moonlight? Is everybody, I wonder, dead in that big house? Will they let us in before those men are up? Out comes a pretty smiling girl, with a curtsey, just as the savages are at the car, and you are ushered into a very comfortable room; and the men turn out to be guides. Well, thank Heaven it’s no worse! I had fifteen pounds still left; and, when desperate, have no doubt should fight like a lion.

The traveller no sooner issues from the inn by a back door, which he is informed will lead him straight to the Causeway, than the guides pounce upon him, with a dozen rough boatmen who are likewise lying in wait; and a crew of shrill beggar-boys, with boxes of spars, ready to tear him and each other to pieces seemingly, yell and bawl incessantly round him. “I’m the guide Miss Henry recommends,” shouts one. “I’m Mr. Macdonald’s guide,” pushes in another. “This way,” roars a third, and drags his prey down a precipice; the rest of them clambering and quarrelling after. I had no friends; I was perfectly helpless. I wanted to walk down to the shore by myself, but they would not let me, and I had nothing for it but to yield myself into the hands of the guide who had seized me, who hurried me down the steep to a little wild bay, flanked on each side by rugged cliffs and rocks, against which the waters came tumbling, frothing, and roaring furiously. Upon some of these black rocks two or three boats were lying: four men seized a boat, pushed it shouting into the water, and ravished me into it. We had slid between two rocks, where the channel came gurgling in: we were up one swelling wave that came in a huge advancing body ten feet above us, and were plunging madly down another (the descent causes a sensation in the lower regions of the stomach which it is not at all necessary here to describe), before I had leisure to ask myself why the deuce I was in that boat, with four rowers hurrooing and bounding madly from one liquid mountain to another--four rowers whom I was bound to pay. I say, the query came qualmishly across me why the devil I was there, and why not walking calmly on the shore.

The guide began pouring his professional jargon into my ears. “Every one of them bays,” says he, “has a name (take my place, and the spray won’t come over you): that is Port Noffer, and the next, Port na Gange; them rocks is the Stookawns (for every rock has its name as well as every bay); and yonder--give way, my boys,--hurray, we’re over it now: has it wet you much, sir?--that’s a little cave: it goes five hundred feet under ground, and the boats goes into it easy of a calm day.”

“Is it a fine day or a rough one now?” said I; the internal disturbance going on with more severity than ever.

“It’s betwixt and between; or, I may say, neither one nor the other. Sit up, sir. Look at the entrance of the cave. Don’t be afraid, sir; never has an accident happened in any one of these boats, and the most delicate ladies has rode in them on rougher days than this. Now, boys, pull to the big cave. That, sir, is six hundred and sixty yards in length, though some say it goes for miles inland, where the people sleeping in their houses hear the waters roaring under them.”

The water was tossing and tumbling into the mouth of the little cave. I looked,--for the guide would not let me alone till I did,--and saw what might be expected: a black hole of some forty feet high, into which it was no more possible to see than into a millstone. “For Heaven’s sake, sir,” says I, “if you’ve no particular wish to see the mouth of the big cave, put about and let us see the Causeway and get ashore.” This was done, the guide meanwhile telling some story of a ship of the Spanish Armada having fired her guns at two peaks of rock, then visible, which the crew mistook for chimney-pots--what benighted fools these Spanish Armadilloes must have been; it is easier to see a rock than a chimney-pot; it is easy to know that chimney-pots do not grow on rocks.--“But where, if you please, is the Causeway?”

“That’s the Causeway before you,” says the guide.

“Which?”

“That pier which you see jutting out into the bay right ahead.”

“_Mon dieu!_ and have I travelled a hundred and fifty miles to see _that_?”

I declare, upon my conscience, the barge moored at Hungerford Market is a more majestic object, and seems to occupy as much space. As for telling a man that the Causeway is merely a part of the sight; that he is there for the purpose of examining the surrounding scenery; that if he looks to the westward he will see Portrush and Donegal Head before him; that the cliffs immediately in his front are green in some places, black in others, interspersed with blotches of brown and streaks of verdure;--what is all this to a lonely individual lying sick in a boat, between two immense waves that only give him momentary glimpses of the land in question, to show that it is frightfully near, and yet you are an hour from it? They won’t let you go away--that cursed guide _will_ tell out his stock of legends and stories. The boatmen insist upon your looking at boxes of “specimens,” which you must buy of them; they laugh as you grow paler and paler; they offer you more and more “specimens”; even the dirty lad who pulls number three, and is not allowed by his comrades to speak, puts in _his_ oar, and hands you over a piece of Irish diamond (it looks like half-sucked alicompayne), and scorns you. “Hurry, lads, now for it, give way!” how the oars do hurtle in the rowlocks, as the boat goes up an aqueous mountain, and then down into one of those cursed maritime valleys where there is no rest as on shore!

At last, after they had pulled me enough about, and sold me all the boxes of specimens, I was permitted to land at the spot whence we set out, and whence, though we had been rowing for an hour, we had never been above five hundred yards distant. Let all cockneys take warning from this; let the solitary one caught issuing from the back door of the hotel, shout at once to the boatmen to be gone--that he will have none of them. Let him, at any rate, go first down to the water to determine whether it be smooth enough to allow him to take any decent pleasure by riding on its surface. For after all, it must be remembered that it is pleasure we come for--that we are not _obliged_ to take those boats.--Well, well! I paid ten shillings for mine, and ten minutes after would cheerfully have paid five pounds to be allowed to quit it; it was no hard bargain after all. As for the boxes of spar and specimens, I at once, being on terra firma, broke my promise, and said I would see them all--first. It is wrong to swear, I know; but sometimes it relieves one _so_ much!

The first act on shore was to make a sacrifice to Sanctissima Tellus; offering up to her a neat and becoming Taglioni coat, bought for a guinea in Covent Garden only three months back. I sprawled on my back on the smoothest of rocks that is, and tore the elbows to pieces: the guide picked me up; the boatman did not stir, for they had their will of me; the guide alone picked me up, I say, and bade me follow him. We went across a boggy ground in one of the little bays, round which rise the green walls of the cliff, terminated on either side by a black crag, and the line of the shore washed by the poluphloisboiotic, nay the poluphloisboiotatotic sea. Two beggars stepped over the bog after us howling for money, and each holding up a cursed box of specimens. No oaths, threats, entreaties, would drive these vermin away; for some time the whole scene had been spoiled by the incessant and abominable jargon of them, the boatmen, and the guides. I was obliged to give them money to be left in quiet, and if, as no doubt will be the case, the Giant’s Causeway shall be a still greater resort of travellers than ever, the county must put policemen on the rocks to keep the beggars away, or fling them in the water when they appear.

And now, by force of money, having got rid of the sea and land beggars, you are at liberty to examine at your leisure the wonders of the place. There is not the least need for a guide to attend the stranger, unless the latter have a mind to listen to a parcel of legends, which may be well from the mouth of a wild simple peasant who believes in his tales, but are odious from a dullard who narrates them at the rate of sixpence a lie. Fee him and the other beggars, and at last you are left tranquil to look at the strange scene with your own eyes, and enjoy your own thoughts at leisure.

That is, if the thoughts awakened by such a scene may be called enjoyment; but for me, I confess, they are too near akin to fear to be pleasant; and I don’t know that I would desire to change that sensation of awe and terror which the hour’s walk occasioned, for a greater familiarity with this wild, sad, lonely place. The solitude is awful. I can’t understand how those chattering guides dare to lift up their voices here, and cry for money.

It looks like the beginning of the world, somehow: the sea looks older than in other places, the hills and rocks strange, and formed differently from other rocks and hills--as those vast dubious monsters were formed who possessed the earth before man. The hilltops are shattered into a thousand cragged fantastical shapes; the water comes swelling into scores of little strange creeks, or goes off with a leap, roaring into those mysterious caves yonder, which penetrate who knows how far into our common world. The savage rock-sides are painted of a hundred colours. Does the sun ever shine here? When the world was moulded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this must have been the _bit over_--a remnant of chaos! Think of that!--it is a tailor’s simile. Well, I am a cockney: I wish I were in Pall Mall! Yonder is a kelp-burner: a lurid smoke from his burning kelp rises up to the leaden sky, and he looks as naked and fierce as Cain. Bubbling up out of the rocks at the very brim of the sea rises a little crystal spring: how comes it there? and there is an old grey hag beside, who has been there for hundreds and hundreds of years, and there sits and sells whisky at the extremity of creation! How do you dare to sell whisky there, old woman? Did you serve old Saturn with a glass when he lay along the Causeway here? In reply, she says, she has no change for a shilling: she never has; but her whisky is good.

This is not a description of the Giant’s Causeway (as some clever critic will remark), but of a Londoner there, who is by no means so interesting an object as the natural curiosity in question. That single hint is sufficient; I have not a word more to say. “If,” says he, “you cannot describe the scene lying before us--if you cannot state from your personal observation that the number of basaltic pillars composing the Causeway has been computed at about forty thousand, which vary in diameter, their surface presenting the appearance of a tesselated pavement of polygonal stones--that each pillar is formed of several distinct joints, the convex end of the one being accurately fitted in the concave of the next, and the length of the joints varying from five feet to four inches--that although the pillars are polygonal, there is but one of three sides in the whole forty thousand (think of that!), but three of nine sides, and that it may be safely computed that ninety-nine out of one hundred pillars have either five, six, or seven sides; if you cannot state something useful, you had much better, sir, retire and get your dinner.”

Never was summons more gladly obeyed. The dinner must be ready by this time; so, remain you, and look on at the awful scene, and copy it down in words if you can. If at the end of the trial you are dissatisfied with your skill as a painter, and find that the biggest of your words cannot render the hues and vastness of that tremendous swelling sea--of those lean solitary crags standing rigid along the shore, where they have been watching the ocean ever since it was made--of those grey towers of Dunluce standing upon a leaden rock, and looking as if some old old princess, of old old fairy times, were dragon-guarded within--of yon flat stretches of sand where the Scotch and Irish mermaids hold conference--come away, too, and prate no more about the scene! There is that in nature, dear Jenkins, which passes even our powers. We can feel the beauty of a magnificent landscape, perhaps: but we can describe a leg of mutton and turnips better. Come, then, this scene is for our betters to depict. If Mr. Tennyson were to come hither for a month, and brood over the place, he might, in some of those lofty heroic lines which the author of the _Morte d’Arthur_ knows how to pile up, convey to the reader a sense of this gigantic desolate scene. What! you, too, are a poet? Well, then Jenkins, stay! but believe me, you had best take my advice, and come off.

_The Irish Sketch-Book_ (London, 1843).

THE GREAT GLACIER OF THE SELKIRKS

(_CANADA_)

DOUGLAS SLADEN

If Banff represents the Rocky Mountains made easy, the Glacier House represents the Selkirks made easy--a much more notable performance, for these mountains had long been regarded as impassable by engineering. The Glacier House is a few miles beyond Rogers’ Pass, in the midst of the line’s greatest marvels of nature and engineering. Just before comes the monarch of snow sheds; just above the monarch of glaciers; just below the monarch of viaducts. The Great Glacier of the Selkirks comes to a conclusion within a couple of miles above it. The moraines and splintered forests at its foot tell a frightful tale of destruction, and the glacier advances every year; but only a few inches, so the hotel is safe for the present.

The hotel is a pretty little châlet, mostly dining-room, with a trim, level lawn in front containing a fine fountain. Eighteen miles broad is the great Glacier of the Selkirks, one foot of which is planted so threateningly above the hotel and the railway station, that it looks as if it meant to stamp them out of existence with the stealth of a thief in the night.

A marvellous and delightful walk it is from the hotel to the Glacier--at first through dry woods of fir and spruce, and balsam and tamarack, carpeted, wherever the sun breaks through, with purple blueberries, wild raspberries, pigeon and salmon berries. Here you might meet a grizzly bear any minute. You pause, if you are only a man and a woman, on the lovers’ seat under the thousand-ton boulder hurled down by the Glacier in the childhood of the earth. Then you pass the fierce glacial torrent of grey-green water, so cold or charged with impurities that fish refuse to live in it, swelling, as all snow-fed rivers do, as the heat of a summer’s day waxes. Some of its pools are huge and deep; some of its falls and rapids as fierce as the cataract at Lorette, rounded boulders and splintered trunks everywhere attesting its fury. The path crosses and recrosses the river over bridges of tree-trunks, with smaller trunks loosely pinned across them, like the little straw mats in which cream cheeses are wrapped. As the path mounts, the scenery becomes more open, and you are greeted, according to the season, with Canada’s gorgeous lily or Canada’s prodigality of wild fruits; for you are in the track of the glacier and the avalanche, and in the death of the forest is the birth of blossoms and berries. All around you now is a scene of awful grandeur--boulders as big as settlers’ huts, and giant tree trunks, many of them blackened with fire, tossed together like the rubbish on a dust-heap, and, brooding over all, the great Glacier like a dragon crouching for the spring. One can hardly believe it is the Glacier; the transitions are so abrupt. A turn of a path brings you almost in contact with a piece of ice larger than any lake in the British Islands. From under its skirts trickle tiny rills; a few feet below, the rills league themselves into a river. Even a first-class glacier is a disappointing affair if you go too close. Its blueness disappears, also its luminosity, except in crevasses deep enough to show you the pure heart of the ice. The surface is a dirty-looking mixture of ice and snow. There were two lovely horizontal crevasses, one so spacious and shining that it is called the Fairy Cavern. The pleasure of standing in them is spoilt, because they look all the time as if they were going to close on you. At another foot of the Glacier there are immense moraines, looking like the earthworks of Dover Castle. I examined them one October day when I went with a guide to the top of the Glacier, eight thousand feet above sea-level, to see the splendid Glacier-girdled head of Mount Fox on the other side of the abyss.

I never intend to do any more mountain climbing through deep, fresh snow. For the last hour or two of the ascent the snow was as deep as one’s thighs at every step, and though the guide was towing me by a rope tied round my waist, it was intolerably wearisome. To begin with, he had to sound with his staff at every step and see that we were on _terra firma_, and not on the _soufflet_ of a crevasse; and though there had been such a snowfall the night before, the sun was as hot as summer overhead. The sight was worth doing once, with the miles and miles of the sea of ice all round one, and the long white slopes of virgin snow.

If it had not been for the aggressive visage of Mount Fox, it would have answered to the description of the interior of Greenland given me by Dr. Nansen, where the world consists of yourselves, the sun, and the snow. We started at eight o’clock in the morning, but in some way or other I was not quite as rapid as the guide had calculated, for a couple of hours before nightfall he began to get excited, if not alarmed. We were at the time clear of the deep snow, and muddling about in a mixture of drifts and moraines; but after dark he was not sure of his way until we struck the path at the foot of the Glacier....

The Glacier House has not only its noble and easily accessible glacier; it is in the very heart of the finest mountain scenery in the Selkirks, which is so different to the scenery of the Rockies. The Canadian Rockies are blunt-topped _fisty_ mountains, with knuckles of bare rock sticking out everywhere. The Selkirks are graceful pyramids and sharp sierras, up to their shoulders in magnificent forests of lofty pines. The trees on the Rockies are much smaller and poorer. Right above the hotel, to the left of the overhanging Glacier, is the bare steeple of Sir Donald, one of the monarchs of the range; Ross Peak and Cheops frown on the descent of the line to the Pacific; and the line of the Atlantic is guarded by the hundred pinnacles of the rifted mountain, formerly known as the Hermit, and now, with singular infelicity, re-christened, in an eponymous fit, Mount Tupper.

Sir Charles Tupper is one of Canada’s greatest men, but his name is more suitable for a great man than a great mountain, especially since there is a very perfect effect of a hermit and his dog formed by boulders near the top of the mountain. The men in the railway camp have got over this difficulty with the doggerel:

“That’s Sir Charles Tupper
Going home to his supper.”

We made two long stays at the Glacier House, and I never enjoyed anything more in my life than the effect of the snug little châlet, with its velvety lawn, in the stronghold of the giant mountains, brought into touch with the great world twice a day by the trains east and west, which echoed their approach and departure miles on miles through the ranges.

_On the Cars and Off_ (London, 1895).

MAUNA LOA

(_HAWAII_)

LADY BRASSEY

At 6:30 A. M., we made the island of Hawaii, rather too much to leeward, as we had been carried by the strong current at least eighteen miles out of our course. We were therefore obliged to beat up to windward, in the course of which operation we passed a large bark running before the wind--the first ship we had seen since leaving Tahiti--and also a fine whale, blowing close to us. We could not see the high land in the centre of the island, owing to the mist in which it was enveloped, and there was great excitement and much speculation on board as to the principal points which were visible. At noon the observations taken proved that Tom was right in his opinion as to our exact position. The wind dropped as we approached the coast, where we could see the heavy surf dashing against the black lava cliffs, rushing up the little creeks, and throwing its spray in huge fountain-like jets high above the tall cocoanut-trees far inland.

We sailed along close to the shore, and by two o’clock were near the entrance to the Bay of Hilo. In answer to our signal for a pilot, a boat came off with a man who said he knew the entrance to the harbour, but informed us that the proper pilot had gone to Honolulu on a pleasure trip.

It was a clear afternoon. The mountains, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, could be plainly seen from top to bottom, their giant crests rising nearly 14,000 feet above our heads, their tree and fern clad slopes seamed with deep gulches or ravines, down each of which a fertilizing river ran into the sea. Inside the reef, the white coral shore, on which the waves seemed too lazy to break, is fringed with a belt of cocoanut palms, amongst which, as well as on the hillsides, the little white houses are prettily dotted. All are surrounded by gardens, so full of flowers that the bright patches of colour were plainly visible even from the deck of the yacht. The harbour is large, and is exposed only to one bad wind, which is most prevalent during the winter months....

It was half-past nine before we were all mounted and fairly off. The first part of our way lay along the flat ground, gay with bright scarlet Guernsey lilies, and shaded by cocoanut-trees, between the town and the sea. Then we struck off to the right, and soon left the town behind us, emerging into the open country. At a distance from the sea, Hilo looks as green as the Emerald Isle itself; but on a closer inspection the grass turns out to be coarse and dry, and many of the trees look scrubby and half dead. Except in the “gulches” and the deep holes, between the hills, the island is covered with lava, in many places of so recent a deposit that it has not yet had time to decompose, and there is consequently only a thin layer of soil on its surface. The soil being, however, very rich, vegetation flourishes luxuriantly for a time; but as soon as the roots have penetrated a certain depth, and have come into contact with the lava, the trees wither up and perish, like the seed that fell on stony ground.

The _ohia_ trees form a handsome feature in the landscape, with their thick stems, glossy foliage, and light crimson flowers. The fruit is a small, pink, waxy-looking apple, slightly acid, pleasant to the taste when you are thirsty. The candle-nut trees attain to a large size, and their light green foliage and white flowers have a very graceful appearance. Most of the foliage, however, is spoiled by a deposit of a black dust, not unlike what one sees on the leaves of a London garden. I do not know whether this is caused by the fumes of the not far-distant volcano, or whether it is some kind of mold or fungus.

After riding about ten miles in the blazing sun we reached a forest, where the vegetation was quite tropical, though not so varied in its beauties as that of Brazil, or of the still more lovely South Sea Islands. There were ferns of various descriptions in the forest, and many fine trees, entwined, supported, or suffocated by numerous climbing plants, amongst which were blue and lilac convolvulus, and magnificent passion-flowers. The protection from the sun afforded by this dense mass of foliage was extremely grateful; but the air of the forest was close and stifling, and at the end of five miles we were glad to emerge once more into the open. The rest of the way lay over the hard lava, through a desert of scrubby vegetation, occasionally relieved by clumps of trees in hollows. More than once we had a fine view of the sea, stretching away into the far distance, though it was sometimes mistaken for the bright blue sky, until the surf could be seen breaking upon the black rocks, amid the encircling groves of cocoanut-trees.

The sun shone fiercely at intervals, and the rain came down several times in torrents. The pace was slow, the road was dull and dreary, and many were the inquiries made for the “Half-way House,” long before we reached it.

Directly we had finished our meal--about three o’clock--the guide came and tried to persuade us that, as the baggage mules had not yet arrived, it would be too late for us to go on to-day, and that we had better spend the night where we were, and start early in the morning. We did not, however, approve of this arrangement, so the horses were saddled, and leaving word that the baggage-mules were to follow us on as soon as possible, we mounted, and set off for the “Volcano House.” We had not gone far before we were again overtaken by a shower, which once more drenched us to the skin.

The scene was certainly one of extreme beauty. The moon was hidden by a cloud, and the prospect lighted only by the red glare of the volcano, which hovered before and above us like the Israelites’ pillar of fire, giving us hope of a splendid spectacle when we should at last reach the long wished-for crater. Presently the moon shone forth again, and gleamed and glistened on the raindrops and silver grasses till they looked like fireflies and glowworms. When we emerged from the wood, we found ourselves at the very edge of the old crater, the bed of which, three or four hundred feet beneath us, was surrounded by steep and in many places overhanging sides. It looked like an enormous caldron, four or five miles in width, full of a mass of coloured pitch. In the centre was the still glowing stream of dark red lava, flowing slowly towards us, and in every direction were red-hot patches, and flames and smoke issuing from the ground. A bit of the “black country” at night, with all the coal-heaps on fire, would give you some idea of the scene. Yet the first sensation is rather one of disappointment, as one expects greater activity on the part of the volcano; but the new crater was still to be seen, containing the lake of fire, with steep walls rising up in the midst of the sea of lava....

The grandeur of the view in the direction of the volcano increased as the evening wore on. The fiery cloud above the present crater augmented in size and depth of colour; the extinct crater glowed red in thirty or forty different places; and clouds of white vapour issued from every crack and crevice in the ground, adding to the sulphurous smell with which the atmosphere was laden. Our room faced the volcano: there were no blinds, and I drew back the curtains and lay watching the splendid scene until I fell asleep.

* * * * *

Sunday, December 24th (Christmas Eve).

I was up at four o’clock, to gaze once more on the wondrous spectacle that lay before me. The molten lava still flowed in many places, the red cloud over the fiery lake was bright as ever, and the stream was slowly ascending in every direction, over hill and valley, till, as the sun rose, it became difficult to distinguish clearly the sulphurous vapours from the morning mists. We walked down to the Sulphur Banks, about a quarter of a mile from the “Volcano House,” and burned our gloves and boots in our endeavours to procure crystals, the beauty of which generally disappeared after a very short exposure to the air. We succeeded, however, in finding a few good specimens, and, by wrapping them at once in paper and cotton-wool and putting them into a bottle, hope to bring them home uninjured.

On our return we found a gentleman who had just arrived from Kan, and who proposed to join us in our expedition to the crater, and at three o’clock in the afternoon we set out, a party of eight, with two guides, and three porters to carry our wraps and provisions, and to bring back specimens. Before leaving the inn the landlord came to us and begged us in an earnest and confidential manner to be very careful to do exactly what our guides told us, and especially to follow in their footsteps exactly when returning in the dark. He added: “There never has been an accident happen to anybody from my house, and I should feel real mean if one did: but there have been a power of narrow escapes.”

First of all we descended the precipice, 300 feet in depth, forming the wall of the old crater, but now thickly covered with vegetation. It is so steep in many places that flights of zigzag wooden steps have been inserted in the face of the cliff in some places, in order to render the descent practicable. At the bottom we stepped straight on to the surface of cold boiled lava, which we had seen from above last night. Even here, in every crevice where a few grains of soil had collected, delicate little ferns might be seen struggling for life, and thrusting out their green fronds towards the light. It was the most extraordinary walk imaginable over that vast plain of lava, twisted and distorted into every conceivable shape and form, according to the temperature it had originally attained, and the rapidity with which it had cooled, its surface, like half-molten glass, cracking and breaking beneath our feet. Sometimes we came to a patch that looked like the contents of a pot, suddenly petrified in the act of boiling; sometimes the black iridescent lava had assumed the form of waves, or more frequently of huge masses of rope, twisted and coiled together; sometimes it was piled up like a collection of organ-pipes, or had gathered into mounds and cones of various dimensions. As we proceeded the lava became hotter and hotter, and from every crack arose gaseous fumes, affecting our noses and throats in a painful manner; till at last, when we had to pass to leeward of the molten stream flowing from the lake, the vapours almost choked us, and it was with difficulty we continued to advance. The lava was more glassy and transparent-looking, as if it had been fused at a higher temperature than usual; and the crystals of sulphur, alum, and other minerals, with which it abounded, reflected the light in bright prismatic colours. In places it was quite transparent, and we could see beneath it the long streaks of a stringy kind of lava, like brown spun glass, called “Pélé’s hair.”

At last we reached the foot of the present crater, and commenced the ascent of the outer wall. Many times the thin crust gave way beneath our guide, and he had to retire quickly from the hot, blinding, choking fumes that immediately burst forth. But we succeeded in reaching the top; and then what a sight presented itself to our astonished eyes! I could neither speak nor move at first, but could only stand and gaze at the terrible grandeur of the scene.

We were standing on the extreme edge of the precipice, overhanging a lake of molten fire, a hundred feet below us, and nearly a mile across. Dashing against the cliffs on the opposite side, with a noise like the roar of a stormy ocean, waves of blood-red, fiery, liquid lava hurled their billows upon an iron-bound headland, and then rushed up the face of the cliffs to toss their gory spray high in the air. The restless, heaving lake boiled and bubbled, never remaining the same for two minutes together. Its normal colour seemed to be a dull, dark red, covered with a thin grey scum, which every moment and in every part swelled and cracked, and emitted fountains, cascades, and whirlpools of yellow and red fire, while sometimes one big golden river, sometimes four or five flowed across it. There was an island on one side of the lake, which the fiery waves seemed to attack unceasingly with relentless fury, as if bent on hurling it from its base. On the other side was a large cavern, into which the burning mass rushed with a loud roar, breaking down in its impetuous headlong career the gigantic stalactites that overhung the mouth of the cave, and flinging up the liquid material for the formation of fresh ones.

It was all terribly grand, magnificently sublime; but no words could adequately describe such a scene. The precipice on which we were standing overhung the crater so much that it was impossible to see what was going on immediately beneath; but from the columns of smoke and vapour that arose, the flames and sparks that constantly drove us back from the edge, it was easy to imagine that there must have been two or three grand fiery fountains below. As the sun set, and the darkness enveloped the scene, it became more awful than ever. We retired a little way from the brink, to breathe some fresh air, and to try and eat the food we had brought with us; but this was an impossibility. Every instant a fresh explosion or glare made us jump up to survey the stupendous scene. The violent struggles of the lava to escape from its fiery bed, and the loud and awful noises by which they were at times accompanied, suggested the idea that some imprisoned monsters were trying to release themselves from their bondage with shrieks and groans, and cries of agony and despair, at the futility of their efforts.

Sometimes there were at least seven spots on the borders of the lake where the molten lava dashed up furiously against the rocks--seven fire-fountains playing simultaneously. With the increasing darkness the colours emitted by the glowing mass became more and more wonderful, varying from the deepest jet-black to the palest grey, from darkest maroon through cherry and scarlet to the most delicate pink, violet, and blue; from the richest brown, through orange and yellow, to the lightest straw-colour. And there was yet another shade, only describable by the term “molten-lava colour.” Even the smokes and vapours were rendered beautiful by their borrowed lights and tints, and the black peaks, pinnacles, and crags, which surrounded the amphitheatre, formed a splendid and appropriate background. Sometimes great pieces broke off and tumbled with a crash into the burning lake, only to be remelted and thrown up anew. I had for some time been feeling very hot and uncomfortable, and on looking round the cause was at once apparent. Not two inches beneath the surface, the grey lava on which we were standing and sitting was red-hot. A stick thrust through it caught fire, a piece of paper was immediately destroyed, and the gentlemen found the heat from the crevices so great that they could not approach near enough to light their pipes.

One more last look, and then we turned our faces away from the scene that had enthralled us for so many hours. The whole of the lava we had crossed, in the extinct crater, was now aglow in many patches, and in all directions flames were bursting forth, fresh lava was flowing, and smoke and steam were issuing from the surface. It was a toilsome journey back again, walking as we did in single file, and obeying the strict injunctions of our head guide to follow him closely, and to tread exactly in his footsteps. On the whole it was easier by night than by day to distinguish the route to be taken, as we could now see the dangers that before we could only feel; and many were the fiery crevices we stepped over or jumped across. Once I slipped, and my foot sank through the thin crust. Sparks issued from the ground, and the stick on which I leaned caught fire before I could fairly recover myself.

* * * * *

Monday, December 25th, (Christmas Day).

Turning in last night was the work of a very few minutes, and this morning I awoke perfectly refreshed and ready to appreciate anew the wonders of the prospect that met my eyes. The pillar of fire was still distinctly visible, when I looked out from my window, though it was not so bright as when I had last seen it: but even as I looked it began to fade, and gradually disappeared. At the same moment a river of glowing lava issued from the side of the bank which we had climbed with so much difficulty yesterday, and slowly but surely overflowed the ground we had walked over. I woke Tom, and you may imagine the feelings with which we gazed upon this startling phenomenon, which, had it occurred a few hours earlier, might have caused the destruction of the whole party.

_A Voyage in the Sunbeam_ (London, 1878).

TROLLHÄTTA

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

Whom did we meet at Trollhätta? It is a strange story. We will relate it.

We landed at the first sluice and immediately stood in a kind of English garden; the broad pathways are covered with gravel and rise in low terraces between the green sunlit greensward. It is charming and delightful here, but by no means imposing; if one desires to be excited in this manner, he must go a little higher up to the old sluices, that have burst, deep and narrow, through the hard rock. Nature is magnificent here, and the water roars and foams in its deep bed far below. Up here one looks over valley and river; the bank of the river on the other side rises in green undulating hills, with clusters of leafy trees and wooden houses painted red; rocks and pine forests hem in the landscape. Through the sluices steamboats and sailing vessels are ascending; the water itself is the attendant spirit that must bear them up above the rock. And from the forest it issues, buzzing, roaring, and blustering. The din of the Trollhätta Falls mingles with the noise of the sawmills and the smithies.

“In three hours we shall be through the sluices,” said the Captain, “and then you shall visit the Falls. We shall meet again at the inn above.”

We went along the path that led through the forest and thickets; a whole flock of bare-headed boys surrounded us, all wishing to be our guides; each one outscreamed the other, and each gave contradictory explanations of how high was the water and how high it did not or could rise; and here was also a great difference of opinion among the learned. Soon we came to a halt on a large heather-covered rock, a dizzying eminence. Before us, but deep below, the foaming, roaring water--the Hell Fall, and over this, cascade after cascade, the rich, swelling, rushing river, the outlet of the largest lake in Sweden. What a sight, what a foaming above and below! It is like the waves of the sea, or like effervescing champagne, or like boiling milk; the water rushes around two rocky islands above so that the spray rises like mist from a meadow, while below, it is more compressed, and, hurrying away, returns in circles; then it rolls down in a long wave-like fall, the Hell Fall. What a roaring storm in the deep--what a spectacle! Man is dumb. And so were also the screaming little guides; they were silent, and when they renewed their explanations and stories, they did not get far before an old gentleman, whom none of us had noticed, although he was here among us, made himself heard above the noise with his peculiarly shrill voice; he spoke of the place and its former days as if they had been of yesterday.

“Here on the rocky isles,” said he, “here in olden times the warriors, as they are called, decided their disputes. The warrior, Stärkodder, dwelt in this region, and took a fancy to the pretty maid Ogn; but she fancied Hergrimer the more, and in consequence he was challenged by Stärkodder to a duel here by the Falls and met his death; but Ogn sprang towards them, and, seizing her lover’s bloody sword, thrust it into her heart. Stärkodder did not get her. So a hundred years passed and another hundred; the forest became heavy and thick, wolves and bears prowled here summer and winter, and wicked robbers hid their booty here and no one could find them; yonder, by the Fall before Top Island, on the Norwegian side, was their cave; now it has fallen in--the cliff there overhangs it!”

“Yes, the Tailors’ Cliff!” screamed all the boys. “It fell in the year 1755!”

“Fell!” cried the old man as if astonished that any one could know of it but himself. “Everything will fall: the tailor also fell. The robbers placed him upon the cliff and told him that if he would be liberated for his ransom he must sew a suit of clothes there; he tried to do it, but as he drew out his thread at the first stitch, he became dizzy and fell into the roaring water, and thus the rock got the name of The Tailors’ Cliff. One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she betrayed them; she kindled a fire in the cavern, the smoke was seen, the cavern was discovered, and the robbers imprisoned and executed; that outside there is called The Thieves’ Fall, and below, under the water, is another cave; the river rushes in there and issues out foaming; you can see it well up here and hear it too, but it can be heard better under the stony roof of the mountain sprite.”