And, Indeed, The Whole Mountain Is More Like A
Ridge Than Any Other I Have Seen.
At one end is a peak called the 'Red
Horn', the other end falls suddenly above Interlaken, and wherever you
should cut it you would get a section like this, for it is as steep as
anything can be short of sheer rock.
There are no precipices on it,
though there are nasty slabs quite high enough to kill a man - I saw
several of three or four hundred feet. It is about five or six
thousand feet high, and it stands right up and along the northern
shore of the lake of Brienz. I began the ascent.
Spongy meads, that soughed under the feet and grew steeper as one
rose, took up the first few hundred feet. Little rivulets of mere
dampness ran in among the under moss, and such very small hidden
flowers as there were drooped with the surfeit of moisture. The rain
was now indistinguishable from a mist, and indeed I had come so near
to the level belt of cloud, that already its gloom was exchanged for
that diffused light which fills vapours from within and lends them
their mystery. A belt of thick brushwood and low trees lay before me,
clinging to the slope, and as I pushed with great difficulty and many
turns to right and left through its tangle a wisp of cloud enveloped
me, and from that time on I was now in, now out, of a deceptive
drifting fog, in which it was most difficult to gauge one's progress.
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