Next morning we walked to Rosenlaui, the BEAU ID'EAL

of Swiss scenery, where we spent the middle of the day

in an excursion to the glacier. This was more beautiful

than words can describe, for in the constant progress

of the ice it has changed the form of its extremity

and formed a vast cavern, as blue as the sky above,

and rippled like a frozen ocean. A few steps cut

in the WHOOPJAMBOREEHOO enabled us to walk completely

under this, and feast our eyes upon one of the loveliest

objects in creation. The glacier was all around divided

by numberless fissures of the same exquisite color,

and the finest wood-ERDBEEREN were growing in abundance

but a few yards from the ice. The inn stands in a CHARMANT

spot close to the C^OTE DE LA RIVIE`RE, which, lower down,

forms the Reichenbach fall, and embosomed in the richest

of pine woods, while the fine form of the Wellhorn

looking down upon it completes the enchanting BOPPLE.

In the afternoon we walked over the Great Scheideck

to Grindelwald, stopping to pay a visit to the Upper

glacier by the way; but we were again overtaken by bad

HOGGLEBUMGULLUP and arrived at the hotel in a SOLCHE

a state that the landlord's wardrobe was in great request.

The clouds by this time seemed to have done their worst,

for a lovely day succeeded, which we determined to devote

to an ascent of the Faulhorn. We left Grindelwald just as

a thunder-storm was dying away, and we hoped to find GUTEN

WETTER up above; but the rain, which had nearly ceased,

began again, and we were struck by the rapidly increasing

FROID as we ascended. Two-thirds of the way up were

completed when the rain was exchanged for GNILLIC,

with which the BODEN was thickly covered, and before we

arrived at the top the GNILLIC and mist became so thick

that we could not see one another at more than twenty

POOPOO distance, and it became difficult to pick our way over

the rough and thickly covered ground. Shivering with cold,

we turned into bed with a double allowance of clothes,

and slept comfortably while the wind howled AUTOUR DE

LA MAISON; when I awoke, the wall and the window looked

equally dark, but in another hour I found I could just

see the form of the latter; so I jumped out of bed,

and forced it open, though with great difficulty from

the frost and the quantities of GNILLIC heaped up against it.

A row of huge icicles hung down from the edge of the roof,

and anything more wintry than the whole ANBLICK could

not well be imagined; but the sudden appearance of the

great mountains in front was so startling that I felt no

inclination to move toward bed again. The snow which had

collected upon LA FENE^TRE had increased the FINSTERNISS

ODER DER DUNKELHEIT, so that when I looked out I was

surprised to find that the daylight was considerable,

and that the BALRAGOOMAH would evidently rise before long.

Only the brightest of LES E'TOILES were still shining;

the sky was cloudless overhead, though small curling

mists lay thousands of feet below us in the valleys,

wreathed around the feet of the mountains, and adding

to the splendor of their lofty summits. We were soon

dressed and out of the house, watching the gradual approach

of dawn, thoroughly absorbed in the first near view

of the Oberland giants, which broke upon us unexpectedly

after the intense obscurity of the evening before.

"KABAUGWAKKO SONGWASHEE KUM WETTERHORN SNAWPO!" cried some one,

as that grand summit gleamed with the first rose of dawn;

and in a few moments the double crest of the Schreckhorn

followed its example; peak after peak seemed warmed

with life, the Jungfrau blushed even more beautifully

than her neighbors, and soon, from the Wetterhorn in the

east to the Wildstrubel in the west, a long row of fires

glowed upon mighty altars, truly worthy of the gods.

The WLGW was very severe; our sleeping-place could

hardly be DISTINGUEE' from the snow around it, which had

fallen to a depth of a FLIRK during the past evening,

and we heartily enjoyed a rough scramble EN BAS to the

Giesbach falls, where we soon found a warm climate.

At noon the day before Grindelwald the thermometer could

not have stood at less than 100 degrees Fahr. in the sun;

and in the evening, judging from the icicles formed,

and the state of the windows, there must have been at least

twelve DINGBLATTER of frost, thus giving a change of 80

degrees during a few hours.

I said:

"You have done well, Harris; this report is concise,

compact, well expressed; the language is crisp,

the descriptions are vivid and not needlessly elaborated;

your report goes straight to the point, attends strictly

to business, and doesn't fool around. It is in many

ways an excellent document. But it has a fault--it

is too learned, it is much too learned. What is 'DINGBLATTER'?

"'DINGBLATTER' is a Fiji word meaning 'degrees.'"

"You knew the English of it, then?"

"Oh, yes."

"What is 'GNILLIC'?

"That is the Eskimo term for 'snow.'"

"So you knew the English for that, too?"

"Why, certainly."

"What does 'MMBGLX' stand for?"

"That is Zulu for 'pedestrian.'"

"'While the form of the Wellhorn looking down upon it

completes the enchanting BOPPLE.' What is 'BOPPLE'?"

"'Picture.' It's Choctaw."

"What is 'SCHNAWP'?"

"'Valley.' That is Choctaw, also."

"What is 'BOLWOGGOLY'?"

"That is Chinese for 'hill.'"

"'KAHKAHPONEEKA'?"

"'Ascent.' Choctaw."

"'But we were again overtaken by bad HOGGLEBUMGULLUP.'

What does 'HOGGLEBUMGULLUP' mean?"

"That is Chinese for 'weather.'"

"Is 'HOGGLEBUMGULLUP' better than the English word? Is

it any more descriptive?"

"No, it means just the same."

"And 'DINGBLATTER' and 'GNILLIC,' and 'BOPPLE,'

and 'SCHNAWP'--are they better than the English words?"

"No, they mean just what the English ones do."

"Then why do you use them? Why have you used all this

Chinese and Choctaw and Zulu rubbish?"

"Because I didn't know any French but two or three words,

and I didn't know any Latin or Greek at all."

"That is nothing. Why should you want to use foreign words,

anyhow?"

"They adorn my page. They all do it."

"Who is 'all'?"

"Everybody. Everybody that writes elegantly. Anybody has

a right to that wants to."

"I think you are mistaken." I then proceeded in the following

scathing manner. "When really learned men write books

for other learned men to read, they are justified in using

as many learned words as they please--their audience

will understand them; but a man who writes a book for the

general public to read is not justified in disfiguring

his pages with untranslated foreign expressions.

It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers,

for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying,

'Get the translations made yourself if you want them,

this book is not written for the ignorant classes.' There are

men who know a foreign language so well and have used it

so long in their daily life that they seem to discharge whole

volleys of it into their English writings unconsciously,

and so they omit to translate, as much as half the time.

That is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the

man's readers. What is the excuse for this? The writer

would say he only uses the foreign language where the

delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English.

Very well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man,

and he ought to warn the nine other not to buy his book.

However, the excuse he offers is at least an excuse;

but there is another set of men who are like YOU;

they know a WORD here and there, of a foreign language,

or a few beggarly little three-word phrases, filched from

the back of the Dictionary, and these are continually

peppering into their literature, with a pretense of

knowing that language--what excuse can they offer? The

foreign words and phrases which they use have their exact

equivalents in a nobler language--English; yet they think

they 'adorn their page' when they say STRASSE for street,

and BAHNHOF for railway-station, and so on--flaunting

these fluttering rags of poverty in the reader's face

and imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the

sign of untold riches held in reserve. I will let your

'learning' remain in your report; you have as much right,

I suppose, to 'adorn your page' with Zulu and Chinese

and Choctaw rubbish as others of your sort have to adorn

theirs with insolent odds and ends smouched from half

a dozen learned tongues whose A-B ABS they don't even know."

When the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel,

he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up.

Similar was the effect of these blistering words upon the

tranquil and unsuspecting Agent. I can be dreadfully rough

on a person when the mood takes me.

CHAPTER XXXI

[Alp-scaling by Carriage]

We now prepared for a considerable walk--from Lucerne

to Interlaken, over the Bruenig Pass. But at the last moment

the weather was so good that I changed my mind and hired

a four-horse carriage. It was a huge vehicle, roomy, as easy

in its motion as a palanquin, and exceedingly comfortable.

We got away pretty early in the morning, after a hot breakfast,

and went bowling over a hard, smooth road, through the summer

loveliness of Switzerland, with near and distant lakes

and mountains before and about us for the entertainment

of the eye, and the music of multitudinous birds to charm

the ear. Sometimes there was only the width of the road

between the imposing precipices on the right and the clear

cool water on the left with its shoals of uncatchable

fish skimming about through the bars of sun and shadow;

and sometimes, in place of the precipices, the grassy land

stretched away, in an apparently endless upward slant,

and was dotted everywhere with snug little chalets,

the peculiarly captivating cottage of Switzerland.

The ordinary chalet turns a broad, honest gable end

to the road, and its ample roof hovers over the home

in a protecting, caressing way, projecting its sheltering

eaves far outward. The quaint windows are filled with

little panes, and garnished with white muslin curtains,

and brightened with boxes of blooming flowers.

Across the front of the house, and up the spreading eaves

and along the fanciful railings of the shallow porch,

are elaborate carvings--wreaths, fruits, arabesques,

verses from Scripture, names, dates, etc. The building

is wholly of wood, reddish brown in tint, a very

pleasing color. It generally has vines climbing over it.

Set such a house against the fresh green of the hillside,

and it looks ever so cozy and inviting and picturesque,

and is a decidedly graceful addition to the landscape.

One does not find out what a hold the chalet has taken

upon him, until he presently comes upon a new house

--a house which is aping the town fashions of Germany

and France, a prim, hideous, straight-up-and-down thing,

plastered all over on the outside to look like stone,

and altogether so stiff, and formal, and ugly, and forbidding,

and so out of tune with the gracious landscape, and so deaf

and dumb and dead to the poetry of its surroundings,

that it suggests an undertaker at a picnic, a corpse at

a wedding, a puritan in Paradise.

In the course of the morning we passed the spot where Pontius

Pilate is said to have thrown himself into the lake.

The legend goes that after the Crucifixion his conscience

troubled him, and he fled from Jerusalem and wandered

about the earth, weary of life and a prey to tortures of

the mind. Eventually, he hid himself away, on the heights

of Mount Pilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and

crags for years; but rest and peace were still denied him,

so he finally put an end to his misery by drowning himself.

Presently we passed the place where a man of better odor

was born. This was the children's friend, Santa Claus,

or St. Nicholas. There are some unaccountable reputations

in the world. This saint's is an instance. He has

ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children,

yet it appears he was not much of a friend to his own.

He had ten of them, and when fifty years old he left them,

and sought out as dismal a refuge from the world as possible,

and became a hermit in order that he might reflect upon

pious themes without being disturbed by the joyous and other

noises from the nursery, doubtless.

Judging by Pilate and St. Nicholas, there exists no rule

for the construction of hermits; they seem made out of all

kinds of material. But Pilate attended to the matter of

expiating his sin while he was alive, whereas St. Nicholas

will probably have to go on climbing down sooty chimneys,

Christmas eve, forever, and conferring kindness on other

people's children, to make up for deserting his own.

His bones are kept in a church in a village (Sachseln)

which we visited, and are naturally held in great reverence.

His portrait is common in the farmhouses of the region,

but is believed by many to be but an indifferent likeness.

During his hermit life, according to legend, he partook

of the bread and wine of the communion once a month,

but all the rest of the month he fasted.

A constant marvel with us, as we sped along the bases

of the steep mountains on this journey, was, not that

avalanches occur, but that they are not occurring all

the time. One does not understand why rocks and landslides

do not plunge down these declivities daily. A landslip

occurred three quarters of a century ago, on the route

from Arth to Brunnen, which was a formidable thing.

A mass of conglomerate two miles long, a thousand feet broad,

and a hundred feet thick, broke away from a cliff three

thousand feet high and hurled itself into the valley below,

burying four villages and five hundred people, as in a grave.

We had such a beautiful day, and such endless pictures

of limpid lakes, and green hills and valleys,

and majestic mountains, and milky cataracts dancing

down the steeps and gleaming in the sun, that we could

not help feeling sweet toward all the world; so we tried

to drink all the milk, and eat all the grapes and apricots

and berries, and buy all the bouquets of wild flowers

which the little peasant boys and girls offered for sale;

but we had to retire from this contract, for it was too heavy.

At short distances--and they were entirely too short--all

along the road, were groups of neat and comely children,

with their wares nicely and temptingly set forth

in the grass under the shade trees, and as soon as we

approached they swarmed into the road, holding out their

baskets and milk bottles, and ran beside the carriage,

barefoot and bareheaded, and importuned us to buy.

They seldom desisted early, but continued to run and

insist--beside the wagon while they could, and behind

it until they lost breath. Then they turned and chased

a returning carriage back to their trading-post again.

After several hours of this, without any intermission,

it becomes almost annoying. I do not know what we

should have done without the returning carriages to draw

off the pursuit. However, there were plenty of these,

loaded with dusty tourists and piled high with luggage.

Indeed, from Lucerne to Interlaken we had the spectacle,

among other scenery, of an unbroken procession of

fruit-peddlers and tourists carriages.

Our talk was mostly anticipatory of what we should see

on the down-grade of the Bruenig, by and by, after we

should pass the summit. All our friends in Lucerne had

said that to look down upon Meiringen, and the rushing

blue-gray river Aar, and the broad level green valley;

and across at the mighty Alpine precipices that rise

straight up to the clouds out of that valley; and up

at the microscopic chalets perched upon the dizzy eaves

of those precipices and winking dimly and fitfully

through the drifting veil of vapor; and still up and up,

at the superb Oltschiback and the other beautiful cascades

that leap from those rugged heights, robed in powdery spray,

ruffled with foam, and girdled with rainbows--to look upon

these things, they say, was to look upon the last possibility

of the sublime and the enchanting. Therefore, as I say,

we talked mainly of these coming wonders; if we were conscious

of any impatience, it was to get there in favorable season;

if we felt any anxiety, it was that the day might

remain perfect, and enable us to see those marvels at their best.

As we approached the Kaiserstuhl, a part of the harness gave way.

We were in distress for a moment, but only a moment.

It was the fore-and-aft gear that was broken--the thing

that leads aft from the forward part of the horse and is

made fast to the thing that pulls the wagon. In America

this would have been a heavy leathern strap; but, all over

the continent it is nothing but a piece of rope the size

of your little finger--clothes-line is what it is.

Cabs use it, private carriages, freight-carts and wagons,

all sorts of vehicles have it. In Munich I afterward saw

it used on a long wagon laden with fifty-four half-barrels

of beer; I had before noticed that the cabs in Heidelberg

used it--not new rope, but rope that had been in use

since Abraham's time --and I had felt nervous, sometimes,

behind it when the cab was tearing down a hill. But I

had long been accustomed to it now, and had even become

afraid of the leather strap which belonged in its place.

Our driver got a fresh piece of clothes-line out of his

locker and repaired the break in two minutes.

So much for one European fashion. Every country has its

own ways. It may interest the reader to know how they "put

horses to" on the continent. The man stands up the horses

on each side of the thing that projects from the front end

of the wagon, and then throws the tangled mess of gear

forward through a ring, and hauls it aft, and passes the

other thing through the other ring and hauls it aft on the

other side of the other horse, opposite to the first one,

after crossing them and bringing the loose end back,

and then buckles the other thing underneath the horse,

and takes another thing and wraps it around the thing I spoke

of before, and puts another thing over each horse's head,

with broad flappers to it to keep the dust out of his eyes,

and puts the iron thing in his mouth for him to grit his

teeth on, uphill, and brings the ends of these things aft

over his back, after buckling another one around under

his neck to hold his head up, and hitching another thing

on a thing that goes over his shoulders to keep his head

up when he is climbing a hill, and then takes the slack

of the thing which I mentioned a while ago, and fetches it

aft and makes it fast to the thing that pulls the wagon,

and hands the other things up to the driver to steer with.

I never have buckled up a horse myself, but I do not think

we do it that way.

We had four very handsome horses, and the driver was very proud

of his turnout. He would bowl along on a reasonable trot,

on the highway, but when he entered a village he did it on

a furious run, and accompanied it with a frenzy of ceaseless

whip-crackings that sounded like volleys of musketry.

He tore through the narrow streets and around the sharp

curves like a moving earthquake, showering his volleys

as he went, and before him swept a continuous tidal wave

of scampering children, ducks, cats, and mothers clasping

babies which they had snatched out of the way of the

coming destruction; and as this living wave washed aside,

along the walls, its elements, being safe, forgot their fears

and turned their admiring gaze upon that gallant driver

till he thundered around the next curve and was lost to sight.

He was a great man to those villagers, with his gaudy

clothes and his terrific ways. Whenever he stopped

to have his cattle watered and fed with loaves of bread,

the villagers stood around admiring him while he

swaggered about, the little boys gazed up at his face with

humble homage, and the landlord brought out foaming mugs

of beer and conversed proudly with him while he drank.

Then he mounted his lofty box, swung his explosive whip,

and away he went again, like a storm. I had not seen

anything like this before since I was a boy, and the

stage used to flourish the village with the dust flying

and the horn tooting.

When we reached the base of the Kaiserstuhl, we took

two more horses; we had to toil along with difficulty

for an hour and a half or two hours, for the ascent

was not very gradual, but when we passed the backbone

and approached the station, the driver surpassed all

his previous efforts in the way of rush and clatter.

He could not have six horses all the time, so he made

the most of his chance while he had it.

Up to this point we had been in the heart of the William

Tell region. The hero is not forgotten, by any means,

or held in doubtful veneration. His wooden image,

with his bow drawn, above the doors of taverns, was a

frequent feature of the scenery.

About noon we arrived at the foot of the Bruenig Pass,

and made a two-hour stop at the village hotel, another of

those clean, pretty, and thoroughly well-kept inns which are

such an astonishment to people who are accustomed to hotels

of a dismally different pattern in remote country-towns.

There was a lake here, in the lap of the great mountains,

the green slopes that rose toward the lower crags

were graced with scattered Swiss cottages nestling

among miniature farms and gardens, and from out a leafy

ambuscade in the upper heights tumbled a brawling cataract.

Carriage after carriage, laden with tourists and trunks,

arrived, and the quiet hotel was soon populous.

We were early at the table d'ho^te and saw the people

all come in. There were twenty-five, perhaps. They were

of various nationalities, but we were the only Americans.

Next to me sat an English bride, and next to her sat her

new husband, whom she called "Neddy," though he was big

enough and stalwart enough to be entitled to his full name.

They had a pretty little lovers' quarrel over what wine

they should have. Neddy was for obeying the guide-book

and taking the wine of the country; but the bride said:

"What, that nahsty stuff!"

"It isn't nahsty, pet, it's quite good."

"It IS nahsty."

"No, it ISN'T nahsty."

"It's Oful nahsty, Neddy, and I shahn't drink it."

Then the question was, what she must have. She said he

knew very well that she never drank anything but champagne.

She added:

"You know very well papa always has champagne on his table,

and I've always been used to it."

Neddy made a playful pretense of being distressed about

the expense, and this amused her so much that she nearly

exhausted herself with laughter--and this pleased HIM

so much that he repeated his jest a couple of times,

and added new and killing varieties to it. When the bride

finally recovered, she gave Neddy a love-box on the arm

with her fan, and said with arch severity:

"Well, you would HAVE me--nothing else would do

--so you'll have to make the best of a bad bargain.

DO order the champagne, I'm Oful dry."

So with a mock groan which made her laugh again,

Neddy ordered the champagne.

The fact that this young woman had never moistened

the selvedge edge of her soul with a less plebeian

tipple than champagne, had a marked and subduing effect

on Harris. He believed she belonged to the royal family.

But I had my doubts.

We heard two or three different languages spoken by

people at the table and guessed out the nationalities

of most of the guests to our satisfaction, but we

failed with an elderly gentleman and his wife and a

young girl who sat opposite us, and with a gentleman

of about thirty-five who sat three seats beyond Harris.

We did not hear any of these speak. But finally the

last-named gentleman left while we were not noticing,

but we looked up as he reached the far end of the table.

He stopped there a moment, and made his toilet with a

pocket comb. So he was a German; or else he had lived

in German hotels long enough to catch the fashion.

When the elderly couple and the young girl rose to leave,

they bowed respectfully to us. So they were Germans, too.

This national custom is worth six of the other one,

for export.

After dinner we talked with several Englishmen, and they

inflamed our desire to a hotter degree than ever,

to see the sights of Meiringen from the heights of

the Bruenig Pass. They said the view was marvelous,

and that one who had seen it once could never forget it.

They also spoke of the romantic nature of the road over

the pass, and how in one place it had been cut through

a flank of the solid rock, in such a way that the mountain

overhung the tourist as he passed by; and they furthermore

said that the sharp turns in the road and the abruptness

of the descent would afford us a thrilling experience,

for we should go down in a flying gallop and seem to be

spinning around the rings of a whirlwind, like a drop

of whiskey descending the spirals of a corkscrew.

I got all the information out of these gentlemen that we

could need; and then, to make everything complete, I asked

them if a body could get hold of a little fruit and milk

here and there, in case of necessity. They threw up their

hands in speechless intimation that the road was simply paved

with refreshment-peddlers. We were impatient to get away,

now, and the rest of our two-hour stop rather dragged.

But finally the set time arrived and we began the ascent.

Indeed it was a wonderful road. It was smooth, and compact,

and clean, and the side next the precipices was guarded

all along by dressed stone posts about three feet high,

placed at short distances apart. The road could not have

been better built if Napoleon the First had built it.

He seems to have been the introducer of the sort of roads

which Europe now uses. All literature which describes

life as it existed in England, France, and Germany up

to the close of the last century, is filled with pictures

of coaches and carriages wallowing through these three

countries in mud and slush half-wheel deep; but after

Napoleon had floundered through a conquered kingdom he

generally arranged things so that the rest of the world

could follow dry-shod.

We went on climbing, higher and higher, and curving hither

and thither, in the shade of noble woods, and with a rich

variety and profusion of wild flowers all about us;

and glimpses of rounded grassy backbones below us occupied

by trim chalets and nibbling sheep, and other glimpses

of far lower altitudes, where distance diminished the

chalets to toys and obliterated the sheep altogether;

and every now and then some ermined monarch of the Alps

swung magnificently into view for a moment, then drifted

past an intervening spur and disappeared again.

It was an intoxicating trip altogether; the exceeding

sense of satisfaction that follows a good dinner added

largely to the enjoyment; the having something especial

to look forward to and muse about, like the approaching

grandeurs of Meiringen, sharpened the zest. Smoking was

never so good before, solid comfort was never solider;

we lay back against the thick cushions silent, meditative,

steeped in felicity.

I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and started. I had been

dreaming I was at sea, and it was a thrilling surprise to wake

up and find land all around me. It took me a couple seconds

to "come to," as you may say; then I took in the situation.

The horses were drinking at a trough in the edge of a town,

the driver was taking beer, Harris was snoring at my side,

the courier, with folded arms and bowed head, was sleeping

on the box, two dozen barefooted and bareheaded children

were gathered about the carriage, with their hands

crossed behind, gazing up with serious and innocent

admiration at the dozing tourists baking there in the sun.

Several small girls held night-capped babies nearly

as big as themselves in their arms, and even these fat

babies seemed to take a sort of sluggish interest in us.

We had slept an hour and a half and missed all the scenery!

I did not need anybody to tell me that. If I had been

a girl, I could have cursed for vexation. As it was,

I woke up the agent and gave him a piece of my mind.

Instead of being humiliated, he only upbraided me for being

so wanting in vigilance. He said he had expected to improve

his mind by coming to Europe, but a man might travel to the

ends of the earth with me and never see anything, for I

was manifestly endowed with the very genius of ill luck.

He even tried to get up some emotion about that poor courier,

who never got a chance to see anything, on account of

my heedlessness. But when I thought I had borne about

enough of this kind of talk, I threatened to make Harris

tramp back to the summit and make a report on that scenery,

and this suggestion spiked his battery.

We drove sullenly through Brienz, dead to the seductions

of its bewildering array of Swiss carvings and the

clamorous HOO-hooing of its cuckoo clocks, and had not

entirely recovered our spirits when we rattled across

a bridge over the rushing blue river and entered the

pretty town of Interlaken. It was just about sunset,

and we had made the trip from Lucerne in ten hours.

CHAPTER XXXII

[The Jungfrau, the Bride, and the Piano]

We located ourselves at the Jungfrau Hotel, one of those

huge establishments which the needs of modern travel

have created in every attractive spot on the continent.

There was a great gathering at dinner, and, as usual,

one heard all sorts of languages.

The table d'ho^te was served by waitresses dressed

in the quaint and comely costume of the Swiss peasants.

This consists of a simple gros de laine, trimmed with ashes

of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventre saint gris,

cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaise

and narrow insertions of pa^te de foie gras backstitched

to the mise en sce`ne in the form of a jeu d'esprit. It gives

to the wearer a singularly piquant and alluring aspect.

One of these waitresses, a woman of forty,

had side-whiskers reaching half-way down her jaws.

They were two fingers broad, dark in color, pretty thick,

and the hairs were an inch long. One sees many women on

the continent with quite conspicuous mustaches, but this

was the only woman I saw who had reached the dignity of whiskers.

After dinner the guests of both sexes distributed themselves

about the front porches and the ornamental grounds belonging

to the hotel, to enjoy the cool air; but, as the twilight

deepened toward darkness, they gathered themselves together

in that saddest and solemnest and most constrained of

all places, the great blank drawing-room which is the chief

feature of all continental summer hotels. There they

grouped themselves about, in couples and threes, and mumbled

in bated voices, and looked timid and homeless and forlorn.

There was a small piano in this room, a clattery, wheezy,

asthmatic thing, certainly the very worst miscarriage

in the way of a piano that the world has seen. In turn,

five or six dejected and homesick ladies approached

it doubtingly, gave it a single inquiring thump, and retired

with the lockjaw. But the boss of that instrument was

to come, nevertheless; and from my own country--from Arkansaw.

She was a brand-new bride, innocent, girlish, happy in herself

and her grave and worshiping stripling of a husband; she was

about eighteen, just out of school, free from affections,

unconscious of that passionless multitude around her;

and the very first time she smote that old wreck one

recognized that it had met its destiny. Her stripling

brought an armful of aged sheet-music from their room

--for this bride went "heeled," as you might say--and bent

himself lovingly over and got ready to turn the pages.

The bride fetched a swoop with her fingers from one end

of the keyboard to the other, just to get her bearings,

as it were, and you could see the congregation set their teeth

with the agony of it. Then, without any more preliminaries,

she turned on all the horrors of the "Battle of Prague,"

that venerable shivaree, and waded chin-deep in the blood

of the slain. She made a fair and honorable average

of two false notes in every five, but her soul was in arms

and she never stopped to correct. The audience stood it

with pretty fair grit for a while, but when the cannonade

waxed hotter and fiercer, and the discord average

rose to four in five, the procession began to move.

A few stragglers held their ground ten minutes longer,

but when the girl began to wring the true inwardness out

of the "cries of the wounded," they struck their colors

and retired in a kind of panic.

There never was a completer victory; I was the only

non-combatant left on the field. I would not have

deserted my countrywoman anyhow, but indeed I had no

desires in that direction. None of us like mediocrity,

but we all reverence perfection. This girl's music

was perfection in its way; it was the worst music that

had ever been achieved on our planet by a mere human being.

I moved up close, and never lost a strain. When she

got through, I asked her to play it again. She did it

with a pleased alacrity and a heightened enthusiasm.

She made it ALL discords, this time. She got an amount

of anguish into the cries of the wounded that shed a new

light on human suffering. She was on the war-path all

the evening. All the time, crowds of people gathered on

the porches and pressed their noses against the windows

to look and marvel, but the bravest never ventured in.

The bride went off satisfied and happy with her young fellow,

when her appetite was finally gorged, and the tourists

swarmed in again.

What a change has come over Switzerland, and in fact

all Europe, during this century! Seventy or eighty years

ago Napoleon was the only man in Europe who could really

be called a traveler; he was the only man who had devoted

his attention to it and taken a powerful interest in it;

he was the only man who had traveled extensively;

but now everybody goes everywhere; and Switzerland,

and many other regions which were unvisited and unknown

remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our days

a buzzing hive of restless strangers every summer.

But I digress.

In the morning, when we looked out of our windows,

we saw a wonderful sight. Across the valley,

and apparently quite neighborly and close at hand,

the giant form of the Jungfrau rose cold and white into

the clear sky, beyond a gateway in the nearer highlands.

It reminded me, somehow, of one of those colossal billows

which swells suddenly up beside one's ship, at sea,

sometimes, with its crest and shoulders snowy white, and the

rest of its noble proportions streaked downward with creamy foam.

I took out my sketch-book and made a little picture

of the Jungfrau, merely to get the shape. [Figure 9]

I do not regard this as one of my finished works, in fact I

do not rank it among my Works at all; it is only a study;

it is hardly more than what one might call a sketch.

Other artists have done me the grace to admire it; but I

am severe in my judgments of my own pictures, and this

one does not move me.

It was hard to believe that that lofty wooded rampart on

the left which so overtops the Jungfrau was not actually

the higher of the two, but it was not, of course.

It is only two or three thousand feet high, and of course

has no snow upon it in summer, whereas the Jungfrau is not

much shorter of fourteen thousand feet high and therefore

that lowest verge of snow on her side, which seems nearly

down to the valley level, is really about seven thousand feet

higher up in the air than the summit of that wooded rampart.

It is the distance that makes the deception. The wooded

height is but four or five miles removed from us,

but the Jungfrau is four or five times that distance away.

Walking down the street of shops, in the fore-noon, I

was attracted by a large picture, carved, frame and all,

from a single block of chocolate-colored wood.

There are people who know everything. Some of these had

told us that continental shopkeepers always raise their

prices on English and Americans. Many people had told

us it was expensive to buy things through a courier,

whereas I had supposed it was just the reverse.

When I saw this picture, I conjectured that it was worth

more than the friend I proposed to buy it for would

like to pay, but still it was worth while to inquire;

so I told the courier to step in and ask the price, as if he

wanted it for himself; I told him not to speak in English,

and above all not to reveal the fact that he was a courier.

Then I moved on a few yards, and waited.

The courier came presently and reported the price.

I said to myself, "It is a hundred francs too much,"

and so dismissed the matter from my mind. But in

the afternoon I was passing that place with Harris,

and the picture attracted me again. We stepped in,

to see how much higher broken German would raise the price.

The shopwoman named a figure just a hundred francs lower

than the courier had named. This was a pleasant surprise.

I said I would take it. After I had given directions as to

where it was to be shipped, the shopwoman said, appealingly:

"If you please, do not let your courier know you bought it."

This was an unexpected remark. I said:

"What makes you think I have a courier?"

"Ah, that is very simple; he told me himself."

"He was very thoughtful. But tell me--why did you charge

him more than you are charging me?"

"That is very simple, also: I do not have to pay you

a percentage."

"Oh, I begin to see. You would have had to pay the courier

a percentage."

"Undoubtedly. The courier always has his percentage.

In this case it would have been a hundred francs."

"Then the tradesman does not pay a part of it

--the purchaser pays all of it?"

"There are occasions when the tradesman and the courier

agree upon a price which is twice or thrice the value of

the article, then the two divide, and both get a percentage."

"I see. But it seems to me that the purchaser does

all the paying, even then."

"Oh, to be sure! It goes without saying."

"But I have bought this picture myself; therefore why

shouldn't the courier know it?"

The woman exclaimed, in distress:

"Ah, indeed it would take all my little profit! He would

come and demand his hundred francs, and I should have

to pay."

"He has not done the buying. You could refuse."

"I could not dare to refuse. He would never bring

travelers here again. More than that, he would denounce me

to the other couriers, they would divert custom from me,

and my business would be injured."

I went away in a thoughtful frame of mind. I began to see why

a courier could afford to work for fifty-five dollars a month

and his fares. A month or two later I was able to understand

why a courier did not have to pay any board and lodging,

and why my hotel bills were always larger when I had him

with me than when I left him behind, somewhere, for a few days.

Another thing was also explained, now, apparently.

In one town I had taken the courier to the bank to do

the translating when I drew some money. I had sat

in the reading-room till the transaction was finished.

Then a clerk had brought the money to me in person,

and had been exceedingly polite, even going so far as to

precede me to the door and holding it open for me and bow

me out as if I had been a distinguished personage.

It was a new experience. Exchange had been in my favor

ever since I had been in Europe, but just that one time.

I got simply the face of my draft, and no extra francs,

whereas I had expected to get quite a number of them.

This was the first time I had ever used the courier at

the bank. I had suspected something then, and as long

as he remained with me afterward I managed bank matters

by myself.

Still, if I felt that I could afford the tax, I would

never travel without a courier, for a good courier is

a convenience whose value cannot be estimated in dollars

and cents. Without him, travel is a bitter harassment,

a purgatory of little exasperating annoyances, a ceaseless

and pitiless punishment--I mean to an irascible man

who has no business capacity and is confused by details.

Without a courier, travel hasn't a ray of pleasure

in it, anywhere; but with him it is a continuous and

unruffled delight. He is always at hand, never has to be

sent for; if your bell is not answered promptly--and it

seldom is--you have only to open the door and speak,

the courier will hear, and he will have the order attended

to or raise an insurrection. You tell him what day

you will start, and whither you are going--leave all

the rest to him. You need not inquire about trains,

or fares, or car changes, or hotels, or anything else.

At the proper time he will put you in a cab or an omnibus,

and drive you to the train or the boat; he has packed your

luggage and transferred it, he has paid all the bills.

Other people have preceded you half an hour to scramble

for impossible places and lose their tempers, but you can

take your time; the courier has secured your seats for you,

and you can occupy them at your leisure.

At the station, the crowd mash one another to pulp in the

effort to get the weigher's attention to their trunks;

they dispute hotly with these tyrants, who are cool

and indifferent; they get their baggage billets, at last,

and then have another squeeze and another rage over the

disheartening business of trying to get them recorded and

paid for, and still another over the equally disheartening

business of trying to get near enough to the ticket

office to buy a ticket; and now, with their tempers gone

to the dogs, they must stand penned up and packed together,

laden with wraps and satchels and shawl-straps, with the

weary wife and babies, in the waiting-room, till the doors

are thrown open--and then all hands make a grand final

rush to the train, find it full, and have to stand on

the platform and fret until some more cars are put on.

They are in a condition to kill somebody by this time.

Meantime, you have been sitting in your car, smoking,

and observing all this misery in the extremest comfort.

On the journey the guard is polite and watchful--won't

allow anybody to get into your compartment--tells them

you are just recovering from the small-pox and do not

like to be disturbed. For the courier has made everything

right with the guard. At way-stations the courier comes

to your compartment to see if you want a glass of water,

or a newspaper, or anything; at eating-stations he sends

luncheon out to you, while the other people scramble

and worry in the dining-rooms. If anything breaks about

the car you are in, and a station-master proposes to pack

you and your agent into a compartment with strangers,

the courier reveals to him confidentially that you are

a French duke born deaf and dumb, and the official comes

and makes affable signs that he has ordered a choice car

to be added to the train for you.

At custom-houses the multitude file tediously through,

hot and irritated, and look on while the officers

burrow into the trunks and make a mess of everything;

but you hand your keys to the courier and sit still.

Perhaps you arrive at your destination in a rain-storm

at ten at night--you generally do. The multitude

spend half an hour verifying their baggage and getting

it transferred to the omnibuses; but the courier puts

you into a vehicle without a moment's loss of time,

and when you reach your hotel you find your rooms have been

secured two or three days in advance, everything is ready,

you can go at once to bed. Some of those other people will

have to drift around to two or three hotels, in the rain,

before they find accommodations.

I have not set down half of the virtues that are

vested in a good courier, but I think I have set down

a sufficiency of them to show that an irritable man

who can afford one and does not employ him is not a

wise economist. My courier was the worst one in Europe,

yet he was a good deal better than none at all.

It could not pay him to be a better one than he was,

because I could not afford to buy things through him.

He was a good enough courier for the small amount he

got out of his service. Yes, to travel with a courier

is bliss, to travel without one is the reverse.

I have had dealings with some very bad couriers; but I have also

had dealings with one who might fairly be called perfection.

He was a young Polander, named Joseph N. Verey. He spoke

eight languages, and seemed to be equally at home in all

of them; he was shrewd, prompt, posted, and punctual;

he was fertile in resources, and singularly gifted in

the matter of overcoming difficulties; he not only knew

how to do everything in his line, but he knew the best ways

and the quickest; he was handy with children and invalids;

all his employer needed to do was to take life easy

and leave everything to the courier. His address is,

care of Messrs. Gay & Son, Strand, London; he was formerly

a conductor of Gay's tourist parties. Excellent couriers

are somewhat rare; if the reader is about to travel,

he will find it to his advantage to make a note of this one.

CHAPTER XXXIII

[We Climb Far--by Buggy]

The beautiful Giesbach Fall is near Interlaken, on the

other side of the lake of Brienz, and is illuminated

every night with those gorgeous theatrical fires whose

name I cannot call just at this moment. This was said

to be a spectacle which the tourist ought by no means

to miss. I was strongly tempted, but I could not go

there with propriety, because one goes in a boat.

The task which I had set myself was to walk over Europe

on foot, not skim over it in a boat. I had made a tacit

contract with myself; it was my duty to abide by it.

I was willing to make boat trips for pleasure, but I could

not conscientiously make them in the way of business.

It cost me something of a pang to lose that fine sight,

but I lived down the desire, and gained in my self-respect

through the triumph. I had a finer and a grander sight,

however, where I was. This was the mighty dome of the Jungfrau

softly outlined against the sky and faintly silvered by

the starlight. There was something subduing in the influence

of that silent and solemn and awful presence; one seemed

to meet the immutable, the indestructible, the eternal,

face to face, and to feel the trivial and fleeting nature

of his own existence the more sharply by the contrast.

One had the sense of being under the brooding contemplation

of a spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice--a spirit

which had looked down, through the slow drift of the ages,

upon a million vanished races of men, and judged them;

and would judge a million more--and still be there,

watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life

should be gone and the earth have become a vacant desolation.

While I was feeling these things, I was groping,

without knowing it, toward an understanding of what the

spell is which people find in the Alps, and in no other

mountains--that strange, deep, nameless influence, which,

once felt, cannot be forgotten--once felt, leaves always

behind it a restless longing to feel it again--a longing

which is like homesickness; a grieving, haunting yearning

which will plead, implore, and persecute till it has its will.

I met dozens of people, imaginative and unimaginative,

cultivated and uncultivated, who had come from far countries

and roamed through the Swiss Alps year after year--they

could not explain why. They had come first, they said,

out of idle curiosity, because everybody talked about it;

they had come since because they could not help it, and they

should keep on coming, while they lived, for the same reason;

they had tried to break their chains and stay away,

but it was futile; now, they had no desire to break them.

Others came nearer formulating what they felt; they said they

could find perfect rest and peace nowhere else when they

were troubled: all frets and worries and chafings sank to

sleep in the presence of the benignant serenity of the Alps;

the Great Spirit of the Mountain breathed his own peace

upon their hurt minds and sore hearts, and healed them;

they could not think base thoughts or do mean and sordid

things here, before the visible throne of God.

Down the road a piece was a Kursaal--whatever that may be

--and we joined the human tide to see what sort of enjoyment

it might afford. It was the usual open-air concert,

in an ornamental garden, with wines, beer, milk, whey,

grapes, etc.--the whey and the grapes being necessaries

of life to certain invalids whom physicians cannot repair,

and who only continue to exist by the grace of whey

or grapes. One of these departed spirits told me,

in a sad and lifeless way, that there is no way for him

to live but by whey, and dearly, dearly loved whey,

he didn't know whey he did, but he did. After making

this pun he died--that is the whey it served him.

Some other remains, preserved from decomposition

by the grape system, told me that the grapes were of

a peculiar breed, highly medicinal in their nature,

and that they were counted out and administered by the

grape-doctors as methodically as if they were pills.

The new patient, if very feeble, began with one grape

before breakfast, took three during breakfast, a couple

between meals, five at luncheon, three in the afternoon,

seven at dinner, four for supper, and part of a grape

just before going to bed, by way of a general regulator.

The quantity was gradually and regularly increased,

according to the needs and capacities of the patient,

until by and by you would find him disposing of his one

grape per second all the day long, and his regular barrel

per day.

He said that men cured in this way, and enabled to discard

the grape system, never afterward got over the habit

of talking as if they were dictating to a slow amanuensis,

because they always made a pause between each two words

while they sucked the substance out of an imaginary grape.

He said these were tedious people to talk with.

He said that men who had been cured by the other process

were easily distinguished from the rest of mankind

because they always tilted their heads back, between every

two words, and swallowed a swig of imaginary whey.

He said it was an impressive thing to observe two men,

who had been cured by the two processes, engaged in

conversation--said their pauses and accompanying movements

were so continuous and regular that a stranger would think

himself in the presence of a couple of automatic machines.

One finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling,

if he stumbles upon the right person.

I did not remain long at the Kursaal; the music was

good enough, but it seemed rather tame after the cyclone

of that Arkansaw expert. Besides, my adventurous spirit

had conceived a formidable enterprise--nothing less

than a trip from Interlaken, by the Gemmi and Visp,

clear to Zermatt, on foot! So it was necessary to plan

the details, and get ready for an early start. The courier

(this was not the one I have just been speaking of)

thought that the portier of the hotel would be able

to tell us how to find our way. And so it turned out.

He showed us the whole thing, on a relief-map, and we could

see our route, with all its elevations and depressions,

its villages and its rivers, as clearly as if we were sailing

over it in a balloon. A relief-map is a great thing.

The portier also wrote down each day's journey and the

nightly hotel on a piece of paper, and made our course

so plain that we should never be able to get lost without

high-priced outside help.

I put the courier in the care of a gentleman who was

going to Lausanne, and then we went to bed, after laying

out the walking-costumes and putting them into condition

for instant occupation in the morning.

However, when we came down to breakfast at 8 A.M., it

looked so much like rain that I hired a two-horse top-buggy

for the first third of the journey. For two or three hours

we jogged along the level road which skirts the beautiful

lake of Thun, with a dim and dreamlike picture of watery

expanses and spectral Alpine forms always before us,

veiled in a mellowing mist. Then a steady downpour

set in, and hid everything but the nearest objects.

We kept the rain out of our faces with umbrellas, and away

from our bodies with the leather apron of the buggy;

but the driver sat unsheltered and placidly soaked the weather

in and seemed to like it. We had the road to ourselves,

and I never had a pleasanter excursion.

The weather began to clear while we were driving up

a valley called the Kienthal, and presently a vast black

cloud-bank in front of us dissolved away and uncurtained

the grand proportions and the soaring loftiness of the

Blumis Alp. It was a sort of breath-taking surprise;

for we had not supposed there was anything behind

that low-hung blanket of sable cloud but level valley.

What we had been mistaking for fleeting glimpses of sky

away aloft there, were really patches of the Blumis's

snowy crest caught through shredded rents in the drifting

pall of vapor.

We dined in the inn at Frutigen, and our driver ought

to have dined there, too, but he would not have had

time to dine and get drunk both, so he gave his mind

to making a masterpiece of the latter, and succeeded.

A German gentleman and his two young-lady daughters had

been taking their nooning at the inn, and when they left,

just ahead of us, it was plain that their driver was

as drunk as ours, and as happy and good-natured, too,

which was saying a good deal. These rascals overflowed

with attentions and information for their guests, and with

brotherly love for each other. They tied their reins,

and took off their coats and hats, so that they might

be able to give unencumbered attention to conversation

and to the gestures necessary for its illustration.

The road was smooth; it led up and over and down a continual

succession of hills; but it was narrow, the horses were

used to it, and could not well get out of it anyhow;

so why shouldn't the drivers entertain themselves and us?

The noses of our horses projected sociably into the rear

of the forward carriage, and as we toiled up the long

hills our driver stood up and talked to his friend,

and his friend stood up and talked back to him, with his

rear to the scenery. When the top was reached and we

went flying down the other side, there was no change in

the program. I carry in my memory yet the picture of that

forward driver, on his knees on his high seat, resting his

elbows on its back, and beaming down on his passengers,

with happy eye, and flying hair, and jolly red face,

and offering his card to the old German gentleman while he

praised his hack and horses, and both teams were whizzing

down a long hill with nobody in a position to tell whether

we were bound to destruction or an undeserved safety.

Toward sunset we entered a beautiful green valley dotted

with chalets, a cozy little domain hidden away from the busy

world in a cloistered nook among giant precipices topped

with snowy peaks that seemed to float like islands above

the curling surf of the sea of vapor that severed them from

the lower world. Down from vague and vaporous heights,

little ruffled zigzag milky currents came crawling,

and found their way to the verge of one of those tremendous

overhanging walls, whence they plunged, a shaft of silver,

shivered to atoms in mid-descent and turned to an air puff

of luminous dust. Here and there, in grooved depressions

among the snowy desolations of the upper altitudes,

one glimpsed the extremity of a glacier, with its sea-green

and honeycombed battlements of ice.

Up the valley, under a dizzy precipice, nestled the

village of Kandersteg, our halting-place for the night.

We were soon there, and housed in the hotel. But the waning

day had such an inviting influence that we did not remain

housed many moments, but struck out and followed a roaring

torrent of ice-water up to its far source in a sort of

little grass-carpeted parlor, walled in all around by vast

precipices and overlooked by clustering summits of ice.

This was the snuggest little croquet-ground imaginable;

it was perfectly level, and not more than a mile long

by half a mile wide. The walls around it were so gigantic,

and everything about it was on so mighty a scale that it

was belittled, by contrast, to what I have likened it

to--a cozy and carpeted parlor. It was so high above

the Kandersteg valley that there was nothing between it

and the snowy-peaks. I had never been in such intimate

relations with the high altitudes before; the snow-peaks

had always been remote and unapproachable grandeurs,

hitherto, but now we were hob-a-nob--if one may use

such a seemingly irreverent expression about creations

so august as these.

We could see the streams which fed the torrent we

had followed issuing from under the greenish ramparts

of glaciers; but two or three of these, instead of flowing

over the precipices, sank down into the rock and sprang

in big jets out of holes in the mid-face of the walls.

The green nook which I have been describing is called

the Gasternthal. The glacier streams gather and flow through

it in a broad and rushing brook to a narrow cleft between

lofty precipices; here the rushing brook becomes a mad torrent

and goes booming and thundering down toward Kandersteg,

lashing and thrashing its way over and among monster boulders,

and hurling chance roots and logs about like straws.

There was no lack of cascades along this route.

The path by the side of the torrent was so narrow

that one had to look sharp, when he heard a cow-bell,

and hunt for a place that was wide enough to accommodate

a cow and a Christian side by side, and such places were

not always to be had at an instant's notice. The cows

wear church-bells, and that is a good idea in the cows,

for where that torrent is, you couldn't hear an ordinary

cow-bell any further than you could hear the ticking of a watch.

I needed exercise, so I employed my agent in setting

stranded logs and dead trees adrift, and I sat on a

boulder and watched them go whirling and leaping head

over heels down the boiling torrent. It was a wonderfully

exhilarating spectacle. When I had had enough exercise,

I made the agent take some, by running a race with one

of those logs. I made a trifle by betting on the log.

After dinner we had a walk up and down the Kandersteg valley,

in the soft gloaming, with the spectacle of the dying lights

of day playing about the crests and pinnacles of the still

and solemn upper realm for contrast, and text for talk.

There were no sounds but the dulled complaining of the

torrent and the occasional tinkling of a distant bell.

The spirit of the place was a sense of deep, pervading peace;

one might dream his life tranquilly away there, and not miss

it or mind it when it was gone.

The summer departed with the sun, and winter came with

the stars. It grew to be a bitter night in that little hotel,

backed up against a precipice that had no visible top to it,

but we kept warm, and woke in time in the morning to find

that everybody else had left for Gemmi three hours before

--so our little plan of helping that German family (principally

the old man) over the pass, was a blocked generosity.

CHAPTER XXXIV

[The World's Highest Pig Farm]

We hired the only guide left, to lead us on our way.

He was over seventy, but he could have given me nine-tenths

of his strength and still had all his age entitled him to.

He shouldered our satchels, overcoats, and alpenstocks,

and we set out up the steep path. It was hot work.

The old man soon begged us to hand over our coats

and waistcoats to him to carry, too, and we did it;

one could not refuse so little a thing to a poor old man

like that; he should have had them if he had been a hundred

and fifty.

When we began that ascent, we could see a microscopic

chalet perched away up against heaven on what seemed

to be the highest mountain near us. It was on our right,

across the narrow head of the valley. But when we got

up abreast it on its own level, mountains were towering

high above on every hand, and we saw that its altitude

was just about that of the little Gasternthal which we had

visited the evening before. Still it seemed a long way up

in the air, in that waste and lonely wilderness of rocks.

It had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it which seemed

about as big as a billiard-table, and this grass-plot

slanted so sharply downward, and was so brief, and ended

so exceedingly soon at the verge of the absolute precipice,

that it was a shuddery thing to think of a person's venturing

to trust his foot on an incline so situated at all.

Suppose a man stepped on an orange peel in that yard;

there would be nothing for him to seize; nothing could

keep him from rolling; five revolutions would bring him

to the edge, and over he would go. What a frightful distance

he would fall!--for there are very few birds that fly

as high as his starting-point. He would strike and bounce,

two or three times, on his way down, but this would be

no advantage to him. I would as soon taking an airing

on the slant of a rainbow as in such a front yard.

I would rather, in fact, for the distance down would be about

the same, and it is pleasanter to slide than to bounce.

I could not see how the peasants got up to that chalet

--the region seemed too steep for anything but a balloon.

As we strolled on, climbing up higher and higher, we were

continually bringing neighboring peaks into view and lofty

prominence which had been hidden behind lower peaks before;

so by and by, while standing before a group of these giants,

we looked around for the chalet again; there it was,

away down below us, apparently on an inconspicuous ridge

in the valley! It was as far below us, now, as it had been

above us when we were beginning the ascent.

After a while the path led us along a railed precipice,

and we looked over--far beneath us was the snug parlor again,

the little Gasternthal, with its water jets spouting

from the face of its rock walls. We could have dropped

a stone into it. We had been finding the top of the world

all along--and always finding a still higher top stealing

into view in a disappointing way just ahead; when we looked

down into the Gasternthal we felt pretty sure that we

had reached the genuine top at last, but it was not so;

there were much higher altitudes to be scaled yet.

We were still in the pleasant shade of forest trees,

we were still in a region which was cushioned with beautiful

mosses and aglow with the many-tinted luster of innumerable

wild flowers.

We found, indeed, more interest in the wild flowers

than in anything else. We gathered a specimen or two

of every kind which we were unacquainted with; so we

had sumptuous bouquets. But one of the chief interests

lay in chasing the seasons of the year up the mountain,

and determining them by the presence of flowers and

berries which we were acquainted with. For instance,

it was the end of August at the level of the sea;

in the Kandersteg valley at the base of the pass,

we found flowers which would not be due at the sea-level

for two or three weeks; higher up, we entered October,

and gathered fringed gentians. I made no notes, and have

forgotten the details, but the construction of the floral

calendar was very entertaining while it lasted.

In the high regions we found rich store of the splendid

red flower called the Alpine rose, but we did not find

any examples of the ugly Swiss favorite called Edelweiss.

Its name seems to indicate that it is a noble flower

and that it is white. It may be noble enough,

but it is not attractive, and it is not white.

The fuzzy blossom is the color of bad cigar ashes,

and appears to be made of a cheap quality of gray plush.

It has a noble and distant way of confining itself to the

high altitudes, but that is probably on account of its looks;

it apparently has no monopoly of those upper altitudes,

however, for they are sometimes intruded upon by some

of the loveliest of the valley families of wild flowers.

Everybody in the Alps wears a sprig of Edelweiss in his hat.

It is the native's pet, and also the tourist's.

All the morning, as we loafed along, having a good time,

other pedestrians went staving by us with vigorous strides,

and with the intent and determined look of men who were

walking for a wager. These wore loose knee-breeches, long

yarn stockings, and hobnailed high-laced walking-shoes.

They were gentlemen who would go home to England or Germany

and tell how many miles they had beaten the guide-book

every day. But I doubted if they ever had much real fun,

outside of the mere magnificent exhilaration of the

tramp through the green valleys and the breezy heights;

for they were almost always alone, and even the finest

scenery loses incalculably when there is no one to enjoy

it with.

All the morning an endless double procession of mule-mounted

tourists filed past us along the narrow path--the one

procession going, the other coming. We had taken

a good deal of trouble to teach ourselves the kindly

German custom of saluting all strangers with doffed hat,

and we resolutely clung to it, that morning, although it

kept us bareheaded most of the time and was not always

responded to. Still we found an interest in the thing,

because we naturally liked to know who were English

and Americans among the passers-by. All continental

natives responded of course; so did some of the English

and Americans, but, as a general thing, these two races

gave no sign. Whenever a man or a woman showed us

cold neglect, we spoke up confidently in our own tongue

and asked for such information as we happened to need,

and we always got a reply in the same language.

The English and American folk are not less kindly than

other races, they are only more reserved, and that comes

of habit and education. In one dreary, rocky waste,

away above the line of vegetation, we met a procession

of twenty-five mounted young men, all from America.

We got answering bows enough from these, of course,

for they were of an age to learn to do in Rome as Rome does,

without much effort.

At one extremity of this patch of desolation, overhung by bare

and forbidding crags which husbanded drifts of everlasting

snow in their shaded cavities, was a small stretch

of thin and discouraged grass, and a man and a family

of pigs were actually living here in some shanties.

Consequently this place could be really reckoned as

"property"; it had a money value, and was doubtless taxed.

I think it must have marked the limit of real estate

in this world. It would be hard to set a money value

upon any piece of earth that lies between that spot

and the empty realm of space. That man may claim the

distinction of owning the end of the world, for if there

is any definite end to the world he has certainly found it.

From here forward we moved through a storm-swept

and smileless desolation. All about us rose gigantic

masses, crags, and ramparts of bare and dreary rock,

with not a vestige or semblance of plant or tree or

flower anywhere, or glimpse of any creature that had life.

The frost and the tempests of unnumbered ages had battered

and hacked at these cliffs, with a deathless energy,

destroying them piecemeal; so all the region about

their bases was a tumbled chaos of great fragments

which had been split off and hurled to the ground.

Soiled and aged banks of snow lay close about our path.

The ghastly desolation of the place was as tremendously

complete as if Dor'e had furnished the working-plans

for it. But every now and then, through the stern

gateways around us we caught a view of some neighboring

majestic dome, sheathed with glittering ice, and displaying

its white purity at an elevation compared to which

ours was groveling and plebeian, and this spectacle

always chained one's interest and admiration at once,

and made him forget there was anything ugly in the world.

I have just said that there was nothing but death

and desolation in these hideous places, but I forgot.

In the most forlorn and arid and dismal one of all,

where the racked and splintered debris was thickest,

where the ancient patches of snow lay against the very path,

where the winds blew bitterest and the general aspect was

mournfulest and dreariest, and furthest from any suggestion

of cheer or hope, I found a solitary wee forget-me-not

flourishing away, not a droop about it anywhere,

but holding its bright blue star up with the prettiest

and gallantest air in the world, the only happy spirit,

the only smiling thing, in all that grisly desert.

She seemed to say, "Cheer up!--as long as we are here,

let us make the best of it." I judged she had earned

a right to a more hospitable place; so I plucked her up

and sent her to America to a friend who would respect

her for the fight she had made, all by her small self,

to make a whole vast despondent Alpine desolation stop

breaking its heart over the unalterable, and hold up its

head and look at the bright side of things for once.

We stopped for a nooning at a strongly built little inn

called the Schwarenbach. It sits in a lonely spot among

the peaks, where it is swept by the trailing fringes

of the cloud-rack, and is rained on, and snowed on,

and pelted and persecuted by the storms, nearly every day

of its life. It was the only habitation in the whole

Gemmi Pass.

Close at hand, now, was a chance for a blood-curdling

Alpine adventure. Close at hand was the snowy mass

of the Great Altels cooling its topknot in the sky

and daring us to an ascent. I was fired with the idea,

and immediately made up my mind to procure the necessary

guides, ropes, etc., and undertake it. I instructed

Harris to go to the landlord of the inn and set him

about our preparations. Meantime, I went diligently

to work to read up and find out what this much-talked-of

mountain-climbing was like, and how one should go about

it--for in these matters I was ignorant. I opened

Mr. Hinchliff's SUMMER MONTHS AMONG THE ALPS (published

1857), and selected his account of his ascent of Monte Rosa.

It began:

"It is very difficult to free the mind from excitement

on the evening before a grand expedition--"

I saw that I was too calm; so I walked the room a while

and worked myself into a high excitement; but the book's

next remark --that the adventurer must get up at two

in the morning--came as near as anything to flatting it

all out again. However, I reinforced it, and read on,

about how Mr. Hinchliff dressed by candle-light and was "soon

down among the guides, who were bustling about in the passage,

packing provisions, and making every preparation for the start";

and how he glanced out into the cold clear night and saw that--

"The whole sky was blazing with stars, larger and brighter

than they appear through the dense atmosphere breathed

by inhabitants of the lower parts of the earth.

They seemed actually suspended from the dark vault

of heaven, and their gentle light shed a fairylike gleam

over the snow-fields around the foot of the Matterhorn,

which raised its stupendous pinnacle on high, penetrating to

the heart of the Great Bear, and crowning itself with a

diadem of his magnificent stars. Not a sound disturbed

the deep tranquillity of the night, except the distant

roar of streams which rush from the high plateau of the

St. Theodule glacier, and fall headlong over precipitous

rocks till they lose themselves in the mazes of

the Gorner glacier."

He took his hot toast and coffee, and then about

half past three his caravan of ten men filed away

from the Riffel Hotel, and began the steep climb.

At half past five he happened to turn around, and "beheld

the glorious spectacle of the Matterhorn, just touched

by the rosy-fingered morning, and looking like a huge

pyramid of fire rising out of the barren ocean of ice

and rock around it." Then the Breithorn and the Dent

Blanche caught the radiant glow; but "the intervening

mass of Monte Rosa made it necessary for us to climb many

long hours before we could hope to see the sun himself,

yet the whole air soon grew warmer after the splendid

birth of the day."

He gazed at the lofty crown of Monte Rosa and the wastes

of snow that guarded its steep approaches, and the chief

guide delivered the opinion that no man could conquer

their awful heights and put his foot upon that summit.

But the adventurers moved steadily on, nevertheless.

They toiled up, and up, and still up; they passed

the Grand Plateau; then toiled up a steep shoulder

of the mountain, clinging like flies to its rugged face;

and now they were confronted by a tremendous wall from

which great blocks of ice and snow were evidently in the

habit of falling. They turned aside to skirt this wall,

and gradually ascended until their way was barred by a "maze

of gigantic snow crevices,"--so they turned aside again,

and "began a long climb of sufficient steepness to make

a zigzag course necessary."

Fatigue compelled them to halt frequently, for a moment

or two. At one of these halts somebody called out,

"Look at Mont Blanc!" and "we were at once made aware

of the very great height we had attained by actually seeing

the monarch of the Alps and his attendant satellites

right over the top of the Breithorn, itself at least

14,000 feet high!"

These people moved in single file, and were all tied

to a strong rope, at regular distances apart, so that if

one of them slipped on those giddy heights, the others

could brace themselves on their alpenstocks and save him

from darting into the valley, thousands of feet below.

By and by they came to an ice-coated ridge which was tilted

up at a sharp angle, and had a precipice on one side of it.

They had to climb this, so the guide in the lead cut

steps in the ice with his hatchet, and as fast as he

took his toes out of one of these slight holes, the toes

of the man behind him occupied it.

"Slowly and steadily we kept on our way over this dangerous

part of the ascent, and I dare say it was fortunate for

some of us that attention was distracted from the head

by the paramount necessity of looking after the feet;

FOR, WHILE ON THE LEFT THE INCLINE OF ICE WAS SO STEEP

THAT IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANY MAN TO SAVE HIMSELF

IN CASE OF A SLIP, UNLESS THE OTHERS COULD HOLD HIM UP,

ON THE RIGHT WE MIGHT DROP A PEBBLE FROM THE HAND OVER

PRECIPICES OF UNKNOWN EXTENT DOWN UPON THE TREMENDOUS

GLACIER BELOW.

"Great caution, therefore, was absolutely necessary,

and in this exposed situation we were attacked by all

the fury of that grand enemy of aspirants to Monte

Rosa--a severe and bitterly cold wind from the north.

The fine powdery snow was driven past us in the clouds,

penetrating the interstices of our clothes, and the pieces

of ice which flew from the blows of Peter's ax were

whisked into the air, and then dashed over the precipice.

We had quite enough to do to prevent ourselves from being

served in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then,

in the more violent gusts of wind, were glad to stick our

alpenstocks into the ice and hold on hard."

Having surmounted this perilous steep, they sat down and

took a brief rest with their backs against a sheltering

rock and their heels dangling over a bottomless abyss;

then they climbed to the base of another ridge--a more

difficult and dangerous one still:

"The whole of the ridge was exceedingly narrow, and the

fall on each side desperately steep, but the ice in some

of these intervals between the masses of rock assumed

the form of a mere sharp edge, almost like a knife;

these places, though not more than three or four short

paces in length, looked uncommonly awkward; but, like the

sword leading true believers to the gates of Paradise,

they must needs be passed before we could attain to

the summit of our ambition. These were in one or two

places so narrow, that in stepping over them with toes

well turned out for greater security, ONE END OF THE

FOOT PROJECTED OVER THE AWFUL PRECIPICE ON THE RIGHT,

WHILE THE OTHER WAS ON THE BEGINNING OF THE ICE SLOPE ON

THE LEFT, WHICH WAS SCARCELY LESS STEEP THAN THE ROCKS.

On these occasions Peter would take my hand, and each

of us stretching as far as we could, he was thus enabled

to get a firm footing two paces or rather more from me,

whence a spring would probably bring him to the rock

on the other side; then, turning around, he called

to me to come, and, taking a couple of steps carefully,

I was met at the third by his outstretched hand ready

to clasp mine, and in a moment stood by his side.

The others followed in much the same fashion. Once my

right foot slipped on the side toward the precipice,

but I threw out my left arm in a moment so that it caught

the icy edge under my armpit as I fell, and supported

me considerably; at the same instant I cast my eyes

down the side on which I had slipped, and contrived

to plant my right foot on a piece of rock as large as a

cricket-ball, which chanced to protrude through the ice,

on the very edge of the precipice. Being thus anchored

fore and aft, as it were, I believe I could easily have

recovered myself, even if I had been alone, though it must

be confessed the situation would have been an awful one;

as it was, however, a jerk from Peter settled the matter

very soon, and I was on my legs all right in an instant.

The rope is an immense help in places of this kind."

Now they arrived at the base of a great knob or dome

veneered with ice and powdered with snow--the utmost,

summit, the last bit of solidity between them and the hollow

vault of heaven. They set to work with their hatchets,

and were soon creeping, insectlike, up its surface, with their

heels projecting over the thinnest kind of nothingness,

thickened up a little with a few wandering shreds and

films of cloud moving in a lazy procession far below.

Presently, one man's toe-hold broke and he fell! There he

dangled in mid-air at the end of the rope, like a spider,

till his friends above hauled him into place again.

A little bit later, the party stood upon the wee pedestal

of the very summit, in a driving wind, and looked out

upon the vast green expanses of Italy and a shoreless

ocean of billowy Alps.

When I had read thus far, Harris broke into the room

in a noble excitement and said the ropes and the guides

were secured, and asked if I was ready. I said I

believed I wouldn't ascend the Altels this time.

I said Alp-climbing was a different thing from what I had

supposed it was, and so I judged we had better study its

points a little more before we went definitely into it.

But I told him to retain the guides and order them to

follow us to Zermatt, because I meant to use them there.

I said I could feel the spirit of adventure beginning

to stir in me, and was sure that the fell fascination

of Alp-climbing would soon be upon me. I said he could

make up his mind to it that we would do a deed before we

were a week older which would make the hair of the timid

curl with fright.

This made Harris happy, and filled him with ambitious

anticipations. He went at once to tell the guides to

follow us to Zermatt and bring all their paraphernalia

with them.

CHAPTER XXXV

[Swindling the Coroner]

A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How

it takes possession of a man! how it clings to him,

how it rides him! I strode onward from the Schwarenbach

hostelry a changed man, a reorganized personality.

I walked into a new world, I saw with new eyes.

I had been looking aloft at the giant show-peaks only as

things to be worshiped for their grandeur and magnitude,

and their unspeakable grace of form; I looked up at

them now, as also things to be conquered and climbed.

My sense of their grandeur and their noble beauty

was neither lost nor impaired; I had gained a new

interest in the mountains without losing the old ones.

I followed the steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye,

and noted the possibility or impossibility of following

them with my feet. When I saw a shining helmet of ice

projecting above the clouds, I tried to imagine I saw

files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a

gossamer thread.

We skirted the lonely little lake called the Daubensee,

and presently passed close by a glacier on the right

--a thing like a great river frozen solid in its flow

and broken square off like a wall at its mouth.

I had never been so near a glacier before.

Here we came upon a new board shanty, and found some men

engaged in building a stone house; so the Schwarenbach was

soon to have a rival. We bought a bottle or so of beer here;

at any rate they called it beer, but I knew by the price

that it was dissolved jewelry, and I perceived by the

taste that dissolved jewelry is not good stuff to drink.

We were surrounded by a hideous desolation. We stepped

forward to a sort of jumping-off place, and were confronted

by a startling contrast: we seemed to look down into fairyland.

Two or three thousand feet below us was a bright green level,

with a pretty town in its midst, and a silvery stream

winding among the meadows; the charming spot was walled

in on all sides by gigantic precipices clothed with pines;

and over the pines, out of the softened distances,

rose the snowy domes and peaks of the Monte Rosa region.

How exquisitely green and beautiful that little valley

down there was! The distance was not great enough to

obliterate details, it only made them little, and mellow,

and dainty, like landscapes and towns seen through the

wrong end of a spy-glass.

Right under us a narrow ledge rose up out of the valley,

with a green, slanting, bench-shaped top, and grouped

about upon this green-baize bench were a lot of black

and white sheep which looked merely like oversized worms.

The bench seemed lifted well up into our neighborhood,

but that was a deception--it was a long way down to it.

We began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road I

have ever seen. It wound its corkscrew curves down the face

of the colossal precipice--a narrow way, with always

the solid rock wall at one elbow, and perpendicular

nothingness at the other. We met an everlasting procession

of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing

up this steep and muddy path, and there was no room

to spare when you had to pass a tolerably fat mule.

I always took the inside, when I heard or saw the

mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall.

I preferred the inside, of course, but I should have had

to take it anyhow, because the mule prefers the outside.

A mule's preference--on a precipice--is a thing to

be respected. Well, his choice is always the outside.

His life is mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers

and packages which rest against his body--therefore he

is habituated to taking the outside edge of mountain paths,

to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks or banks

on the other. When he goes into the passenger business he

absurdly clings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his

passenger always dangling over the great deeps of the lower

world while that passenger's heart is in the highlands,

so to speak. More than once I saw a mule's hind foot

cave over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into

the bottom abyss; and I noticed that upon these occasions

the rider, whether male or female, looked tolerably unwell.

There was one place where an eighteen-inch breadth of

light masonry had been added to the verge of the path,

and as there was a very sharp turn here, a panel of fencing

had been set up there at some time, as a protection.

This panel was old and gray and feeble, and the light

masonry had been loosened by recent rains. A young

American girl came along on a mule, and in making the turn

the mule's hind foot caved all the loose masonry and one

of the fence-posts overboard; the mule gave a violent lurch

inboard to save himself, and succeeded in the effort,

but that girl turned as white as the snows of Mont Blanc

for a moment.

The path was simply a groove cut into the face of

the precipice; there was a four-foot breadth of solid rock

under the traveler, and four-foot breadth of solid rock

just above his head, like the roof of a narrow porch;

he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer

summitless and bottomless wall of rock before him,

across a gorge or crack a biscuit's toss in width

--but he could not see the bottom of his own precipice

unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge.

I did not do this, because I did not wish to soil my clothes.

Every few hundred yards, at particularly bad places,

one came across a panel or so of plank fencing; but they

were always old and weak, and they generally leaned

out over the chasm and did not make any rash promises

to hold up people who might need support. There was one

of these panels which had only its upper board left;

a pedestrianizing English youth came tearing down the path,

was seized with an impulse to look over the precipice,

and without an instant's thought he threw his weight

upon that crazy board. It bent outward a foot! I never

made a gasp before that came so near suffocating me.

The English youth's face simply showed a lively surprise,

but nothing more. He went swinging along valleyward again,

as if he did not know he had just swindled a coroner by the

closest kind of a shave.

The Alpine litter is sometimes like a cushioned box

made fast between the middles of two long poles,

and sometimes it is a chair with a back to it and a support

for the feet. It is carried by relays of strong porters.

The motion is easier than that of any other conveyance.

We met a few men and a great many ladies in litters;

it seemed to me that most of the ladies looked pale

and nauseated; their general aspect gave me the idea

that they were patiently enduring a horrible suffering.

As a rule, they looked at their laps, and left the scenery

to take care of itself.

But the most frightened creature I saw, was a led horse

that overtook us. Poor fellow, he had been born and reared

in the grassy levels of the Kandersteg valley and had

never seen anything like this hideous place before.

Every few steps he would stop short, glance wildly out from

the dizzy height, and then spread his red nostrils wide

and pant as violently as if he had been running a race;

and all the while he quaked from head to heel as with

a palsy. He was a handsome fellow, and he made a fine

statuesque picture of terror, but it was pitiful to see

him suffer so.

This dreadful path has had its tragedy. Baedeker, with his

customary over-terseness, begins and ends the tale thus:

"The descent on horseback should be avoided.

In 1861 a Comtesse d'Herlincourt fell from her saddle

over the precipice and was killed on the spot."

We looked over the precipice there, and saw the monument

which commemorates the event. It stands in the bottom

of the gorge, in a place which has been hollowed out of

the rock to protect it from the torrent and the storms.

Our old guide never spoke but when spoken to, and then

limited himself to a syllable or two, but when we asked

him about this tragedy he showed a strong interest

in the matter. He said the Countess was very pretty,

and very young--hardly out of her girlhood, in fact.

She was newly married, and was on her bridal tour.

The young husband was riding a little in advance; one guide

was leading the husband's horse, another was leading the

bride's.

The old man continued:

"The guide that was leading the husband's horse happened

to glance back, and there was that poor young thing sitting

up staring out over the precipice; and her face began

to bend downward a little, and she put up her two hands

slowly and met it--so,--and put them flat against her

eyes--so--and then she sank out of the saddle, with a

sharp shriek, and one caught only the flash of a dress,

and it was all over."

Then after a pause:

"Ah, yes, that guide saw these things--yes, he saw them all.

He saw them all, just as I have told you."

After another pause:

"Ah, yes, he saw them all. My God, that was ME.

I was that guide!"

This had been the one event of the old man's life; so one

may be sure he had forgotten no detail connected with it.

We listened to all he had to say about what was done and what

happened and what was said after the sorrowful occurrence,

and a painful story it was.

When we had wound down toward the valley until we were about

on the last spiral of the corkscrew, Harris's hat blew

over the last remaining bit of precipice--a small cliff

a hundred or hundred and fifty feet high--and sailed down

toward a steep slant composed of rough chips and fragments

which the weather had flaked away from the precipices.

We went leisurely down there, expecting to find it without

any trouble, but we had made a mistake, as to that.

We hunted during a couple of hours--not because the old

straw hat was valuable, but out of curiosity to find out

how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open

ground where there was nothing left for it to hide behind.

When one is reading in bed, and lays his paper-knife down,

he cannot find it again if it is smaller than a saber;

that hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife could have been,

and we finally had to give it up; but we found a fragment

that had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by digging

around and turning over the rocks we gradually collected

all the lenses and the cylinders and the various odds

and ends that go to making up a complete opera-glass.

We afterward had the thing reconstructed, and the owner

can have his adventurous lost-property by submitting

proofs and paying costs of rehabilitation. We had hopes

of finding the owner there, distributed around amongst

the rocks, for it would have made an elegant paragraph;

but we were disappointed. Still, we were far from

being disheartened, for there was a considerable area

which we had not thoroughly searched; we were satisfied he

was there, somewhere, so we resolved to wait over a day at

Leuk and come back and get him.

Then we sat down to polish off the perspiration and

arrange about what we would do with him when we got him.

Harris was for contributing him to the British Museum;

but I was for mailing him to his widow. That is the difference

between Harris and me: Harris is all for display, I am

all for the simple right, even though I lose money by it.

Harris argued in favor of his proposition against mine,

I argued in favor of mine and against his. The discussion

warmed into a dispute; the dispute warmed into a quarrel.

I finally said, very decidedly:

"My mind is made up. He goes to the widow."

Harris answered sharply:

"And MY mind is made up. He goes to the Museum."

I said, calmly:

"The museum may whistle when it gets him."

Harris retorted:

"The widow may save herself the trouble of whistling,

for I will see that she never gets him."

After some angry bandying of epithets, I said:

"It seems to me that you are taking on a good many airs

about these remains. I don't quite see what YOU'VE got

to say about them?"

"I? I've got ALL to say about them. They'd never have

been thought of if I hadn't found their opera-glass. The

corpse belongs to me, and I'll do as I please with him."

I was leader of the Expedition, and all discoveries

achieved by it naturally belonged to me. I was entitled

to these remains, and could have enforced my right;

but rather than have bad blood about the matter,

I said we would toss up for them. I threw heads and won,

but it was a barren victory, for although we spent all

the next day searching, we never found a bone. I cannot

imagine what could ever have become of that fellow.

The town in the valley is called Leuk or Leukerbad.

We pointed our course toward it, down a verdant slope

which was adorned with fringed gentians and other flowers,

and presently entered the narrow alleys of the outskirts

and waded toward the middle of the town through liquid

"fertilizer." They ought to either pave that village or

organize a ferry.

Harris's body was simply a chamois-pasture; his person

was populous with the little hungry pests; his skin,

when he stripped, was splotched like a scarlet-fever patient's;

so, when we were about to enter one of the Leukerbad inns,

and he noticed its sign, "Chamois Hotel," he refused

to stop there. He said the chamois was plentiful enough,

without hunting up hotels where they made a specialty of it.

I was indifferent, for the chamois is a creature that will

neither bite me nor abide with me; but to calm Harris,

we went to the Ho^tel des Alpes.

At the table d'ho^te, we had this, for an incident.

A very grave man--in fact his gravity amounted to solemnity,

and almost to austerity--sat opposite us and he was

"tight," but doing his best to appear sober. He took up

a CORKED bottle of wine, tilted it over his glass awhile,

then set it out of the way, with a contented look, and went

on with his dinner.

Presently he put his glass to his mouth, and of course

found it empty. He looked puzzled, and glanced furtively

and suspiciously out of the corner of his eye at a

benignant and unconscious old lady who sat at his right.

Shook his head, as much as to say, "No, she couldn't have

done it." He tilted the corked bottle over his glass again,

meantime searching around with his watery eye to see

if anybody was watching him. He ate a few mouthfuls,

raised his glass to his lips, and of course it was

still empty. He bent an injured and accusing side-glance

upon that unconscious old lady, which was a study to see.

She went on eating and gave no sign. He took up his glass

and his bottle, with a wise private nod of his head,

and set them gravely on the left-hand side of his plate

--poured himself another imaginary drink--went to work

with his knife and fork once more--presently lifted

his glass with good confidence, and found it empty,

as usual.

This was almost a petrifying surprise. He straightened

himself up in his chair and deliberately and sorrowfully

inspected the busy old ladies at his elbows, first one and

then the other. At last he softly pushed his plate away,

set his glass directly in front of him, held on to it

with his left hand, and proceeded to pour with his right.

This time he observed that nothing came. He turned the

bottle clear upside down; still nothing issued from it;

a plaintive look came into his face, and he said, as if

to himself,

"'IC! THEY'VE GOT IT ALL!" Then he set the bottle down,

resignedly, and took the rest of his dinner dry.

It was at that table d'ho^te, too, that I had under inspection

the largest lady I have ever seen in private life.

She was over seven feet high, and magnificently proportioned.

What had first called my attention to her, was my stepping

on an outlying flange of her foot, and hearing, from up

toward the ceiling, a deep "Pardon, m'sieu, but you encroach!"

That was when we were coming through the hall, and the place

was dim, and I could see her only vaguely. The thing

which called my attention to her the second time was,

that at a table beyond ours were two very pretty girls,

and this great lady came in and sat down between them

and me and blotted out my view. She had a handsome face,

and she was very finely formed--perfected formed,

I should say. But she made everybody around her look trivial

and commonplace. Ladies near her looked like children,

and the men about her looked mean. They looked like failures;

and they looked as if they felt so, too. She sat with

her back to us. I never saw such a back in my life.

I would have so liked to see the moon rise over it.

The whole congregation waited, under one pretext or another,

till she finished her dinner and went out; they wanted to see

her at full altitude, and they found it worth tarrying for.

She filled one's idea of what an empress ought to be,

when she rose up in her unapproachable grandeur and moved

superbly out of that place.

We were not at Leuk in time to see her at her heaviest weight.

She had suffered from corpulence and had come there to get

rid of her extra flesh in the baths. Five weeks of soaking

--five uninterrupted hours of it every day--had accomplished

her purpose and reduced her to the right proportions.

Those baths remove fat, and also skin-diseases. The

patients remain in the great tanks for hours at a time.

A dozen gentlemen and ladies occupy a tank together,

and amuse themselves with rompings and various games.

They have floating desks and tables, and they read or lunch

or play chess in water that is breast-deep. The tourist

can step in and view this novel spectacle if he chooses.

There's a poor-box, and he will have to contribute.

There are several of these big bathing-houses, and you can

always tell when you are near one of them by the romping

noises and shouts of laughter that proceed from it.

The water is running water, and changes all the time,

else a patient with a ringworm might take the bath with only

a partial success, since, while he was ridding himself of

the ringworm, he might catch the itch.

The next morning we wandered back up the green valley,

leisurely, with the curving walls of those bare and

stupendous precipices rising into the clouds before us.

I had never seen a clean, bare precipice stretching up

five thousand feet above me before, and I never shall

expect to see another one. They exist, perhaps, but not

in places where one can easily get close to them.

This pile of stone is peculiar. From its base to the

soaring tops of its mighty towers, all its lines and

all its details vaguely suggest human architecture.

There are rudimentary bow-windows, cornices, chimneys,

demarcations of stories, etc. One could sit and stare up

there and study the features and exquisite graces of this

grand structure, bit by bit, and day after day, and never

weary his interest. The termination, toward the town,

observed in profile, is the perfection of shape.

It comes down out of the clouds in a succession of rounded,

colossal, terracelike projections--a stairway for the gods;

at its head spring several lofty storm-scarred towers,

one after another, with faint films of vapor curling

always about them like spectral banners. If there were

a king whose realms included the whole world, here would

be the place meet and proper for such a monarch. He would

only need to hollow it out and put in the electric light.

He could give audience to a nation at a time under its roof.

Our search for those remains having failed, we inspected with

a glass the dim and distant track of an old-time avalanche

that once swept down from some pine-grown summits behind

the town and swept away the houses and buried the people;

then we struck down the road that leads toward the Rhone,

to see the famous Ladders. These perilous things are

built against the perpendicular face of a cliff two or

three hundred feet high. The peasants, of both sexes,

were climbing up and down them, with heavy loads on

their backs. I ordered Harris to make the ascent, so I

could put the thrill and horror of it in my book, and he

accomplished the feat successfully, though a subagent,

for three francs, which I paid. It makes me shudder yet

when I think of what I felt when I was clinging there

between heaven and earth in the person of that proxy.

At times the world swam around me, and I could hardly keep

from letting go, so dizzying was the appalling danger.

Many a person would have given up and descended, but I stuck

to my task, and would not yield until I had accomplished it.

I felt a just pride in my exploit, but I would not

have repeated it for the wealth of the world. I shall

break my neck yet with some such foolhardy performance,

for warnings never seem to have any lasting effect on me.

When the people of the hotel found that I had been

climbing those crazy Ladders, it made me an object of

considerable attention.

Next morning, early, we drove to the Rhone valley and took

the train for Visp. There we shouldered our knapsacks

and things, and set out on foot, in a tremendous rain,

up the winding gorge, toward Zermatt. Hour after hour we

slopped along, by the roaring torrent, and under noble

Lesser Alps which were clothed in rich velvety green

all the way up and had little atomy Swiss homes perched

upon grassy benches along their mist-dimmed heights.

The rain continued to pour and the torrent to boom, and we

continued to enjoy both. At the one spot where this torrent

tossed its white mane highest, and thundered loudest,

and lashed the big boulders fiercest, the canton had done

itself the honor to build the flimsiest wooden bridge

that exists in the world. While we were walking over it,

along with a party of horsemen, I noticed that even

the larger raindrops made it shake. I called Harris's

attention to it, and he noticed it, too. It seemed

to me that if I owned an elephant that was a keepsake,

and I thought a good deal of him, I would think twice

before I would ride him over that bridge.

We climbed up to the village of St. Nicholas, about half

past four in the afternoon, waded ankle-deep through

the fertilizer-juice, and stopped at a new and nice hotel

close by the little church. We stripped and went to bed,

and sent our clothes down to be baked. And the horde

of soaked tourists did the same. That chaos of clothing

got mixed in the kitchen, and there were consequences.

I did not get back the same drawers I sent down, when our

things came up at six-fifteen; I got a pair on a new plan.

They were merely a pair of white ruffle-cuffed absurdities,

hitched together at the top with a narrow band, and they did

not come quite down to my knees. They were pretty enough,

but they made me feel like two people, and disconnected

at that. The man must have been an idiot that got himself

up like that, to rough it in the Swiss mountains.

The shirt they brought me was shorter than the drawers,

and hadn't any sleeves to it--at least it hadn't anything

more than what Mr. Darwin would call "rudimentary" sleeves;

these had "edging" around them, but the bosom was

ridiculously plain. The knit silk undershirt they brought

me was on a new plan, and was really a sensible thing;

it opened behind, and had pockets in it to put your

shoulder-blades in; but they did not seem to fit mine,

and so I found it a sort of uncomfortable garment.

They gave my bobtail coat to somebody else, and sent me

an ulster suitable for a giraffe. I had to tie my collar on,

because there was no button behind on that foolish little shirt

which I described a while ago.

When I was dressed for dinner at six-thirty, I was too loose

in some places and too tight in others, and altogether I

felt slovenly and ill-conditioned. However, the people

at the table d'ho^te were no better off than I was;

they had everybody's clothes but their own on. A long

stranger recognized his ulster as soon as he saw the tail

of it following me in, but nobody claimed my shirt or

my drawers, though I described them as well as I was able.

I gave them to the chambermaid that night when I went

to bed, and she probably found the owner, for my own

things were on a chair outside my door in the morning.

There was a lovable English clergyman who did

not get to the table d'ho^te at all. His breeches

had turned up missing, and without any equivalent.

He said he was not more particular than other people,

but he had noticed that a clergyman at dinner without

any breeches was almost sure to excite remark.

CHAPTER XXXVI

[The Fiendish Fun of Alp-climbing]

We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The church-bell

began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from

the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it

takes the Swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation

through his head. Most church-bells in the world

are of poor quality, and have a harsh and rasping

sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin,

but the St. Nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one

that has been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening

in its operation. Still, it may have its right and its

excuse to exist, for the community is poor and not every

citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be

any excuse for our church-bells at home, for their is no

family in America without a clock, and consequently there

is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful

sounds that issues from our steeples. There is much more

profanity in America on Sunday than is all in the other six

days of the week put together, and it is of a more bitter

and malignant character than the week-day profanity, too.

It is produced by the cracked-pot clangor of the cheap

church-bells.

We build our churches almost without regard to cost;

we rear an edifice which is an adornment to the town, and we

gild it, and fresco it, and mortgage it, and do everything

we can think of to perfect it, and then spoil it all by

putting a bell on it which afflicts everybody who hears it,

giving some the headache, others St. Vitus's dance,

and the rest the blind staggers.

An American village at ten o'clock on a summer Sunday is

the quietest and peacefulest and holiest thing in nature;

but it is a pretty different thing half an hour later.

Mr. Poe's poem of the "Bells" stands incomplete to this day;

but it is well enough that it is so, for the public reciter

or "reader" who goes around trying to imitate the sounds

of the various sorts of bells with his voice would find

himself "up a stump" when he got to the church-bell

--as Joseph Addison would say. The church is always trying

to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea

to reform itself a little, by way of example. It is still

clinging to one or two things which were useful once,

but which are not useful now, neither are they ornamental.

One is the bell-ringing to remind a clock-caked town

that it is church-time, and another is the reading from

the pulpit of a tedious list of "notices" which everybody

who is interested has already read in the newspaper.

The clergyman even reads the hymn through--a relic

of an ancient time when hymn-books are scarce and costly;

but everybody has a hymn-book, now, and so the public reading

is no longer necessary. It is not merely unnecessary,

it is generally painful; for the average clergyman could

not fire into his congregation with a shotgun and hit a worse

reader than himself, unless the weapon scattered shamefully.

I am not meaning to be flippant and irreverent, I am only

meaning to be truthful. The average clergyman, in all

countries and of all denominations, is a very bad reader.

One would think he would at least learn how to read

the Lord's Prayer, by and by, but it is not so. He races

through it as if he thought the quicker he got it in,

the sooner it would be answered. A person who does not

appreciate the exceeding value of pauses, and does not know

how to measure their duration judiciously, cannot render

the grand simplicity and dignity of a composition like

that effectively.

We took a tolerably early breakfast, and tramped off

toward Zermatt through the reeking lanes of the village,

glad to get away from that bell. By and by we had a fine

spectacle on our right. It was the wall-like butt end of a

huge glacier, which looked down on us from an Alpine height

which was well up in the blue sky. It was an astonishing

amount of ice to be compacted together in one mass.

We ciphered upon it and decided that it was not less than

several hundred feet from the base of the wall of solid

ice to the top of it--Harris believed it was really

twice that. We judged that if St. Paul's, St. Peter's,

the Great Pyramid, the Strasburg Cathedral and the Capitol

in Washington were clustered against that wall, a man

sitting on its upper edge could not hang his hat on the top

of any one of them without reaching down three or four

hundred feet--a thing which, of course, no man could do.

To me, that mighty glacier was very beautiful. I did

not imagine that anybody could find fault with it; but I

was mistaken. Harris had been snarling for several days.

He was a rabid Protestant, and he was always saying:

"In the Protestant cantons you never see such poverty

and dirt and squalor as you do in this Catholic one;

you never see the lanes and alleys flowing with foulness;

you never see such wretched little sties of houses;

you never see an inverted tin turnip on top of a church

for a dome; and as for a church-bell, why, you never hear

a church-bell at all."

All this morning he had been finding fault, straight along.

First it was with the mud. He said, "It ain't muddy in a

Protestant canton when it rains." Then it was with the dogs:

"They don't have those lop-eared dogs in a Protestant canton."

Then it was with the roads: "They don't leave the roads

to make themselves in a Protestant canton, the people make

them--and they make a road that IS a road, too." Next it

was the goats: "You never see a goat shedding tears

in a Protestant canton--a goat, there, is one of the

cheerfulest objects in nature." Next it was the chamois:

"You never see a Protestant chamois act like one of these

--they take a bite or two and go; but these fellows camp

with you and stay." Then it was the guide-boards: "In

a Protestant canton you couldn't get lost if you wanted to,

but you never see a guide-board in a Catholic canton."

Next, "You never see any flower-boxes in the windows,

here--never anything but now and then a cat--a torpid one;

but you take a Protestant canton: windows perfectly lovely

with flowers--and as for cats, there's just acres of them.

These folks in this canton leave a road to make itself,

and then fine you three francs if you 'trot' over it

--as if a horse could trot over such a sarcasm of a road."

Next about the goiter: "THEY talk about goiter!--I haven't

seen a goiter in this whole canton that I couldn't put

in a hat."

He had growled at everything, but I judged it would puzzle

him to find anything the matter with this majestic glacier.

I intimated as much; but he was ready, and said with surly

discontent: "You ought to see them in the Protestant cantons."

This irritated me. But I concealed the feeling, and asked:

"What is the matter with this one?"

"Matter? Why, it ain't in any kind of condition.

They never take any care of a glacier here. The moraine

has been spilling gravel around it, and got it all dirty."

"Why, man, THEY can't help that."

"THEY? You're right. That is, they WON'T. They could

if they wanted to. You never see a speck of dirt

on a Protestant glacier. Look at the Rhone glacier.

It is fifteen miles long, and seven hundred feet think.

If this was a Protestant glacier you wouldn't see it looking

like this, I can tell you."

"That is nonsense. What would they do with it?"

"They would whitewash it. They always do."

I did not believe a word of this, but rather than have

trouble I let it go; for it is a waste of breath to argue

with a bigot. I even doubted if the Rhone glacier WAS

in a Protestant canton; but I did not know, so I could

not make anything by contradicting a man who would

probably put me down at once with manufactured evidence.

About nine miles from St. Nicholas we crossed a bridge

over the raging torrent of the Visp, and came to a log

strip of flimsy fencing which was pretending to secure

people from tumbling over a perpendicular wall forty feet

high and into the river. Three children were approaching;

one of them, a little girl, about eight years old,

was running; when pretty close to us she stumbled and fell,

and her feet shot under the rail of the fence and for a

moment projected over the stream. It gave us a sharp shock,

for we thought she was gone, sure, for the ground slanted

steeply, and to save herself seemed a sheer impossibility;

but she managed to scramble up, and ran by us laughing.

We went forward and examined the place and saw the long

tracks which her feet had made in the dirt when they

darted over the verge. If she had finished her trip she

would have struck some big rocks in the edge of the water,

and then the torrent would have snatched her downstream

among the half-covered boulders and she would have been

pounded to pulp in two minutes. We had come exceedingly

near witnessing her death.

And now Harris's contrary nature and inborn selfishness

were striking manifested. He has no spirit of self-denial.

He began straight off, and continued for an hour,

to express his gratitude that the child was not destroyed.

I never saw such a man. That was the kind of person he was;

just so HE was gratified, he never cared anything about

anybody else. I had noticed that trait in him, over and

over again. Often, of course, it was mere heedlessness,

mere want of reflection. Doubtless this may have been

the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard

to bar on that account--and after all, its bottom,

its groundwork, was selfishness. There is no avoiding

that conclusion. In the instance under consideration,

I did think the indecency of running on in that way might

occur to him; but no, the child was saved and he was glad,

that was sufficient--he cared not a straw for MY feelings,

or my loss of such a literary plum, snatched from my

very mouth at the instant it was ready to drop into it.

His selfishness was sufficient to place his own gratification

in being spared suffering clear before all concern for me,

his friend. Apparently, he did not once reflect upon the

valuable details which would have fallen like a windfall

to me: fishing the child out--witnessing the surprise of

the family and the stir the thing would have made among the

peasants--then a Swiss funeral--then the roadside monument,

to be paid for by us and have our names mentioned in it.

And we should have gone into Baedeker and been immortal.

I was silent. I was too much hurt to complain. If he could

act so, and be so heedless and so frivolous at such a time,

and actually seem to glory in it, after all I had done for him,

I would have cut my hand off before I would let him see

that I was wounded.

We were approaching Zermatt; consequently, we were

approaching the renowned Matterhorn. A month before,

this mountain had been only a name to us, but latterly

we had been moving through a steadily thickening double

row of pictures of it, done in oil, water, chromo, wood,

steel, copper, crayon, and photography, and so it had at

length become a shape to us--and a very distinct, decided,

and familiar one, too. We were expecting to recognize

that mountain whenever or wherever we should run across it.

We were not deceived. The monarch was far away when we

first saw him, but there was no such thing as mistaking him.

He has the rare peculiarity of standing by himself;

he is peculiarly steep, too, and is also most oddly shaped.

He towers into the sky like a colossal wedge, with the

upper third of its blade bent a little to the left.

The broad base of this monster wedge is planted upon

a grand glacier-paved Alpine platform whose elevation

is ten thousand feet above sea-level; as the wedge itself

is some five thousand feet high, it follows that its

apex is about fifteen thousand feet above sea-level.

So the whole bulk of this stately piece of rock, this

sky-cleaving monolith, is above the line of eternal snow.

Yet while all its giant neighbors have the look of being

built of solid snow, from their waists up, the Matterhorn

stands black and naked and forbidding, the year round,

or merely powdered or streaked with white in places,

for its sides are so steep that the snow cannot stay there.

Its strange form, its august isolation, and its majestic

unkinship with its own kind, make it--so to speak--the Napoleon

of the mountain world. "Grand, gloomy, and peculiar,"

is a phrase which fits it as aptly as it fitted the great

captain.

Think of a monument a mile high, standing on a pedestal

two miles high! This is what the Matterhorn is--a monument.

Its office, henceforth, for all time, will be to keep

watch and ward over the secret resting-place of the young

Lord Douglas, who, in 1865, was precipitated from the

summit over a precipice four thousand feet high, and never

seen again. No man ever had such a monument as this before;

the most imposing of the world's other monuments are

but atoms compared to it; and they will perish, and their

places will pass from memory, but this will remain. [1]

1. The accident which cost Lord Douglas his life (see

Chapter xii) also cost the lives of three other men.

These three fell four-fifths of a mile, and their bodies

were afterward found, lying side by side, upon a glacier,

whence they were borne to Zermatt and buried in the

churchyard.

The remains of Lord Douglas have never been found.

The secret of his sepulture, like that of Moses, must remain

a mystery always.