A TRAMP ABROAD, Part 5. 

By Mark Twain

(Samuel L. Clemens)

First published in 1880

Illustrations taken from an 1880 First Edition

 * * * * * *

ILLUSTRATIONS:

 1.     PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR 2.     TITIAN'S MOSES 3.     THE AUTHOR'S MEMORIES 178.   EXCEEDINGLY COMFORTABLE 179.   THE SUNRISE 180.   THE RIGI-KULM 181.   AN OPTICAL ILLUSION 182.   TAIL PIECE 183.   RAILWAY DOWN THE MOUNTAIN 184.   SOURCE OF THE RHONE 185.   A GLACIER TABLE 186.   GLACIER OF GRINDELWALD 187.   DAWN ON THE MOUNTAINS 188.   TAIL PIECE 189.   NEW AND OLD STYLE 190.   ST NICHOLAS, AS A HERMIT 191.   A LANDSLIDE 192.   GOLDAU VALLEY BEFORE AND AFTER THE LANDSLIDE 193.   THE WAY THEY DO IT 194.   OUR GALLANT DRIVER 195.   A MOUNTAIN PASS 196.   "I'M OFUL DRY" 197.   IT'S THE FASHION 198.   WHAT WE EXPECTED 199.   WE MISSED THE SCENERY 200.   THE TOURISTS 201.   THE YOUNG BRIDE 202.   "IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY 203.   PROMENADE IN INTERLAKEN 204.   THE JUNGFRAU BY M. T. 205.   STREET IN INTERLAKEN 206.   WITHOUT A COURIER 207.   TRAVELING WITH A COURIER 208.   TAIL PIECE 209.   GRAPE AND WHEY PATIENTS 210.   SOCIABLE DRIVERS 211.   A MOUNTAIN CASCADE 212.   THE GASTERNTHAL 213.   EXHILARATING SPORT 214.   FALLS 215.   WHAT MIGHT BE 216.   AN ALPINE BOUQUET 217.   THE END OF THE WORLD 218.   THE FORGET-ME-NOT 219.   A NEEDLE OF ICE 220.   CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN 221.   SNOW CREVASSES 222.   CUTTING STEPS 223.   THE GUIDE 224.   VIEW FROM THE CLIFF 225.   GEMMI PASS AND LAKE DAUBENSEE 226.   ALMOST A TRAGEDY 227.   THE ALPINE LITTER 228.   SOCIAL BATHERS 229.   DEATH OF COUNTESS HERLINCOURT 230.   THEY'VE GOT IT ALL 231.   MODEL FOR AN EMPRESS 232.   BATH HOUSES AT LEUKE 233.   THE BATHERS AT LEUKE 234.   RATTIER MIXED UP 235.   TAIL PIECE

CONTENTS:

CHAPTER XXIX Everything Convenient--Looking for a WesternSunrise--Mutual Recrimination--View from the Summit--Down theMountain--Railroading--Confidence Wanted and Acquired

CHAPTER XXX A Trip by Proxy--A Visit to the Furka Regions--Deadman'sLake--Source of the Rhone--Glacier Tables--Storm in the Mountains--AtGrindelwald--Dawn on the Mountains--An Explanation Required--DeadLanguage--Criticism of Harris's Report

CHAPTER XXXI Preparations for a Tramp--From Lucerne to Interlaken--TheBrunig Pass--Modern and Ancient Chalets--Death of Pontius Pilate--HermitHome of St Nicholas--Landslides--Children Selling Refreshments--How theyHarness a Horse--A Great Man--Honors to a Hero--A Thirsty Bride--ForBetter or Worse--German Fashions--Anticipations--Solid Comfort--AnUnsatisfactory Awakening--What we had Lost--Our Surroundings

CHAPTER XXXII The Jungfrau Hotel--A Whiskered Waitress--An ArkansasBride--Perfection in Discord--A Famous Victory--A Look from aWindow--About the Jungfrau

CHAPTER XXXIII The Giesbach Falls--The Spirit of the Alps--Why PeopleVisit Them--Whey and Grapes as Medicines--The Kursaal--A FormidableUndertaking--From Interlaken to Zermatt on Foot--We Concluded to takea Buggy--A Pair of Jolly Drivers--We meet with Companions--A CheerfulRide--Kandersteg Valley--An Alpine Parlor--Exercise and Amusement--ARace with a Log

CHAPTER XXXIV An Old Guide--Possible Accidents--DangerousHabitation--Mountain Flowers--Embryo Lions--Mountain Pigs--The Endof The World--Ghastly Desolation--Proposed Adventure--Reading-upAdventures--Ascent of Monte Rosa--Precipices and Crevasses--Amongthe Snows--Exciting Experiences--lee Ridges--The Summit--AdventuresPostponed

CHAPTER XXXV A New Interest--Magnificent Views--A Mule'sPrefereoces--Turning Mountain Corners--Terror of a Horse--LadyTourists--Death of a young Countess--A Search for a Hat--What We DidFind--Harris's Opinion of Chamois--A Disappointed Man--A Giantess--Modelfor an Empress--Baths at Leuk--Sport in the Water--The GemmiPrecipices--A Palace for an Emperor--The Famous Ladders--ConsiderablyMixed Up--Sad Plight of a Minister

CHAPTER XXIX

[Looking West for Sunrise]

He kept his word. We heard his horn and instantly got up. It was darkand cold and wretched. As I fumbled around for the matches, knockingthings down with my quaking hands, I wished the sun would rise in themiddle of the day, when it was warm and bright and cheerful, and onewasn't sleepy. We proceeded to dress by the gloom of a couple sicklycandles, but we could hardly button anything, our hands shook so. I thought of how many happy people there were in Europe, Asia, andAmerica, and everywhere, who were sleeping peacefully in their beds, and did not have to get up and see the Rigi sunrise--people who didnot appreciate their advantage, as like as not, but would get up in themorning wanting more boons of Providence. While thinking these thoughtsI yawned, in a rather ample way, and my upper teeth got hitched on anail over the door, and while I was mounting a chair to free myself, Harris drew the window-curtain, and said:

"Oh, this is luck! We shan't have to go out at all--yonder are themountains, in full view. "

That was glad news, indeed. It made us cheerful right away. One couldsee the grand Alpine masses dimly outlined against the black firmament, and one or two faint stars blinking through rifts in the night. Fullyclothed, and wrapped in blankets, and huddled ourselves up, by thewindow, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat, while we waited inexceeding comfort to see how an Alpine sunrise was going to look bycandlelight. By and by a delicate, spiritual sort of effulgence spreaditself by imperceptible degrees over the loftiest altitudes of the snowywastes--but there the effort seemed to stop. I said, presently:

"There is a hitch about this sunrise somewhere. It doesn't seem to go. What do you reckon is the matter with it?"

"I don't know. It appears to hang fire somewhere. I never saw a sunriseact like that before. Can it be that the hotel is playing anything onus?"

"Of course not. The hotel merely has a property interest in the sun, ithas nothing to do with the management of it. It is a precarious kind ofproperty, too; a succession of total eclipses would probably ruin thistavern. Now what can be the matter with this sunrise?"

Harris jumped up and said:

"I've got it! I know what's the matter with it! We've been looking atthe place where the sun SET last night!"

"It is perfectly true! Why couldn't you have thought of that sooner? Nowwe've lost another one! And all through your blundering. It was exactlylike you to light a pipe and sit down to wait for the sun to rise in thewest. "

"It was exactly like me to find out the mistake, too. You never wouldhave found it out. I find out all the mistakes. "

"You make them all, too, else your most valuable faculty would be wastedon you. But don't stop to quarrel, now--maybe we are not too late yet. "

But we were. The sun was well up when we got to the exhibition-ground. 

On our way up we met the crowd returning--men and women dressed inall sorts of queer costumes, and exhibiting all degrees of cold andwretchedness in their gaits and countenances. A dozen still remained onthe ground when we reached there, huddled together about the scaffoldwith their backs to the bitter wind. They had their red guide-books openat the diagram of the view, and were painfully picking out the severalmountains and trying to impress their names and positions on theirmemories. It was one of the saddest sights I ever saw. 

Two sides of this place were guarded by railings, to keep people frombeing blown over the precipices. The view, looking sheer down intothe broad valley, eastward, from this great elevation--almost aperpendicular mile--was very quaint and curious. Counties, towns, hillyribs and ridges, wide stretches of green meadow, great forest tracts, winding streams, a dozen blue lakes, a block of busy steamboats--we sawall this little world in unique circumstantiality of detail--saw it justas the birds see it--and all reduced to the smallest of scales and assharply worked out and finished as a steel engraving. The numerous toyvillages, with tiny spires projecting out of them, were just as thechildren might have left them when done with play the day before; theforest tracts were diminished to cushions of moss; one or two big lakeswere dwarfed to ponds, the smaller ones to puddles--though they did notlook like puddles, but like blue teardrops which had fallen and lodgedin slight depressions, conformable to their shapes, among the moss-bedsand the smooth levels of dainty green farm-land; the microscopicsteamboats glided along, as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty time tocover the distance between ports which seemed only a yard apart; and theisthmus which separated two lakes looked as if one might stretch out onit and lie with both elbows in the water, yet we knew invisible wagonswere toiling across it and finding the distance a tedious one. Thisbeautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance of those "reliefmaps" which reproduce nature precisely, with the heights and depressionsand other details graduated to a reduced scale, and with the rocks, trees, lakes, etc. , colored after nature. 

I believed we could walk down to Waeggis or Vitznau in a day, but I knewwe could go down by rail in about an hour, so I chose the latter method. I wanted to see what it was like, anyway. The train came along about themiddle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was. The locomotive-boilerstood on end, and it and the whole locomotive were tilted sharplybackward. There were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open allaround. These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; thisenables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline. 

There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the "lanternwheel" of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls thetrain up the hill or retards its motion on the down trip. About the samespeed--three miles an hour--is maintained both ways. Whether going up ordown, the locomotive is always at the lower end of the train. It pushesin the one case, braces back in the other. The passenger rides backwardgoing up, and faces forward going down. 

We got front seats, and while the train moved along about fifty yardson level ground, I was not the least frightened; but now it startedabruptly downstairs, and I caught my breath. And I, like my neighbors, unconsciously held back all I could, and threw my weight to the rear, but, of course, that did no particular good. I had slidden down thebalusters when I was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide downthe balusters in a railway-train is a thing to make one's flesh creep. Sometimes we had as much as ten yards of almost level ground, and thisgave us a few full breaths in comfort; but straightway we would turn acorner and see a long steep line of rails stretching down below us, andthe comfort was at an end. One expected to see the locomotive pause, or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously, but itdid nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went it reached thejumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding smoothlydownstairs, untroubled by the circumstances. 

It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the precipices, after this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-offvalley which I was describing a while ago. 

There was no level ground at the Kaltbad station; the railbed was assteep as a roof; I was curious to see how the stop was going to bemanaged. But it was very simple; the train came sliding down, and whenit reached the right spot it just stopped--that was all there was "toit"--stopped on the steep incline, and when the exchange of passengersand baggage had been made, it moved off and went sliding down again. Thetrain can be stopped anywhere, at a moment's notice. 

There was one curious effect, which I need not take the trouble todescribe--because I can scissor a description of it out of the railwaycompany's advertising pamphlet, and save my ink:

"On the whole tour, particularly at the Descent, we undergo an opticalillusion which often seems to be incredible. All the shrubs, fir trees, stables, houses, etc. , seem to be bent in a slanting direction, as by animmense pressure of air. They are all standing awry, so much awry thatthe chalets and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down. Itis the consequence of the steep inclination of the line. Those whoare seated in the carriage do not observe that they are going down adeclivity of twenty to twenty-five degrees (their seats being adaptedto this course of proceeding and being bent down at their backs). Theymistake their carriage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure ofthe normal plain, and therefore all the objects outside which reallyare in a horizontal position must show a disproportion of twenty totwenty-five degrees declivity, in regard to the mountain. "

By the time one reaches Kaltbad, he has acquired confidence in therailway, and he now ceases to try to ease the locomotive by holdingback. Thenceforth he smokes his pipe in serenity, and gazes out upon themagnificent picture below and about him with unfettered enjoyment. Thereis nothing to interrupt the view or the breeze; it is like inspectingthe world on the wing. However--to be exact--there is one place wherethe serenity lapses for a while; this is while one is crossing theSchnurrtobel Bridge, a frail structure which swings its gossamer framedown through the dizzy air, over a gorge, like a vagrant spider-strand. 

One has no difficulty in remembering his sins while the train iscreeping down this bridge; and he repents of them, too; though he sees, when he gets to Vitznau, that he need not have done it, the bridge wasperfectly safe. 

So ends the eventual trip which we made to the Rigi-Kulm to see anAlpine sunrise. 

CHAPTER XXX

[Harris Climbs Mountains for Me]

An hour's sail brought us to Lucerne again. I judged it best to go tobed and rest several days, for I knew that the man who undertakes tomake the tour of Europe on foot must take care of himself. 

Thinking over my plans, as mapped out, I perceived that they did nottake in the Furka Pass, the Rhone Glacier, the Finsteraarhorn, theWetterhorn, etc. I immediately examined the guide-book to see if thesewere important, and found they were; in fact, a pedestrian tour ofEurope could not be complete without them. Of course that decided me atonce to see them, for I never allow myself to do things by halves, or ina slurring, slipshod way. 

I called in my agent and instructed him to go without delay and make acareful examination of these noted places, on foot, and bring me back awritten report of the result, for insertion in my book. I instructedhim to go to Hospenthal as quickly as possible, and make his grand startfrom there; to extend his foot expedition as far as the Giesbach fall, and return to me from thence by diligence or mule. I told him to takethe courier with him. 

He objected to the courier, and with some show of reason, since he wasabout to venture upon new and untried ground; but I thought he mightas well learn how to take care of the courier now as later, therefore Ienforced my point. I said that the trouble, delay, and inconvenienceof traveling with a courier were balanced by the deep respect which acourier's presence commands, and I must insist that as much style bethrown into my journeys as possible. 

So the two assumed complete mountaineering costumes and departed. A weeklater they returned, pretty well used up, and my agent handed me thefollowing: Official Report

OF A VISIT TO THE FURKA REGION. 

BY H. HARRIS, AGENT About seven o'clock in the morning, with perfectlyfine weather, we started from Hospenthal, and arrived at the MAISON onthe Furka in a little under QUATRE hours. The want of variety in thescenery from Hospenthal made the KAHKAHPONEEKA wearisome; but let nonebe discouraged; no one can fail to be completely R'ECOMPENS'EE for hisfatigue, when he sees, for the first time, the monarch of the Oberland, the tremendous Finsteraarhorn. A moment before all was dullness, buta PAS further has placed us on the summit of the Furka; and exactly infront of us, at a HOPOW of only fifteen miles, this magnificent mountainlifts its snow-wreathed precipices into the deep blue sky. The inferiormountains on each side of the pass form a sort of frame for the pictureof their dread lord, and close in the view so completely that no otherprominent feature in the Oberland is visible from this BONG-A-BONG;nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary grandeur of theFinsteraarhorn and the dependent spurs which form the abutments of thecentral peak. 

With the addition of some others, who were also bound for the Grimsel, we formed a large XHVLOJ as we descended the STEG which winds round theshoulder of a mountain toward the Rhone Glacier. We soon left the pathand took to the ice; and after wandering amongst the crevices UN PEU, toadmire the wonders of these deep blue caverns, and hear the rushing ofwaters through their subglacial channels, we struck out a course towardL'AUTRE CÔTE and crossed the glacier successfully, a little above thecave from which the infant Rhone takes its first bound from under thegrand precipice of ice. Half a mile below this we began to climb theflowery side of the Meienwand. One of our party started before the rest, but the HITZE was so great, that we found IHM quite exhausted, and lyingat full length in the shade of a large GESTEIN. We sat down with himfor a time, for all felt the heat exceedingly in the climb up this verysteep BOLWOGGOLY, and then we set out again together, and arrived atlast near the Dead Man's Lake, at the foot of the Sidelhorn. This lonelyspot, once used for an extempore burying-place, after a sanguinaryBATTUE between the French and Austrians, is the perfection ofdesolation; there is nothing in sight to mark the hand of man, exceptthe line of weather-beaten whitened posts, set up to indicate thedirection of the pass in the OWDAWAKK of winter. Near this point thefootpath joins the wider track, which connects the Grimsel with the headof the Rhone SCHNAWP; this has been carefully constructed, and leadswith a tortuous course among and over LES PIERRES, down to the bank ofthe gloomy little SWOSH-SWOSH, which almost washes against the walls ofthe Grimsel Hospice. We arrived a little before four o'clock at the endof our day's journey, hot enough to justify the step, taking by most ofthe PARTIE, of plunging into the crystal water of the snow-fed lake. 

The next afternoon we started for a walk up the Unteraar glacier, withthe intention of, at all events, getting as far as the Hütte which isused as a sleeping-place by most of those who cross the Strahleck Passto Grindelwald. We got over the tedious collection of stones and DÉBRISwhich covers the PIED of the GLETCHER, and had walked nearly three hoursfrom the Grimsel, when, just as we were thinking of crossing over to theright, to climb the cliffs at the foot of the hut, the clouds, which hadfor some time assumed a threatening appearance, suddenly dropped, anda huge mass of them, driving toward us from the Finsteraarhorn, poureddown a deluge of HABOOLONG and hail. Fortunately, we were not far froma very large glacier-table; it was a huge rock balanced on a pedestalof ice high enough to admit of our all creeping under it for GOWKARAK. A stream of PUCKITTYPUKK had furrowed a course for itself in the iceat its base, and we were obliged to stand with one FUSS on each side ofthis, and endeavor to keep ourselves CHAUD by cutting steps in the steepbank of the pedestal, so as to get a higher place for standing on, as the WASSER rose rapidly in its trench. A very cold BZZZZZZZZEEEaccompanied the storm, and made our position far from pleasant; andpresently came a flash of BLITZEN, apparently in the middle of ourlittle party, with an instantaneous clap of YOKKY, sounding like a largegun fired close to our ears; the effect was startling; but in a fewseconds our attention was fixed by the roaring echoes of the thunderagainst the tremendous mountains which completely surrounded us. Thiswas followed by many more bursts, none of WELCHE, however, was sodangerously near; and after waiting a long DEMI-hour in our icy prison, we sallied out to talk through a HABOOLONG which, though not so heavyas before, was quite enough to give us a thorough soaking before ourarrival at the Hospice. 

The Grimsel is CERTAINEMENT a wonderful place; situated at the bottomof a sort of huge crater, the sides of which are utterly savage GEBIRGE, composed of barren rocks which cannot even support a single pine ARBRE, and afford only scanty food for a herd of GMWKWLLOLP, it looks as ifit must be completely BEGRABEN in the winter snows. Enormous avalanchesfall against it every spring, sometimes covering everything to the depthof thirty or forty feet; and, in spite of walls four feet thick, andfurnished with outside shutters, the two men who stay here when theVOYAGEURS are snugly quartered in their distant homes can tell you thatthe snow sometimes shakes the house to its foundations. 

Next morning the HOGGLEBUMGULLUP still continued bad, but we made up ourminds to go on, and make the best of it. Half an hour after we started, the REGEN thickened unpleasantly, and we attempted to get shelter undera projecting rock, but being far to NASS already to make standing atall AGRÉABLE, we pushed on for the Handeck, consoling ourselves with thereflection that from the furious rushing of the river Aar at ourside, we should at all events see the celebrated WASSERFALL in GRANDEPERFECTION. Nor were we NAPPERSOCKET in our expectation; the waterwas roaring down its leap of two hundred and fifty feet in a mostmagnificent frenzy, while the trees which cling to its rocky sidesswayed to and fro in the violence of the hurricane which it brought downwith it; even the stream, which falls into the main cascade at rightangles, and TOUTEFOIS forms a beautiful feature in the scene, was nowswollen into a raging torrent; and the violence of this "meeting of thewaters, " about fifty feet below the frail bridge where we stood, wasfearfully grand. While we were looking at it, GLÜECKLICHEWEISE a gleamof sunshine came out, and instantly a beautiful rainbow was formed bythe spray, and hung in mid-air suspended over the awful gorge. 

On going into the CHALET above the fall, we were informed that a BRUECKEhad broken down near Guttanen, and that it would be impossible toproceed for some time; accordingly we were kept in our drenchedcondition for EIN STUNDE, when some VOYAGEURS arrived from Meiringen, and told us that there had been a trifling accident, ABER that we couldnow cross. On arriving at the spot, I was much inclined to suspect thatthe whole story was a ruse to make us SLOWWK and drink the more at theHandeck Inn, for only a few planks had been carried away, and thoughthere might perhaps have been some difficulty with mules, the gap wascertainly not larger than a MMBGLX might cross with a very slight leap. Near Guttanen the HABOOLONG happily ceased, and we had time to walkourselves tolerably dry before arriving at Reichenback, WO we enjoyed agood DINÉ at the Hotel des Alps. 

Next morning we walked to Rosenlaui, the BEAU IDÉAL 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 constantprogress of the ice it has changed the form of its extremity and formeda vast cavern, as blue as the sky above, and rippled like a frozenocean. A few steps cut in the WHOOPJAMBOREEHOO enabled us to walkcompletely under this, and feast our eyes upon one of the loveliestobjects in creation. The glacier was all around divided by numberlessfissures of the same exquisite color, and the finest wood-ERDBEEREN weregrowing in abundance but a few yards from the ice. The inn stands in aCHARMANT spot close to the CÔTÉ DE LA RIVIÈRE, which, lower down, formsthe Reichenbach fall, and embosomed in the richest of pine woods, while the fine form of the Wellhorn looking down upon it completes theenchanting BOPPLE. In the afternoon we walked over the Great Scheideckto Grindelwald, stopping to pay a visit to the Upper glacier by the way;but we were again overtaken by bad HOGGLEBUMGULLUP and arrived at thehotel in a SOLCHE a state that the landlord's wardrobe was in greatrequest. 

The clouds by this time seemed to have done their worst, for a lovelyday succeeded, which we determined to devote to an ascent of theFaulhorn. We left Grindelwald just as a thunder-storm was dying away, and we hoped to find GUTEN WETTER up above; but the rain, which hadnearly ceased, began again, and we were struck by the rapidly increasingFROID as we ascended. Two-thirds of the way up were completed whenthe rain was exchanged for GNILLIC, with which the BODEN was thicklycovered, and before we arrived at the top the GNILLIC and mist becameso thick that we could not see one another at more than twenty POOPOOdistance, and it became difficult to pick our way over the rough andthickly covered ground. Shivering with cold, we turned into bed with adouble allowance of clothes, and slept comfortably while the windhowled AUTOUR DE LA MAISON; when I awoke, the wall and the window lookedequally dark, but in another hour I found I could just see the formof the latter; so I jumped out of bed, and forced it open, though withgreat difficulty from the frost and the quantities of GNILLIC heaped upagainst it. 

A row of huge icicles hung down from the edge of the roof, and anythingmore wintry than the whole ANBLICK could not well be imagined; but thesudden appearance of the great mountains in front was so startlingthat I felt no inclination to move toward bed again. The snow whichhad collected upon LA FÊNTRE had increased the FINSTERNISS ODER DERDUNKELHEIT, so that when I looked out I was surprised to find that thedaylight was considerable, and that the BALRAGOOMAH would evidently risebefore long. Only the brightest of LES E'TOILES were still shining; thesky was cloudless overhead, though small curling mists lay thousands offeet below us in the valleys, wreathed around the feet of the mountains, and adding to the splendor of their lofty summits. We were soon dressedand out of the house, watching the gradual approach of dawn, thoroughlyabsorbed in the first near view of the Oberland giants, which brokeupon us unexpectedly after the intense obscurity of the evening before. "KABAUGWAKKO SONGWASHEE KUM WETTERHORN SNAWPO!" cried some one, as thatgrand summit gleamed with the first rose of dawn; and in a few momentsthe double crest of the Schreckhorn followed its example; peak afterpeak seemed warmed with life, the Jungfrau blushed even more beautifullythan her neighbors, and soon, from the Wetterhorn in the east to theWildstrubel 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 DISTINGUEÉfrom the snow around it, which had fallen to a depth of a FLIRK duringthe past evening, and we heartily enjoyed a rough scramble EN BAS tothe Giesbach falls, where we soon found a warm climate. At noon the daybefore Grindelwald the thermometer could not have stood at less than 100degrees Fahr. In the sun; and in the evening, judging from the iciclesformed, and the state of the windows, there must have been at leasttwelve DINGBLATTER of frost, thus giving a change of 80 degrees during afew hours. 

I said:

"You have done well, Harris; this report is concise, compact, wellexpressed; the language is crisp, the descriptions are vivid and notneedlessly elaborated; your report goes straight to the point, attendsstrictly to business, and doesn't fool around. It is in many ways anexcellent document. But it has a fault--it is too learned, it is muchtoo 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 theenchanting 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 moredescriptive?"

"No, it means just the same. "

"And 'DINGBLATTER' and 'GNILLIC, ' and 'BOPPLE, ' and 'SCHNAWP'--are theybetter 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 andChoctaw and Zulu rubbish?"

"Because I didn't know any French but two or three words, and I didn'tknow 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 thatwants to. "

"I think you are mistaken. " I then proceeded in the following scathingmanner. "When really learned men write books for other learned mento read, they are justified in using as many learned words as theyplease--their audience will understand them; but a man who writes a bookfor the general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pageswith untranslated foreign expressions. It is an insolence toward themajority of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way ofsaying, 'Get the translations made yourself if you want them, thisbook is not written for the ignorant classes. ' There are men who knowa foreign language so well and have used it so long in their dailylife that they seem to discharge whole volleys of it into their Englishwritings unconsciously, and so they omit to translate, as much ashalf the time. That is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the man'sreaders. What is the excuse for this? The writer would say he only usesthe foreign language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyedin 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, theexcuse he offers is at least an excuse; but there is another set ofmen who are like YOU; they know a WORD here and there, of a foreignlanguage, or a few beggarly little three-word phrases, filched from theback of the Dictionary, and these are continually peppering into theirliterature, with a pretense of knowing that language--what excuse canthey offer? The foreign words and phrases which they use have theirexact equivalents in a nobler language--English; yet they think they'adorn their page' when they say STRASSE for street, and BAHNHOF forrailway-station, and so on--flaunting these fluttering rags of povertyin the reader's face and imagining he will be ass enough to takethem 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 ofyour sort have to adorn theirs with insolent odds and ends smouched fromhalf 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 exhibitsa wild surprise, then he shrivels up. Similar was the effect of theseblistering words upon the tranquil and unsuspecting Agent. I can bedreadfully 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 goodthat I changed my mind and hired a four-horse carriage. It was a hugevehicle, roomy, as easy in its motion as a palanquin, and exceedinglycomfortable. 

We got away pretty early in the morning, after a hot breakfast, andwent bowling over a hard, smooth road, through the summer loveliness ofSwitzerland, with near and distant lakes and mountains before and aboutus for the entertainment of the eye, and the music of multitudinousbirds to charm the ear. Sometimes there was only the width of the roadbetween the imposing precipices on the right and the clear cool water onthe left with its shoals of uncatchable fish skimming about through thebars of sun and shadow; and sometimes, in place of the precipices, thegrassy land stretched away, in an apparently endless upward slant, and was dotted everywhere with snug little chalets, the peculiarlycaptivating cottage of Switzerland. 

The ordinary chalet turns a broad, honest gable end to the road, andits ample roof hovers over the home in a protecting, caressing way, projecting its sheltering eaves far outward. The quaint windows arefilled with little panes, and garnished with white muslin curtains, and brightened with boxes of blooming flowers. Across the front of thehouse, and up the spreading eaves and along the fanciful railings ofthe shallow porch, are elaborate carvings--wreaths, fruits, arabesques, verses from Scripture, names, dates, etc. The building is wholly ofwood, reddish brown in tint, a very pleasing color. It generally hasvines climbing over it. Set such a house against the fresh green of thehillside, and it looks ever so cozy and inviting and picturesque, and isa decidedly graceful addition to the landscape. 

One does not find out what a hold the chalet has taken upon him, untilhe presently comes upon a new house--a house which is aping the townfashions of Germany and France, a prim, hideous, straight-up-and-downthing, plastered all over on the outside to look like stone, andaltogether so stiff, and formal, and ugly, and forbidding, and so out oftune with the gracious landscape, and so deaf and dumb and dead to thepoetry 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 issaid to have thrown himself into the lake. The legend goes that afterthe Crucifixion his conscience troubled him, and he fled from Jerusalemand wandered about the earth, weary of life and a prey to torturesof the mind. Eventually, he hid himself away, on the heights of MountPilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and crags for years; but restand peace were still denied him, so he finally put an end to his miseryby drowning himself. 

Presently we passed the place where a man of better odor was born. Thiswas the children's friend, Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas. There are someunaccountable reputations in the world. This saint's is an instance. Hehas ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children, yet it appearshe was not much of a friend to his own. He had ten of them, and whenfifty years old he left them, and sought out as dismal a refuge from theworld as possible, and became a hermit in order that he might reflectupon pious themes without being disturbed by the joyous and other noisesfrom the nursery, doubtless. 

Judging by Pilate and St. Nicholas, there exists no rule for theconstruction of hermits; they seem made out of all kinds of material. But Pilate attended to the matter of expiating his sin while he wasalive, whereas St. Nicholas will probably have to go on climbing downsooty chimneys, Christmas eve, forever, and conferring kindness on otherpeople's children, to make up for deserting his own. His bones are keptin a church in a village (Sachseln) which we visited, and are naturallyheld in great reverence. His portrait is common in the farmhouses ofthe region, but is believed by many to be but an indifferent likeness. During his hermit life, according to legend, he partook of the breadand wine of the communion once a month, but all the rest of the month hefasted. 

A constant marvel with us, as we sped along the bases of the steepmountains on this journey, was, not that avalanches occur, but that theyare not occurring all the time. One does not understand why rocksand landslides do not plunge down these declivities daily. A landslipoccurred three quarters of a century ago, on the route from Arth toBrunnen, which was a formidable thing. A mass of conglomerate two mileslong, a thousand feet broad, and a hundred feet thick, broke away from acliff 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 cataractsdancing down the steeps and gleaming in the sun, that we could not helpfeeling sweet toward all the world; so we tried to drink all themilk, and eat all the grapes and apricots and berries, and buy all thebouquets of wild flowers which the little peasant boys and girls offeredfor 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 theroad, were groups of neat and comely children, with their wares nicelyand temptingly set forth in the grass under the shade trees, and as soonas we approached they swarmed into the road, holding out their basketsand milk bottles, and ran beside the carriage, barefoot and bareheaded, and importuned us to buy. They seldom desisted early, but continued torun and insist--beside the wagon while they could, and behind it untilthey lost breath. Then they turned and chased a returning carriage backto their trading-post again. After several hours of this, without anyintermission, it becomes almost annoying. I do not know what we shouldhave done without the returning carriages to draw off the pursuit. However, there were plenty of these, loaded with dusty tourists andpiled high with luggage. Indeed, from Lucerne to Interlaken we hadthe spectacle, among other scenery, of an unbroken procession offruit-peddlers and tourists carriages. 

Our talk was mostly anticipatory of what we should see on the down-gradeof the Bruenig, by and by, after we should pass the summit. All ourfriends in Lucerne had said that to look down upon Meiringen, and therushing blue-gray river Aar, and the broad level green valley; andacross at the mighty Alpine precipices that rise straight up to theclouds out of that valley; and up at the microscopic chalets perchedupon the dizzy eaves of those precipices and winking dimly and fitfullythrough the drifting veil of vapor; and still up and up, at the superbOltschiback and the other beautiful cascades that leap from those ruggedheights, robed in powdery spray, ruffled with foam, and girdled withrainbows--to look upon these things, they say, was to look upon the lastpossibility of the sublime and the enchanting. Therefore, as I say, we talked mainly of these coming wonders; if we were conscious of anyimpatience, it was to get there in favorable season; if we felt anyanxiety, it was that the day might remain perfect, and enable us to seethose 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 thefore-and-aft gear that was broken--the thing that leads aft from theforward part of the horse and is made fast to the thing that pulls thewagon. In America this would have been a heavy leathern strap; but, allover the continent it is nothing but a piece of rope the size ofyour little finger--clothes-line is what it is. Cabs use it, privatecarriages, freight-carts and wagons, all sorts of vehicles have it. InMunich I afterward saw it used on a long wagon laden with fifty-fourhalf-barrels of beer; I had before noticed that the cabs in Heidelbergused it--not new rope, but rope that had been in use since Abraham'stime --and I had felt nervous, sometimes, behind it when the cab wastearing down a hill. But I had long been accustomed to it now, and hadeven become afraid of the leather strap which belonged in its place. Ourdriver got a fresh piece of clothes-line out of his locker and repairedthe break in two minutes. 

So much for one European fashion. Every country has its own ways. It mayinterest 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 projectsfrom the front end of the wagon, and then throws the tangled mess ofgear forward through a ring, and hauls it aft, and passes the otherthing through the other ring and hauls it aft on the other side of theother horse, opposite to the first one, after crossing them and bringingthe loose end back, and then buckles the other thing underneath thehorse, and takes another thing and wraps it around the thing I spokeof before, and puts another thing over each horse's head, with broadflappers to it to keep the dust out of his eyes, and puts the iron thingin his mouth for him to grit his teeth on, uphill, and brings the endsof these things aft over his back, after buckling another one aroundunder his neck to hold his head up, and hitching another thing ona thing that goes over his shoulders to keep his head up when he isclimbing a hill, and then takes the slack of the thing which I mentioneda while ago, and fetches it aft and makes it fast to the thing thatpulls the wagon, and hands the other things up to the driver to steerwith. I never have buckled up a horse myself, but I do not think we doit that way. 

We had four very handsome horses, and the driver was very proud of histurnout. He would bowl along on a reasonable trot, on the highway, butwhen he entered a village he did it on a furious run, and accompanied itwith a frenzy of ceaseless whip-crackings that sounded like volleys ofmusketry. He tore through the narrow streets and around the sharp curveslike a moving earthquake, showering his volleys as he went, and beforehim swept a continuous tidal wave of scampering children, ducks, cats, and mothers clasping babies which they had snatched out of the way ofthe coming destruction; and as this living wave washed aside, along thewalls, its elements, being safe, forgot their fears and turned theiradmiring gaze upon that gallant driver till he thundered around the nextcurve and was lost to sight. 

He was a great man to those villagers, with his gaudy clothes and histerrific ways. Whenever he stopped to have his cattle watered and fedwith loaves of bread, the villagers stood around admiring him whilehe swaggered about, the little boys gazed up at his face with humblehomage, and the landlord brought out foaming mugs of beer and conversedproudly with him while he drank. Then he mounted his lofty box, swunghis explosive whip, and away he went again, like a storm. I had notseen anything like this before since I was a boy, and the stage used toflourish the village with the dust flying and the horn tooting. 

When we reached the base of the Kaiserstuhl, we took two more horses; wehad 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 andapproached the station, the driver surpassed all his previous efforts inthe 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 afrequent feature of the scenery. 

About noon we arrived at the foot of the Bruenig Pass, and made atwo-hour stop at the village hotel, another of those clean, pretty, andthoroughly well-kept inns which are such an astonishment to peoplewho are accustomed to hotels of a dismally different pattern in remotecountry-towns. There was a lake here, in the lap of the great mountains, the green slopes that rose toward the lower crags were graced withscattered Swiss cottages nestling among miniature farms and gardens, and from out a leafy ambuscade in the upper heights tumbled a brawlingcataract. 

Carriage after carriage, laden with tourists and trunks, arrived, andthe quiet hotel was soon populous. We were early at the table d'hôte andsaw the people all come in. There were twenty-five, perhaps. They wereof various nationalities, but we were the only Americans. Next to me satan 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 tohis full name. They had a pretty little lovers' quarrel over what winethey should have. Neddy was for obeying the guide-book and taking thewine 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 wellthat she never drank anything but champagne. 

She added:

"You know very well papa always has champagne on his table, and I'vealways 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 withlaughter--and this pleased HIM so much that he repeated his jest acouple of times, and added new and killing varieties to it. When thebride finally recovered, she gave Neddy a love-box on the arm with herfan, and said with arch severity:

"Well, you would HAVE me--nothing else would do--so you'll have to makethe 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 thechampagne. 

The fact that this young woman had never moistened the selvedge edge ofher soul with a less plebeian tipple than champagne, had a marked andsubduing 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 thetable and guessed out the nationalities of most of the guests to oursatisfaction, but we failed with an elderly gentleman and his wife anda young girl who sat opposite us, and with a gentleman of aboutthirty-five who sat three seats beyond Harris. We did not hear any ofthese speak. But finally the last-named gentleman left while we were notnoticing, but we looked up as he reached the far end of the table. Hestopped there a moment, and made his toilet with a pocket comb. So hewas a German; or else he had lived in German hotels long enough to catchthe fashion. When the elderly couple and the young girl rose to leave, they bowed respectfully to us. So they were Germans, too. This nationalcustom is worth six of the other one, for export. 

After dinner we talked with several Englishmen, and they inflamed ourdesire to a hotter degree than ever, to see the sights of Meiringen fromthe heights of the Bruenig Pass. They said the view was marvelous, andthat one who had seen it once could never forget it. They also spoke ofthe romantic nature of the road over the pass, and how in one place ithad been cut through a flank of the solid rock, in such a way that themountain overhung the tourist as he passed by; and they furthermore saidthat the sharp turns in the road and the abruptness of the descent wouldafford us a thrilling experience, for we should go down in a flyinggallop and seem to be spinning around the rings of a whirlwind, like adrop of whiskey descending the spirals of a corkscrew. 

I got all the information out of these gentlemen that we could need; andthen, to make everything complete, I asked them if a body could get holdof a little fruit and milk here and there, in case of necessity. Theythrew up their hands in speechless intimation that the road was simplypaved with refreshment-peddlers. We were impatient to get away, now, andthe rest of our two-hour stop rather dragged. But finally the set timearrived and we began the ascent. Indeed it was a wonderful road. It wassmooth, and compact, and clean, and the side next the precipices wasguarded all along by dressed stone posts about three feet high, placedat short distances apart. The road could not have been better built ifNapoleon the First had built it. He seems to have been the introducer ofthe sort of roads which Europe now uses. All literature which describeslife as it existed in England, France, and Germany up to the closeof the last century, is filled with pictures of coaches and carriageswallowing through these three countries in mud and slush half-wheeldeep; but after Napoleon had floundered through a conquered kingdom hegenerally arranged things so that the rest of the world could followdry-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 ofwild flowers all about us; and glimpses of rounded grassy backbonesbelow us occupied by trim chalets and nibbling sheep, and other glimpsesof far lower altitudes, where distance diminished the chalets to toysand obliterated the sheep altogether; and every now and then someermined 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 ofsatisfaction that follows a good dinner added largely to the enjoyment;the having something especial to look forward to and muse about, likethe approaching grandeurs of Meiringen, sharpened the zest. Smokingwas never so good before, solid comfort was never solider; we lay backagainst the thick cushions silent, meditative, steeped in felicity. ** * * * * * * I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and started. I had beendreaming I was at sea, and it was a thrilling surprise to wake up andfind land all around me. It took me a couple seconds to "come to, " asyou may say; then I took in the situation. The horses were drinking ata trough in the edge of a town, the driver was taking beer, Harris wassnoring at my side, the courier, with folded arms and bowed head, wassleeping on the box, two dozen barefooted and bareheaded children weregathered about the carriage, with their hands crossed behind, gazing upwith serious and innocent admiration at the dozing tourists baking therein the sun. Several small girls held night-capped babies nearly as bigas themselves in their arms, and even these fat babies seemed to take asort of sluggish interest in us. 

We had slept an hour and a half and missed all the scenery! I did notneed anybody to tell me that. If I had been a girl, I could have cursedfor vexation. As it was, I woke up the agent and gave him a piece ofmy mind. Instead of being humiliated, he only upbraided me for beingso wanting in vigilance. He said he had expected to improve his mind bycoming to Europe, but a man might travel to the ends of the earth withme and never see anything, for I was manifestly endowed with the verygenius of ill luck. He even tried to get up some emotion about thatpoor courier, who never got a chance to see anything, on account of myheedlessness. But when I thought I had borne about enough of this kindof talk, I threatened to make Harris tramp back to the summit and make areport on that scenery, and this suggestion spiked his battery. 

We drove sullenly through Brienz, dead to the seductions of itsbewildering array of Swiss carvings and the clamorous HOO-hooing ofits cuckoo clocks, and had not entirely recovered our spirits when werattled across a bridge over the rushing blue river and entered thepretty town of Interlaken. It was just about sunset, and we had made thetrip from Lucerne in ten hours. 

CHAPTER XXXII

[The Jungfrau, the Bride, and the Piano]

We located ourselves at the Jungfrau Hotel, one of those hugeestablishments which the needs of modern travel have created in everyattractive spot on the continent. There was a great gathering at dinner, and, as usual, one heard all sorts of languages. 

The table d'hôte was served by waitresses dressed in the quaint andcomely costume of the Swiss peasants. This consists of a simple gros delaine, trimmed with ashes of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventresaint gris, cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaiseand narrow insertions of pâte de foie gras backstitched to the miseen sce`ne in the form of a jeu d'esprit. It gives to the wearer asingularly piquant and alluring aspect. 

One of these waitresses, a woman of forty, had side-whiskers reachinghalf-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 onthe continent with quite conspicuous mustaches, but this was the onlywoman I saw who had reached the dignity of whiskers. 

After dinner the guests of both sexes distributed themselves about thefront porches and the ornamental grounds belonging to the hotel, toenjoy the cool air; but, as the twilight deepened toward darkness, theygathered themselves together in that saddest and solemnest and mostconstrained of all places, the great blank drawing-room which is thechief feature of all continental summer hotels. There they groupedthemselves 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, asthmaticthing, certainly the very worst miscarriage in the way of a piano thatthe world has seen. In turn, five or six dejected and homesick ladiesapproached it doubtingly, gave it a single inquiring thump, andretired 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 hergrave and worshiping stripling of a husband; she was about eighteen, just out of school, free from affectations, unconscious of thatpassionless multitude around her; and the very first time she smotethat old wreck one recognized that it had met its destiny. Her striplingbrought an armful of aged sheet-music from their room--for this bridewent "heeled, " as you might say--and bent himself lovingly over and gotready to turn the pages. 

The bride fetched a swoop with her fingers from one end of the keyboardto the other, just to get her bearings, as it were, and you could seethe congregation set their teeth with the agony of it. Then, withoutany more preliminaries, she turned on all the horrors of the "Battle ofPrague, " that venerable shivaree, and waded chin-deep in the blood ofthe slain. She made a fair and honorable average of two false notes inevery 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 thecannonade waxed hotter and fiercer, and the discord average rose tofour in five, the procession began to move. A few stragglers held theirground ten minutes longer, but when the girl began to wring the trueinwardness out of the "cries of the wounded, " they struck their colorsand retired in a kind of panic. 

There never was a completer victory; I was the only non-combatant lefton the field. I would not have deserted my countrywoman anyhow, butindeed I had no desires in that direction. None of us like mediocrity, but we all reverence perfection. This girl's music was perfection in itsway; it was the worst music that had ever been achieved on our planet bya mere human being. 

I moved up close, and never lost a strain. When she got through, Iasked her to play it again. She did it with a pleased alacrity and aheightened enthusiasm. She made it ALL discords, this time. She got anamount of anguish into the cries of the wounded that shed a new light onhuman suffering. She was on the war-path all the evening. All the time, crowds of people gathered on the porches and pressed their noses againstthe windows to look and marvel, but the bravest never ventured in. The bride went off satisfied and happy with her young fellow, when herappetite was finally gorged, and the tourists swarmed in again. 

What a change has come over Switzerland, and in fact all Europe, duringthis century! Seventy or eighty years ago Napoleon was the only man inEurope who could really be called a traveler; he was the only man whohad devoted his attention to it and taken a powerful interest in it; hewas the only man who had traveled extensively; but now everybody goeseverywhere; and Switzerland, and many other regions which were unvisitedand unknown remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our days a buzzinghive of restless strangers every summer. But I digress. 

In the morning, when we looked out of our windows, we saw a wonderfulsight. Across the valley, and apparently quite neighborly and close athand, the giant form of the Jungfrau rose cold and white into the clearsky, beyond a gateway in the nearer highlands. It reminded me, somehow, of one of those colossal billows which swells suddenly up beside one'sship, at sea, sometimes, with its crest and shoulders snowy white, andthe 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. 

I do not regard this as one of my finished works, in fact I do not rankit among my Works at all; it is only a study; it is hardly more thanwhat one might call a sketch. Other artists have done me the grace toadmire it; but I am severe in my judgments of my own pictures, and thisone does not move me. 

It was hard to believe that that lofty wooded rampart on the left whichso overtops the Jungfrau was not actually the higher of the two, but itwas not, of course. It is only two or three thousand feet high, and ofcourse has no snow upon it in summer, whereas the Jungfrau is not muchshorter of fourteen thousand feet high and therefore that lowest vergeof snow on her side, which seems nearly down to the valley level, isreally about seven thousand feet higher up in the air than the summitof that wooded rampart. It is the distance that makes the deception. The wooded height is but four or five miles removed from us, but theJungfrau is four or five times that distance away. 

Walking down the street of shops, in the fore-noon, I was attracted bya large picture, carved, frame and all, from a single block ofchocolate-colored wood. There are people who know everything. Some ofthese had told us that continental shopkeepers always raise their priceson English and Americans. Many people had told us it was expensive tobuy things through a courier, whereas I had supposed it was just thereverse. When I saw this picture, I conjectured that it was worth morethan the friend I proposed to buy it for would like to pay, but still itwas worth while to inquire; so I told the courier to step in and askthe price, as if he wanted it for himself; I told him not to speak inEnglish, 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, "Itis a hundred francs too much, " and so dismissed the matter from mymind. But in the afternoon I was passing that place with Harris, and thepicture attracted me again. We stepped in, to see how much higherbroken German would raise the price. The shopwoman named a figure justa hundred francs lower than the courier had named. This was a pleasantsurprise. I said I would take it. After I had given directions as towhere 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 thanyou 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 apercentage. "

"Undoubtedly. The courier always has his percentage. In this case itwould have been a hundred francs. "

"Then the tradesman does not pay a part of it--the purchaser pays all ofit?"

"There are occasions when the tradesman and the courier agree upon aprice which is twice or thrice the value of the article, then the twodivide, and both get a percentage. "

"I see. But it seems to me that the purchaser does all the paying, eventhen. "

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

"But I have bought this picture myself; therefore why shouldn't thecourier know it?"

The woman exclaimed, in distress:

"Ah, indeed it would take all my little profit! He would come and demandhis 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 woulddivert custom from me, and my business would be injured. "

I went away in a thoughtful frame of mind. I began to see why a couriercould afford to work for fifty-five dollars a month and his fares. Amonth or two later I was able to understand why a courier did not haveto pay any board and lodging, and why my hotel bills were always largerwhen I had him with me than when I left him behind, somewhere, for a fewdays. 

Another thing was also explained, now, apparently. In one town I hadtaken the courier to the bank to do the translating when I drew somemoney. 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 beenexceedingly polite, even going so far as to precede me to the door andholding it open for me and bow me out as if I had been a distinguishedpersonage. It was a new experience. Exchange had been in my favor eversince I had been in Europe, but just that one time. I got simply theface of my draft, and no extra francs, whereas I had expected to getquite a number of them. This was the first time I had ever used thecourier at the bank. I had suspected something then, and as long as heremained with me afterward I managed bank matters by myself. 

Still, if I felt that I could afford the tax, I would never travelwithout a courier, for a good courier is a convenience whose valuecannot be estimated in dollars and cents. Without him, travel is abitter harassment, a purgatory of little exasperating annoyances, aceaseless and pitiless punishment--I mean to an irascible man who has nobusiness capacity and is confused by details. 

Without a courier, travel hasn't a ray of pleasure in it, anywhere; butwith 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 itseldom is--you have only to open the door and speak, the courier willhear, 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--leaveall the rest to him. You need not inquire about trains, or fares, or carchanges, or hotels, or anything else. At the proper time he will put youin a cab or an omnibus, and drive you to the train or the boat; he haspacked your luggage and transferred it, he has paid all the bills. Otherpeople have preceded you half an hour to scramble for impossible placesand lose their tempers, but you can take your time; the courier hassecured 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 getthe weigher's attention to their trunks; they dispute hotly with thesetyrants, who are cool and indifferent; they get their baggage billets, at last, and then have another squeeze and another rage over thedisheartening business of trying to get them recorded and paid for, andstill another over the equally disheartening business of trying to getnear enough to the ticket office to buy a ticket; and now, with theirtempers gone to the dogs, they must stand penned up and packed together, laden with wraps and satchels and shawl-straps, with the weary wife andbabies, in the waiting-room, till the doors are thrown open--and thenall hands make a grand final rush to the train, find it full, and haveto stand on the platform and fret until some more cars are put on. Theyare in a condition to kill somebody by this time. Meantime, you havebeen sitting in your car, smoking, and observing all this misery in theextremest comfort. 

On the journey the guard is polite and watchful--won't allow anybody toget into your compartment--tells them you are just recovering from thesmall-pox and do not like to be disturbed. For the courier has madeeverything right with the guard. At way-stations the courier comes toyour 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 theother people scramble and worry in the dining-rooms. If anything breaksabout the car you are in, and a station-master proposes to pack you andyour agent into a compartment with strangers, the courier reveals to himconfidentially that you are a French duke born deaf and dumb, and theofficial comes and makes affable signs that he has ordered a choice carto be added to the train for you. 

At custom-houses the multitude file tediously through, hot andirritated, and look on while the officers burrow into the trunks andmake a mess of everything; but you hand your keys to the courier and sitstill. Perhaps you arrive at your destination in a rain-storm at tenat night--you generally do. The multitude spend half an hour verifyingtheir baggage and getting it transferred to the omnibuses; but thecourier puts you into a vehicle without a moment's loss of time, andwhen you reach your hotel you find your rooms have been secured two orthree 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 threehotels, in the rain, before they find accommodations. 

I have not set down half of the virtues that are vested in a goodcourier, but I think I have set down a sufficiency of them to show thatan irritable man who can afford one and does not employ him is not awise economist. My courier was the worst one in Europe, yet he was agood deal better than none at all. It could not pay him to be a betterone 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 hisservice. Yes, to travel with a courier is bliss, to travel without oneis the reverse. 

I have had dealings with some very bad couriers; but I have also haddealings with one who might fairly be called perfection. He was a youngPolander, named Joseph N. Verey. He spoke eight languages, and seemedto be equally at home in all of them; he was shrewd, prompt, posted, and punctual; he was fertile in resources, and singularly gifted in thematter of overcoming difficulties; he not only knew how to do everythingin his line, but he knew the best ways and the quickest; he was handywith children and invalids; all his employer needed to do was to takelife easy and leave everything to the courier. His address is, care ofMessrs. Gay & Son, Strand, London; he was formerly a conductor of Gay'stourist parties. Excellent couriers are somewhat rare; if the reader isabout to travel, he will find it to his advantage to make a note of thisone. 

CHAPTER XXXIII

[We Climb Far--by Buggy]

The beautiful Giesbach Fall is near Interlaken, on the other side ofthe lake of Brienz, and is illuminated every night with those gorgeoustheatrical fires whose name I cannot call just at this moment. This wassaid to be a spectacle which the tourist ought by no means to miss. Iwas strongly tempted, but I could not go there with propriety, becauseone goes in a boat. The task which I had set myself was to walk overEurope on foot, not skim over it in a boat. I had made a tacit contractwith myself; it was my duty to abide by it. I was willing to make boattrips for pleasure, but I could not conscientiously make them in the wayof business. 

It cost me something of a pang to lose that fine sight, but I lived downthe desire, and gained in my self-respect through the triumph. I hada finer and a grander sight, however, where I was. This was the mightydome of the Jungfrau softly outlined against the sky and faintlysilvered by the starlight. There was something subduing in the influenceof that silent and solemn and awful presence; one seemed to meet theimmutable, the indestructible, the eternal, face to face, and to feelthe trivial and fleeting nature of his own existence the more sharplyby the contrast. One had the sense of being under the broodingcontemplation of a spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice--a spiritwhich had looked down, through the slow drift of the ages, upon amillion vanished races of men, and judged them; and would judge amillion more--and still be there, watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life should be gone and the earth have become a vacantdesolation. 

While I was feeling these things, I was groping, without knowing it, toward an understanding of what the spell is which people find in theAlps, and in no other mountains--that strange, deep, nameless influence, which, once felt, cannot be forgotten--once felt, leaves alwaysbehind it a restless longing to feel it again--a longing which is likehomesickness; a grieving, haunting yearning which will plead, implore, and persecute till it has its will. I met dozens of people, imaginativeand unimaginative, cultivated and uncultivated, who had come from farcountries and roamed through the Swiss Alps year after year--they couldnot explain why. They had come first, they said, out of idle curiosity, because everybody talked about it; they had come since because theycould not help it, and they should keep on coming, while they lived, forthe same reason; they had tried to break their chains and stay away, butit was futile; now, they had no desire to break them. Others came nearerformulating what they felt; they said they could find perfect rest andpeace nowhere else when they were troubled: all frets and worries andchafings sank to sleep in the presence of the benignant serenity of theAlps; the Great Spirit of the Mountain breathed his own peace upon theirhurt minds and sore hearts, and healed them; they could not think basethoughts or do mean and sordid things here, before the visible throne ofGod. 

Down the road a piece was a Kursaal--whatever that may be--and we joinedthe human tide to see what sort of enjoyment it might afford. It was theusual open-air concert, in an ornamental garden, with wines, beer, milk, whey, grapes, etc. --the whey and the grapes being necessaries of life tocertain invalids whom physicians cannot repair, and who only continue toexist by the grace of whey or grapes. One of these departed spirits toldme, in a sad and lifeless way, that there is no way for him to live butby whey, and dearly, dearly loved whey, he didn't know whey he did, buthe 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 intheir nature, and that they were counted out and administered by thegrape-doctors as methodically as if they were pills. The new patient, if very feeble, began with one grape before breakfast, took threeduring breakfast, a couple between meals, five at luncheon, three in theafternoon, seven at dinner, four for supper, and part of a grape justbefore going to bed, by way of a general regulator. The quantity wasgradually and regularly increased, according to the needs and capacitiesof the patient, until by and by you would find him disposing of his onegrape 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 grapesystem, never afterward got over the habit of talking as if they weredictating to a slow amanuensis, because they always made a pause betweeneach two words while they sucked the substance out of an imaginarygrape. He said these were tedious people to talk with. He said that menwho had been cured by the other process were easily distinguished fromthe rest of mankind because they always tilted their heads back, betweenevery two words, and swallowed a swig of imaginary whey. He said it wasan impressive thing to observe two men, who had been cured by the twoprocesses, engaged in conversation--said their pauses and accompanyingmovements were so continuous and regular that a stranger would thinkhimself in the presence of a couple of automatic machines. One findsout a great many wonderful things, by traveling, if he stumbles upon theright person. 

I did not remain long at the Kursaal; the music was good enough, but itseemed rather tame after the cyclone of that Arkansaw expert. Besides, my adventurous spirit had conceived a formidable enterprise--nothingless than a trip from Interlaken, by the Gemmi and Visp, clear toZermatt, on foot! So it was necessary to plan the details, and get readyfor an early start. The courier (this was not the one I have just beenspeaking of) thought that the portier of the hotel would be able to tellus how to find our way. And so it turned out. He showed us the wholething, on a relief-map, and we could see our route, with all itselevations and depressions, its villages and its rivers, as clearly asif 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 ona piece of paper, and made our course so plain that we should never beable 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 andputting them into condition for instant occupation in the morning. 

However, when we came down to breakfast at 8 A. M. , it looked so muchlike rain that I hired a two-horse top-buggy for the first third of thejourney. For two or three hours we jogged along the level road whichskirts the beautiful lake of Thun, with a dim and dreamlike picture ofwatery expanses and spectral Alpine forms always before us, veiled ina mellowing mist. Then a steady downpour set in, and hid everything butthe 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 thedriver sat unsheltered and placidly soaked the weather in and seemedto like it. We had the road to ourselves, and I never had a pleasanterexcursion. 

The weather began to clear while we were driving up a valley called theKienthal, and presently a vast black cloud-bank in front of us dissolvedaway and uncurtained the grand proportions and the soaring loftiness ofthe Blumis Alp. It was a sort of breath-taking surprise; for we had notsupposed there was anything behind that low-hung blanket of sable cloudbut level valley. What we had been mistaking for fleeting glimpses ofsky away aloft there, were really patches of the Blumis's snowy crestcaught through shredded rents in the drifting pall of vapor. 

We dined in the inn at Frutigen, and our driver ought to have dinedthere, too, but he would not have had time to dine and get drunkboth, so he gave his mind to making a masterpiece of the latter, andsucceeded. A German gentleman and his two young-lady daughters had beentaking 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 happyand good-natured, too, which was saying a good deal. These rascalsoverflowed with attentions and information for their guests, and withbrotherly love for each other. They tied their reins, and took offtheir coats and hats, so that they might be able to give unencumberedattention to conversation and to the gestures necessary for itsillustration. 

The road was smooth; it led up and over and down a continual successionof hills; but it was narrow, the horses were used to it, and couldnot well get out of it anyhow; so why shouldn't the drivers entertainthemselves and us? The noses of our horses projected sociably into therear of the forward carriage, and as we toiled up the long hills ourdriver stood up and talked to his friend, and his friend stood up andtalked back to him, with his rear to the scenery. When the top wasreached and we went flying down the other side, there was no changein the program. I carry in my memory yet the picture of that forwarddriver, 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, andjolly red face, and offering his card to the old German gentleman whilehe praised his hack and horses, and both teams were whizzing down along hill with nobody in a position to tell whether we were bound todestruction or an undeserved safety. 

Toward sunset we entered a beautiful green valley dotted with chalets, acozy little domain hidden away from the busy world in a cloistered nookamong giant precipices topped with snowy peaks that seemed to float likeislands above the curling surf of the sea of vapor that severed themfrom the lower world. Down from vague and vaporous heights, littleruffled zigzag milky currents came crawling, and found their way to theverge of one of those tremendous overhanging walls, whence they plunged, a shaft of silver, shivered to atoms in mid-descent and turned to an airpuff of luminous dust. Here and there, in grooved depressions among thesnowy desolations of the upper altitudes, one glimpsed the extremity ofa glacier, with its sea-green and honeycombed battlements of ice. 

Up the valley, under a dizzy precipice, nestled the village ofKandersteg, our halting-place for the night. We were soon there, andhoused in the hotel. But the waning day had such an inviting influencethat we did not remain housed many moments, but struck out and followeda roaring torrent of ice-water up to its far source in a sort of littlegrass-carpeted parlor, walled in all around by vast precipices andoverlooked by clustering summits of ice. This was the snuggest littlecroquet-ground imaginable; it was perfectly level, and not more than amile long by half a mile wide. The walls around it were so gigantic, andeverything about it was on so mighty a scale that it was belittled, bycontrast, to what I have likened it to--a cozy and carpeted parlor. Itwas so high above the Kandersteg valley that there was nothing betweenit and the snowy-peaks. I had never been in such intimate relations withthe high altitudes before; the snow-peaks had always been remote andunapproachable grandeurs, hitherto, but now we were hob-a-nob--if onemay use such a seemingly irreverent expression about creations so augustas these. 

We could see the streams which fed the torrent we had followed issuingfrom under the greenish ramparts of glaciers; but two or three of these, instead of flowing over the precipices, sank down into the rock andsprang 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 rushingbrook to a narrow cleft between lofty precipices; here the rushingbrook becomes a mad torrent and goes booming and thundering downtoward Kandersteg, lashing and thrashing its way over and among monsterboulders, and hurling chance roots and logs about like straws. Therewas no lack of cascades along this route. The path by the side ofthe torrent was so narrow that one had to look sharp, when he heard acow-bell, and hunt for a place that was wide enough to accommodate a cowand a Christian side by side, and such places were not always to be hadat an instant's notice. The cows wear church-bells, and that is agood idea in the cows, for where that torrent is, you couldn't hearan ordinary cow-bell any further than you could hear the ticking of awatch. 

I needed exercise, so I employed my agent in setting stranded logs anddead trees adrift, and I sat on a boulder and watched them go whirlingand leaping head over heels down the boiling torrent. It was awonderfully exhilarating spectacle. When I had had enough exercise, Imade the agent take some, by running a race with one of those logs. Imade a trifle by betting on the log. 

After dinner we had a walk up and down the Kandersteg valley, in thesoft gloaming, with the spectacle of the dying lights of day playingabout the crests and pinnacles of the still and solemn upper realmfor contrast, and text for talk. There were no sounds but the dulledcomplaining of the torrent and the occasional tinkling of a distantbell. The spirit of the place was a sense of deep, pervading peace; onemight dream his life tranquilly away there, and not miss it or mind itwhen it was gone. 

The summer departed with the sun, and winter came with the stars. Itgrew to be a bitter night in that little hotel, backed up against aprecipice that had no visible top to it, but we kept warm, and woke intime in the morning to find that everybody else had left for Gemmithree 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 overseventy, but he could have given me nine-tenths of his strength andstill had all his age entitled him to. He shouldered our satchels, overcoats, and alpenstocks, and we set out up the steep path. It was hotwork. The old man soon begged us to hand over our coats and waistcoatsto him to carry, too, and we did it; one could not refuse so little athing to a poor old man like that; he should have had them if he hadbeen a hundred and fifty. 

When we began that ascent, we could see a microscopic chalet perchedaway up against heaven on what seemed to be the highest mountain nearus. It was on our right, across the narrow head of the valley. But whenwe got up abreast it on its own level, mountains were towering highabove on every hand, and we saw that its altitude was just about that ofthe little Gasternthal which we had visited the evening before. Still itseemed a long way up in the air, in that waste and lonely wilderness ofrocks. It had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it which seemed aboutas big as a billiard-table, and this grass-plot slanted so sharplydownward, and was so brief, and ended so exceedingly soon at the vergeof the absolute precipice, that it was a shuddery thing to think of aperson'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 benothing for him to seize; nothing could keep him from rolling; fiverevolutions would bring him to the edge, and over he would go. 

What a frightful distance he would fall!--for there are very few birdsthat fly as high as his starting-point. He would strike and bounce, twoor three times, on his way down, but this would be no advantage to him. I would as soon take an airing on the slant of a rainbow as in sucha front yard. I would rather, in fact, for the distance down would beabout the same, and it is pleasanter to slide than to bounce. I couldnot see how the peasants got up to that chalet--the region seemed toosteep for anything but a balloon. 

As we strolled on, climbing up higher and higher, we were continuallybringing neighboring peaks into view and lofty prominence which had beenhidden behind lower peaks before; so by and by, while standing before agroup of these giants, we looked around for the chalet again; there itwas, away down below us, apparently on an inconspicuous ridge in thevalley! It was as far below us, now, as it had been above us when wewere beginning the ascent. 

After a while the path led us along a railed precipice, and we lookedover--far beneath us was the snug parlor again, the little Gasternthal, with its water jets spouting from the face of its rock walls. We couldhave dropped a stone into it. We had been finding the top of the worldall along--and always finding a still higher top stealing into view ina disappointing way just ahead; when we looked down into the Gasternthalwe felt pretty sure that we had reached the genuine top at last, but itwas not so; there were much higher altitudes to be scaled yet. We werestill in the pleasant shade of forest trees, we were still in a regionwhich was cushioned with beautiful mosses and aglow with the many-tintedluster of innumerable wild flowers. 

We found, indeed, more interest in the wild flowers than in anythingelse. We gathered a specimen or two of every kind which we wereunacquainted with; so we had sumptuous bouquets. But one of the chiefinterests lay in chasing the seasons of the year up the mountain, anddetermining them by the presence of flowers and berries which we wereacquainted with. For instance, it was the end of August at the levelof the sea; in the Kandersteg valley at the base of the pass, we foundflowers which would not be due at the sea-level for two or three weeks;higher up, we entered October, and gathered fringed gentians. I madeno notes, and have forgotten the details, but the construction of thefloral calendar was very entertaining while it lasted. 

In the high regions we found rich store of the splendid red flowercalled the Alpine rose, but we did not find any examples of the uglySwiss favorite called Edelweiss. Its name seems to indicate that it is anoble flower and that it is white. It may be noble enough, but it is notattractive, and it is not white. The fuzzy blossom is the color of badcigar ashes, and appears to be made of a cheap quality of gray plush. Ithas a noble and distant way of confining itself to the high altitudes, but that is probably on account of its looks; it apparently has nomonopoly of those upper altitudes, however, for they are sometimesintruded upon by some of the loveliest of the valley families of wildflowers. Everybody in the Alps wears a sprig of Edelweiss in his hat. Itis the native's pet, and also the tourist's. 

All the morning, as we loafed along, having a good time, otherpedestrians went staving by us with vigorous strides, and with theintent and determined look of men who were walking for a wager. Thesewore loose knee-breeches, long yarn stockings, and hobnailed high-lacedwalking-shoes. They were gentlemen who would go home to England orGermany and tell how many miles they had beaten the guide-book everyday. But I doubted if they ever had much real fun, outside of the meremagnificent exhilaration of the tramp through the green valleys and thebreezy heights; for they were almost always alone, and even the finestscenery loses incalculably when there is no one to enjoy it with. 

All the morning an endless double procession of mule-mounted touristsfiled past us along the narrow path--the one procession going, theother coming. We had taken a good deal of trouble to teach ourselves thekindly German custom of saluting all strangers with doffed hat, and weresolutely clung to it, that morning, although it kept us bareheadedmost of the time and was not always responded to. Still we found aninterest in the thing, because we naturally liked to know who wereEnglish and Americans among the passers-by. All continental nativesresponded of course; so did some of the English and Americans, but, asa general thing, these two races gave no sign. Whenever a man or a womanshowed us cold neglect, we spoke up confidently in our own tongue andasked for such information as we happened to need, and we always got areply in the same language. The English and American folk are not lesskindly than other races, they are only more reserved, and that comes ofhabit and education. In one dreary, rocky waste, away above the line ofvegetation, we met a procession of twenty-five mounted young men, allfrom America. We got answering bows enough from these, of course, forthey were of an age to learn to do in Rome as Rome does, without mucheffort. 

At one extremity of this patch of desolation, overhung by bare andforbidding crags which husbanded drifts of everlasting snow in theirshaded cavities, was a small stretch of thin and discouraged grass, anda man and a family of pigs were actually living here in some shanties. Consequently this place could be really reckoned as "property"; it hada money value, and was doubtless taxed. I think it must have markedthe limit of real estate in this world. It would be hard to set a moneyvalue upon any piece of earth that lies between that spot and the emptyrealm of space. That man may claim the distinction of owning the endof the world, for if there is any definite end to the world he hascertainly found it. 

From here forward we moved through a storm-swept and smilelessdesolation. All about us rose gigantic masses, crags, and ramparts ofbare and dreary rock, with not a vestige or semblance of plant or treeor flower anywhere, or glimpse of any creature that had life. The frostand the tempests of unnumbered ages had battered and hacked at thesecliffs, with a deathless energy, destroying them piecemeal; so all theregion about their bases was a tumbled chaos of great fragments whichhad been split off and hurled to the ground. Soiled and aged banks ofsnow lay close about our path. The ghastly desolation of the place wasas tremendously complete as if Doré had furnished the working-plansfor it. But every now and then, through the stern gateways around uswe caught a view of some neighboring majestic dome, sheathed withglittering ice, and displaying its white purity at an elevation comparedto which ours was groveling and plebeian, and this spectacle alwayschained one's interest and admiration at once, and made him forget therewas anything ugly in the world. 

I have just said that there was nothing but death and desolation inthese hideous places, but I forgot. In the most forlorn and arid anddismal one of all, where the racked and splintered debris was thickest, where the ancient patches of snow lay against the very path, wherethe winds blew bitterest and the general aspect was mournfulest anddreariest, and furthest from any suggestion of cheer or hope, I founda solitary wee forget-me-not flourishing away, not a droop about itanywhere, but holding its bright blue star up with the prettiest andgallantest air in the world, the only happy spirit, the only smilingthing, in all that grisly desert. She seemed to say, "Cheer up!--as longas we are here, let us make the best of it. " I judged she had earned aright to a more hospitable place; so I plucked her up and sent her toAmerica 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 desolationstop breaking its heart over the unalterable, and hold up its head andlook at the bright side of things for once. 

We stopped for a nooning at a strongly built little inn called theSchwarenbach. It sits in a lonely spot among the peaks, where it isswept by the trailing fringes of the cloud-rack, and is rained on, andsnowed on, and pelted and persecuted by the storms, nearly every day ofits 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 topknotin the sky and daring us to an ascent. I was fired with the idea, andimmediately made up my mind to procure the necessary guides, ropes, etc. , and undertake it. I instructed Harris to go to the landlord of theinn and set him about our preparations. Meantime, I went diligently towork to read up and find out what this much-talked-of mountain-climbingwas like, and how one should go about it--for in these matters Iwas 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 eveningbefore a grand expedition--"

I saw that I was too calm; so I walked the room a while and workedmyself into a high excitement; but the book's next remark --that theadventurer must get up at two in the morning--came as near as anythingto flatting it all out again. However, I reinforced it, and read on, about how Mr. Hinchliff dressed by candle-light and was "soon down amongthe guides, who were bustling about in the passage, packing provisions, and making every preparation for the start"; and how he glanced out intothe cold clear night and saw that--

"The whole sky was blazing with stars, larger and brighter than theyappear through the dense atmosphere breathed by inhabitants of the lowerparts of the earth. They seemed actually suspended from the dark vaultof heaven, and their gentle light shed a fairylike gleam over thesnow-fields around the foot of the Matterhorn, which raised itsstupendous pinnacle on high, penetrating to the heart of the Great Bear, and crowning itself with a diadem of his magnificent stars. Not a sounddisturbed the deep tranquillity of the night, except the distant roarof streams which rush from the high plateau of the St. Theodule glacier, and fall headlong over precipitous rocks till they lose themselves inthe mazes of the Gorner glacier. "

He took his hot toast and coffee, and then about half past three hiscaravan of ten men filed away from the Riffel Hotel, and began the steepclimb. At half past five he happened to turn around, and "beheld theglorious spectacle of the Matterhorn, just touched by the rosy-fingeredmorning, and looking like a huge pyramid of fire rising out of thebarren ocean of ice and rock around it. " Then the Breithorn and the DentBlanche caught the radiant glow; but "the intervening mass of Monte Rosamade it necessary for us to climb many long hours before we could hopeto see the sun himself, yet the whole air soon grew warmer after thesplendid birth of the day. "

He gazed at the lofty crown of Monte Rosa and the wastes of snow thatguarded its steep approaches, and the chief guide delivered the opinionthat no man could conquer their awful heights and put his foot upon thatsummit. 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 toits rugged face; and now they were confronted by a tremendous wallfrom which great blocks of ice and snow were evidently in the habit offalling. They turned aside to skirt this wall, and gradually ascendeduntil their way was barred by a "maze of gigantic snow crevices, "--sothey turned aside again, and "began a long climb of sufficient steepnessto make a zigzag course necessary. "

Fatigue compelled them to halt frequently, for a moment or two. At oneof these halts somebody called out, "Look at Mont Blanc!" and "we wereat once made aware of the very great height we had attained by actuallyseeing the monarch of the Alps and his attendant satellites right overthe 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 thosegiddy heights, the others could brace themselves on their alpenstocksand save him from darting into the valley, thousands of feet below. Byand by they came to an ice-coated ridge which was tilted up at a sharpangle, and had a precipice on one side of it. They had to climb this, sothe guide in the lead cut steps in the ice with his hatchet, and as fastas he took his toes out of one of these slight holes, the toes of theman behind him occupied it. 

"Slowly and steadily we kept on our way over this dangerous part of theascent, and I dare say it was fortunate for some of us that attentionwas distracted from the head by the paramount necessity of looking afterthe feet; FOR, WHILE ON THE LEFT THE INCLINE OF ICE WAS SO STEEP THATIT 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 PEBBLEFROM THE HAND OVER PRECIPICES OF UNKNOWN EXTENT DOWN UPON THE TREMENDOUSGLACIER BELOW. 

"Great caution, therefore, was absolutely necessary, and in this exposedsituation we were attacked by all the fury of that grand enemy ofaspirants to Monte Rosa--a severe and bitterly cold wind from the north. The fine powdery snow was driven past us in the clouds, penetrating theinterstices of our clothes, and the pieces of ice which flew from theblows of Peter's ax were whisked into the air, and then dashed over theprecipice. We had quite enough to do to prevent ourselves from beingserved in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then, in the moreviolent gusts of wind, were glad to stick our alpenstocks into the iceand hold on hard. "

Having surmounted this perilous steep, they sat down and took a briefrest with their backs against a sheltering rock and their heels danglingover a bottomless abyss; then they climbed to the base of anotherridge--a more difficult and dangerous one still:

"The whole of the ridge was exceedingly narrow, and the fall on eachside desperately steep, but the ice in some of these intervals betweenthe masses of rock assumed the form of a mere sharp edge, almost like aknife; these places, though not more than three or four short pacesin length, looked uncommonly awkward; but, like the sword leading truebelievers to the gates of Paradise, they must needs be passed beforewe could attain to the summit of our ambition. These were in one or twoplaces so narrow, that in stepping over them with toes well turnedout for greater security, ONE END OF THE FOOT PROJECTED OVER THE AWFULPRECIPICE ON THE RIGHT, WHILE THE OTHER WAS ON THE BEGINNING OF THEICE SLOPE ON THE LEFT, WHICH WAS SCARCELY LESS STEEP THAN THE ROCKS. Onthese occasions Peter would take my hand, and each of us stretching asfar as we could, he was thus enabled to get a firm footing two pacesor rather more from me, whence a spring would probably bring him to therock 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 hisoutstretched hand ready to clasp mine, and in a moment stood by hisside. The others followed in much the same fashion. Once my right footslipped on the side toward the precipice, but I threw out my left arm ina moment so that it caught the icy edge under my armpit as I fell, andsupported me considerably; at the same instant I cast my eyes down theside on which I had slipped, and contrived to plant my right foot ona piece of rock as large as a cricket-ball, which chanced to protrudethrough the ice, on the very edge of the precipice. Being thus anchoredfore and aft, as it were, I believe I could easily have recoveredmyself, even if I had been alone, though it must be confessed thesituation would have been an awful one; as it was, however, a jerk fromPeter settled the matter very soon, and I was on my legs all right in aninstant. 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 iceand powdered with snow--the utmost, summit, the last bit of soliditybetween them and the hollow vault of heaven. They set to work with theirhatchets, and were soon creeping, insectlike, up its surface, with theirheels projecting over the thinnest kind of nothingness, thickened up alittle with a few wandering shreds and films of cloud moving in a lazyprocession 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, tillhis friends above hauled him into place again. 

A little bit later, the party stood upon the wee pedestal of the verysummit, in a driving wind, and looked out upon the vast green expansesof Italy and a shoreless ocean of billowy Alps. 

When I had read thus far, Harris broke into the room in a nobleexcitement and said the ropes and the guides were secured, and asked ifI was ready. I said I believed I wouldn't ascend the Altels this time. Isaid 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 wewent definitely into it. But I told him to retain the guides and orderthem to follow us to Zermatt, because I meant to use them there. I saidI could feel the spirit of adventure beginning to stir in me, and wassure that the fell fascination of Alp-climbing would soon be upon me. Isaid he could make up his mind to it that we would do a deed beforewe were a week older which would make the hair of the timid curl withfright. 

This made Harris happy, and filled him with ambitious anticipations. Hewent at once to tell the guides to follow us to Zermatt and bring alltheir paraphernalia with them. 

CHAPTER XXXV

[Swindling the Coroner]

A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How it takes possessionof a man! how it clings to him, how it rides him! I strode onward fromthe Schwarenbach hostelry a changed man, a reorganized personality. Iwalked into a new world, I saw with new eyes. I had been lookingaloft at the giant show-peaks only as things to be worshiped for theirgrandeur and magnitude, and their unspeakable grace of form; I lookedup at them now, as also things to be conquered and climbed. My sense oftheir grandeur and their noble beauty was neither lost nor impaired; Ihad 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 thepossibility or impossibility of following them with my feet. When I sawa shining helmet of ice projecting above the clouds, I tried to imagineI saw files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a gossamerthread. 

We skirted the lonely little lake called the Daubensee, and presentlypassed close by a glacier on the right--a thing like a great riverfrozen 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 inbuilding a stone house; so the Schwarenbach was soon to have a rival. Webought a bottle or so of beer here; at any rate they called it beer, butI knew by the price that it was dissolved jewelry, and I perceived bythe taste that dissolved jewelry is not good stuff to drink. 

We were surrounded by a hideous desolation. We stepped forward to a sortof jumping-off place, and were confronted by a startling contrast: weseemed to look down into fairyland. Two or three thousand feet below uswas a bright green level, with a pretty town in its midst, and a silverystream winding among the meadows; the charming spot was walled in on allsides by gigantic precipices clothed with pines; and over the pines, outof the softened distances, rose the snowy domes and peaks of the MonteRosa region. How exquisitely green and beautiful that little valley downthere was! The distance was not great enough to obliterate details, itonly made them little, and mellow, and dainty, like landscapes and townsseen 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-baizebench were a lot of black and white sheep which looked merely likeoversized 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--anarrow way, with always the solid rock wall at one elbow, andperpendicular nothingness at the other. We met an everlasting processionof guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing up this steepand muddy path, and there was no room to spare when you had to pass atolerably fat mule. I always took the inside, when I heard or saw themule coming, and flattened myself against the wall. I preferred theinside, of course, but I should have had to take it anyhow, becausethe mule prefers the outside. A mule's preference--on a precipice--is athing to be respected. Well, his choice is always the outside. His lifeis mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers and packages which restagainst his body--therefore he is habituated to taking the outside edgeof mountain paths, to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks orbanks on the other. When he goes into the passenger business he absurdlyclings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his passenger alwaysdangling over the great deeps of the lower world while that passenger'sheart is in the highlands, so to speak. More than once I saw a mule'shind foot cave over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into thebottom abyss; and I noticed that upon these occasions the rider, whethermale or female, looked tolerably unwell. 

There was one place where an eighteen-inch breadth of light masonry hadbeen added to the verge of the path, and as there was a very sharpturn here, a panel of fencing had been set up there at some time, asa protection. This panel was old and gray and feeble, and the lightmasonry had been loosened by recent rains. A young American girl camealong on a mule, and in making the turn the mule's hind foot caved allthe loose masonry and one of the fence-posts overboard; the mule gave aviolent lurch inboard to save himself, and succeeded in the effort, butthat 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; therewas a four-foot breadth of solid rock under the traveler, and four-footbreadth of solid rock just above his head, like the roof of a narrowporch; he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer summitlessand bottomless wall of rock before him, across a gorge or crack abiscuit's toss in width--but he could not see the bottom of his ownprecipice unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge. I didnot do this, because I did not wish to soil my clothes. 

Every few hundred yards, at particularly bad places, one came acrossa 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 rashpromises to hold up people who might need support. There was one ofthese panels which had only its upper board left; a pedestrianizingEnglish youth came tearing down the path, was seized with an impulse tolook over the precipice, and without an instant's thought he threw hisweight upon that crazy board. It bent outward a foot! I never made agasp before that came so near suffocating me. The English youth's facesimply showed a lively surprise, but nothing more. He went swingingalong valleyward again, as if he did not know he had just swindled acoroner by the closest kind of a shave. 

The Alpine litter is sometimes like a cushioned box made fast betweenthe middles of two long poles, and sometimes it is a chair with a backto it and a support for the feet. It is carried by relays of strongporters. The motion is easier than that of any other conveyance. We meta few men and a great many ladies in litters; it seemed to me that mostof the ladies looked pale and nauseated; their general aspect gave methe idea that they were patiently enduring a horrible suffering. As arule, they looked at their laps, and left the scenery to take care ofitself. 

But the most frightened creature I saw, was a led horse that overtookus. Poor fellow, he had been born and reared in the grassy levels of theKandersteg valley and had never seen anything like this hideous placebefore. Every few steps he would stop short, glance wildly out fromthe dizzy height, and then spread his red nostrils wide and pant asviolently as if he had been running a race; and all the while he quakedfrom head to heel as with a palsy. He was a handsome fellow, and hemade a fine statuesque picture of terror, but it was pitiful to see himsuffer so. 

This dreadful path has had its tragedy. Baedeker, with his customaryover terseness, begins and ends the tale thus:

"The descent on horseback should be avoided. In 1861 a Comtessed'Herlincourt fell from her saddle over the precipice and was killed onthe spot. "

We looked over the precipice there, and saw the monument whichcommemorates the event. It stands in the bottom of the gorge, in a placewhich has been hollowed out of the rock to protect it from the torrentand the storms. Our old guide never spoke but when spoken to, and thenlimited himself to a syllable or two, but when we asked him about thistragedy he showed a strong interest in the matter. He said the Countesswas 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 wasriding 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 theprecipice; and her face began to bend downward a little, and she putup her two hands slowly and met it--so, --and put them flat against hereyes--so--and then she sank out of the saddle, with a sharp shriek, andone 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 themall, 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 hehad forgotten no detail connected with it. We listened to all he had tosay about what was done and what happened and what was said after thesorrowful occurrence, and a painful story it was. 

When we had wound down toward the valley until we were about on the lastspiral of the corkscrew, Harris's hat blew over the last remainingbit of precipice--a small cliff a hundred or hundred and fifty feethigh--and sailed down toward a steep slant composed of rough chips andfragments which the weather had flaked away from the precipices. We wentleisurely down there, expecting to find it without any trouble, but wehad made a mistake, as to that. We hunted during a couple of hours--notbecause the old straw hat was valuable, but out of curiosity to findout how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open ground wherethere was nothing left for it to hide behind. When one is reading inbed, and lays his paper-knife down, he cannot find it again if it issmaller than a saber; that hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife couldhave been, and we finally had to give it up; but we found a fragmentthat had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by digging around andturning over the rocks we gradually collected all the lenses and thecylinders and the various odds and ends that go to making up a completeopera-glass. We afterward had the thing reconstructed, and the owner canhave his adventurous lost-property by submitting proofs and paying costsof rehabilitation. We had hopes of finding the owner there, distributedaround 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 aday at Leuk and come back and get him. 

Then we sat down to polish off the perspiration and arrange about whatwe would do with him when we got him. Harris was for contributing him tothe British Museum; but I was for mailing him to his widow. That is thedifference between Harris and me: Harris is all for display, I am allfor the simple right, even though I lose money by it. Harris argued infavor of his proposition against mine, I argued in favor of mine andagainst his. The discussion warmed into a dispute; the dispute warmedinto 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 seethat 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 theseremains. 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 ifI hadn't found their opera-glass. The corpse belongs to me, and I'll doas I please with him. "

I was leader of the Expedition, and all discoveries achieved by itnaturally belonged to me. I was entitled to these remains, and couldhave 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 abarren victory, for although we spent all the next day searching, wenever found a bone. I cannot imagine what could ever have become of thatfellow. 

The town in the valley is called Leuk or Leukerbad. We pointed ourcourse toward it, down a verdant slope which was adorned with fringedgentians and other flowers, and presently entered the narrow alleys ofthe outskirts and waded toward the middle of the town through liquid"fertilizer. " They ought to either pave that village or organize aferry. 

Harris's body was simply a chamois-pasture; his person was populous withthe little hungry pests; his skin, when he stripped, was splotched likea scarlet-fever patient's; so, when we were about to enter one of theLeukerbad inns, and he noticed its sign, "Chamois Hotel, " he refused tostop there. He said the chamois was plentiful enough, without huntingup hotels where they made a specialty of it. I was indifferent, for thechamois is a creature that will neither bite me nor abide with me; butto calm Harris, we went to the Hôtel des Alpes. 

At the table d'hôte, we had this, for an incident. A very grave man--infact his gravity amounted to solemnity, and almost to austerity--satopposite us and he was "tight, " but doing his best to appear sober. Hetook up a CORKED bottle of wine, tilted it over his glass awhile, thenset it out of the way, with a contented look, and went on with hisdinner. 

Presently he put his glass to his mouth, and of course found it empty. He looked puzzled, and glanced furtively and suspiciously out of thecorner of his eye at a benignant and unconscious old lady who sat at hisright. Shook his head, as much as to say, "No, she couldn't havedone it. " He tilted the corked bottle over his glass again, meantimesearching 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 itwas still empty. He bent an injured and accusing side-glance upon thatunconscious old lady, which was a study to see. She went on eating andgave no sign. He took up his glass and his bottle, with a wise privatenod of his head, and set them gravely on the left-hand side of hisplate--poured himself another imaginary drink--went to work withhis knife and fork once more--presently lifted his glass with goodconfidence, and found it empty, as usual. 

This was almost a petrifying surprise. He straightened himself up in hischair and deliberately and sorrowfully inspected the busy old ladies athis elbows, first one and then the other. At last he softly pushed hisplate away, set his glass directly in front of him, held on to itwith his left hand, and proceeded to pour with his right. This timehe observed that nothing came. He turned the bottle clear upside down;still nothing issued from it; a plaintive look came into his face, andhe said, as if to himself, "'IC! THEY'VE GOT IT ALL!" Then he set the bottle down, resignedly, andtook the rest of his dinner dry. 

It was at that table d'hôte, too, that I had under inspection thelargest lady I have ever seen in private life. She was over seven feethigh, and magnificently proportioned. What had first called my attentionto 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 attentionto her the second time was, that at a table beyond ours were two verypretty girls, and this great lady came in and sat down between them andme and blotted out my view. She had a handsome face, and she was veryfinely formed--perfectly formed, I should say. But she made everybodyaround her look trivial and commonplace. Ladies near her looked likechildren, 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. Inever saw such a back in my life. I would have so liked to see themoon rise over it. The whole congregation waited, under one pretext oranother, till she finished her dinner and went out; they wanted to seeher at full altitude, and they found it worth tarrying for. She filledone's idea of what an empress ought to be, when she rose up in herunapproachable grandeur and moved superbly out of that place. 

We were not at Leuk in time to see her at her heaviest weight. She hadsuffered from corpulence and had come there to get rid of her extraflesh in the baths. Five weeks of soaking--five uninterrupted hours ofit every day--had accomplished her purpose and reduced her to the rightproportions. 

Those baths remove fat, and also skin-diseases. The patients remain inthe great tanks for hours at a time. A dozen gentlemen and ladies occupya tank together, and amuse themselves with rompings and various games. They have floating desks and tables, and they read or lunch or playchess in water that is breast-deep. The tourist can step in and viewthis novel spectacle if he chooses. There's a poor-box, and he will haveto contribute. There are several of these big bathing-houses, and youcan always tell when you are near one of them by the romping noises andshouts of laughter that proceed from it. The water is running water, andchanges all the time, else a patient with a ringworm might take the bathwith only a partial success, since, while he was ridding himself of theringworm, he might catch the itch. 

The next morning we wandered back up the green valley, leisurely, withthe curving walls of those bare and stupendous precipices risinginto the clouds before us. I had never seen a clean, bare precipicestretching up five thousand feet above me before, and I never shallexpect to see another one. They exist, perhaps, but not in places whereone can easily get close to them. This pile of stone is peculiar. Fromits base to the soaring tops of its mighty towers, all its lines and allits details vaguely suggest human architecture. There are rudimentarybow-windows, cornices, chimneys, demarcations of stories, etc. One couldsit and stare up there and study the features and exquisite graces ofthis grand structure, bit by bit, and day after day, and never weary hisinterest. The termination, toward the town, observed in profile, is theperfection of shape. It comes down out of the clouds in a succession ofrounded, colossal, terracelike projections--a stairway for the gods; atits head spring several lofty storm-scarred towers, one after another, with faint films of vapor curling always about them like spectralbanners. If there were a king whose realms included the whole world, here would be the place meet and proper for such a monarch. He wouldonly need to hollow it out and put in the electric light. He could giveaudience to a nation at a time under its roof. 

Our search for those remains having failed, we inspected with a glassthe dim and distant track of an old-time avalanche that once swept downfrom some pine-grown summits behind the town and swept away the housesand buried the people; then we struck down the road that leads towardthe Rhone, to see the famous Ladders. These perilous things are builtagainst the perpendicular face of a cliff two or three hundred feethigh. The peasants, of both sexes, were climbing up and down them, withheavy loads on their backs. I ordered Harris to make the ascent, so Icould put the thrill and horror of it in my book, and he accomplishedthe feat successfully, through a subagent, for three francs, which Ipaid. It makes me shudder yet when I think of what I felt when I wasclinging there between heaven and earth in the person of that proxy. Attimes 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 upand descended, but I stuck to my task, and would not yield until I hadaccomplished it. I felt a just pride in my exploit, but I would not haverepeated it for the wealth of the world. I shall break my neck yet withsome such foolhardy performance, for warnings never seem to have anylasting effect on me. When the people of the hotel found that I hadbeen climbing those crazy Ladders, it made me an object of considerableattention. 

Next morning, early, we drove to the Rhone valley and took the train forVisp. There we shouldered our knapsacks and things, and set out on foot, in a tremendous rain, up the winding gorge, toward Zermatt. Hour afterhour we slopped along, by the roaring torrent, and under noble LesserAlps which were clothed in rich velvety green all the way up andhad little atomy Swiss homes perched upon grassy benches along theirmist-dimmed heights. 

The rain continued to pour and the torrent to boom, and we continuedto enjoy both. At the one spot where this torrent tossed its white manehighest, and thundered loudest, and lashed the big boulders fiercest, the canton had done itself the honor to build the flimsiest woodenbridge that exists in the world. While we were walking over it, alongwith a party of horsemen, I noticed that even the larger raindrops madeit 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 Ithought a good deal of him, I would think twice before I would ride himover that bridge. 

We climbed up to the village of St. Nicholas, about half past fourin the afternoon, waded ankle-deep through the fertilizer-juice, andstopped at a new and nice hotel close by the little church. We strippedand went to bed, and sent our clothes down to be baked. And the hordeof soaked tourists did the same. That chaos of clothing got mixed in thekitchen, and there were consequences. 

I did not get back the same drawers I sent down, when our things came upat six-fifteen; I got a pair on a new plan. They were merely a pairof white ruffle-cuffed absurdities, hitched together at the top witha narrow band, and they did not come quite down to my knees. They werepretty enough, but they made me feel like two people, and disconnectedat that. The man must have been an idiot that got himself up likethat, to rough it in the Swiss mountains. The shirt they brought mewas shorter than the drawers, and hadn't any sleeves to it--at leastit hadn't anything more than what Mr. Darwin would call "rudimentary"sleeves; these had "edging" around them, but the bosom was ridiculouslyplain. The knit silk undershirt they brought me was on a new plan, andwas really a sensible thing; it opened behind, and had pockets in it toput your shoulder-blades in; but they did not seem to fit mine, and soI found it a sort of uncomfortable garment. They gave my bobtail coatto somebody else, and sent me an ulster suitable for a giraffe. I hadto tie my collar on, because there was no button behind on that foolishlittle shirt which I described a while ago. 

When I was dressed for dinner at six-thirty, I was too loose in someplaces and too tight in others, and altogether I felt slovenly andill-conditioned. However, the people at the table d'hôte were no betteroff than I was; they had everybody's clothes but their own on. Along stranger recognized his ulster as soon as he saw the tail of itfollowing me in, but nobody claimed my shirt or my drawers, though Idescribed them as well as I was able. I gave them to the chambermaidthat night when I went to bed, and she probably found the owner, for myown things were on a chair outside my door in the morning. 

There was a lovable English clergyman who did not get to the tabled'hôte at all. His breeches had turned up missing, and without anyequivalent. He said he was not more particular than other people, but hehad noticed that a clergyman at dinner without any breeches was almostsure to excite remark.