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, and looking round we
find that we have in an instant pierced the clouds, and emerged, as it
were, on the surface of the ocean of vapour. Beneath us stretches for
hundreds of miles the level fleecy floor, and above us shines out clear
in the eternal sunshine every mountain, from Mont Blanc to Monte Rosa
and the Jungfrau.
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