Part 1
# Greatest wonders of the world, as seen and described by famous writers ### By Unknown
---
THE GREATEST WONDERS OF THE WORLD
[Illustration]
[Illustration: MER DE GLACE, MONT BLANC. _Frontispiece._]
GREATEST WONDERS of the WORLD
_AS SEEN AND DESCRIBED BY FAMOUS WRITERS_
EDITED AND TRANSLATED By ESTHER SINGLETON
AUTHOR OF
“TURRETS, TOWERS AND TEMPLES,” “GREAT PICTURES,” “PARIS,” AND “A GUIDE TO THE OPERA,” AND TRANSLATOR OF THE MUSIC DRAMAS OF RICHARD WAGNER
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK THE CHRISTIAN HERALD LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor Nos. 91 to 115 BIBLE HOUSE
Copyright, 1900, By Dodd, Mead & Co. Copyright, 1906, By Louis Klopsch
Preface
In my former collections of objects of interest to the tourist, I have confined myself to masterpieces of painting and architecture. The success of those books has encouraged me to carry the idea still further and make a compilation of pleasurable and striking impressions produced upon thoughtful travellers by a contemplation of the wonders of nature.
The range is somewhat limited, for I have confined myself to the description of the grand, the curious and the awe-inspiring in nature, leaving the beauties of landscape for future treatment. Those who miss the Lakes of Killarney or the vine-clad hills of the Rhine therefore will remember that in the following pages I have purposely neglected beautiful scenery.
The professional traveller, by which I mean the emissary of a scientific society, appears very seldom here, because it is the effect produced rather than the topographical or detailed description that I have sought. I hope this book will appeal to that large class of readers that takes pleasure in travelling by imagination, as well as to those who have actually seen the objects described and pictured here.
It is interesting to note the difference between the old and the modern travellers. The day of the Marco Polos has passed; the traveller of old seemed to feel himself under an obligation to record marvels and report trifling details, while the modern traveller is more concerned about describing or analyzing the effect produced upon himself. He feels it encumbent upon him to exhibit æsthetic appreciation. For this tendency we have to thank Gautier and his humble follower D’Amicis. Thackeray and Dickens write of their journeyings in a holiday spirit; Kipling is a stimulating combination of the flippant and the devout; Shelley is quite up to date; and Fromentin and Gautier always speak in terms of the palette. Thus we get an additional pleasure from the varied literary treatment of nature’s wonders--apart from their intrinsic interest.
Though there is a great deal of information in the following pages, I have generally avoided what is simply instructive; my aim has been to suit all tastes.
For the kind permission to use _The Mammoth Cave_, _Fuji-San_ and _The Antarctic_, and _The Yellowstone_, my best thanks are due to Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co., and Mr. Rudyard Kipling.
E. S.
New York, _September, 1900_.
Contents
The Blue Grotto of Capri 1 Alexandre Dumas.
Mount Blanc and Chamouni 7 Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The Dead Sea 15 Pierre Loti.
Mount Vesuvius 25 Charles Dickens.
The Falls of the Rhine 39 Victor Hugo.
In Arctic and Antarctic Seas 46 I. Lord Dufferin. II. W. G. Burn Murdoch.
The Desert of Sahara 55 Eugène Fromentin.
Fingal’s Cave 62 I. Sir Walter Scott. II. John Keats.
In the Himalayas 71 G. W. Steevens.
Niagara Falls 79 I. Anthony Trollope. II. Charles Dickens.
Fuji-San 90 Sir Edwin Arnold.
The Cedars of Lebanon 98 Alphonse de Lamartine.
The Giant’s Causeway 103 William Makepeace Thackeray.
The Great Glacier of the Selkirks 113 Douglas Sladen.
Mauna Loa 118 Lady Brassey.
Trollhätta 129 Hans Christian Andersen.
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado 134 C. F. Gordon-Cumming.
The Rock of Gibraltar 139 Augustus J. C. Hare.
Thingvalla 144 Lord Dufferin.
Land’s End and Logan Rock 152 John Ayrton Paris.
Mount Hekla 160 Sir Richard F. Burton.
Victoria Falls 169 David Livingstone.
The Dragon-Tree of Orotava 179 Alexander von Humboldt.
Mount Shasta 183 J. W. Boddam-Wheatham.
The Lagoons of Venice 189 John Ruskin.
The Cataracts of the Nile 199 Amelia B. Edwards.
In the Alps 205 Théophile Gautier.
The Vale of Kashmir 212 Andrew Wilson.
The Lake of Pitch 220 Charles Kingsley.
The Lachine Rapids 228 Douglas Sladen.
Lake Rotorua 232 H. R. Haweis.
The Big Trees of California 239 C. F. Gordon-Cumming.
Gersoppa Falls 248 W. M. Yool.
Etna 254 Alexandre Dumas.
Pike’s Peak and the Garden of the Gods 263 Iza Duffus Hardy.
The Great Geysir of Iceland 268 Sir Richard F. Burton.
The Rapids of the Danube 275 William Beattie.
The Mammoth Cave 283 Bayard Taylor.
Stromboli 295 Alexandre Dumas.
The High Woods 302 Charles Kingsley.
The Yo-semité Valley 323 C. F. Gordon-Cumming.
The Golden Horn 342 Alphonse de Lamartine.
The Yellowstone 352 Rudyard Kipling.
Illustrations
Mer de Glace, Mont Blanc _Switzerland_ _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Blue Grotto _Italy_ 4
Chamouni, Mer de Glace _Switzerland_ 12
The Dead Sea _Palestine_ 20
Mount Vesuvius _Italy_ 28
The Falls of the Rhine _Germany_ 40
An Ice Floe _Antarctic_ 52
The Desert of Sahara _Africa_ 60
Fingal’s Cave _Scotland_ 64
The Himilayas _India_ 72
Niagara Falls _North America_ 80
Niagara Falls in Winter _North America_ 88
Fuji-San _Japan_ 92
The Cedars of Lebanon _Syria_ 100
The Giant’s Loom, Giant’s Causeway _Ireland_ 104
The Keystone, Giant’s Causeway _Ireland_ 108
The Great Glacier of the Selkirks _Canada_ 116
Lava Cascade Flow _Hawaii_ 124
Trollhätta _Sweden_ 132
Canyon of the Colorado _North America_ 136
The Rock of Gibraltar _Spain_ 140
The Rock of Gibraltar _Spain_ 144
Thingvalla _Iceland_ 148
Rocking Stones, Land’s End _England_ 156
Falls of the Zambesi _Africa_ 172
The Dragon-Tree _Teneriffe_ 180
Mount Shasta _North America_ 184
The City of the Lagoons _Italy_ 192
First Cataract of the Nile _Africa_ 200
Mont Blanc _Switzerland_ 208
Aiguille du Dru, Alps _Switzerland_ 210
The Vale of Kashmir _India_ 216
The Lachine Rapids _Canada_ 228
Lake Rotorua _New Zealand_ 232
The Big Trees of California _North America_ 240
Gersoppa Falls _India_ 248
Etna _Sicily_ 256
The Garden of the Gods _America_ 264
The Iron Gates of the Danube _Turkey_ 280
The High Woods _South America_ 304
The Yo-semité Valley _North America_ 328
The Golden Horn _Turkey_ 344
Costing Springs, Yellowstone _North America_ 352
WONDERS OF THE WORLD
THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI
(_ITALY_)
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
We were surrounded by five and twenty boatmen, each of whom exerted himself to get our custom: these were the _ciceroni_ of the Blue Grotto. I chose one and Jadin another, for you must have a boat and a boatman to get there, the opening being so low and so narrow that one cannot enter unless in a very small boat.
The sea was calm, nevertheless, even in this beautiful weather it broke with such force against the belt of rocks surrounding the island that our barks bounded as if in a tempest, and we were obliged to lie down and cling to the sides to avoid being thrown into the sea. At last, after three-quarters of an hour of navigation, during which we skirted about one-sixth of the island’s circumference, our boatmen informed us of our arrival. We looked about us, but we could not perceive the slightest suspicion of a grotto until we made out with difficulty a little black, circular point above the foaming waves: this was the orifice of the vault.
The first sight of this entrance was not reässuring: you could not understand how it was possible to clear it without breaking your head against the rocks. As the question seemed important enough for discussion, I put it to my boatman, who replied that we were perfectly right in remaining seated now, but presently we must lie down to avoid the danger. We had not come so far as this to flinch. It was my turn first; my boatman advanced, rowing with precaution and indicating that, accustomed as he was to the work, he could not regard it as exempt from danger. As for me, from the position that I occupied, I could see nothing but the sky; soon I felt myself rising upon a wave, the boat slid down it rapidly, and I saw nothing but a rock that seemed for a second to weigh upon my breast. Then, suddenly, I found myself in a grotto so marvellous that I gave a cry of astonishment, and I jumped up so quickly to look about me that I nearly capsized the boat.
In reality, before me, around me, above me, under me, and behind me were marvels of which no description can give an idea, and before which, the brush itself, the grand preserver of human memories, is powerless. You must imagine an immense cavern entirely of azure, just as if God had amused himself by making a pavilion with fragments of the firmament; water so limpid, so transparent, and so pure that you seemed floating upon dense air; from the ceiling stalactites hanging like inverted pyramids; in the background a golden sand mingled with submarine vegetation; along the walls which were bathed by the water there were trees of coral with irregular and dazzling branches; at the sea-entrance, a tiny point--a star--let in the half-light that illumines this fairy palace; finally, at the opposite end, a kind of stage arranged like the throne of a splendid goddess who has chosen one of the wonders of the world for her baths.
At this moment the entire grotto assumed a deeper hue, darkening as the earth does when a cloud passes across the sun at brightest noontide. It was caused by Jadin, who entered in his turn and whose boat closed the mouth of the cavern. Soon he was thrown near me by the force of the wave that had lifted him up; the grotto recovered its beautiful shade of azure; and his boat stopped tremblingly near mine, for this sea, so agitated and obstreperous outside, breathes here as serenely and gently as a lake.
In all probability the Blue Grotto was unknown to the ancients. No poet speaks of it, and certainly, with their marvellous imagination, the Greeks would not have neglected making of it the palace of some sea-goddess with a musical name and leaving some story to us. Suetonius, who describes for us with so much detail the Thermes and baths of Tiberius, would certainly have devoted a few words to this natural pool which the old emperor would doubtless have chosen as the theatre for some of his monstrous pleasures. No, the ocean must have been much higher at that epoch than it is at present, and this marvellous sea-cave was known only to Amphitrite and her court of Sirens, Naïads, and Tritons.
But sometimes Amphitrite is angered with the indiscreet travellers who follow her into this retreat, just as Diana was when surprised by Actæon. At such times the sea rises suddenly and closes the entrance so effectually that those who have entered cannot leave. In this case, they must wait until the wind, which has veered from east to west, changes to south or north; and it has even happened that visitors, who have come to spend twenty minutes in the Blue Grotto, have had to remain two, three, and, even four, days. Therefore, the boatmen always carry with them a certain portion of a kind of biscuit to nourish the prisoners in the event of such an accident. With regard to water, enough filters through two or three places in the grotto to prevent any fear of thirst. I bestowed a few reproaches upon my boatman for having waited so long to apprise me of so disquieting a fact; but he replied with a charming _naïveté_:
“_Dame! excellence!_ If we told this to the visitors at first, only half would come, and that would make the boatmen angry.”
I admit that after this accidental information, I was seized with a certain uneasiness, on account of which I found the Blue Grotto infinitely less delightful than it had appeared to me at first. Unfortunately, my boatman had told me these details just at the moment when I was undressing to bathe in this water, which is so beautiful and transparent that to attract the fisherman it would not need the song of Goethe’s poetical Undine. We were unwilling to waste any time in preparations, and, wishing to enjoy ourselves as much as possible, we both dived.
[Illustration: BLUE GROTTO, CAPRI.]
It is only when you are five or six feet below the surface of the water that you can appreciate its incredible purity. Notwithstanding the liquid that envelops the diver, no detail escapes him; he sees everything,--the tiniest shell at the base of the smallest stalactite of the arch, just as clearly as if through the air; only each object assumes a deeper hue.
At the end of a quarter of an hour, we clambered back into our boats and dressed ourselves without having apparently attracted one of the invisible nymphs of this watery palace, who would not have hesitated, if the contrary had been the case, to have kept us here twenty-four hours at least. The fact was humiliating; but neither of us pretended to be a Telemachus, and so we took our departure. We again crouched in the bottom of our respective canoes, and we went out of the Blue Grotto with the same precautions and the same good luck with which we had entered it: only it was six minutes before we could open our eyes; the ardent glare of the sun blinded us. We had not gone more than a hundred feet away from the spot we had visited before it seemed to have melted into a dream.
We landed again at the port of Capri. While we were settling our account with our boatmen, Pietro pointed out a man lying down in the sunshine with his face in the sand. This was the fisherman who nine or ten years ago discovered the Blue Grotto while looking for _frutti di mare_ along the rocks. He went immediately to the authorities of the island to make his discovery known, and asked the privilege of being the only one allowed to conduct visitors to the new world he had found, and to have revenue from those visitors. The authorities, who saw in this discovery a means of attracting strangers to their island, agreed to the second proposition, and since that time this new Christopher Columbus has lived upon his income and does not trouble to conduct the visitors himself; this explains why he can sleep as we see him. He is the most envied individual in the island.
As we had seen all that Capri offered us in the way of wonders, we stepped into our launch and regained the _Speronare_, which, profiting by several puffs of the land breeze, set sail and gently glided off in the direction of Palermo.
_Le Speronare: Impressions de Voyage_ (Paris, 1836).
MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI
(_SWITZERLAND_)
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni--Mont Blanc was before us--the Alps, with their innumerable glaciers on high all around, closing in the complicated windings of the single vale--forests inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty--intermingled beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road, or receded, whilst lawns of such verdure as I have never seen before occupied these openings, and gradually became darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc was before us, but it was covered with cloud; its base furrowed with dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on high. I never knew--I never imagined what mountains were before. The immensity of these aërial summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of extatic wonder, not unallied to madness. And remember this was all one scene, it all pressed home to our regard and our imagination. Though it embraced a vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our path; the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard above--all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of the divinest.
As we entered the valley of Chamouni (which in fact may be considered as a continuation of those which we have followed from Bonneville and Cluses) clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of 6,000 feet from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal not only Mont Blanc, but the other _aiguilles_, as they call them here, attached and subordinate to them. We were travelling along the valley, when suddenly we heard a sound as of the burst of smothered thunder rolling above; yet there was something earthly in the sound, that told us it could not be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the mountain opposite, from whence the sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the smoke of its path among the rocks, and continued to hear at intervals the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of a torrent, which it displaced, and presently we saw its tawny-coloured waters also spread themselves over the ravine, which was their couch.
We did not, as we intended, visit the _Glacier de Boisson_ to-day, although it descends within a few minutes’ walk of the road, wishing to survey it at least when unfatigued. We saw this glacier which comes close to the fertile plain, as we passed, its surface was broken into a thousand unaccountable figures: conical and pyramidical crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height, rise from its surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendour, overhang the woods and meadows of the vale. This glacier winds upwards from the valley, until it joins the masses of frost from which it was produced above, winding through its own ravine like a bright belt flung over the black region of pines. There is more in all these scenes than mere magnitude of proportion: there is a majesty of outline; there is an awful grace in the very colours which invest these wonderful shapes--a charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even from the reality of their unutterable greatness.
Yesterday morning we went to the source of the Arveiron. It is about a league from this village; the river rolls forth impetuously from an arch of ice, and spreads itself in many streams over a vast space of the valley, ravaged and laid bare by its inundations. The glacier by which its waters are nourished, overhangs this cavern and the plain, and the forests of pine which surround it, with terrible precipices of solid ice. On the other side rises the immense glacier of Montanvert, fifty miles in extent, occupying a chasm among mountains of inconceivable height, and of forms so pointed and abrupt, that they seem to pierce the sky. From this glacier we saw as we sat on a rock, close to one of the streams of the Arveiron, masses of ice detach themselves from on high, and rush with a loud dull noise into the vale. The violence of their fall turned them into powder, which flowed over the rocks in imitation of waterfalls, whose ravines they usurped and filled.
In the evening I went with Ducrée, my guide, the only tolerable person I have seen in this country, to visit the glacier of Boisson. This glacier, like that of Montanvert, comes close to the vale, overhanging the green meadows and the dark woods with the dazzling whiteness of its precipices and pinnacles, which are like spires of radiant crystal covered with a network of frosted silver. These glaciers flow perpetually into the valley, ravaging in their slow but irresistible progress the pastures and the forests which surround them, performing a work of desolation in ages, which a river of lava might accomplish in an hour, but far more irretrievably; for where the ice has once descended, the hardiest plant refuses to grow; if even, as in some extraordinary instances, it should recede after its progress has once commenced. The glaciers perpetually move onward, at the rate of a foot each day, with a motion that commences at the spot where, on the boundaries of perpetual congelation, they are produced by the freezing of the waters which arise from the partial melting of the eternal snows. They drag with them from the regions whence they derive their origin, all the ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, and immense accumulations of sand and stones. These are driven onwards by the irresistible stream of solid ice; and when they arrive at a declivity of the mountain, sufficiently rapid, roll down, scattering ruin. I saw one of these rocks which had descended in the spring (winter here is the season of silence and safety) which measured forty feet in every direction.
The verge of a glacier, like that of Boisson, presents the most vivid image of desolation that it is possible to conceive. No one dares to approach it; for the enormous pinnacles of ice which perpetually fall, are perpetually reproduced. The pines of the forest, which bound it at one extremity, are overthrown and shattered to a wide extent at its base. There is something inexpressibly dreadful in the aspect of the few branchless trunks, which, nearest to the ice rifts, still stand in the uprooted soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and stones. Within this last year, these glaciers have advanced three hundred feet into the valley. Saussure, the naturalist, says, that they have their periods of increase and decay: the people of the country hold an opinion entirely different; but as I judge, more probable. It is agreed by all, that the snow on the summit of Mont Blanc and the neighbouring mountains perpetually augments, and that ice, in the form of glaciers, subsists without melting in the valley of Chamouni during its transient and variable summer. If the snow which produces this glacier must augment, and the heat of the valley is no obstacle to the perpetual existence of such masses of ice as have already descended into it, the consequence is obvious; the glaciers must augment and will subsist, at least until they have overflowed this vale.
I will not pursue Buffon’s sublime but gloomy theory--that this globe which we inhabit will at some future period be changed into a mass of frost by the encroachment of the polar ice, and of that produced on the most elevated points of the earth. Do you, who assert the supremacy of Ahriman, imagine him throned among these desolating snows, among these palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he casts around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation, avalanches, torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, at once the proof and symbols of his reign;--add to this, the degradation of the human species--who in these regions are half-deformed or idiotic, and most of whom are deprived of anything that can excite interest or admiration. This is a part of the subject more mournful and less sublime; but such as neither the poet nor the philosopher should disdain to regard.