FRIDAY, July 22, Grindelwald to Meyringen. On we came, to the top of
the Great Schiedich, where H. and W. botanized, while I slept. Thence
we rode down the mountain till we reached Rosenlaui, where, I am free
to say, a dinner was to me a more interesting object than a glacier.
Therefore, while H. and W. went to the latter, I turned off to the
inn, amid their cries and reproaches. I waved my cap and made a bow. A
glacier!--go five rods farther to see a glacier! Catch me in any such
folly. The fact is, Alps are good, like confections, in moderation;
but to breakfast, dine, and sup on Alps surfeits my digestion.
Here, for example, I am writing these notes in the _salle-à-manger_ of
the inn, where other voyagers are eating and drinking, and there H. is
feeding on the green moonshine of an emerald ice cave. One would
almost think her incapable of fatigue. How she skips up and down high
places and steep places, to the manifest perplexity of honest guide
Kienholz, _père_, who tries to take care of her, but does not exactly
know how. She gets on a pyramid of _débris_, which the edge of the
glacier is ploughing and grinding up, sits down, and falls--not asleep
exactly--but into a trance. W. and I are ready to go on; we shout; our
voice is lost in the roar of the torrent. We send the guide. He goes
down, and stands doubtfully. He does not know exactly what to do.
She hears him, and starts to her feet, pointing with one hand to yonder
peak, and with the other to that knifelike edge, that seems cleaving
heaven with its keen and glistening cimeter of snow, reminding one of
Isaiah's sublime imagery, "For my sword is bathed in heaven." She
points at the grizzly rocks, with their jags and spear points. Evidently
she is beside herself, and thinks she can remember the names of those
monsters, born of earthquake and storm, which cannot be named nor
known but by sight, and then are known at once, perfectly and forever.
Mountains are Nature's testimonials of anguish. They are the sharp cry
of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes
itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and
splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing
verdureless and stern because exist they must. In them hearts that
have ceased to rejoice, and have learned to suffer, find kindred, and
here, an earth worn with countless cycles of sorrow, utters to the
stars voices of speechless despair.
And all this time no dinner! All this time H. is at the glacier! How
do I know but she has fallen into a _crevasse_? How do I know but
that a cliff, one of those ice castles, those leaning turrets, those
frosty spearmen, have toppled over upon her? I shudder at the
reflection. I will write no more.
I had just written thus far, when in came H. and W. in high feather.
O, I had lost the greatest sight in Switzerland! There was such a
chasm, a mountain cut in twain, with a bridge, and a man to throw a
stone down; and you could hear it go _boom_, and _he held his
hat!_ "Not a doubt of that," said I. Then there was a cavern in the
ice, and the ice was so green, and the water dripped from the roof,
and a great river rushed out. Such was the substance of their united
enthusiasm.
But, alas! it was not enough to lose the best glacier in Switzerland;
I must needs lose two cascades and a chamois. Just before coming to
Meyringen, I was composedly riding down a species of stone gridiron,
set up sidewise, called a road, when the guide overtook me, and
requested me to walk, as the road was bad. Stupid fellow! he said not
a word about cascades and chamois, and so I went down like a chamois
myself, taking the road that seemed best and nearest, and reached the
inn an hour before the rest. After waiting till I became alarmed, and
was just sending back a messenger to inquire, lo, in they came, and
began to tell me of cascades and chamois.
"What cascade? What chamois? I have not seen any!" And then what a
burst! "Not seen any! What, two cascades, one glacier, and a
four-year-old chamois, lost in one day! What will become of you? Is
this the way you make the tour of Switzerland?"
Saturday, July 23. Rode in a _voiture_ from Meyringen to Brienz,
on the opposite end of the lake from Interlachen. Embarked in a
rowboat of four immense oars tied by withs. Two men and one woman
pulled three, and W. and I took turns at the fourth. The boat being
high built, flat bottomed, with awning and flagstaff, rolled and
tipped so easily that soon H., with remorseful visage, abandoned her
attempt to write, and lay down. There is a fresh and savage beauty
about this lake, which can only be realized by rowing across.
Interlachen is underrated in the guide books. It has points of
unrivalled loveliness; the ruins of the old church of Rinconberg, for
example, commanding a fine view of both lakes, of the country between,
and the Alps around, while just at your feet is a little lake in a
basin, some two hundred feet above the other lakes. Then, too, from
your window in the Belvedere, you gaze upon the purity of the
Jungfrau. The church, too, where on Sabbath we attended Episcopal
service, is embowered in foliage, and seems like some New England
village meeting house.
Monday, July 25. Adieu to Interlachen! Ho for Lucerne and the Righi!
Dined at Thun in a thunder storm. Stopped over night at Langnau, an
out-of-the-way place. H. and G. painted Alpine flowers, while I played
violin. This violin must be of spotless pedigree, even as our Genevese
friend, Monsieur--, certified when he reluctantly sold it me. None
but a genuine AMATI, a hundred years old, can possess this mysterious
quality, that can breathe almost inaudible, like a mornbeam in the
parlor, or predominate imperious and intense over orchestra and choir,
illuminating with its fire, like chain lightning, the arches of a vast
cathedral. Enchanted thing--what nameless spirit impregnates with
magnetic ether the fine fibres of thy mechanism!
Tuesday, 26. Rode from Langnan to Lucerne just in time to take the
boat for Weggis. From the door of the Hotel de la Concorde, at Weggis,
the guide _chef_ fitted us out with two _chaises à porteur_,
six _carriers_, two mules with grooms, making a party of fourteen
in all.
After ascending a while the scenery became singularly wild and
beautiful. Vast walls and cliffs of conglomerate rose above us, up
which our path wound in zigzags. Below us were pines, vales, fields,
and hills, themselves large enough for mountains. There, at our feet,
with its beautiful islands, bays, capes, and headlands, gleams the
broad lake of the four cantons, consecrated by the muse of Schiller
and the heroism of Tell. New plains are unrolling, new mountain tops
sinking below our range of vision. We plunged into a sea of mist. It
rolled and eddied, boiling beneath us. Through its mysterious pall we
saw now a skeleton pine stretch out its dark pointing hand--now a
rock, shapeless and uncouth, far below, like a behemoth petrified in
mid ocean. Then an eddy would sweep a space for the sun to pour a
flood of gold on this field far down at our feet, on that village, on
this mountain side with its rosy vapor-wreaths, upon yon distant lake,
making it a crater of blinding brightness. On we went wrapped in
mantles, mist, and mystery, trembling with chilliness and enthusiasm.
We reached the summit just as the sunset-gazing crowd were dispersing.
And this is Righi Kulm!
Wednesday, 27. At half past three in the morning we were aroused by
the Alpine horn. We sprang up, groping and dressing in the dark, and
went out in the frosty air. Ascending the ridge we looked off upon a
sleeping world. Mists lay beneath like waves, clouds, like a sea. On
one side the Oberland Alps stretched along the horizon their pale,
blue-white peaks. Other mountains, indistinct in color and outline,
chained round the whole horizon. Yes, "the sleeping rocks did dream"
all over the wide expanse, as they slumbered on their cloudy pillow,
and their dream was of the coming dawn. Twelve lakes, leaden pale or
steel blue, dreamed also under canopies of cloud, and the solid land
dreamed, and all her wilds and forests. And in the silence of the
dream already the tinge of clairvoyance lit the gray east; a dim,
diffuse aurora, while yet the long, low clouds hung lustreless above;
nor could the eye prophesy where should open the door in heaven. At
length, a flush, as of shame or joy, presaged the pathway. Tongues of
many-colored light vibrated beneath the strata of clouds, now dappled,
mottled, streaked with fire; those on either hand of a light, flaky,
salmon tint, those in the path and portal of the dawn of a gorgeous
blending and blazoning of golden glories. The mists all abroad stirred
uneasily. Tufts of feathery down came up out of the mass. Soft,
floating films lifted from the surface and streamed away dissolving.
Strange hues came out on lake and shore, far, far below. The air, the
very air became conscious of a coming change, and the pale tops of
distant Alps sparkled like diamonds. It was night in the valleys. And
we heard the cocks crowing below, and the uneasy stir of a world
preparing to awake. So Isaiah foresaw a slumbering world, while
Messiah's coming glanced upon the heights of Zion, and cried,--
"Behold, darkness shall cover the earth
And gross darkness the people;
But the Lord shall rise upon THEE,
And his glory shall be seen upon thee!"
Hushed the immense crowd of spectators waited; then he came. On the
gray edge of the horizon, under the emblazoned strata, came a sudden
coal of fire, as shot from the altar of Heaven. It dazzled, it
wavered, it consumed. Its lambent lines lengthened sidelong. At
length, not a coal, but a shield, as the shield of Jehovah, stood
above the east, and it was day. The vapor sea heaved, and broke, and
rolled up the mountain sides. The lakes flashed back the conquering
splendor. The wide panorama, asleep no more, was astir with teeming
life.
Tuesday, July 28. One of the greatest curiosities in Lucerne is the
monument to those brave Swiss guards who were slain for their unshaken
fidelity to the unhappy Louis XVI. In a sequestered spot the rocky
hill side is cut away, and in the living strata is sculptured the
colossal figure of a dying lion. A spear is broken off in his side,
but in his last struggle he still defends a shield, marked with the
_fleur de lis_ of France. Below are inscribed in red letters, as
if charactered in blood, the names of the brave officers of that
devoted band. From many a crevice in the rock drip down trickling
springs, forming a pellucid basin below, whose dark, glossy surface,
encircled with trees and shrubs, reflects the image. The design of the
monument is by Thorwaldsen, and the whole effect of it has an
inexpressible pathos.
[Illustration: _of the memorial. Above the grotto reads:_