Heinrich proved to be a wonderful youth. He had a warm heart, and his intellect was cultivated to a degree not parallelled in my acquaintance among young men. He was just one and twenty years of age, and had not completed the usual course of collegiate education. But there was no author in the Latin or Greek languages, poet, philosopher or historian, whose works I have ever heard of, which were not familiar to him, as the English Classics are to well read men in England or America. He discoursed readily of the style, the dialect, the shade of sentiment on any disputed point; he cited passages and drew illustrations from the pages of ancient literature which seemed to him like household words: and one of our amusements when crossing the Alps was to discuss the difference in Greek or Latin words which are usually regarded as synonymes. But classical learning was the least and lowest attainment of this accomplished youth. The whole range of Natural Sciences had been pursued with a zeal that might be called a passion. Botany and Mineralogy were child’s play to him: and Chemistry had been a favorite study evidently, for its principles often came up in our rambling discourse, and he was master of it as if he had been a teacher of the science for years. Geology was a hobby of his, and he thrust it upon me often when I wished he would let me alone, or discourse of something else. And yet when I have said all this I have not mentioned the department in which he was most at home, where his soul revelled in profound enjoyment, and in which he was resolved to spend his life. Metaphysics was his favorite pursuit. His analytical mind was always on the track of investigation, challenging a reason for everything, questioning the truth of every proposition, and never resting till his reason had subjected it to the most exhausting process. Yet in the midst of these studies including many departments to which I have not referred, as the exact sciences, he had polished this fine intellect by the widest course of polite literature, perusing in the German translations, all the old masters of the English tongue, admiring Shakespeare and Milton, quoting from them as a scholar would from Sophocles or Homer, and surprising me by reference to English authors, whose works I had not supposed were translated into the German language. Of course the poets and philosophers of his father-land were his pride and love. Often he would speak of them in terms of endearment, as if they were his personal friends; though of all beings, present or past, in heaven or out of it, I think he loved Plato most. This boy was just out of his teens, a student still, and modest as he was learned; burning to learn more; asking questions till it was tiresome to hear them; and never dreaming that he knew more than others. He was the most learned young man I ever saw. And few old men know half as much. He now joined my party, leaving his own altogether, and resolved to follow me to the ends of the earth.

We are now in the Vale of the Grimsel. In the bottom of the Valley, by the side of a lake forever dark with the shadows of overhanging hills, is the Hospice, a name that here combines the idea of hospital and hotel—its design being to furnish lodging and entertainment to travellers, whether they are able to pay for the hospitality or not. Last winter the landlord of the Grimsel having insured his house, set fire to it, to get the money, and now is in prison for twenty years as the penalty of his crime. In years past there have been terrible avalanches here, and once the house was crushed by the “thunderbolts of snow.” Often it is surrounded by snow drifts twenty or thirty feet high, yet some one lodges here all winter to keep up a fire and furnish shelter to the benighted traveller. It is strange that these lonely paths should be traversed at all in the depth of winter. But there is no other mode of communication between the valleys, than along these defiles, and the traffic among the people of one canton with another is carried on, and the intercourse of families is kept up at the risk of life here as in other countries. If one has a good home, it were better to stay in it than to cross the Grimsel in the winter.

A mixed multitude were under the roof of the Hospice. The building is yet unfinished; and it must have required prodigious exertions to get it so far under way, since the fire, as to make it habitable for travellers this season. Every stick of timber must be brought up by hand from the plain some miles below. The walls are of stone, about three feet thick, and rough enough. No attempt to smooth a wall, or paint a board appears on the edifice, and the rude bedsteads, benches and chairs suggest to the luxurious traveller how few of the good things he has at home are actually essential to his comfort. The house has about forty beds, but these were far from being sufficient to give each weary pilgrim one. Many were obliged to choose the softest boards in the dining room floor, and sleep on them. Yet in that company of sixty who crowded around the supper table were many of the learned, and titled, and beautiful, and wealthy of many lands; meeting socially in a dreary valley, on a journey of pleasure, and refreshing each other with the “feast of reason and the flow of soul.” Reserve was banished, and the hour freely given to good cheer, in which all strove to forget the toils of the day, in the pleasures of the evening, and the repose of a peaceful night.

Within an hour’s walk from the door of the Hospice is the Glacier of the Aar, the most interesting and instructive of all the Glaciers of Switzerland. It has been more studied by men of science than any other. Agassiz and Forbes had their huts on its bosom, and spent many long and weary months in prying into the mysteries of these stupendous seas of solid water. Not one of the whole company who staid at the Hospice last night, turned aside for a day to study with us this wonderful scene. A party of English people read the guide book on the route to Meyringen, and congratulated themselves on having a “comfortable” day, as there was very little to see! They were doing Switzerland, and were evidently pleased to find a day before them when they had nothing to do but to go on, without being worried with fine views and climbing hills. One party after another came down and took a wretched cup of coffee, and were off on their pilgrimage, some on foot, some on mules, and one or two were carried on chairs by porters.

We were left alone at the Hospice, and after breakfast set off to spend the day on the Glaciers. There are two of them, the Obi and Unter, or Upper and Lower; the latter being the most easily reached, and happily the most interesting. It is eighteen miles long, and about three miles wide. To circumnavigate it therefore, is not the journey of a day, but it may be explored on foot, and Hugi, the naturalist, is said to have rode over it on a horse. The morning was not promising. Heavy mists had lodged in the vale of the Grimsel. But far above them in gloomy grandeur rose the sterile ridges of rocks, towering aloft, and looking like the battlements of giants’ castles, inaccessible save to the chamois and his pursuer, who often risked, and sometimes threw away his life in his daring adventures to secure his prey. Even the chamois has now almost entirety disappeared, and the eagles alone have their dwelling places in these desolate abodes. Yet from the lofty heights some beautiful cascades are pouring all the way down into the vale, foaming as they fall; and sometimes caught by the intervening rocks, and sent out from the side of the precipice they melt into spray, and again on a lower ledge are gathered to pursue their downward course. Along the bottom of this gloomy vale we walked for an hour, till we came in sight of a mighty pile of earth, rocks, ice and snow. At first we thought we had come to a vast heap of sand, or to the debris brought down by an avalanche of soil with stones intermingled, but from the base of it a torrent was rushing, not of clear blue water, but of a dirty milky hue, as are all the streams when they issue from the beds of these Glaciers. The front of the mass was perhaps one hundred and fifty feet high, and nearly perpendicular, and here it was half a mile in width. On nearer approach, we could see the rocks of blue ice projecting through the coating of earth, showing plainly that the body of the great pile before us was the cold icebergs hid beneath a covering of earth that had been washed down upon it, from the mountains above. Now and then large masses of earth, or a huge boulder would be dislodged from the brow of the pile, and thunder along down, as we sat watching for these miniature avalanches. The sense of the terrible was strong upon us now. It was not beautiful: it was grand and awful, as we changed our position lest the falling rocks should overtake us in their course. But a few little birds were flying about from stone to stone unconscious of danger, the solitary inhabitants of this frozen world.

We now determined to ascend and look on its face. With incredible toil we climbed the hill by the side of it. If there ever was a path, we could not find it, but from rock to rock, often pulling ourselves up by the stunted bushes, we worked our way. Onward and upward we mounted, and at last were rewarded for the struggle by standing abreast of the glacier, where we could walk around and upon it and contemplate its stupendous proportions. From the bosom of it rises the Finster-Aarhorn, a lone pyramid that seems now to touch the blue sky: so cold and stern it stands there, its head forever covered with snow and its foot in this everlasting ocean of ice. The Schreckhorn is the other peak that stands yet farther off, but the clouds are now so dense around its summit, that I cannot see its hoary head.

Here we are six thousand feet above the level of the sea, and for three-quarters of the year the snow is falling on these mountains: not an April snow that melts as it falls, but a dry powder, into which a man without snow-shoes would sink out of sight, as in the water. On the loftiest of these mountains, the surface of the snow melts a little every day, and the deeper you descend into the snow, the melting is going on also. But at night it freezes, as by day for a little while it thaws, and this process is continued until the snow is gradually converted into ice. The high valleys are filled with these ever increasing deposits of snow, which are thus constantly undergoing this change, and as the fresh deposit far exceeds what is carried off by melting, the enormous mass is rather increased than diminished by the lapse of time. It becomes a fixed fact; yet not fixed, for the most remarkable, and to my mind, the sublimest fact in this relation, is that these glaciers are actually moving steadily, year by year. The projecting mass in the lowest valley, as where we were standing a few hours ago, is melting away, and sending out the river that leaves its bosom on its mission into a world far below. Underneath the glacier, where it presses on the earth, which has a heart of fire, the work of dissolution is rapidly going on, while the sun on the upper surface melts the ice, and streams flow along and cut deep crevices into which the uncautious traveller may fall never to rise again till the last day. Some of these glaciers may be traversed underneath, by following the streams. Hugi wandered a mile in this way underneath magnificent domes, through which the sun-light was streaming, and among crystal columns which had been left standing as if to support the superincumbent mass. The water, as in rocky caverns, trickles through and freezes in beautiful stalactytes, to adorn these palaces, unseen except by the eye to which darkness and light are both alike. As this decay of the glacier takes place, and it is always more rapid near the lower border of it than above, the pressure of the upper masses brings the whole mountain slowly along: with a steadiness of march that cannot be perceived by the eye, but which is marked with precision, and chronicled from year to year. The place where great rocks are reposing on the surface near the edge of the mountain against which the glacier presses has been carefully noted, and the next year and for many subsequent years, the onward progress of the boulder has been noted. Blocks of granite have been inserted in the bosom of the glacier, and their position defined by their relation to the points of land in sight; and years afterwards they are away on their journey, and by and by, they have disappeared altogether as the glacier moves on and heaves and breaks and closes again. More wonderful still, it is recorded that a “mass of granite of twenty six thousand cubic feet, originally buried under the snow, was raised to the surface and even elevated above it upon two pillars of ice, so that a small army might have found shelter under it.” The men of science who have pursued investigations here under circumstances quite as fearful and forbidding as the navigators around the north Pole, have a rude hut in which they make themselves as comfortable as the nature of the case will admit; but this house though founded on a rock is not stationary. It moves on with the mighty field of ice, about three hundred feet in a year, or nearly one foot every day: not so rapidly in winter as in summer, for the rate of progress depends on the melting, which is arrested for a brief period during the terrible winters of this Alpine region. Other glaciers move with greater rapidity than this. The Mere de Glace is believed to move at the rate of four or five hundred feet every year, and it is said that the glacier is gradually wasting out.

The surface of this frozen sea is exceedingly irregular, depending on the nature of the ground below, and the progress of the ice. When a stream has cut away a great seam, where the descent of the moving mass will be swift when it does move, the shock will throw up the ice in ridges, in pyramids, in various fantastic shapes, piling rocks on rocks of ice, as if some great explosion underneath had upheaved the surface and the fragments had come down in wild confusion, like the ruins of a crystal city. Then the sun gradually melts those towers, and they assume strange shapes of wild and dazzling beauty, unreal palaces, glittering minarets, silvered domes and shining battlements; freaks of nature we call them, but they are too beautiful for chance work, and we do not know to what eyes these forms of glory may give pleasure, nor why it is that God displays so much of his selectest skill and most stupendous power, where few behold it of the race to which we belong. Doubtless our own great Cataract leaped and thundered in the wilderness thousands of years, with no human ear or eye to receive its majesty and beauty, but it did not roar in vain. God has other and nobler worshippers than man, and while we are groping like moles beneath the surface, and striving in our blindness to discover the mysteries of God’s works, there are minds to which these wonders are revelations of their Maker’s glory and goodness, and they understand, admire and adore.

Here was a world of solid water, gradually enlarging and then melting away, to send down rivers into the plains below, and this with the other glaciers of the Alps, is thus supplying all the rivers in Europe which might otherwise be dry. Yet as other rivers in other lands are constantly supplied without this provision, we must suppose that some other design in Providence is laid, which science may or may not discover, but whether it does or not, we are certain that they are not without a purpose corresponding with the magnitude of their proportions, and the wisdom of Him who, though omnipotent, never wastes His strength in works without design.

We confined our walks to the edges of this solid but still treacherous sea. We had yesterday conversed with a man who had fallen into the crevices of one of these glaciers, and we had a greater horror of repeating the experiment. The case is on record of a shepherd who was crossing this very glacier with his flock, when he fell into one of the clefts, into which a torrent was pouring. This stream was his guide to life and liberty again; for he followed its course under the archway it had made, until it led him to the foot of the glacier into the open air. But a Swiss clergyman, a spiritual shepherd, M. Mouron, was leaning on the edge of a fissure to explore a remarkable formation over the brink, when the staff on which he rested gave way, and he fell, only to be drawn out again a mangled corpse. A man was let down by a rope, and after two or three unsuccessful expeditions, found him at last, and was drawn up with the body in his arms.

Coming down from the hill, we had hard work in crossing some dangerous clefts in the rocks, and once I planted my Alpen-stock firmly, as I thought, in the thin soil, and leaped; the spike failed; the foot of the staff slipped on and left the steel in the ground, and I was sprawling generally along down the hill: fortunately I recovered my foothold, and came down standing! And this is a good place in which to say that shoes with iron nails in the soles are not the best for walking over these mountains: a good pair of boots with double soles have served me many times, sticking fast in the face of a slippery rock, while travellers shod with iron have been sliding down with no strength of sole to resist the gravitation. But I met with no such misfortune in all my travels over the most dangerous passes, and under circumstances of trial not often exceeded by those who wander in these parts.

We had several sorts of weather in this expedition to the source of the Aar. The misty morning was succeeded by a glowing sun at noon, followed by clouds and rain. When this was coming, we thought it time to be going, and gathering a few flowers, as usual, on the verge of the cold beds of ice, we turned our weary steps towards the Hospice. It was our good fortune just then to meet an Italian artist who had lost his way, and we had the pleasure of guiding him to the Hospice. Wandering with his knapsack and port folio, in search of the beautiful in nature, which he sketched by the way, it was of no great consequence to him, in which direction he travelled, but a storm was now at hand, it was rapidly growing cold, and he was going every moment farther from any place of shelter.

We were soon housed safely in the Hospice; and glad enough to stretch ourselves on a bed after the walk of the morning. It was hard to keep warm anywhere else but in bed. The house was yet so unfinished and open, and the storm increasing every moment; a wretched old stove in one corner of the eating-room, scarcely giving any heat with the few sticks of fuel we were able to find. We wrapped blankets around us, and tried to write, and when that proved to be more than we could accomplish under the difficulties, I took my Bible and read to my German friend some of the sublimest passages in the Psalms, where the Lord is revealed among the mountains, and his majesty portrayed by the loftiest of his works. He listened with interest, and when I laid aside the book, he asked for it, and read it long and earnestly.

As the evening drew on, a few travellers began to drop in, and at seven o’clock a company, much like the one of last night, but all with new faces, sat down to supper.