The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1 [of 2]Shelley, Percy Bysshe
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The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1 [of 2]
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
English prose literature
From Bonneville to Cluses the road conducts through a spacious and
fertile plain, surrounded on all sides by mountains, covered like
those of Mellerie with forests of intermingled pine and chesnut.
At Cluses the road turns suddenly to the right, following the Arve
along the chasm, which it seems to have hollowed for itself among the
perpendicular mountains. The scene assumes here a more savage and
colossal character: the valley becomes narrow, affording no more space
than is sufficient for the river and the road. The pines descend to
the banks, imitating with their irregular spires, the pyramidal crags
which lift themselves far above the regions of forest into the deep
azure of the sky, and among the white dazzling clouds. The scene, at
the distance of half a mile from Cluses, differs from that of Matlock
in little else than in the immensity of its proportions, and in its
untameable, inaccessible solitude, inhabited only by the goats which we
saw browsing on the rocks.
Near Maglans, within a league of each other, we saw two waterfalls.
They were no more than mountain rivulets, but the height from which
they fell, at least of _twelve_ hundred feet, made them assume a
character inconsistent with the smallness of their stream. The first
fell from the overhanging brow of a black precipice on an enormous
rock, precisely resembling some colossal Egyptian statue of a female
deity. It struck the head of the visionary image, and, gracefully
dividing there, fell from it in folds of foam more like to cloud than
water, imitating a veil of the most exquisite woof. It then united,
concealing the lower part of the statue, and hiding itself in a winding
of its channel, burst into a deeper fall, and crossed our route in its
path towards the Arve.
The other waterfall was more continuous and larger. The violence with
which it fell made it look more like some shape which an exhalation had
assumed than like water, for it streamed beyond the mountain, which
appeared dark behind it, as it might have appeared behind an evanescent
cloud.
The character of the scenery continued the same until we arrived at
St. Martin (called in the maps Sallanches), the mountains perpetually
becoming more elevated, exhibiting at every turn of the road more
craggy summits, loftier and wider extent of forests, darker and more
deep recesses.
The following morning we proceeded from St. Martin on mules to
Chamouni, accompanied by two guides. We proceeded, as we had done the
preceding day, along the valley of the Arve, a valley surrounded on
all sides by immense mountains, whose rugged precipices are intermixed
on high with dazzling snow. Their bases were still covered with the
eternal forests, which perpetually grew darker and more profound as we
approached the inner regions of the mountains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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