"The Eagle's Nest" in the Valley of Sixt; A Summer Home Among the Alps Together with Some Excursions Among the Great Glaciers

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1860 Excerpt: ... MONTE ROSA. 303 rounded summit of the Lyskamm. It was not the true daylight, however, for the great Matterhorn still slept in the dead cold white which is the hue of lofty peaks before daylight breaks. Monte Rosa rises at the head of the Gorner Glacier in one huge hump, totally destitute of the graceful proportions of Mont Blanc. Nor is it surrounded, like the monarch of the Alps, by a forest of those needle-like peaks to which the appropriate name of Aiguilles has been given. The Gorner Glacier streams from it in three great arms--those on the right and left holding the hump in a close embrace, while the middle portion issues from the very heart of the mountain itself. As we stand face to face with Monte Rosa, on the central portion of the Gorner Glacier, looking into the great rocky basin out of which it comes forth on its long journey to the valley, where the ice-existence is destined to fade away, and to take a new and more vigorous life, as an impetuous and resistless mountain torrent, we see that the least elevated portion of the glacier lies to our left, and has its origin in the long ridge of snow connecting the upper extremity of the Gornergrat range with the mass of Monte Rosa. Close underneath the mountain, the ridge attains a height of perhaps ten or eleven thousand feet; but 304 MONTE ROSA. Monte Rosa itself shoots forth from it, in a broken wall of nearly perpendicular rock, which can scarcely be less than two thousand feet high. Above this huge precipice is a long, sharp ridge of snow, leading up to the Nord End Spitze, the northernmost of several points which are all called by the generic name of summits. From the lower part of this snow-ridge springs another set of precipices, coming forward towards the spectator with a rapidly lowe...