All around me
were these deep, green dells, from which comes up the tinkle of bells,
like the dropping of rain every where It seems to me the air is more
elastic and musical here than below, and gives grace to the commonest
sound. 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.
But no; the sleepers have waked up, the guide has the horses ready,
and I must come down. So here I descend my hill Difficulty into the
valley of Humiliation. We stumble along, for the roads here are no
turnpikes, and we come to a place called the _Black Forest;_ not
_the_ Black Forest, but truly a black one. I always love pines,
to all generations. I welcome this solemn old brotherhood, which stand
gray-bearded, like monks, old, dark, solemn, sighing a certain
mournful sound - like a _benedicite_ through the leaves.
About noon we came to Rosenlaui. As we drew near the hotel the guide
struck off upon a path leading up the mountain, saying, by way of
explanation, _"The glacier!"_
Now, I confess that it was rather too near dinner time, and I was too
tired at once to appreciate this movement.
I regret to say, that two glaciers, however beautiful, on an empty
stomach, appear rather of doubtful utility. So I remonstrated; but
the guide, as all guides do, went dead ahead, as if I had not said a
word. C., however, rode composedly towards the hotel, saying that
dinner was a finer sight than a glacier; and I, though only of the
same mind, thought I would follow my guide, just to see.
W. went with me. After a little we had to leave our horses, and
scramble about a mile up the mountain. "C. was right, and we are
wrong," said my companion, sententiously. I was just dubious enough to
be silent. Pretty soon we came to a tremendous ravine, as if an
earthquake had rent a mountain asunder. A hundred feet down in this
black gorge, a stream was roaring in a succession of mad leaps, and a
bridge crossed it, where we stood to gaze down into its dark, awful
depths. Then on we went till we came to the glacier. What a mass of
clear, blue ice! so very blue, so clear! This awful chasm runs
directly under it, and the mountain torrent, formed by the melting of
the glacier, falls in a roaring cascade into it. You can go down into
a cavern in this rift. Above your head a roof of clear, blue ice;
below your feet this black chasm, with the white, flashing foam of the
cascade, as it leaps away into the darkness. On one side of the
glacier was a little sort of cell, or arched nook, up which an old man
had cut steps, and he helped me up into it. I stood in a little Gothic
shrine of blue, glittering ice, and looked out of an arched window at
the cascade and mountains. I thought of Coleridge's line -
"A pleasure bower with domes of ice."
[Illustration: _of a glacier's terminus, with animals and small
buildings in the foreground._]
On the whole, the glacier of Rosenlaui paid for looking - even at
dinner time - which is saying a good deal.
JOURNAL - (CONTINUED.)
FRIDAY, July 22, Grindelwald to Meyringen. 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.
