Now I look back along the way we have been travelling. I look
at the strange old cloudy mountains, the Eiger, the Wetterhorn, the
Schreckhorn. A kind of hazy ether floats around them - an indescribable
aerial halo - which no painter ever represents. Who can paint the
air - that vivid blue in which these sharp peaks cut their glittering
images? Of all peaks, the Eiger is the most impressive to me.
[Illustration: _of the sharp pointed Eiger, with mountain goats on a
pinnacle in the foreground._]
It is a gigantic ploughshare of rock, set up against the sky, its
thin, keen, purple blade edged with glittering frost; for so sharp is
its point, that only a dazzling line marks the eternal snow on its
head.
I walked out as far as I could on a narrow summit, and took a last
look. Glaciers! snows! mountains! sunny dells and flowers! all good
by. I am a pilgrim and a stranger.
Already, looking down to the shanty, I see the guide like a hen that
has lost a chicken, shaking her wings, and clucking, and making a
great ado. I could stay here all day. I would like to stay two or
three - to see how it would look at sunrise, at sunset - to lie down in
one of these sunny hollows, and look up into the sky - to shut my eyes
lazily, and open them again, and so let the whole impression _soak
in_, as Mrs. H. used to say.
