Ten Thousand Wonderful Things: Comprising whatever is marvellous and rare, curious, eccentric and extraordinary in all ages and nations
History
Ten Thousand Wonderful Things: Comprising whatever is marvellous and rare, curious, eccentric and extraordinary in all ages and nations
Curiosities and wonders; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Folklore
There is a waterfall in Chamouni which no traveller should omit going
to see, called the Cascade des Pelerines. It is one of the most curious
and beautiful scenes in Switzerland. A torrent issues from the Glacier
des Pelerines, high up the mountain, above the Glacier du Bossons, and
descends, by a succession of leaps, in a deep gorge, from precipice
to precipice, almost in one continual cataract; but it is all the
while merely gathering force, and preparing for its last magnificent
deep plunge and recoil of beauty. Springing in one round condensed
column out of the gorge, over a perpendicular cliff, it strikes, at
its fall, with its whole body of water, into a sort of vertical rock
basin, which one would suppose its prodigious velocity and weight would
split into a thousand pieces; but the whole cataract, thus arrested,
at once suddenly rebounds in a parabolic arch, at least sixty feet
into the air; and then, having made this splendid airy curvature,
falls with great noise and beauty into the natural channel below. It
is beyond measure beautiful. It is like the fall of divine grace into
chosen hearts, that send it forth again for the world's refreshment,
in something like such a shower and spray of loveliness, to go winding
its life-giving course afterwards, as still waters in green pastures.
The force of the recoil from the plunge of so large a body of water, at
such a height, is so great, that large stones, thrown into the stream
above the fall, may be heard amidst the din striking into the basin,
and then are instantly seen careering in the arch of flashing waters.
The same is the case with bushes and pieces of wood, which the boys
are always active in throwing in, for the curiosity of visitors, who
stand below, and see each object invariably carried aloft with the
cataract, in its rebounding atmospheric gambols. When the sun is in
the right position, the rainbows play about the fall like the glancing
of supernatural wings, as if angels were taking a shower-bath. If you
have "the head and the legs of a chamois," you may climb entirely above
this magnificent scene, and look out over the cliff right down into the
point where the cataract shoots like the lightning, to be again shot
back in ten thousand branching jets of diamonds.
INTERESTING INCIDENT CONNECTED WITH THE BAROMETER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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