Who does not recall the velvety darkness of the sleeping valleys through which he passed near the midnight hour when just setting forth for some long ascent? How that contrasted with and set off the brilliancy of the star-spangled sky, where Orion, the Alpine climber's heavenly guide, shone over some col or darkly perceptible ridge, and bade him expect the coming of the day. Then, as the trees are left behind and the open alp is reached, while night still reigns in her darkest hour, how sweet are the airs, how uplifting the sense of widening space and enlarging sky, how stimulating the wonder of the vaguely felt glaciers and mountain-presences around!
Oftenest perhaps it is moonlight when the climber starts earliest upon his way; then indeed he beholds glorious scenes and revels in the sight, nor envies his sleeping friends in the valley below. Ah! dearly remembered splendours of full moonshine upon the snow! how gladly we retain the images of you in the very treasury of our hearts! Yet who shall attempt to draw them forth for another, or write down even a faint suggestion of their beauty for those by whom they have never been beheld? Surely at no time are the great snows endowed with more dignity, more of the impressiveness of visible size, more aspect of aloofness, of belonging to another and a nobler world, than when the full moon shines perfectly upon them. And then, too, how the snow-fields glisten over all their wide expanse, yet with a pale effulgence that does not paralyse the eye! What velvet blackness embellishes the shadows! How the rocks are fretted against the snow! How clear are the foregrounds of glacier; how spiritual are the distant peaks; how softly lies the faint light in the deep hollows! Surely Night, the ancient Mother, speaks with a voice which all her children understand.
[Illustration: 28. MOONLIGHT IN THE VAL FORMAZZA FROM THE TOSA FALLS.]
At such hours and amidst such scenes the mere onlooker oftenest shivers and suffers, so that half the beauty escapes him; but the active mountaineer, keenly awake, with the blood alive within him and a day of hopes ahead, misses no sight that he is capable of seeing, yet dreams, who shall say what visions of beauty that flit before his mind and vanish in swift succession. And then--suddenly--he turns his head and there in the east--always unexpected--is the bed of white that heralds the day. The night is dying. Her rich darks and whites grow pallid. Each moment a layer of darkness peels off. The sky turns blue before one knows it; the rocks grow brown; there is blue in the crevasses, and green upon the swards--all low-toned yet distinct. Faint puffs of warm air come, we know not whence, touch our faces, and are gone. The lantern has been extinguished; we stride out more freely; the day awakens within us also.