A beautiful Chamois was standing on the ledge of rock that overhung the path as I turned away from the Reichenbach Fall, and I was pleased to see so fine a specimen of the animal whose home is the Alps and whose pursuit has for ages been the delight of the mountaineer. He would have sprung from crag to crag at my approach and soon disappeared, had he not been held by a string in the hand of a boy who expected a few coppers for showing the animal. This is but one of a hundred ways and means of begging adopted by the Swiss peasantry. Of all ages from the infant to extreme decrepitude, they plant themselves along the highways of travel, and by every possible pretext seek to obtain the pence of the traveller. Some are glad to have a poor cretin or a case of goitre in the family, that they may have an additional plea to put in for charity. Others sing or play on some wretched instrument, and the traveller would cheerfully pay them something to be silent, that he may enjoy the beauties of the world around him without the torment of their music. But the Alpine Horn makes music to which the hills listen. A wooden tube nearly ten feet long and three inches in diameter, curved at the mouth which is slightly enlarged, is blown with great strength of lungs, and the blast at first harsh and startling is caught by the mountain sides and returned in softened strains, echoing again and again as if the spirits of the wood were answering to the calls of the dwellers in the vales. The man who was blowing, had but one hand, and after a single performance, or one blast, he held out that hand for his pay, and then returned to his instrument, making the hills to resound again with his wild notes.

The Rosenlaui valley into which we now enter is a green and sunny plain, where the verdure is as rich and the fruits as fair as if there were no oceans of never melting ice and hills of snow lying all around and above it. On either side the bare mountains rise perpendicularly: the Engel-Horner or Angel’s Peaks sending their shining summits so far into the heavens that the pagans would make them the thrones of gods, and the Well-Horn, and Wetter-Horn, bleak and cold, but now resplendent in a brilliant sun light. A small but very comfortable inn is fitted up in this valley with conveniences for bathing, and a few invalids are always here for the benefit of the air, scenery and the mountain baths. We rested at the tavern, and then walked a mile out of the way to see the Glacier of the Rosenlaui. After a short ascent we entered a fine forest, and followed the gorge through which the glacier torrent is rushing: an awful gorge a thousand feet deep it seemed to me, and if some mighty shock has not rent these rocks, and opened the way for the waters that are now roaring in those dark mysterious depths, they must have been a thousand years in wearing out the channel for themselves. A slight bridge is thrown across the ravine, and a terrible pleasure there is in standing on it and listening to the mad leaps of rocks which the peasants are prepared to launch into the abyss, for the amusement of travellers. I shuddered at the thought of falling, and felt a glow of pleasing relief when I was away from the tempting verge. I never could explain to myself the source of that half formed desire which so many, perhaps all have, of trying the leap when standing on the brow of a cataract, the verge of a precipice, the summit of a lofty tower. It is often a question whether persons who have thus perished, designed to commit suicide or not. It is not unlikely that some are suddenly seized with this undefined desire to make the trial: the mind is wrought into a frenzy of excitement, dizziness ensues, and in a moment of fear, desire and delirium the irresponsible victim leaps into the gulf. Many of the fearful passes of the Alps have their local tragedies of this sort, and I was not disposed to add another. We soon climbed to the foot of the glacier. We have come to a mountain of emerald. The sun is shining on it, at high noon. The melting waters have cut a glorious gateway of solid crystal: we step within and beneath the arch. A ledge of ice affords a standing place for the cool traveller who may plant his pike staff firmly and look over into the depths where the torrent has wrought its passage and from which the mists are curling upwards. The sunlight streams through the blue domes of these caverns, long icicles sparkle in the roof, and jewels, crowns and thrones of ice are all about me in this crystal cave. Its outer surface is remarkable for the purity of the ice, its perfect freedom from that deposit of earth and broken stone which mars the beauty of most of the glaciers of Switzerland. Great white wreaths are twisted on its brow, and on its bosom palaces and towers are brilliant in the sunlight; and from the side of it the Well-horn and Wetter-horn rise like giants from their bed, and stretch themselves away into the clouds. No sight among the Alps had so charmed me with its beauty and sublimity. These hills of pure ice, this great gateway only less bright in the sun than the gates of pearl, cold indeed, but with flowers and evergreens cheating the senses into the feeling that this is not real, it must be a reproduction of fabled palaces and hills of diamonds, and mountains of light. I am sure that I do not exaggerate: the memory of it now that I recur to it after many days is of great glory, such as the eye never can see out of Switzerland, and the forms of beauty and the thoughts of majesty, awakened as I stood before and beneath and upon this glacier, must remain among the latest images that will fade from the soul.

Excited by what I had seen and mindless of the path by which I had ascended, I threw myself back upon my Alpen-stock and slid down the face of a long shelving rock, leaping when I could, and gliding when the way was smooth, and reached the bridge and the ravine in safety, though the guides insisted that the longest way around was the surest way down. We are now at the foot of lofty mountains. The warm sun is loosening the masses of snow and ice and we are constantly hearing the roar of the avalanches. At first it startles us, as if behind the clear blue sky above us there is a gathering storm: the sound comes rushing down and multiplied by echoes themselves re-echoed from the surrounding hills, the thunder is forgotten in the majesty of this music of the mountains. We see nothing from which these voices came. There are valleys beyond these peaks where perhaps the foot of man has never trod, and He who directs the thunderbolt when it falls, is guiding these ice-falls into the depths of some abyss where they may not crush even one of the least of the creatures of his care. It is grand to hear them and feel that they will not come nigh us. Our path is now so far from the base of this precipitous mountain that if those snow caps fall, and we are constantly wishing that they would, we should be in no peril, and so we ride on with hearts full of worship, rejoicing in the thoughts of Him who built these high places, and whose praise is uttered in the silence of all these speechless peaks, and shouted in the avalanche in tones which seem to be reverberated all around the world. One of our own poets, with a soul in harmony with the greatness as well as the beauty of this scenery, exclaims in view of these towering heights—

My mind was full of such thoughts as these, so finely clothed in Mrs. Kinney’s words, when I met a party, of ladies and gentlemen, and one of the ladies was borne along in a chair, with a babe in her arms! Here was a contrast, and a suggestive sight. It was certainly the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, but I could readily understand that having overcome every obstacle in her strong desire to see the Alps, and to see them now, she was enjoying them perhaps more than any one of the group around her. And I did not fail to admire the energy of soul that in its love of nature, and its thirsting after these mighty manifestations of power and beauty, was equal to all the difficulties that opposed her way. Whether ladies may make these difficult passes, which must be made to see the inner life and real character of Switzerland, is merely a question of dollars and cents. The feeblest may be borne as tenderly as this infant was on its mother’s breast, and the most delicate will gather health and strength from the bracing mountain air, and new life will be inspired in the midst of these exciting scenes. To see Switzerland on wheels is impracticable. Its brightest glories are hid away in regions of perpetual ice and snow, where no traveller passes except to see. The highways of trade are not here. This is a secret place of the Most High, where from the foundation of the world, he has wrapt himself in storms and clouds, and thundered among the hills, and has been admired only by those who have come here expressly to behold his works. The solitude of such scenery adds intensely to the sense of the sublime. Mountains all around us and God! To be alone with him anywhere is to be near him: in the midnight, or on the ocean or the desert, it is a heart-luxury to feel that only God is near; that his presence fills immensity, and his Spirit pervades all matter and all space. But to stand in the midst of these great Alps, hoary patriarchs, monuments compared with which the pyramids are children of a day, is to stand in the high places of his dominions and to be raised by his own hand into audience with him at whose presence these mountains shall one day flow down like water and melt away. Heinrich, my young German friend, was peopling them continually with the creatures of Grecian mythology, and his classic history often led him to speak of the lofty seats of divinities where ancient poets had planted the council halls of the gods. I loved to believe that God had made these hills for himself, and as the people who dwell among them have no heart to appreciate them, pilgrims from all lands are flocking here, and offering the incense of praise at the foot of these high altars. How they do lead the soul along upward toward the great white throne! How like that throne is yonder peak in snowy purity shining now in this bright sun. It is very glorious, and no human footstep ever trod the summit. God sits there alone. Let us admire and adore. He is fearful in praises, doing wonders! Who is like unto him, a great God, and a great King!

But this is not getting on with the journey. You have the privilege of skipping my reflections as you read; but to travel without reflection, common as it is, is not my way—and if you would feel the sights that meet the eye in this world of wonders, you must indulge me in pausing now and then, to muse. All this time we have been going steadily up the Great Scheidek, and have now stopped at a small house, with the word tavern painted on it in two or three different languages. An apology for a dinner we got after waiting for it till an appetite for supper came. The view from this height into the Grindelwald valley is enchanting. The descent is so steep that we were willing to leave the mules and walk down, holding back by the alpenstock, and resting often to enjoy the sight, into the valley below. And now we have come to another glacier, in the midst of a sunny slope, stretching down into the bosom of verdant pasturage where herds are grazing and flowers are blossoming, and women and children are laboring under a burning sun. It is hard to believe, even as we stand at the foot of it, that this is everlasting ice: a segment of the frozen zone let fall into the lap of summer, and sleeping here age after age, perishing continually, but renewed day by day, so that it seems unchanged. It is a wonderful growth and decay; and the greater wonder to my mind, and one that does not diminish, is that so much life and beauty can exist and flourish in the midst of this eternal cold.—Yet there is a greater contrast even here. We are coming into the valley, and there another, called the Upper Glacier lies, and yet that is not to furnish the contrast of which I speak. It is in the wide and wonderful difference between this people and their country! Degenerate, ignorant, begging and demoralized, this people seem, and indeed are, unworthy of such a land as this. They have a history, but Switzerland was, and is not. The race has run down.—Disease and hardships have reduced the stock, till now we rarely meet a fine-looking man, never a fine-looking woman, as we cross the mountains and traverse the valleys of this noble country.

The vale of Grindelwald, into which we have now descended, is one of the most fertile, picturesque, and quiet in Switzerland. It is a place to stay in. The hotels, of which there are two, are crowded to overflowing. We sent our guide ahead to get room for us, but he failed. There was no room for us at the inn. We paused first at the Eagle, a very good-looking establishment, and the balcony running across the front of it was filled with good-looking people—but there were as many there as the house would hold, and we had to go on to the Bear. And the Bear would not let us in. The very best the landlord could do, was to give us a room with three beds in it, in a cottage across the way, where we would be quiet and comfortable. We went over. Up stairs, by as dark, narrow, dirty, ricketty, dangerous and disagreeable a passage as I had made among the mountains, we were led by a tall, skinny, slatternly woman, with a tallow candle in her fingers, and shown into our treble chamber. For the first time we were in such a house as the better class of peasants occupy in Switzerland. It had been taken by the proprietor of the hotel, as a sort of makeshift when his hotel was overflowing—the lower part of it was his bake and wash house, and this room was reserved for lodgings. I was worn out with the journey of the day, and glad enough to stretch myself on any thing that ventured to call itself a bed. The walls of the chamber around and above were rude boards, and the bare floor had been trodden a hundred years without feeling. The furniture was a mixture of the broken chairs of the hotel and the superannuated relics of the cottage, an amusing study, which helped to pass away half an hour, while our prison keeper, the ugly old woman, was scaring up something for us to eat. Bread and milk, with some cheese so strong that we begged her to take it off, made a frugal repast, but sweet to a hungry man: this mountaineering does give a man an appetite—and then he sleeps so well after eating. Alas! my dreams were short; a band of bloodthirsty villains attacked me in the dead of night, and for four hours I fought them tooth and nail. The battle made real the poet’s description of another scene—

How many of the foe found that night a bed of death in my bed, I cannot say, as we took no account of the slain, but the conflict was sanguinary and the destruction of life was immense. The sun rose upon the battle field, but it was hard to say which was the victor. Exhausted quite as much by the night’s exertions as the travels of the previous day, I rose to address myself to the journey. The rapacious landlord of the Bear charged us the same price for our lodgings that was paid by those who had the best rooms in his house, and I told him we were willing to pay him for the privilege of hunting in his grounds, which we had greatly enjoyed for several hours. He was too slow to take my meaning, but when he did, he had no idea there was any harm in a few fleas. All these mountain sides are covered with the huts of the shepherds, where during a part of the year a man remains to tend the flocks, and he takes with him some coarse food to last him during the months of his stay. The shepherds and their families live in the midst of their dogs and cattle, and fleas are no worse to them than they are to us. It only served to amuse the landlord of the Bear, when we related to him the sufferings of the night, and besought him never to expose travellers to such annoyances again.

The ascent of the Faulhorn is made from Grindelwald. It is a mountain eight thousand feet high, and the view from the summit is said to be an ample reward for the five hours’ walk or ride which is necessary to gain it. The long and glorious range of the Bernese Alps stands majestically in sight, and there are not wanting those who declare the prospect superior to that which is had on the Rigi. I took it on trust, and having loftier summits still before me, was willing to leave the Faulhorn. And I was willing to leave Grindelwald too—glad to escape the scene of my midnight sufferings, but I doubt not that at the Eagle (and not at the Bear) we might have spent a day or two very pleasantly in this charming vale. And how soon are these little vexations of life forgotten. They are worth mentioning only to remind us how foolish it is to be vexed at trifles, which in a single day are with the things that happened a hundred years ago. Thus moralizing and half sorry that I had made any complaint of my quarters for the night, I mounted my horse and set off to cross

The Wengern Alp.

The ride through the vale in the early morning was refreshing. Parties of travellers were emerging from cottages where they had found beds, and winding their way by the bridle paths, in various directions, on foot and on horseback, all seeking to see the world of Switzerland, and all enjoying themselves with the various degrees of ability which had been given them. We crossed the lesser Sheideck, and stopped on the ridge of it at a small house of refreshment to eat Alpine strawberries and milk. The berries are small and have very little of the strawberry taste, but are quite a treat in their way. They were apparently more abundant here than we had seen them elsewhere, and with plenty of milk they made a capital lunch. Well for us that we had the milk before a dirty boy who was playing at the door when we came up, plunged his mouth and nose into the milkpan and took a long drink, only withdrawing when his father wished to dip some out for a lady who had just arrived. Had she seen the operation, she would have declined the draught, but where “Ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise.”

We rested a few moments only at this chalet, and then pushed on, passing a forest, or the ruins of a forest, which the avalanches had mown down as grass. The stumps, and here and there a scraggy tree were the witnesses of the desolation that had been wrought. From the height we are crossing we have one of the most magnificent of Alpine views. The Jungfrau stands before us clad in white raiment, beautiful as a bride adorned for her husband: in the sunlight she is dazzling and seems so near to heaven, and so pure in her vestal robes, that we are willing to believe the gateway must be there. The name of this mountain Jungfrau, or the Virgin, is given, on account of the peculiar beauty and purity of the peak which until 1812 had never been sullied by the foot of man. Rising like a pyramid above the surrounding heights thirteen thousand seven hundred and forty-eight feet, and seeming to be as smooth as if cut with a chisel out of solid marble, she stands there sublimely beautiful, to be gazed at and admired. Lord Byron has made this region the scene of some of his most terrible passages, and I was forcibly impressed as I read them with the contrast, not the similarity, between his emotions and my own in the midst of these mountains. Here he conceived some of those images never read in his Manfred without a shudder. In his Journal he says “the clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the foam of the ocean of hell during a spring-tide—it was white and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance.” Then in Manfred he does it into verse:

None but a mind surcharged with horrors, a mind which all bad things inhabit, could find such images to convey its emotions in view of these sights of grandeur, beauty, and glory. The mists were curling along up the precipices as I have seen incense in a great cathedral, mounting the lofty columns, and curling among the arches, a symbol of the praise that goes up from the hearts of worshippers to the God of heaven. These white clouds, not “sulphury”—so far from being suggestive of hell-waves, were heavenly robes rather, and as the sun now nearly at noon, was filling them with light, I loved to watch them, and then look away up to the summit of the mountains around me, rejoicing in the manifestations which the King of kings was making of himself in this dwelling among the munitions of rocks. With these thoughts full on me as I rode along the verge of the tremendous ravine that separates the Wengern Alp from the Jungfrau, we reached a small inn, on the brow of the ravine, where large parties, chiefly English people, were ravening for dinner. This house has been planted here in the Jungfrau, that travellers may rest themselves in its beauty, and watch for the avalanches that now and then come thundering down its precipitous sides. Streams of water are in some places pouring down. The music of the fall is constantly heard, and every five or ten minutes the roar of a snow-slide thunders on the ear. Few of them are seen. They break away from crags that are out of sight, and plunge into dark abysses where the eye of man does not follow them. But this is just the time of day when we might look for one, for it is past noon when the sun’s power is the greatest, and if the great toppling mass which seems to be holding on with difficulty would but let go its cold death grasp and come headlong into this mighty grave at the base of the mountain, it would be a sight worth coming to Switzerland to see.

We watched and wished, and the more we watched, the more it would not come. During the half hour we had sat wrapped up in our blankets, gazing at the cold snow hills, and shivering in the bleak winds, the dinner had been in preparation, and despairing of getting something to see, we determined like sensible people, to have something to eat. The long table was filled with hungry travellers, and all had forgotten in the enjoyment of dinner the wonders of the Alps, when suddenly the alarm was given, “Laweenen,” the “Avalanche.” Servants dropped the dishes and ran, gentlemen and ladies following them rushed from the table, over chairs and each other, crowding for the doors and windows: and had there been danger of a sudden overwhelming of the house, and the destruction of all the inhabitants, we could not have fled in greater haste and confusion than we now did, to see the descending “thunderbolt of snow.” All eyes were upon one point where a stream like powdered marble was pouring from one of the gullies far up the Jungfrau and lodging on a ledge. It differed in no respect from a stream of snow, nor indeed from one of water which is perfectly white in the distance when a small cascade is dangling from the rocks. Yet we are told, and there is no reason to doubt that this stream is made up of vast blocks of ice and masses of snow, dashed constantly into smaller fragments as it comes “rushing amain down,” but still weighing each of them many tons, and capable of dealing destruction to forests and villages if they stood in its path. We looked on in silence, and with disappointment mingled with awe. The stream that had rested for a while on one ledge now began to flow again, and the roar of the torrent increased every instant, filling the air with its reverberations, which were caught by distant mountains and sent back in sharp echoes, and again in deep toned voices that seemed to shake the sky. But I was disappointed. It was just what I did not expect, although I had read enough of them to be prepared for what was to come. This was said to be one of the grandest scenes this season! Of course we believed it, and report it accordingly. Grand indeed it was, and when we consider that at least four miles are between us and the hill side down which it is rushing, it is not surprising that the masses of ice should be blended into a steady and liquid stream. Certainly I prefer to see such a torrent at a distance, to being sufficiently near it to run any risk of being buried alive in an icy grave.