The Sight So Cheered Me That I
Determined To Press On Up The Valley, Though With No Definite Goal For
The Night.
It was a foolish decision, for I was really in the heart of
an unknown country, at the end of roads, at the sources of rivers,
beyond help.
I knew that straight before me, not five miles away, was
the Brienzer Grat, the huge high wall which it was my duty to cross
right over from side to side. I did not know whether or not there was
an inn between me and that vast barrier.
The light was failing. I had perhaps some vague idea of sleeping out,
but that would have killed me, for a heavy mist that covered all the
tops of the hills and that made a roof over the valley, began to drop
down a fine rain; and, as they sing in church on Christmas Eve, 'the
heavens sent down their dews upon a just man'. But that was written in
Palestine, where rain is a rare blessing; there and then in the cold
evening they would have done better to have warmed the righteous.
There is no controlling them; they mean well, but they bungle
terribly.
The road stopped being a road, and became like a Californian trail. I
approached enormous gates in the hills, high, precipitous, and narrow.
The mist rolled over them, hiding their summits and making them seem
infinitely lifted up and reaching endlessly into the thick sky; the
straight, tenuous lines of the rain made them seem narrower still.
Just as I neared them, hobbling, I met a man driving two cows, and
said to him the word, 'Guest-house?' to which he said 'Yaw!' and
pointed out a clump of trees to me just under the precipice and right
in the gates I speak of.
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