On We Came, To The Top Of
The Great Schiedich, Where H. And W. Botanized, While I Slept.
Thence
we rode down the mountain till we reached Rosenlaui, where, I am free
to say, a dinner was to me a more interesting object than a glacier.
Therefore, while H. and W. went to the latter, I turned off to the
inn, amid their cries and reproaches.
I waved my cap and made a bow. A
glacier! - go five rods farther to see a glacier! Catch me in any such
folly. The fact is, Alps are good, like confections, in moderation;
but to breakfast, dine, and sup on Alps surfeits my digestion.
Here, for example, I am writing these notes in the _salle-a-manger_ of
the inn, where other voyagers are eating and drinking, and there H. is
feeding on the green moonshine of an emerald ice cave. One would
almost think her incapable of fatigue. How she skips up and down high
places and steep places, to the manifest perplexity of honest guide
Kienholz, _pere_, who tries to take care of her, but does not exactly
know how. She gets on a pyramid of _debris_, which the edge of the
glacier is ploughing and grinding up, sits down, and falls - not asleep
exactly - but into a trance. W. and I are ready to go on; we shout; our
voice is lost in the roar of the torrent. We send the guide. He goes
down, and stands doubtfully. He does not know exactly what to do.
She hears him, and starts to her feet, pointing with one hand to yonder
peak, and with the other to that knifelike edge, that seems cleaving
heaven with its keen and glistening cimeter of snow, reminding one of
Isaiah's sublime imagery, "For my sword is bathed in heaven." She
points at the grizzly rocks, with their jags and spear points. Evidently
she is beside herself, and thinks she can remember the names of those
monsters, born of earthquake and storm, which cannot be named nor
known but by sight, and then are known at once, perfectly and forever.
Mountains are Nature's testimonials of anguish. They are the sharp cry
of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes
itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and
splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing
verdureless and stern because exist they must. In them hearts that
have ceased to rejoice, and have learned to suffer, find kindred, and
here, an earth worn with countless cycles of sorrow, utters to the
stars voices of speechless despair.
And all this time no dinner! All this time H. is at the glacier! How
do I know but she has fallen into a _crevasse_? How do I know but
that a cliff, one of those ice castles, those leaning turrets, those
frosty spearmen, have toppled over upon her? I shudder at the
reflection. I will write no more.
I had just written thus far, when in came H. and W. in high feather.
O, I had lost the greatest sight in Switzerland!
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