Even the perpendicular precipices, called walls by the natives, are
covered with white frost delicately laid on, or with thin ice adhering
to them like varnish, so that the whole mass looms up like an enchanted
castle from out of the hoary gray of the forests which lie spread out
heavily about its base. In summer, when the sun and warm winds melt the
snow from their steep sides, the peaks soar up black into the sky and
have only beautiful veins and specks of white on their flanks--as the
natives say. But the fact is, the peaks are of a delicate, distant blue,
and what they call veins and specks is not white, but has the lovely
milk-blue color of distant snow against the darker blue of the rocks.
When the weather is hot, the more elevated slopes about the peaks do not
lose their covering of eternal snow. On the contrary it then gleams with
double resplendence down upon the green of the trees in the valley; but
the winter's snow is melted off their lower parts. Then becomes visible
the bluish or greenish iridescence of the glaciers which are bared and
gleam down upon the valley below. At the edge of this iridescence, there
where it seems from the distance like a fringe of gems, a nearer view
reveals confused masses of wild and monstrous boulders, slabs, and
fragments piled up in chaotic fashion. In very hot and long summers, the
ice-fields are denuded even in the higher regions, and then a much
greater amount of blue-green glacier-ice glances down into the valley,
many knobs and depressions are laid bare which one otherwise sees only
covered with white, the muddy edge of the ice comes to view with its
deposit of rocks, silt, and slime, and far greater volumes of water than
usual rush into the valley.
Pages:
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485