Enchanted Thing - What Nameless Spirit Impregnates With
Magnetic Ether The Fine Fibres Of Thy Mechanism!
Tuesday, 26.
Rode from Langnan to Lucerne just in time to take the
boat for Weggis. From the door of the Hotel de la Concorde, at Weggis,
the guide _chef_ fitted us out with two _chaises a porteur_,
six _carriers_, two mules with grooms, making a party of fourteen
in all.
After ascending a while the scenery became singularly wild and
beautiful. Vast walls and cliffs of conglomerate rose above us, up
which our path wound in zigzags. Below us were pines, vales, fields,
and hills, themselves large enough for mountains. There, at our feet,
with its beautiful islands, bays, capes, and headlands, gleams the
broad lake of the four cantons, consecrated by the muse of Schiller
and the heroism of Tell. New plains are unrolling, new mountain tops
sinking below our range of vision. We plunged into a sea of mist. It
rolled and eddied, boiling beneath us. Through its mysterious pall we
saw now a skeleton pine stretch out its dark pointing hand - now a
rock, shapeless and uncouth, far below, like a behemoth petrified in
mid ocean. Then an eddy would sweep a space for the sun to pour a
flood of gold on this field far down at our feet, on that village, on
this mountain side with its rosy vapor-wreaths, upon yon distant lake,
making it a crater of blinding brightness. On we went wrapped in
mantles, mist, and mystery, trembling with chilliness and enthusiasm.
We reached the summit just as the sunset-gazing crowd were dispersing.
And this is Righi Kulm!
Wednesday, 27. At half past three in the morning we were aroused by
the Alpine horn. We sprang up, groping and dressing in the dark, and
went out in the frosty air. Ascending the ridge we looked off upon a
sleeping world. Mists lay beneath like waves, clouds, like a sea. On
one side the Oberland Alps stretched along the horizon their pale,
blue-white peaks. Other mountains, indistinct in color and outline,
chained round the whole horizon. Yes, "the sleeping rocks did dream"
all over the wide expanse, as they slumbered on their cloudy pillow,
and their dream was of the coming dawn. Twelve lakes, leaden pale or
steel blue, dreamed also under canopies of cloud, and the solid land
dreamed, and all her wilds and forests. And in the silence of the
dream already the tinge of clairvoyance lit the gray east; a dim,
diffuse aurora, while yet the long, low clouds hung lustreless above;
nor could the eye prophesy where should open the door in heaven. At
length, a flush, as of shame or joy, presaged the pathway. Tongues of
many-colored light vibrated beneath the strata of clouds, now dappled,
mottled, streaked with fire; those on either hand of a light, flaky,
salmon tint, those in the path and portal of the dawn of a gorgeous
blending and blazoning of golden glories. The mists all abroad stirred
uneasily.
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