Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, August 1847. Various
we find described in Murray's hand-book as "an oasis in the desert, an island in the ice—a rock which is covered with a beautiful herbage, and enamelled in August with flowers. This is the Jardin of this palace of nature, and nothing can exceed the beauty of such a spot, amidst the overwhelming sublimity of the surrounding objects, the Aiguilles of Charmoz, Bletière, and the Géant," &c. "Herbage," "flowers"!! Why, the jardin is merely a rock protruding out of the glacier, and covered with lichens; but, after all, was it reasonable to expect a better flower-show ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, and some nine thousand or so above all horticultural societies and prize exhibitions?
As we follow the course of the little stream, it becomes gradually enlarged by contributions from subsidiary snow streams; and winds along for some distance not inconsiderable in the volume of its waters, passing through a beautiful channel of fine sand, probably formed of the detritus of the granite rocks, swept along by the floods, caused by the melting of the snow in spring. The water is exquisitely clear—a feature which at once deprives it of all right to be considered glacier-born; for filth is the peculiarity of the streams claiming this high origin, and none can have seen without regretting it, the Rhone, after having washed itself clean in the Lake Leman, and come forth a sapphire blue, becoming afterwards as dirty as ever, because it happens to fall in company with an old companion, the Arve, which, having never seen good society, or had an opportunity of making itself respectable, by the mere force of its native character, brings its reformed brother back to his original mire, and accompanies him in that plight through the respectable city of Lyons, till both plunge together into the great ocean, where all the rivers of the earth, be they blue or yellow, clear or boggy, classical or obscure, become alike indistinguishable.
Perhaps our traveller is becoming tired of this small pleasant stream running along a mere declivity of the table-land of Ben Muich Dhui. But he will not be long distressed by its peaceful monotony. Presently, as he comes in sight of the valley below, and Loch Avon lying in a small pool at the base of the dizzy height, the stream leaps at once from the edge of the hill, and disappears for a time, reappearing again far down in a narrow thread, as white as the snow from which it has issued. Down the wide channel, which the stream occupies in its moments of fulness and pride—moments when it is all too terrible to be approached by mortal footsteps—the traveller must find his way; and, if he understand his business, he may, by judiciously adapting to his purpose the many ledges and fractures caused by the furious bursts of the flooded stream, and by a judicious system of zig-zagging, convert the channel, so far as he is himself concerned, into a sort of rough staircase, some two thousand feet or so in length. The torrent itself takes a more direct course; and he who has descended by the ravine may well look up with wonder at what has the appearance of a continuous cataract, which, falling a large mass of waters at his feet, seems as if it diminished and disappeared in the heavens. The Staubbach, or Fall of Dust, in Lauter Brunen, is beyond question a fine object. The water is thrown sheer off the edge of a perpendicular rock, and reaches the ground in a massive shower nine hundred feet high. But with all respect for this wonder of the world, we are scarcely disposed to admit that it is a grander fall than this rumbling, irregular, unmeasured cataract which tumbles through the cleft between Ben Muich Dhui and Ben Avon. We should not omit, by the way, for the benefit of those who are better acquainted with Scottish than with Con tinental scenery, to notice the resemblance of this torrent to the Gray Mare's Tail in Moffat-dale. In the character both of the stream itself and in the immediate scenery there are many points of resemblance, every thing connected with the Avon being of course on the larger scale.
Our wanderer has perhaps indulged himself in the belief that he has been traversing these solitudes quite alone—how will he feel if he shall discover that he has been accompanied in every step and motion by a shadowy figure of huge proportions and savage mien, flourishing in his band a great pine-tree, in ghastly parallel with all the motions of the traveller's staff? Such are the spirits of the air haunting this howling wilderness, where the pale sheeted phantom of the burial vault or the deserted cloister would lose all his terrors and feel himself utterly insignificant. Sometimes the phantom's head is large and his body small, then he receives the name of Fahin. James Hogg has asserted, not only poetically, but in sober prose, that, he was acquainted with a man who
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