Saturday, July 9. Rose in a blaze of glory. Rode five mortal hours in achar-à-banc, sweltering under a burning sun. But in less than ten minutes after we mounted the mules and struck into the gorge, the ladies muffled themselves in thick shawls. We seemed to have passed, almost in a moment, from the tropics into the frigid zone. A fur cloak was suggested to me, but as it happened I was adequately calorified without. Chancing to be the last in the file, my mule suddenly stopped to eat.
"Allez,allez!" said I, twitching the bridle.
"Iwon't!" said he, as plainly as ears and legs could speak.
"Allez!" thundered I, jumping off and bestowing a kick upon his ribs which made me suffer if it did not him.
"Iwon't!" said he, stuffily.
"Won't you?" said I, pursuing the same line of inductive argument, with rhetorical flourishes of the bridle.
"Never!" he replied again, most mulishly.
"Then if words and kicks won't do," said I, "let us see what virtue there is in stones;" and suiting the action to the word, I showered him with fragments of granite, as from a catapult. At every concussion he jumped and kicked, but kept his nose in the same relative position. I redoubled the logical admonition; he jumped the more perceptibly; finally, after an unusually affecting appeal from a piece of granite, he fairly budged, and I seized the bridle to mount.
"Not at all," said he, wheeling round to his first position, like a true proslavery demagogue.
"Ah," said I; and went over the same line of argument in a more solid and convincing manner. At length the salutary impression seemed permanently fastened on his mind; he fairly gave in; and I rode on in triumph to overtake the party—having no need of a fur coat.
Horeb, Sinai, and Hor! What a wilderness! what a sudden change! Nothing but savage, awful precipices of naked granite, snowy fields, and verdureless wastes! In every other place in the Alps, we have looked upon the snow in the remote distance, to be dazzled with its sheeny effulgence—ourselves, meanwhile, in the region of verdure and warmth. Here we march through a horrid desert—not a leaf, not a blade of grass—over the deep drifts of snow; and we find our admiration turns to horror. And this is the road that Hannibal trod, and Charlemagne, and Napoleon! They were fit conquerors of Rome, who could vanquish the sterner despotism of eternal winter.
After an hour's perilous climbing, we reached, at last, thehospice, and in five minutes were sitting at the supper table, by a good blazing fire, with a lively company, chatting with a gentlemanly abbé, discussing figs and fun, cracking filberts and jokes, and regaling ourselves genially. But ever and anon drawing, with a half shiver, a little closer to the roaring fagots in the chimney, I thought to myself, "And this is our midsummer nights' dream"!
Dear:—
During breakfast, we were discussing whether we could get through the snow to Mont St. Bernard. Some thought we could, and some thought not. So it goes here: we are gasping and sweltering one hour, and plunging through snow banks the next.
After breakfast, we entered thechar-à-banc, a crab-like, sideway carriage, and were soon on our way. Our path was cut from the breast of the mountain, in a stifling gorge, where walls of rock on both sides served as double reflectors to concentrate the heat of the sun on our hapless heads. To be sure, there was a fine foaming stream at the bottom of the pass, and ever so much fine scenery, if we could have seen it; but our chars opened but one way, and that against the perpendicular rock, close enough, almost, to blister our faces; and the sun beat in so on our backs that we were obliged to have the curtain down. Thus we were as uncognizant of the scenery we passed through as if we had been nailed up in a box. Nothing but the consideration that we were travelling for pleasure could for a moment have reconciled us to such inconveniences. As it was, I occasionally called out to C., in the back carriage, to be sure and take good care of the fur coat; which always brought shouts of laughter from the whole party. The idea of a fur coat seemed so supremely ridiculous to us, there was no making us believe we ever should or could want it.
That was the most unpleasant day's ride I had in the Alps. We stopped to take dinner in the little wretched village of Liddes. You have no idea what a disagreeable, unsavory concern one of these villages is. Houses, none of which look much better than the log barns in our Western States, set close together on either side of a street paved with round stones; coarse, sunburnt women, with their necks enlarged by the goitre; and dirty children, with tangled hair, and the same disgusting disease,—these were the principal features of the scene.
This goitre prevails so extensively in this region, that you seldom see a person with the neck in a healthy condition. The worst of the matter is, that in many cases of children it induces idiocy. Cases of this kind were so frequent, that, after a while, whenever I met a child, I began to search in its face for indications of the approach of this disease.
They are calledcretins. In many cases the whole head appears swelled and deformed. As usual, every one you look at puts out the hand to beg. The tavern where we stopped to dine seemed more like a great barn, or cavern, than any thing else. We go groping along perfectly dark stone passages, stumbling up a stone staircase, and gaining light only when the door of a kind of reception room opens upon us—a long, rough-looking room, without any carpet, furnished with a table, and some chairs, and a rude sofa. We were shown to a bed room, carpetless, but tolerably clean, with a very high feather bed in each corner, under a canopy of white curtains.
After dinner we went on towards St. Pierre, a miserable hamlet, where the mules were taken out of the chars, and we prepared to mount them.
It was between three and four o'clock. Our path lay up a desolate mountain gorge. After we had ascended some way the cold became intense. The mountain torrent, by the side of which we went up, leaped and tumbled under ribs of ice, and through banks of snow.
I noticed on either side of the defile that there were high posts put up on the rocks, and a cord stretched from one to the other. The object of these, my guide told me, was to show the path, when this whole ravine is filled up with deep snow.
I could not help thinking how horrible it must be to go up here in the winter.
Our path sometimes came so near to the torrent as to suggest uncomfortable ideas.
In one place it swept round the point of a rock which projected into the foaming flood, so that it was completely under water. I stopped a little before I came to this, and told the guide I wanted to get down. He was all accommodation, and lifted me from my saddle, and then stood to see what I would do next. When I made him understand that I meant to walk round the point, he very earnestly insisted that I should get back to the saddle again, and was so positive that I had only to obey. It was well I did so, for the mule went round safely enough, and could afford to go up to his ankles in water better than I could.
As we neared thehospiceI began to feel the effects of the rarefied air very sensibly. It made me dizzy and sick, bringing on a most acute headache—a sharp, knife-like pain. S. was still more affected.
I was glad enough when the old building came in view, though the road lay up an ascent of snow almost perpendicular.
At the foot of this ascent we paused. Our guides, who looked a little puzzled, held a few moments' conversation, in which the word "fonce" was particularly prominent, a word which I took to be equivalent to our English "slump;" and indeed the place was suggestive of the idea. The snow had so far melted and softened under the influence of the July sun, that something of this kind, in going up the ascent, seemed exceedingly probable. The man stood leaning on his alpenstock, looking at the thing to be demonstrated. There were two paths, both equally steep and snowy. At last he gathered up the bridle, and started up the most direct way. The mule did not like it at all, evidently, and expressed his disgust by occasionally stopping short and snuffing, meaning probably to intimate that he considered the whole thing a humbug, and that in his opinion we should all slump through together, and go to—nobody knows where. At last, when we were almost up the ascent, he did slump, and went up to his breast in the snow; whereat the guide pulled me out of the saddle with one hand, and pulled him out of the hole with the other. In a minute he had me into the saddle again, and after a few moments more we were up the ascent and drawing near thehospice—a great, square, strong, stone building, standing alone among rocks and snowbanks.
As we drove up nearer I saw the little porch in front of it crowded with gentlemen smoking cigars, and gazing on our approach just as any set of loafers do from the porch of a fashionable hotel. This was quite a new idea of the matter to me. We had been flattering ourselves on performing an incredible adventure; and lo, and behold, all the world were there waiting for us.
[Illustration:of a large multi-story hospice and other buildings in a remote-looking mountain valley. A river flows in the foreground.]
We came up to the steps, and I was so crippled with fatigue and so dizzy and sick with the thin air, that I hardly knew what I was doing. We entered a low-browed, dark, arched, stone passage, smelling dismally of antiquity and dogs, when a brisk voice accosted me in the very choicest of French, and in terms of welcome as gay and courtly as if we were entering asalon.
Keys clashed, and we went up stone staircases, our entertainer talking volubly all the way. As for me, all the French I ever knew was buried under an avalanche. C. had to make answer for me, that madame was very unwell, which brought forth another stream of condolence as we came into a supper room, lighted by a wood fire at one end. The long table was stretched out, on which they were placing supper. Here I had light enough to perceive that our entertainer was a young man of a lively, intelligent countenance, in the Augustine monks' dress, viz., a long, black camlet frock, with a kind of white band over it, which looks much like a pair of suspenders worn on the outside. He spoke French very purely, and had all that warm cordiality and graceful vivacity of manner which seems to be peculiar to the French. He appeared to pity us very much, and was full of offers of assistance; and when he heard that I had a bad headache, insisted on having some tea made for me, the only drink on the table being wine The supper consisted of codfish, stewed apples, bread, filberts, and raisins. Immediately after we were shown up stone staircases, and along stone passages, to our rooms, of which the most inviting feature was two high, single beds covered with white spreads. The windows of the rooms were so narrow as to seem only like loopholes. There was a looking glass, table, chair, and some glazed prints.
A good old woman came to see if we wanted any thing. I thought, as I stretched myself in the bed, with feathers under me and feathers over me, what a heaven of rest this place must have seemed to poor travellers benighted and perishing in the snow. In the morning I looked out of my loophole on the tall, grim rocks, and a small lake frozen and covered with snow. "Is this lake always frozen?" said I to the old serving woman who had come to bring us hot water for washing.
"Sometimes," says she, "about the latter part of August, it is thawed."
I suppose it thaws the last of August, and freezes the first ofSeptember.
After dressing ourselves we crept down stairs in hopes of finding the fire which we left the night before in the sitting room. No such thing. The sun was shining, and it was what was called a warm day, that is to say, a day when a little thaw trickles down the south side of snow banks; so the fire was out, and the windows up, and our gay Augustine friend, coming in, congratulated us on our charming day.
The fireplace was piled up with wood and kindlings ready to be lighted in the evening; but being made to understand that it was a very sultry day, we could not, of course, suggest such an extravagance as igniting the tempting pile—an extravagance, because every stick of wood has to be brought on the backs of mules from the valleys below, at a very great expense of time and money.
The same is true of provisions of all sorts, and fodder for cattle.
Well, after breakfast I went to the front porch to view the prospect. And what did I see there? Banks of dirty, half-melted snow, bones, and scraps of offal, patches of bare earth, for a small space, say about fifty feet round, and then the whole region shut in by barren, inaccessible rocks, which cut off all view in every direction.
Along by the frozen lake there is a kind of causeway path made for a promenade, where one might walk to observe the beauties of the season, and our cheery entertainer offered to show it to us; so we walked out with him. Under the rocks in one place he showed us a little plat, about as large as a closet door, which, he said, laughing, was their garden.
I asked him if any thing ever really grew there. He shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Sometimes."
We pursued this walk till we came to the end of the lake, and there he showed me a stone pillar.
"There," said he, "beyond that pillar is Italy."
"Well," said I, "I believe I shall take a trip into Italy." So, as he turned back to go to the house, W. and I continued on. We went some way into Italy, down the ravine, and I can assure you I was not particularly struck with the country.
I observed no indications of that superiority in the fine arts, or of that genial climate and soil, of which I had heard so much. W. and I agreed to give ourselves airs on this subject whenever the matter of Italy was introduced, and to declare that we had been there, and had seen none of the things of which people write in books.
"What a perfectly dismal, comfortless place!" said I; but climbing up the rocks to rest me in a sunny place, I discovered that they were all enamelled with the most brilliant flowers.
[Illustration:of a cluster of small five-petaled flowers with blunt tips growing very close to the ground.]
In particular I remarked beds of velvet moss, which bore a pink blossom, in form somewhat like this. Then there was a kind of low, starry gentian, of a bright metallic blue; I tried to paint it afterwards, but neither ultramarine nor any color I could find would represent its brilliancy; it was a kind of living brightness. I examined the petals to see how this effect was produced, and it seemed to be by a kind of prismatic arrangement of the small round particles of which they were composed. The shape of the flower was somewhat like this.
[Illustration:of a cluster of small five petaled flowers with sharp points growing on short stalks near the ground.]
I spread down my pocket handkerchief, and proceeded to see how many varieties I could gather, and in a very small circle W. and I collected eighteen. Could I have thought, when I looked from my window over this bleak region, that any thing so perfectly lovely as this little purple witch, for example, was to be found there? It was quite a significant fact. There is no condition of life, probably, so dreary that a lowly and patient seeker cannot find its flowers.
[Illustration:of a clump of a small flowering plant attached to what appears to be its rhizome.]
I began to think that I might be contented even there. But while I was looking I was so sickened by headache, and disagreeable feelings arising from the air, that I often had to lie down on the sunny side of the bank. W., I found, was similarly troubled; he said he really thought in the morning he was going to have a fever. We went back to the house. There were services in the chapel; I could hear the organ pealing, and the singers responding.
Seven great dogs were sunning themselves on the porch, and as I knew it was a subject particularly interesting to you, I made minute inquiries respecting them. Like many other things, they have been much overstated, I think, by travellers. They are of a tawny-yellow color, short haired, broad chested, and strong limbed. As to size, I have seen much larger Newfoundland dogs in Boston. I made one of them open his mouth, and can assure you it was black as night; a fact which would seem to imply Newfoundland blood. In fact the breed originally from Spain is supposed to be a cross between the Pyrenean and the Newfoundland. The biggest of them was called Pluto. Here is his likeness, which W. sketched.
[Illustration:of a large, light-colored dog with medium-short fur at rest and wearing a broad patterned collar.]
For my part, I was a little uneasy among them, as they went walloping and frisking around me, flouncing and rolling over each other on the stone floor, and making, every now and then, the most hideous noises that it ever came into a dog's head to conceive.
As I saw them biting each other in their clumsy frolics, I began to be afraid lest they should take it into their heads to treat me like one of the family, and so stood ready to run.
The man who showed them wished to know if I should like to see some puppies; to which, in the ardor of natural history, I assented: so he opened the door of a little stone closet, and sure enough there lay madam in state, with four little blind, snubbed-nosed pledges. As the man picked up one of these, and held it up before me in all the helplessness of infancy, looking for all the world like a roly-poly pudding with a short tail to it, I could not help querying in my mind, are you going to be a St. Bernard dog?
One of the large dogs, seeing the door open, thought now was a good time to examine the premises, and so walked briskly into the kennel, but was received by the amiable mother with such a sniff of the nose as sent him howling back into the passage, apparently a much wiser and better dog than he had been before. Their principal use is to find paths in the deep snow when the fathers go out to look for travellers, as they always do in stormy weather. They are not longlived; neither man nor animal can stand the severe temperature and the thin air for a long time. Many of the dogs die from diseases of the lungs and rheumatism, besides those killed by accidents, such as the falling of avalanches, &c. A little while ago so many died that they were fearful of losing the breed altogether, and were obliged to recruit by sending down into the valleys for some they had given away. One of the monks told us that, when they went out after the dogs in the winter storms, all they could see of them was their tails moving along through the snow. The monks themselves can stand the climate but a short time, and then they are obliged to go down and live in the valleys below, while others take their places.
They told us that there were over a hundred people in thehospicewhen we were there. They were mostly poor peasants and some beggars. One poor man came up to me, and uncovered his neck, which was a most disgusting sight, swollen with goitre. I shut my eyes, and turned another way, like a bad Christian, while our Augustine friend walked up to him, spoke in a soothing tone, and called him "my son." He seemed very loving and gentle to all the poor, dirty people by whom we were surrounded.
I went into the chapel to look at the pictures. There was St. Bernard standing in the midst of a desolate, snowy waste, with a little child on one arm and a great dog beside him.
This St. Bernard, it seems, was a man of noble family, who lived nine hundred and sixty-two years after Christ. Almost up to that time a temple to Jupiter continued standing on this spot. It is said that the founding of this institution finally rooted out the idolatrous worship.
On Monday we returned to Martigny, and obtained avoitureforVilleneuve. Drove through the beautiful Rhone valley, past thecelebrated fall of the Pissevache, and about five o'clock reached theHotel Byron, on the shore of the lake.
Here I am, sitting at my window, overlooking Lake Leman. Castle Chillon, with its old conical towers, is silently pictured in the still waters. It has been a day of a thousand. We took a boat, with two oarsmen, and passed leisurely along the shores, under the cool, drooping branches of trees, to the castle, which is scarce a stone's throw from the hotel. We rowed along, close under the walls, to the ancient moat and drawbridge. There I picked a bunch of blue bells, "les clochettes," which were hanging their aerial pendants from every crevice—some blue, some white.
[Illustration:of blue bell flowers with sharp-bladed leaves.]
I know not why the old buildings and walls in Europe have this vivacious habit of shooting out little flowery ejaculations and soliloquies at every turn. One sees it along through France and Switzerland, every where; but never, that I remember, in America.
On the side of the castle wall, in a large white heart, is painted the inscription,Liberté et Patrie!
We rowed along, almost touching the castle rock, where the wall ascends perpendicularly, and the water is said to be a thousand feet deep. We passed the loopholes that illuminate the dungeon vaults, and an old arch, now walled up, where prisoners, after having been strangled, were thrown into the lake.
Last evening we walked over the castle. An interesting Swiss woman, who has taught herself English for the benefit of her visitors, was ourcicerone. She seemed to have all the old Swiss vivacity of attachment for "liberté et patrie."
[Illustration:of a interior space of hewn stone with high vaulted gothic arches.]
She took us first into the dungeon, with the seven pillars, described by Byron. There was the pillar to which, for protecting the liberty of Geneva, BONNEVARD was chained. There the Duke of Savoy kept him for six years, confined by a chain four feet long. He could take only three steps, and the stone floor is deeply worn by the prints of those weary steps. Six years is so easily said; but tolivethem, alone, helpless, a man burning with all the fires of manhood, chained to that pillar of stone, and those three unvarying steps! Two thousand one hundred and ninety days rose and set the sun, while seedtime and harvest, winter and summer, and the whole living world went on over his grave. For him no sun, no moon, no star, no business, no friendship, no plans—nothing! The great millstone of life emptily grinding itself away!
What a power of vitality was there in Bonnevard, that he did not sink in lethargy, and forget himself to stone! But he did not; it is said that when the victorious Swiss army broke in to liberate him, they cried,—
"Bonnevard, you are free!"
"Et Genève?"
"Geneva is free also!"
You ought to have heard the enthusiasm with which our guide told this story!
Near by are the relics of the cell of a companion of Bonnevard, who made an ineffectual attempt to liberate him. On the wall are still seen sketches of saints and inscriptions by his hand. This man one day overcame his jailer, locked him in his cell, ran into the hall above, and threw himself from a window into the lake, struck a rock, and was killed instantly. One of the pillars in this vault is covered with names. I think it is Bonnevard's pillar. There are the names of Byron, Hunt, Schiller, and many other celebrities.
After we left the dungeons we went up into the judgment hall, where prisoners were tried, and then into the torture chamber. Here are the pulleys by which limbs were broken; the beam, all scorched with the irons by which feet were burned; the oven where the irons were heated; and there was the stone where they were sometimes laid to be strangled, after the torture. On that stone, our guide told us, two thousand Jews, men, women, and children, had been put to death. There was also, high up, a strong beam across, where criminals were hung; and a door, now walled up, by which they were thrown into the lake. I shivered. "'Twas cruel," she said; "'twas almost as cruel as your slavery in America."
Then she took us into a tower where was theoubliette. Here the unfortunate prisoner was made to kneel before an image of the Virgin, while the treacherous floor, falling beneath him, precipitated him into a well forty feet deep, where he was left to die of broken limbs and starvation. Below this well was still another pit, filled with knives, into which, when they were disposed to a merciful hastening of the torture, they let him fall. The woman has been herself to the bottom of the first dungeon, and found there bones of victims. The second pit is now walled up.
"All this," she said, "was done for the glory of God in the good old times."
The glory of God! What has not been done in that name! Yet he keeps silence; patient he watches; the age-long fever of this world, the delirious night, shall have a morning. Ah, there is an unsounded depth in that word which says, "He is long-suffering." This it must be at which angels veil their faces.
On leaving the castle we offered the woman the customary gratuity. "No;" she would "have the pleasure of showing it to me as a friend." And she ran into a charming little garden, full of flowers, and brought me a bouquet of lilies and roses, which I have had in my room all day.
To-night, after sunset, we rowed to Byron's "little isle," the only one in the lake. O, the unutterable beauty of these mountains—great, purple waves, as if they had been dashed up by a mighty tempest, crested with snow-like foam! this purple sky, and crescent moon, and the lake gleaming and shimmering, and twinkling stars, while far off up the sides of a snow-topped mountain a light shines like a star— some mountaineer's candle, I suppose.
In the dark stillness we rowed again over to Chillon, and paused under its walls. The frogs were croaking in the moat, and we lay rocking on the wave, and watching the dusky outlines of the towers and turrets. Then the spirit of the scene seemed to wrap me round like a cloak.
Back to Geneva again. This lovely place will ever leave its image on my heart. Mountains embrace it. Strength and beauty are its habitation. The Salève is a peculiar looking mountain, striped with different strata of rock, which have a singular effect in the hazy distance; so is the Mole, with its dark marked outline, looking blacker in clear weather, from being set against the snow mountains beyond.
There is one peculiarity about the outline of Mont Blanc, as seen from Geneva, which is quite striking. There is in certain positions the profile of a gigantic head visible, lying with face upturned to the sky. Mrs. F. was the first to point it out to me, calling it a head of Napoleon. Like many of these fanciful profiles, I was some time in learning to see it; and after that it became to me so plain that I wondered I had not seen it before. I called it not Napoleon, however, but as it gained on my imagination, lying there so motionless, cold, and still, I thought of Prometheus on Mount Caucasus; it seemed as if, his sorrows ended, he had sunk at last to a dreamless sleep on that snowy summit. This sketch may, perhaps, give you some faint idea of how such an outline might be formed in one's imagination.
[Illustration:of Mont Blanc in the distance.]
We walked out the other evening, with M. Fazy, to a beautiful place, where Servetus was burned. Soft, new-mown meadow grass carpets it, and a solemn amphitheatre of mountains, glowing in the evening sky, looked down—Mont Blanc, the blue-black Mole, the Saleve! Never was deed done in a more august presence chamber! Ere this these two may have conferred together of the tragedy, with far other thoughts than then.
The world is always unjust to its progressive men. If one fragment of past absurdity cleaves to them, they celebrate the absurdity as a personal peculiarity. Hence we hear so much of Luther's controversial harshness, of Calvin's burning Servetus, and of the witch persecutions of New England.
Luther was the poet of the reformation, and Calvin its philosopher. Luther fused the mass, Calvin crystallized. He who fuses makes the most sensation in his day; he who crystallizes has a longer and wider power. Calvinism, in its essential features, never will cease from the earth, because the great fundamental facts of nature are Calvinistic, and men with strong minds and wills always discover it. The predestination of a sovereign will is written over all things. The old Greek tragedians read it, and expressed it. So did Mahomet, Napoleon, Cromwell. Why? They found it so by their own experience; they tried the forces of nature enough to find their strength. The strong swimmer who breasts the Rhone is certain of its current. But Ranke well said, that in those days when the whole earth was in arms against these reformers, they had no refuge except in exalting God's sovereignty above all other causes. To him who strives in vain with the giant forces of evil, what calm in the thought of an overpowering will, so that will be crowned by goodness! However grim, to the distrusting, looks this fortress of sovereignty in times of flowery ease, yet in times when "the waters roar and are troubled, and the mountains shake with the swelling thereof," it has been always the refuge of God's people. All this I say, while I fully sympathize with the causes which incline many fine and beautiful minds against the system.
The wife of De Wette has twice called upon me—a good, plain, motherly, pious old lady as any in Andover. She wanted me to visit her daughter, who, being recently deprived of her only little girl, has since been wholly lost to life. The only thing in which she expressed any interest was Uncle Tom's Cabin, and she was earnestly desiring to see me. So I went. I found Mrs. De Wette in a charming saloon, looking out upon the botanic gardens. A very beautiful picture of a young lady hung on the wall. "Thatwasmy poor Clara," said Mrs. De Wette, "but she is so altered now!"
After a while Clara came in, and I was charmed at a glance—a most lovely creature, in deep mourning, with beautiful manners; so much interested for the poor slaves! so full of feeling, inquiring so anxiously what she could do for them!
"Do ministers ever hold slaves?" she said.
"0, yes; many."
"0! But how can they be Christians?"
"They reason in this way," said I; "they say, 'These people are not fit to take care of themselves; therefore we must hold them, and educate them, till they are fit to be free.'"
"I wish," said she, looking very pretty and fierce, "that they might all be sold themselves, and see how they would like it."
Her husband, who speaks only French, now asked what we were talking about, and she repeated the conversation.
"I would shoot every one of them," said he, with a significant movement.
"Now, see," said Mrs. De Wette, "Clara would sell them, and her husband wouldshootthem; for my part, I would ratherconvertthem." We all laughed at this sally.
"Ah," said Clara, "the last thing my little darling looked at was the pictures in Uncle Tom; when she came to the death of Eva, she said, 'Now I am weary, I will go to sleep;' and so closed her eyes, and never opened them more."
Clara said she had met the Key in Turin and Milan. The Cabin is made a school reading book in Sardinia, for those who wish to learn English, with explanatory notes in Italian. The feeling here on the continent for the slave is no less earnest than in England and Scotland. I have received most beautiful and feeling letters from many Christians of Switzerland, which I will show you.
I am grieved to say, that there are American propagandists of slavery here, who seem to feel it incumbent on them to recognize this hideous excrescence as a national peculiarity, and to consider any reflection upon it, on the part of the liberty-loving Swiss, as an insult to the American nation. The sophisms by which slaveholding has been justified from the Bible have left their slimy track even here. Alas! is it thus America fulfils her high destiny? Must she send missionaries abroad to preach despotism?
Walking the other evening with M. Fazy, who is, of course, French in education, we talked of our English literature. He. had Hamlet in French—just think of it. One never feels the national difference so much as in thinking of Shakspeare in French! Madame de Stael says of translation, that music written for one instrument cannot be played upon another. I asked if he had read Milton.
"Yes."
"And how did you like him?"
"0," with a kind of shiver, "he is so cold!"
Now, I felt that the delicate probe of the French mind had dissected out a shade of feeling of which I had often been conscious. There is a coldness about all the luscious exuberance of Milton, like the wind that blows from, the glaciers across these flowery valleys. How serene his angels in their adamantine virtue! yet what sinning, suffering soul could find sympathy in them? The utter want of sympathy for the fallen angels, in the whole celestial circle, is shocking. Satan is the only one who weeps.
"For millions of spirits for his fault amerced,And from eternal splendors flung."
God does not care, nor his angels. Ah, quite otherwise is God revealed in Him who wept over Jerusalem, and is touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
I went with Mrs. Fazy the other night to call on Mrs. C.'s friend, Pastor C. They were so affectionate, so full of beautiful kindness! The French language sounds sweetly as a language of affection and sympathy: with all its tart vivacity, it has a richness in the gentler world of feeling. Then, in the evening, I was with a little circle of friends at the house of the sister of Merle d'Aubigne, and they prayed and sang together. It was beautiful. The hymn was one on the following of Jesus, similar to that German one of old Godfrey Arnold, which is your favorite. These Christians speak with deep sorrow of our slavery; it grieves, it distresses them, for the American church has been to them a beloved object. They have leaned towards it as a vine inclines towards a vigorous elm. To them it looks incomprehensible that such a thing could gain strength in a free Christian republic.
I feel really sorry that I have had to withdraw so much from proffered kindness here, and to seem unwilling to meet feeling; but so it has been. Yet, to me, apparently so cold, many of these kind Genevese have shown most considerate attention. Fruit and flowers have been sent in anonymously; and one gentleman offered to place his garden at my disposal for walks, adding that, if I wished to be entirely private, neither he nor his family would walk there. This, I thought, was too much kindness.
One social custom here is new to me. The husband, by marriage, takes the wife's name. Thus M. Fazy, our host, is known as M. Fazy Meyer— Meyer being his wife's name—a thing which at first perplexed me. I was often much puzzled about names, owing to this circumstance.
From the conversation I hear I should think that democracy was not entirely absolute in Switzerland. I hear much aboutpatricianfamilies, particularly at Berne, and these are said to be quite exclusive; yet that the old Swiss fire still burns in Switzerland, I see many indications.
The other day I visited Beautte's celebrated watch and jewelry store, and saw all the process of making watches, from the time the case is cut from a sheet of gold, on through the enamelling, engraving, and finishing. Enamel is metallic paint, burned on in a furnace. Many women are employed in painting the designs. The workmen looked intelligent and thoughtful, like men who can both think and do. Some glimpses showed their sympathy with republicanism—as one should see fire through a closed door.
I have had full reason to observe that difference between Protestant and Catholic cantons on which Horace Greeley commented while here. They are as different as our slave and free states, and in the same ways. Geneva seems like New England—the country around is well cultivated, and speaks of thrift. But, still, I find no land, however beautiful, that can compare with home—Andover Hill, with its arched elms, its blue distance pointing with spires, its Merrimac crowned with labor palaces, and, above all, an old stone house, brown and queer, &c. Good by.
Thursday, July 14. Spent a social evening at Mrs. La V.'s, on the lake shore. Mont Blanc invisible. We met M. Merle d'Aubigne, brother of our hostess, and a few other friends. Returned home, and listened to a serenade to H. from a glee club of fifty performers, of the working men of Geneva. The songs were mostly in French, and the burden of one of them seemed to be in words like these:—
"Travaillons, travaillez,Pour la liberte!"
Friday, July 15. Mrs. C. and her two daughters are here from Paris.They intend to come to Madame Fazy till we leave.
Saturday, July 16. Our whole company resorted to the lake, and spent the forenoon on its tranquil waters. If this life seem idle, we remember that there must be valleys between mountains; and as, in those vales, tired mountaineers love to rest, so we, by the silver shore of summer Leman, while away the quiet hours, in this interval, between great mountain epochs Chamouni and Oberland.
Monday, July 18. Weather suspicious. Stowed ourselves and our baggage into ourvoiture, and bade adieu to our friends and to Geneva. Ah, how regretfully! From the market-place we carried away a basket of cherries and fruit, as a consolation. Dined at Lausanne, and visited the cathedral and picture gallery, where was an exquisiteEva.Slept at Meudon.
Tuesday, July 19. Rode through Payerne to Freyburg. Stopped at the Zahringer Hof—most romantic of inns. Our gentlemanly host ushered us forth upon a terrace overhanging the deep gorge of the Saärine, spanned, to the right and left of us, by two immense suspension bridges, one of which seemed to spring from the hotel itself. Ruins of ancient walls and watch towers lined the precipice.
After dinner we visited the cathedral to hear the celebrated organ. The organist performed a piece descriptive of a storm. We resigned ourselves to the illusion. Low, mysterious wailings, swelling, dying away in the distance, seeming at first exceedingly remote, drew gradually near. Fitful sighings and sobbings rose, as of gusts of wind; then low, smothered roarings. Anon came flashes of lightning, rattling hail, and driving rain, succeeded by bursts of storm, and howlings of a hurricane—fierce, furious, frightful. I felt myself lost in a snow storm in winter, on the pass of Great St. Bernard.
One note there was of strange, terrible clangor—bleak, dark, yet of a lurid fire—that seemed to prolong itself through all the uproar, like a note of doom, cutting its way to the heart as the call of the last archangel. Yes, I felt myself alone, lost in a boundless desert, beyond the abodes of man; and this was a call of terror-stern, savage, gloomy—the call as of fixed fate and absolute despair.
Then the storm died away, in faint and far-off murmurs; and we broke, as it were, from the trance, to find ourselves,notlost, but here among the living. We then drove quietly to Berne.
Wednesday, July 20. Examined, not the lions, but the bears of Berne. It is indeed a city of bears, as its name imports. There are bears on its gates, bears on its fountains, bears in its parks and gardens, bears every where. But, though Berne rejoices in a fountain adorned with an image of Saturn eating children, nevertheless, the old city—quaint, quiet, and queer—looks as if, bear-like, it had been hybernating good-naturedly for a century, and were just about to wake up.
Engaged avoiture, and drove to Thun. Dined, and drove by the shore of the lake to Interlachen, arriving just after a brilliant sunset.
Thursday, July 21. S. and G. remained at the Belvedere. W., II., and I took a guide andvoiturefor Lauterbrunn. Here we visited Byron's apocalyptic horse-tail waterfall, the Staubbach. This waterfall is very sublime, all except the water and the fall. Whoever has been "under the sheet" at Niagara will not be particularly impressed here. This picture is sufficiently accurate, with the exception of the cottage. People here do not build cottages under waterfalls.
[Illustration:of the waterfall and cliff rising sharply to the left of the roadway. A cabin appears to be located very near its base.]
Here we crossed the Wengern Alps to Grindelwald. The Jungfrau is right over against us—her glaciers purer, tenderer, more dazzlingly beautiful, if possible, than those of Mont Blanc. Slept at Grindelwald.
To-day we have been in the Wengern Alps—the scenes described in Manfred. Imagine us mounting, about ten o'clock, from the valley of Lauterbrunn, on horseback—our party of three—with two guides. We had first been to see the famous Staubbach, a beautiful, though not sublime, object. Up we began to go among those green undulations which form the lower part of the mountain.
[Illustration:of narrow, high alpine meadows with grazing livestock.]
It is haying time; a bright day; all is cheerful; the birds sing; men, women, and children are busy in the field. Up we go, zigzag; it grows steeper and steeper. Now right below me is a field, where men are literally working almost on a perpendicular wall, cutting hay; now we are so high that the houses in the valley look like chips. Here we stand in a place two thousand feet above the valley. There is no shield or screen. The horse stands on the very edge; the guide stops, lets go his bridle, and composedly commences an oration on the scene below. "0, for mercy's sake, why do you stop here?" I say. "Pray go on." He looks in my face, with innocent wonder, takes the bridle on his arm, and goes on.
Now we have come to the little village of Wengern, whence the Wengern Alps take their name. How beautiful! how like fairyland! Up here, midway in air, is a green nook, with undulating dells, and shadowy, breezy nests, where are the cottages of the haymakers. The Delectable Mountains had no scene more lovely. Each house has its roof heavily loaded with stones. "What is that for?" I ask. "The whirlwinds," says my guide, with a significant turn of his hands. "This is the school house," he adds, as we pass a building larger than the rest.
Now the path turns and slopes down a steep bank, covered with haycocks, to a little nook below, likewise covered with new hay. If my horse is going to throw me any where, I wish it may be here: it is not so bad a thing to roll down into that hay. But now we mount higher; the breezy dells, enamelled with flowers and grass, become fewer; the great black pines take their place. Right before us, in the purest white, as a bride adorned for her husband, rises the beautiful Jungfrau, wearing on her forehead the Silver Horn, and the Snow Horn. The Silver Horn is a peak, dazzlingly bright, of snow; and its crest is now seen in relief against a sky of the deepest blue. See, also, how those dark pines of the foreground contrast with it, like the stern, mournful realities of life seen against the dazzling hopes of heaven.
There is something celestial in these mountains. You might think such a vision as that to be a bright footstool of Heaven, from which the next step would be into an unknown world. The pines here begin to show that long white beard of moss which I admire so much in Maine. Now, we go right up over their heads. There, the tall pines are under our feet. A little more—and now above us rise the stern, naked rocks, where only the chamois and the wild goat live. But still, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, looks forth the Jungfrau.
We turn to look down. That Staubbach, which in the valley seemed to fall from an immense precipice, higher than we could gaze, is now a silver thread, far below our feet; and the valley of Lauterbrunn seems as nothing. Only bleak, purplish crags, rising all around us, and silent, silver mountains looking over them.
"That one directly before you is the Monk," says C., calling to me from behind, and pointing to a great snow peak.
Our guide, with animation, introduced us by name to every one of these snow-white genii—the Falhorn, the Schreckhorn, the Wetterhorn, the great Eiger, and I cannot remember what besides. The guides seem to consider them all as old friends.
Certainly nothing could be so singular, so peculiar as this ascension. We have now passed the limit of all but grass and Alpine flowers, which still, with their infinite variety, embroider the way; and now theaubergeis gained. Good night, now, and farewell.
That is to say, there we stopped—on the summit, in fair view of the Jungfrau, a wall of rock crowned with fields of eternal snow, whose dazzling brightness almost put my eyes out. My head ached, too, with the thin air of these mountains. I thought I should like to stay one night just to hear avalanches fall; but I cannot breathe well here, and there is a secret sense of horror about these sterile rocks and eternal snows. So, after dinner, I gladly consent to go down to Grindelwald.
Off we start—I walking—for, to tell the truth, I have no fondness for riding down a path as steep in some places as a wall; I leave that to C., who never fears any thing. So I walked all the way to Grindelwald, nine miles of a very rough road. There was a lady with her husband walking the same pass, who had come on foot the whole way from Lauterbrunn, and did not seem in the least fatigued. My guide exhausted all his eloquence to persuade me that it was better to ride; at last I settled him by saying, "Why, here is a lady who has walked the whole route." So he confined himself after that to helping me find flowers, and carrying the handkerchief in which I stowed them. Alas! what herbarium of hapless flowers, laid out stark, stiff, and motionless, like beauty on its bier, and with horrible long names written under them, can ever give an idea of the infinite variety and beauty of the floral crown of these mountains!
The herbarium resembles the bright, living reality no more than themorgueat St. Bernard's is a specimen of mountain travellers. Yet one thing an herbarium is good for: in looking at it you can recall how they looked, and glowed, and waved in life, with all their silver-crowned mountains around them.
After we arrived at Grindelwald, tired as I was, I made sketches of nine varieties, which I intend to color as soon as we rest long enough. So much I did for love of the dear little souls.
One noticeable feature is the predominance ofyellowflowers. These, of various kinds, so abound as to make a distinct item of coloring in a distant view. One of the most common is this—of a vivid chrome yellow, sometimes brilliantly striped with orange.
[Illustration:of a flowered bract.]
One thing more as to botanical names. What does possess botanists to afflict the most fragile and delicate of earth's children with such mountainous and unpronounceable names? Now there was a dear little flower that I first met at St. Bernard—a little purple bell, with a fringe; it is more particularly beautiful from its growing just on the verge of avalanches, coming up and blossoming through the snow. I send you one in this letter, which I dug out of a snow bank this morning. And this fair creation—this hope upon a death bed—this image of love unchilled and immortal—how I wanted to know it by name!
[Illustration:of a tiny plant with a single flowering stem and two simple circular leaves.]
Today, at the summit house of the mountain, I opened an herbarium, and there were three inches of name as hopeless and unpronounceable as the German of our guides, piled up on my little flower. I shut the herbarium.
This morning we started early from Grindelwald—that is, by eight o'clock. An unclouded, clear, breezy morning, the air full of the sounds of cascades, and of the little bells of the herds. As we began to wind upward into that delectable region which forms the first stage of ascent, I said to C., "The more of beautiful scenery I see, the more I appreciate the wonderful poetry of the Pilgrim's Progress." The meadows by the River of Life, the Delectable Mountains, the land of Beulah, how often have I thought of them! From this we went off upon painting, and then upon music, the freshness of the mountain air inspiring our way. At last, while we were riding in the very lap of a rolling field full of grass and flowers, the sharp blue and white crystals of the glacier rose at once before us.
"O, I want to get down," said I, "and go near them."
Down I did get, and taking what seemed to be the straightest course, began running down the hill side towards them.
"No, no! Back, back!" shouted the guide, in unimaginable French andGerman."Ici, ici!"
I came back; and taking my hand, he led me along a path where travellers generally go. I went closer, and sat down on a rock under them, and looked up. The clear sun was shining through them; clear and blue looked the rifts and arches, all dripping and beautiful. We went down upon them by steps which a man had cut in the ice. There was one rift of ice we looked into, which was about fifty feet high, going up into a sharp arch. The inside of this arch was clear blue ice, of the color of crystal of blue vitriol.
Here, immediately under, I took a rude sketch just to show you how a glacier looks close at hand.
[Illustration:of the broken and chiseled surface of a glacier.]
C. wanted, as usual, to do all sorts of improper things. He wanted to stone down blocks of ice, and to go inside the cave, and to go down into holes, and insisted on standing particularly long on a spot which the guide told him was all undermined, in order that he might pelt a cliff of ice that seemed inclined to fall, and hear it smash.
The poor guide was as distressed as a hen when her ducks take to the water; he ran, and called, and shouted, in German, French, and English, and it was not till C. had contrived to throw the head of the little boy's hatchet down into acrevasse, that he gave up. There were two francs to pay for this experiment; but never mind! Our guide book says that a clergyman of Yevay, on this glacier, fell into acrevasseseveral hundred feet deep, and was killed; so I was glad enough when C. came off safe.
He ought to have a bell on his neck, as the cows do here; andaproposto this, we leave the glacier, and ride up into a land of pastures. Here we see a hundred cows grazing in the field—the field all yellow with buttercups. They are a very small breed, prettily formed, and each had on her neck a bell. How many notes there are in these bells! quite a diapason—some very deep toned, and so on up to the highest! how prettily they sound, all going together! The bells are made of the best of metal, for the tone is of an admirable quality.
0, do look off there, on that patch of snow under the Wetterhorn! It is all covered with cows; they look no bigger than insects. "What makes them go there?" said we to our guides.
"To be cool" was the answer.
Hark! what's that? a sudden sound like the rush of a cascade.
"Avalanche! avalanche!" exclaimed the guide. And now, pouring down the sides of the Wetterhorn, came a milk-white cascade, looking just like any other cascade, melting gracefully over the rocks, and spreading, like a stream of milk, on the soiled snow below.
This is a summer avalanche—a merebijou—a fancy article, got up, or rather got down, to entertain travellers. The winter avalanches are quite other things. Witness a little further in our track, where our guide stops us, and points to a place where all the pines have been broken short off by one of them. Along here some old ghostly pines, dead ages ago, their white, ghastly skeletons bleached by a hundred storms, stand, stretching out their long, bony arms, like phantom giants. These skeleton pines are a striking image; I wonder I have not seen them introduced into pictures.
There, now, a little ahead, is a small hut, which marks the summit of the grand Scheidich. Our horses come up to it, and we dismount. Some of the party go in to sleep—I go out to climb a neighboring peak. At the foot of this peak lay a wreath of snow, soiled and dirty, as half-melted snow always is; but lying amid the green grass and luxuriant flowers, it had a strange air. It seemed a little spot of death in the green lap of rejoicing life—like that death-spot which often lies in the human heart—among all seeming flowers, cold and cheerless, unwarmed by the sunbeam, and unmelted by the ray that unfolds thousands of blooms around.
Now, I thought, I have read of Alpine flowers leaning their cheeks on the snows. I wonder if any flowers grow near enough to that snow to touch it. I mean to go and see. So I went; there, sure enough, my little fringed purple bell, to which I have given the name of "suspirium," was growing, not only close to the snow, but in it.
Thus God's grace shining steadily on the waste places of the human heart, brings up heavenward sighings and aspirations which pierce through the cold snows of affliction, and tell that there is yet life beneath.
I climbed up the grassy sides of the peak, flowers to the very top. There I sat down and looked. This is Alpine solitude. All around me were these deep, green dells, from which comes up the tinkle of bells, like the dropping of rain every where It seems to me the air is more elastic and musical here than below, and gives grace to the commonest sound. Now I look back along the way we have been travelling. I look at the strange old cloudy mountains, the Eiger, the Wetterhorn, the Schreckhorn. A kind of hazy ether floats around them—an indescribable aerial halo—which no painter ever represents. Who can paint the air—that vivid blue in which these sharp peaks cut their glittering images? Of all peaks, the Eiger is the most impressive to me.
[Illustration:of the sharp pointed Eiger, with mountain goats on a pinnacle in the foreground.]
It is a gigantic ploughshare of rock, set up against the sky, its thin, keen, purple blade edged with glittering frost; for so sharp is its point, that only a dazzling line marks the eternal snow on its head.
I walked out as far as I could on a narrow summit, and took a last look. Glaciers! snows! mountains! sunny dells and flowers! all good by. I am a pilgrim and a stranger.
Already, looking down to the shanty, I see the guide like a hen that has lost a chicken, shaking her wings, and clucking, and making a great ado. I could stay here all day. I would like to stay two or three—to see how it would look at sunrise, at sunset—to lie down in one of these sunny hollows, and look up into the sky—to shut my eyes lazily, and open them again, and so let the whole impressionsoak in, as Mrs. H. used to say.
But no; the sleepers have waked up, the guide has the horses ready, and I must come down. So here I descend my hill Difficulty into the valley of Humiliation. We stumble along, for the roads here are no turnpikes, and we come to a place called theBlack Forest;nottheBlack Forest, but truly a black one. I always love pines, to all generations. I welcome this solemn old brotherhood, which stand gray-bearded, like monks, old, dark, solemn, sighing a certain mournful sound—like abenedicitethrough the leaves.
About noon we came to Rosenlaui. As we drew near the hotel the guide struck off upon a path leading up the mountain, saying, by way of explanation,"The glacier!"
Now, I confess that it was rather too near dinner time, and I was too tired at once to appreciate this movement.
I regret to say, that two glaciers, however beautiful, on an empty stomach, appear rather of doubtful utility. So I remonstrated; but the guide, as all guides do, went dead ahead, as if I had not said a word. C., however, rode composedly towards the hotel, saying that dinner was a finer sight than a glacier; and I, though only of the same mind, thought I would follow my guide, just to see.
W. went with me. After a little we had to leave our horses, and scramble about a mile up the mountain. "C. was right, and we are wrong," said my companion, sententiously. I was just dubious enough to be silent. Pretty soon we came to a tremendous ravine, as if an earthquake had rent a mountain asunder. A hundred feet down in this black gorge, a stream was roaring in a succession of mad leaps, and a bridge crossed it, where we stood to gaze down into its dark, awful depths. Then on we went till we came to the glacier. What a mass of clear, blue ice! so very blue, so clear! This awful chasm runs directly under it, and the mountain torrent, formed by the melting of the glacier, falls in a roaring cascade into it. You can go down into a cavern in this rift. Above your head a roof of clear, blue ice; below your feet this black chasm, with the white, flashing foam of the cascade, as it leaps away into the darkness. On one side of the glacier was a little sort of cell, or arched nook, up which an old man had cut steps, and he helped me up into it. I stood in a little Gothic shrine of blue, glittering ice, and looked out of an arched window at the cascade and mountains. I thought of Coleridge's line—
"A pleasure bower with domes of ice."
[Illustration:of a glacier's terminus, with animals and small buildings in the foreground.]
On the whole, the glacier of Rosenlaui paid for looking—even at dinner time—which is saying a good deal.
FRIDAY, July 22, Grindelwald to Meyringen. On we came, to the top of the Great Schiedich, where H. and W. botanized, while I slept. Thence we rode down the mountain till we reached Rosenlaui, where, I am free to say, a dinner was to me a more interesting object than a glacier. Therefore, while H. and W. went to the latter, I turned off to the inn, amid their cries and reproaches. I waved my cap and made a bow. A glacier!—go five rods farther to see a glacier! Catch me in any such folly. The fact is, Alps are good, like confections, in moderation; but to breakfast, dine, and sup on Alps surfeits my digestion.
Here, for example, I am writing these notes in thesalle-à-mangerof the inn, where other voyagers are eating and drinking, and there H. is feeding on the green moonshine of an emerald ice cave. One would almost think her incapable of fatigue. How she skips up and down high places and steep places, to the manifest perplexity of honest guide Kienholz,père, who tries to take care of her, but does not exactly know how. She gets on a pyramid ofdébris, which the edge of the glacier is ploughing and grinding up, sits down, and falls—not asleep exactly—but into a trance. W. and I are ready to go on; we shout; our voice is lost in the roar of the torrent. We send the guide. He goes down, and stands doubtfully. He does not know exactly what to do. She hears him, and starts to her feet, pointing with one hand to yonder peak, and with the other to that knifelike edge, that seems cleaving heaven with its keen and glistening cimeter of snow, reminding one of Isaiah's sublime imagery, "For my sword is bathed in heaven." She points at the grizzly rocks, with their jags and spear points. Evidently she is beside herself, and thinks she can remember the names of those monsters, born of earthquake and storm, which cannot be named nor known but by sight, and then are known at once, perfectly and forever.
Mountains are Nature's testimonials of anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must. In them hearts that have ceased to rejoice, and have learned to suffer, find kindred, and here, an earth worn with countless cycles of sorrow, utters to the stars voices of speechless despair.
And all this time no dinner! All this time H. is at the glacier! How do I know but she has fallen into acrevasse? How do I know but that a cliff, one of those ice castles, those leaning turrets, those frosty spearmen, have toppled over upon her? I shudder at the reflection. I will write no more.
I had just written thus far, when in came H. and W. in high feather. O, I had lost the greatest sight in Switzerland! There was such a chasm, a mountain cut in twain, with a bridge, and a man to throw a stone down; and you could hear it goboom, andhe held his hat!"Not a doubt of that," said I. Then there was a cavern in the ice, and the ice was so green, and the water dripped from the roof, and a great river rushed out. Such was the substance of their united enthusiasm.
But, alas! it was not enough to lose the best glacier in Switzerland; I must needs lose two cascades and a chamois. Just before coming to Meyringen, I was composedly riding down a species of stone gridiron, set up sidewise, called a road, when the guide overtook me, and requested me to walk, as the road was bad. Stupid fellow! he said not a word about cascades and chamois, and so I went down like a chamois myself, taking the road that seemed best and nearest, and reached the inn an hour before the rest. After waiting till I became alarmed, and was just sending back a messenger to inquire, lo, in they came, and began to tell me of cascades and chamois.
"What cascade? What chamois? I have not seen any!" And then what a burst! "Not seen any! What, two cascades, one glacier, and a four-year-old chamois, lost in one day! What will become of you? Is this the way you make the tour of Switzerland?"
Saturday, July 23. Rode in avoiturefrom Meyringen to Brienz, on the opposite end of the lake from Interlachen. Embarked in a rowboat of four immense oars tied by withs. Two men and one woman pulled three, and W. and I took turns at the fourth. The boat being high built, flat bottomed, with awning and flagstaff, rolled and tipped so easily that soon H., with remorseful visage, abandoned her attempt to write, and lay down. There is a fresh and savage beauty about this lake, which can only be realized by rowing across.
Interlachen is underrated in the guide books. It has points of unrivalled loveliness; the ruins of the old church of Rinconberg, for example, commanding a fine view of both lakes, of the country between, and the Alps around, while just at your feet is a little lake in a basin, some two hundred feet above the other lakes. Then, too, from your window in the Belvedere, you gaze upon the purity of the Jungfrau. The church, too, where on Sabbath we attended Episcopal service, is embowered in foliage, and seems like some New England village meeting house.
Monday, July 25. Adieu to Interlachen! Ho for Lucerne and the Righi! Dined at Thun in a thunder storm. Stopped over night at Langnau, an out-of-the-way place. H. and G. painted Alpine flowers, while I played violin. This violin must be of spotless pedigree, even as our Genevese friend, Monsieur—, certified when he reluctantly sold it me. None but a genuine AMATI, a hundred years old, can possess this mysterious quality, that can breathe almost inaudible, like a mornbeam in the parlor, or predominate imperious and intense over orchestra and choir, illuminating with its fire, like chain lightning, the arches of a vast cathedral. Enchanted thing—what nameless spirit impregnates with magnetic ether the fine fibres of thy mechanism!
Tuesday, 26. Rode from Langnan to Lucerne just in time to take the boat for Weggis. From the door of the Hotel de la Concorde, at Weggis, the guidecheffitted us out with twochaises à porteur, sixcarriers, two mules with grooms, making a party of fourteen in all.
After ascending a while the scenery became singularly wild and beautiful. Vast walls and cliffs of conglomerate rose above us, up which our path wound in zigzags. Below us were pines, vales, fields, and hills, themselves large enough for mountains. There, at our feet, with its beautiful islands, bays, capes, and headlands, gleams the broad lake of the four cantons, consecrated by the muse of Schiller and the heroism of Tell. New plains are unrolling, new mountain tops sinking below our range of vision. We plunged into a sea of mist. It rolled and eddied, boiling beneath us. Through its mysterious pall we saw now a skeleton pine stretch out its dark pointing hand—now a rock, shapeless and uncouth, far below, like a behemoth petrified in mid ocean. Then an eddy would sweep a space for the sun to pour a flood of gold on this field far down at our feet, on that village, on this mountain side with its rosy vapor-wreaths, upon yon distant lake, making it a crater of blinding brightness. On we went wrapped in mantles, mist, and mystery, trembling with chilliness and enthusiasm. We reached the summit just as the sunset-gazing crowd were dispersing. And this is Righi Kulm!
Wednesday, 27. At half past three in the morning we were aroused by the Alpine horn. We sprang up, groping and dressing in the dark, and went out in the frosty air. Ascending the ridge we looked off upon a sleeping world. Mists lay beneath like waves, clouds, like a sea. On one side the Oberland Alps stretched along the horizon their pale, blue-white peaks. Other mountains, indistinct in color and outline, chained round the whole horizon. Yes, "the sleeping rocks did dream" all over the wide expanse, as they slumbered on their cloudy pillow, and their dream was of the coming dawn. Twelve lakes, leaden pale or steel blue, dreamed also under canopies of cloud, and the solid land dreamed, and all her wilds and forests. And in the silence of the dream already the tinge of clairvoyance lit the gray east; a dim, diffuse aurora, while yet the long, low clouds hung lustreless above; nor could the eye prophesy where should open the door in heaven. At length, a flush, as of shame or joy, presaged the pathway. Tongues of many-colored light vibrated beneath the strata of clouds, now dappled, mottled, streaked with fire; those on either hand of a light, flaky, salmon tint, those in the path and portal of the dawn of a gorgeous blending and blazoning of golden glories. The mists all abroad stirred uneasily. Tufts of feathery down came up out of the mass. Soft, floating films lifted from the surface and streamed away dissolving. Strange hues came out on lake and shore, far, far below. The air, the very air became conscious of a coming change, and the pale tops of distant Alps sparkled like diamonds. It was night in the valleys. And we heard the cocks crowing below, and the uneasy stir of a world preparing to awake. So Isaiah foresaw a slumbering world, while Messiah's coming glanced upon the heights of Zion, and cried,—
"Behold, darkness shall cover the earthAnd gross darkness the people;But the Lord shall rise upon THEE,And his glory shall be seen upon thee!"
Hushed the immense crowd of spectators waited; then he came. On the gray edge of the horizon, under the emblazoned strata, came a sudden coal of fire, as shot from the altar of Heaven. It dazzled, it wavered, it consumed. Its lambent lines lengthened sidelong. At length, not a coal, but a shield, as the shield of Jehovah, stood above the east, and it was day. The vapor sea heaved, and broke, and rolled up the mountain sides. The lakes flashed back the conquering splendor. The wide panorama, asleep no more, was astir with teeming life.
Tuesday, July 28. One of the greatest curiosities in Lucerne is the monument to those brave Swiss guards who were slain for their unshaken fidelity to the unhappy Louis XVI. In a sequestered spot the rocky hill side is cut away, and in the living strata is sculptured the colossal figure of a dying lion. A spear is broken off in his side, but in his last struggle he still defends a shield, marked with thefleur de lisof France. Below are inscribed in red letters, as if charactered in blood, the names of the brave officers of that devoted band. From many a crevice in the rock drip down trickling springs, forming a pellucid basin below, whose dark, glossy surface, encircled with trees and shrubs, reflects the image. The design of the monument is by Thorwaldsen, and the whole effect of it has an inexpressible pathos.
[Illustration:of the memorial. Above the grotto reads:
On the monument's plinth can be read the following:
DIE X AUGUSTI II ET III SEPTEMBRIS MDCCXCIIHAEC SUNT NOMINA EORUM OUTNE SACRA(illegible) (illegible)DUES XXVI DUCES]
Rode in our privatevoitureto Basle, and rested our weary limbs at the Three Kings.