Over the Ocean Part 30

Away we sped from the town of Altorf, pa.s.sed a little castle on a height, said to be that of Gessler, and soon emerged on the broad, hard, floor-like road of the St. Gothard Pa.s.s; and what pen can describe the grandeur and beauty of this most magnificent of all Alpine pa.s.ses! One may read descriptions, see engravings, paintings, photographs, or panoramas, and yet get no idea of the grandeur of the spectacle.

There were huge walls of splintered crags, so high that they seemed to be rocky curtains hung down out of the blue heavens. These _were_ mountains, such as I imagined mountains were when a child. We had to look straight up into the sky to see them. Great rocky walls rose almost from the road-side sheer up thousands and thousands of feet. A whole range of peaks is printed against the sky directly before us, half of them glittering with snow and ice. On we rolled over the smooth road, and emerged into a vast oval amphitheatre, as it were, the road pa.s.sing through the centre, the green slopes the sides, and the huge peaks surrounding the outer barriers that enclosed it. We all stood up in our carriage, with exclamations of admiration at the magnificent scene that suddenly burst upon us.

Just below the broad road we were upon rushed the River Reuss, a foaming torrent. Beyond it, on the opposite side, all the rest of the distance, the whole beautiful valley, and along the green slope of the opposite mountain, for three or four miles, were Swiss chalets, flocks feeding, men and women at work, streams turning water-wheels, romantic waterfalls spattering down in large and small ravines. We could see them starting from their source miles away up among the blue glaciers, where, beneath the sun's beams, they fluttered like little threads of silver, and farther down came into view in great brooks of feathery foam, till they rushed into the river that owed its life to their contributions.

The distance is so enormous, the scenery so grand, that it is beyond description. I was like Gulliver among the Brobdingnagians, and feared I never should get my head down to a level with ordinary mortals again. I discovered, too, how deceptive the distance was among these huge peaks.

In attempting to toss a pebble into the stream that flowed apparently thirty or forty feet below the road, and, as I thought, about twenty feet from it, it fell far short. Another and another effort failed to reach it; for it rolled over three hundred feet below, and more than two hundred and fifty from us.

Every variety of mountain peak rose before us against the dark-blue afternoon sky. There were peaks that ran away up into heaven, glittering with snow; old gray crags, splintered, as it were, with thunder-bolts; huge square, throne-like walls, the very throne of Jupiter; mountains that were like great brown castles; and peaks that the blue atmosphere of distance painted with a hundred softened and varied hues.

The reader may fancy himself viewing this scene, if possible, which we saw as we rode over this smooth, well-kept road--at our right a ridge of mountain wall, at our left the great ravine, with the white-foamed torrent rushing over its rocky bed, every mile or so spanned by arched stone bridges. On the other side of the stream were the pretty rural picture of farms, chalets, gardens, herds, and flocks. Every inch of ground that was available was cultivated, and the cultivation runs up the mountain side as far as vegetation can exist. All around the air was filled with the rattle of running water. Rushing torrents leaped from great ravines, little ribbons tumbled down in silver sheets, brooks clattered and flashed as they wound in and out of view on their way to the valley, cascades vaulted over sharp crags, and the sides of this vast amphitheatre were glistening with silvery veins. I counted over twenty waterfalls within one sweep of the eye.

We were surprised into admiration at the state of the road. It is a magnificent specimen of engineering, and, although it is a steady ascent, it is rendered easy and comparatively imperceptible by numerous curves. There are forty-six great curves, or zigzags, in the ascent. The road itself is nearly twenty feet wide, kept in admirable order, free as a floor from the least obstruction, and protected on the side towards the precipice by strong stone posts planted at regular intervals. There are many streets in Boston more difficult of ascent and more dangerous of descent than the road of the St. Gothard Pa.s.s.

The magnificent roads in the mountain pa.s.ses, the fine hotels, the regulations respecting guides, and the care and attention bestowed upon travellers in Switzerland, are all for a purpose; for the Swiss, as I have remarked, live on the travel of foreigners, and are wise enough to know that the more easy and pleasant they make travelling to tourists, the more of them will come, and the more money will be spent. The roads are almost as great a wonder as the scenery. Sometimes, when a spur of the mountain juts out, a tunnel, or gallery, is cut right through it; and really there is comparatively but very little danger in traversing the Swiss pa.s.ses, except to those venturesome spirits who persist in attempting to scale almost inaccessible peaks, or ascending Mont Blanc, Mont Rosa, or the dangerous Matterhorn.

As we rode on and on, and up and up, we came to a wild scene that seemed a very chaos--the commencement of creation. We found ourselves in the midst of great black and iron-rust colored crags, five or six thousand feet high, jagged, splintered, and shattered into every variety of shape. The torrent fairly roared hundreds of feet below. I had left the carriage, and was walking some hundreds of yards in advance alone as I entered this tremendous pa.s.s. The road hugged the great black rocky wall of the mountain that rose so high as almost to shut out the light. On the opposite side were mountains of solid black rock, not a spear of gra.s.s, not a speck of verdure, from base to summit. The great rushing mountain torrent tore, rushed, and leaped madly over the huge boulders that had rolled into its jagged bed, and its fall was all that broke the awful stillness and the gloomy grandeur of the place; for the whole scene, which the eye took in for miles, was lofty ma.s.ses of everlasting granite, hurled together and cleft asunder as by supernatural means. I could think of nothing like it but Gustave Dore's pictures in Dante's Inferno; and this terrific pa.s.s was a good representation of the approach to h.e.l.l itself. It is astonishing to notice how the scene hushes the visitor into an awe-struck silence; for it seems as if in these wild and awful heights, as on mid-ocean, man stands more immediately in the presence of the Almighty.

The scene culminates at the bridge itself,--appropriately named the Devil's Bridge,--where is a tremendously rapid waterfall pouring down, and where the eye takes in the whole of the black ravine, with the road like a white snake clinging to the precipitous mountain wall. Thirty or forty feet below, also spanning the torrent, are the remains of the old bridge upon which the battle was fought between the French and Austrians--a terrible place, indeed, for a death struggle. The new bridge, over which we crossed, is a splendid structure of granite, and has a single arch of twenty-five feet. Through the mighty ravines we wound upward and onward, on through a great tunnel, fifteen feet high and sixteen feet wide, cut through the solid rock a distance of over two hundred feet, soon after emerging from which we came to a verdant, broad, level pasture, here up among the mountains, a valley surrounded by lofty snow-clads. This is the valley of Uri, and its pleasant verdure, watered by the river which flows through it, is an agreeable contrast to the savage and gloomy grandeur of the scenery we had left behind us. There are only about four months of summer here, and the inhabitants subsist by their herds, and by conveying travellers' baggage and merchandise over to St. Gothard Pa.s.s.

We next came to the little village of Andermatt, and just beyond it, at nightfall, reached Hospenthal, fatigued and glad to reach the Meyerhof Hotel, just outside the village. The house, which had accommodations for seventy or eighty guests, was crowded with tourists, among whom was a liberal representation of Americans and Englishmen. In the morning, after discussing a hearty breakfast, we started on our return, having a fine view of the glacier of St. Anna, rising high above the mountain ridges, and glittering in the morning sunshine. We drove back through the same pa.s.s, and halted on the Devil's Bridge to watch the waterfall of the Reuss, that leaps and foams down its descent here of a hundred feet, as it pa.s.ses beneath the bridge, and, looking up, saw the spray of the descending torrent made into beautiful rainbows by the morning sunbeams. There were the terrible ma.s.ses of rock, the huge, splintered peaks, and tremendous ravines; but the grand effect of ascending in the twilight of afternoon, which is the time chosen, if possible, by tourists, is lost, to a great extent, in the early part of the day.

Once more, adieu to Lucerne; and this time we start from the door of the Schweizerhoff in private conveyance for Interlaken, _via_ the Brunig Pa.s.s. We rode along for miles over a smooth, level road, on the very banks of the Lake of the Four Cantons, the scenery being a succession of charming pictures of lake and mountain. Our road led us through several Swiss villages, generally closely built, with narrow and irregular streets, and very dirty. The Swiss peasants that we meet are browned and bent with hard toil. Men and women toil alike, in the fields and by the roadside. All are trained to burden-bearing, which is by means of a long basket made to fit the back and shoulders, the top higher than the head.

The women over thirty years of age are coa.r.s.e and masculine, their faces and hands browned, seamed, and wrinkled with toil. They clamber about in the mountain pa.s.ses, and gather gra.s.s for their herds, carrying the burdens in their baskets, or the manure which may be found on the road during the travelling season, or break stones for mending the roads.

The Brunig road was another one of those wonderful specimens of engineering, with not a loose pebble upon its floor-like surface, the scenery romantic and beautiful, but not of so grand a description as the St. Gothard. We wind through the woods, have occasional glimpses of the valley below, until finally, at the summit of the pa.s.s, the magnificent scenery of the Meiringen valley bursts upon the view. This is, as it were, a level, beautiful country, deep between two great ranges of mountains, and you stand upon one and look down upon it, and across to the other.

This smiling valley was like a framed picture in the sunshine; the silver River Aare wound through it, white villages were nestled here and there, orchards bloomed, and fields were verdant, sheltered by the high crags from the north wind, and brown roads wound in and out among finely cultivated farms. Directly opposite us, away over the other side of the valley, rose up the sheer, rocky sides of the mountain wall, out of which waterfalls were spurting and cascades dashing in every direction, to feed the stream below. There were the beautiful falls of the Reichenbach, rushing over the cliff, and dropping hundreds and hundreds of feet down to the valley. The different waterfalls that we could see at the opposite side of the valley seemed like white, waving wreaths hung upon the mountain-sides. To the rear of these, overtopping all at intervals, lofty snow-clads lifted their white crowns into the sunshine.

The view of this lovely valley, with its green pastures, meandering rivers, and picturesque waterfalls; its verdant carpet, dotted with villages, and the whole fringed with a belt of firs and dark green foliage, as we looked down into it from our lofty platform, reminded me of the story of the genius who stamped his foot on the mountain, which was cleft open, and showed in its depths to an astonished peasant the lovely country of the elves and fairies, in contrast with the desolation of the rocky crags and mountains that rose about him.

Down we ride, amid beautiful mountain scenery on every side, and finally through the town of Brienz, where the beautiful wood carving is wrought.

We have a good view of the Faulhorn in the distance, pa.s.s through two or three little Swiss villages, and finally drive into a beautiful green valley, with quite a New England appearance to the _pensions_, or boarding-houses, which pa.s.sed, we come to a string of splendid hotels upon one side of the broad road, the other side being open, and affording an un.o.bstructed view of the Jungfrau and its snowy crown.

Fatigued with a ten-hours' ride, and sight-seeing, we drive up to the door of the magnificent Hotel Victoria. Price of the carriage hire, extra horses, driver's fee, horse baiting, and all, for the whole day's journey, fifty francs,--ten dollars, or two dollars apiece,--and a very reasonable price it was considered for private conveyance, _premiere cla.s.se_, at the height of the travelling season.

The hotels at Interlaken are fine establishments, and well kept. The Victoria, where we were domiciled, has fine grounds in front, and commands a view of the Jungfrau glacier. It contains two hundred and forty rooms, and has reading-rooms, parlors, and music-rooms equal to the hotels at our fashionable watering-places. Prices high--about two dollars per day, each person. There are numerous other smaller hotels, where the living is equally good, and the prices are less; and still others, known as _pensions_, where visitors stay for a few weeks or the season, which are very comfortable, and at which prices are half the rate above mentioned.

Interlaken is beautifully and romantically situated, and is a popular resort for tourists in Switzerland, as a place from which many interesting excursions may be made. We chose ours to be up over the Wengernalp to Grindenwald, sending our carriage around from Lauterbrunnen to Grindenwald, to meet us as we came down by the bridle-path to that place. The ride to Lauterbrunnen was the same succession of beautiful Alpine scenery that I have so often described--lofty mountains, cascades, waterfalls, green slopes, distant snow-clads, dark pines, blue distance, Swiss _chalets_, and picturesque landscape.

Beggars now begin to be a serious nuisance, especially when your carriage stops at different points for you to enjoy the view. Then boys and girls come with milk, plums, apricots, cheap wood carvings, and curious pebbles, to sell, till one gets perfectly nervous at their approach, especially after the halt, the lame, and the blind have besought you; and one fellow capped the climax, as we were enjoying a beautiful view, by gracefully swaying a toy flexible snake into our carriage, to our most intense disgust and indignation. As you progress, women waylay the carriage at the top of a small ascent, which it must approach slowly, and bawl Swiss songs, ending with an outstretched palm, as you reach them. Boys and men, at certain points in the pa.s.ses, sound Alpine horns,--a wide-mouthed instrument of wood, six feet in length,--which gives out a sonorous but mellow sound, peculiarly musical in the Alpine echoes. The blowers expect that a few sous will be tossed to them, and children chase you with bunches of mountain flowers to sell.

How people manage to exist far up in some of these wild mountain defiles is a wonder; and it seems as though it must be a struggle for some of them to keep soul and body together: they save every bit of herbage, sc.r.a.pe up manure from the roads, cultivate all they can in the short summers, keep goats and cows, and live on travellers.

The Catholic priests have penetrated every pa.s.s and defile in the country, and at their little chapels in the Alps and by the roadsides are rude and fearfully rough-looking representations of our Saviour on the cross, and of various saints undergoing all sorts of tortures. Now and then we meet a party of peasants on foot, men and women travelling over the mountain pa.s.s from one canton to another, the leader holding a rosary, and all repeating a prayer together, invoking protection from dangers on the road. The priests, with their long black robes and huge hats, you meet all over Europe. We had one--a jolly fellow he was, too--in the same compartment of a railway carriage on one of the Swiss roads, who laughed, joked, had a pleasant chat with the ladies, asking all sorts of questions about America, and at parting, bade us adieu with an air.

As we approached Lauterbrunnen, we rode through the romantic valley of the River Lutschine, which rushes and boils over the rocks at such a rate that the cloudy glacier water has exactly the appearance of soap-suds. Here, on this river's banks, rests the picturesque little village of Lauterbrunnen, which name, we were told, signified springs.

The little waterfalls and cascades can be seen flashing out in every direction from the lofty mountains that surround it; but chief among them is the superb and graceful Staubbach, that tumbles down from a lofty cliff _nine hundred and twenty-five feet_ in height. The best view of this beautiful fall is at a point nearly half a mile distant, as the water, which is not of great volume, becomes converted into a shower of mist before reaching the ground, after its lofty leap; but at this point, where we had the best view of it, it was like a wreath of snowy foam, broadening at the base into a million of beautiful scintillations in the sunlight, and the effect of the wind was to sway it hither and thither like a huge strip of snowy lace that had been hung down over the green side of the mountain.

Now we take horses, after leaving the road that runs through Lauterbrunnen. Every half hour reveals to us new wonders of Alpine scenery and beauty; we reach the little village of Wengen, and see great peaks rising all around us; upward and onward, and from our mountain path we can look back and down in the valley of Lauterbrunnen, that we have left far, far below; we see the Staubbach fall dwarfed to a little glittering line, and, above it its other waterfall, of several hundred feet, which was not visible from the valley. But still upward and onward we go, and now come to a long ridge, upon which the bridle-path runs, as it were on the back-bone of the mountain. Here we have a view as grand, as Alpine, as Swiss, as one has ever read about or imagined.

Right across the ravine, which appeared like a deep creva.s.se, scarcely half a mile wide, was a huge blue wall of ice, seamed with great chasms, rent into great fissures, cold, still, awful, and terrible, with its background of lofty mountains covered with eternal snow. Now we had a view of the Jungfrau in all its majesty, as its snow crest sparkled in the sunshine, twelve thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven feet in height. There were the Silverhorn and the Schneerhorn, springing their lofty peaks out of a vast expanse of snow and ice; a whole chain of gigantic cliffs, so lofty in height that you seem to look up into the very heavens at their peaks of dazzling whiteness; the Shreckhorn, twelve thousand two hundred feet high; the Black Monk, a dark ma.s.s of rocks, twelve thousand feet, in striking contrast with the snowy mantles that clothe the other mountains.

Great glaciers, miles in extent, put a chill into the air that makes you shudder. The gap that I thought half a mile wide is a s.p.a.ce nearly six times that distance across; we feel dwarfed amid the immensity and stupendous grandeur of the scene, and, as we unconsciously become silent, are struck with the unbroken, awful stillness of the Alps.

We are above the murmur of brooks and the rush of waterfalls; no bird or insect chirrups here; there is not even a bush for the wind to sigh through. Now and then a deep, sonorous murmur, as of the sigh of some laboring gnome in the mountain, or the tw.a.n.g of a gigantic harp-string, breaks the silence for a moment, and then dies away. It is a distant avalanche. We listen. It is gone! and all is still, awful, sublime.

We rode on; the view took in a whole chain of lofty mountains: now we pa.s.s great walls of crag, three or four thousand feet high, now looked across the ravine at the great glaciers, commencing with layers of snow and ice, and running out till they became a huge sheet of blue ice, the color deepening till it was blue as vitriol; but we were doomed to pay one of the penalties of sight-seeing in the Alps, for swiftly came a thick cloud, shutting out the whole view, and out of it came a heavy shower, drenching all thoroughly. A quarter of an hour of this, and the cloud had pa.s.sed on, and we had nearly reached the little Hotel Bellevue, our point of destination, and come in sight of a verdant hill-side, a vast green, sheltered slope, in striking contrast to the ice and snow of the other part of the pa.s.s.

Our guides made us first halt, and look at the herd of cattle that were feeding upon it, and then pause, and listen to the tinkle of their bells,--more than three hundred in number,--that sounded like a vast music-box in the Alpine stillness. Then we looked away across the valley, and saw the little village of Murren, the highest village in Switzerland, five thousand and eighteen feet, on a mountain-side; and finally we reached the hotel on the highest point of the little Scheideck, six thousand two hundred and eighty-four feet (Righi is five thousand five hundred and forty-one feet), and as we approached across the little plat of level ground in front of it, found we had arrived at a "reapers' festival;" and there was quite a gathering of peasants, who a.s.semble here on the first Sunday in August, dressed in the Grindenwald costume, for dancing, wrestling, and other festivities. They had been driven in-doors by the rain; the entry of the little hotel was crowded; and however romantic and picturesque the Swiss mountaineer may look in his national costume in the picture-books, or poetical he and the Swiss maiden may be in songs and ballads, there is an odor of garlic and tobacco about them at close quarters that seriously affects poetic sentimentality.

As the rain had ceased, the peasants once more betook themselves to dancing to the music of a cracked clarinet and a melodeon; and another group got up an extemporaneous fight, two of them tumbling down a dozen or fifteen feet into a gully without injury, while we put the house under contribution for wood for a fire in the best room, and were soon drying our clothes by a blaze of claret-wine boxes. A capital mountain dinner, in which tea, honey, sweet bread, b.u.t.ter, and chamois chops figured, was so much better and cheaper than the soggy doughnuts, indigestible pie, sour bread, and cold beans that used to be set before the traveller at the Tip Top House, Mount Washington, New Hampshire, for the tip top price of _one dollar_ a head, that we could not help drawing the comparison.

A rest and an enjoyment of the grand view of mountain chain, snowy peaks, and vast glaciers that surround us, and we start for the descent to Grindenwald. Grand views we had of the Wetterhorn, the Faulhorn, and the upper and lower glaciers of Grindenwald. We pa.s.s where avalanches have torn down the mountain-side, and thrown huge boulders about like pebbles, then over patches of open field, where stunted herbage grows, and Alpine roses redden the ground with their blossoms; then we come to woods, pastures, and peasants, and reach Grindenwald just before nightfall, to find our carriage waiting to take us back to Interlaken, which we reached after an absence of about eleven hours.

Interlaken is a grand depository and mart of the Swiss carved wood work, Alpine crystals, &c.; and grand stores of this merchandise, after the fashion of the "Indian stores" at Niagara Falls, attract the tourist.

Some of this carving is very beautifully and artistically done, and some of it is cheap and not worth the trouble of taking away; but it is positively amusing to see how some American travellers will load themselves down with this trash because it _is_ cheap. Some of the smoke crystals and rock crystals, fashioned into sleeve-b.u.t.tons and watch-seals, were both handsome and low priced.

I strolled into the little shop of an honest old Hebrew from Prague, who had a cheaply-painted little sign, in English, that he sold "Garnets, real Stones," and found that he did not, or had not learned to charge extravagant prices; he spoke English, and was teaching it to his little daughter, from a primer, when we entered, for "English and Americans buy garnet, and must be talk wis." The old fellow's garnets were excellent and cheap, and I soon had sleeve-b.u.t.tons, and scarf-pin, large pin, and small pin, studs, and the garnet in forms enough to render me ruddy for the next ten years, and was preparing to take my departure, when leaning too heavily upon the little show-case, my elbow went through it with a crash. Here was a chance for damage! To be sure the pane of gla.s.s was little larger than a sheet of foolscap; but we must pay what the proprietor charged; and was he not a Jew? Well, this Jew thought two francs would amply reimburse him; but monsieur had been so kind, be could only charge him one.

After being deceived in the Rue de la Paix, cheated on the Boulevards, swindled barefacedly in the Grand Hotel, and humbugged outrageously in the Palais Royal, I rather relished being "Jewed" in this manner; none the less agreeable and satisfactory from its being so un-Christian-like a transaction. Accordingly I hailed two other Americans from the street, men who "bought everything everywhere," one of whom had got one of his trunks so mixed up, and tightly packed with shirts, curiosities, gloves, carved wood-work, stockings, photographs, crystals, boots, guide-books, under clothing, fans, and stereoscopic views, that he denominated it the Chinese puzzle, gave up trying to find his articles of wearing apparel in it, and sent it back to Paris. I hailed these two as they were pa.s.sing, commended the merchandise and "much kindness in the Jew," and the old fellow, in less than half an hour, felt that he had brought his glittering gems from Prague to some purpose, as many of his best jewels changed places with the gold Napoleons of the Americans.

The little hotel at Giessbach was full when we arrived, although we had telegraphed a day in advance for rooms; and a polite porter met us at the pier, as the boat drew up, with regrets, and commended the "Bear,"

which was situated in the village of Brienz, opposite, where we could sup, lodge, and breakfast, and row over to see the Giessbach Falls.

There was no resource but to go to the Bear, and we went; and after a bad supper, a boat's crew of two men and a woman rowed us back across the lake to Giessbach to see the lime light illumination of the falls.

From the landing to the terrace commanding the falls is a good twenty minutes' climb; but in the darkness, preceded by a couple of guides bearing lanterns, there is not much opportunity for a critical examination of the surrounding scenery: however, we determined to revisit it by daylight, and all agreed that the idea of exhibiting a waterfall on a dark night, by means of an illumination, at a franc a head, was an idea worthy a Barnum, or at least the inventive qualities of an American.

We reached the terrace, and there waited in the blackness of night with an expectant group. We could hear the torrent dashing and tumbling down opposite to where we stood, and high above among the cliffs, but our vision failed to penetrate half a dozen yards into the Cimmerian gloom.

Suddenly a little rocket shot out from below us; another, above, with momentary flash revealed a tumbling cascade and the dark green foliage, and then all again was blackness. In a moment or two, however, a bright glare shot out from below, another above it, another and another flashed up, and then from out the blackness, like an illuminated picture, we saw the beautiful fall, a series of seven cascades, leaping and tumbling down amid the verdant foliage, every twig of which stood out in the powerful light, while through the romantic and picturesque ravine poured a ma.s.s of foam of molten silver, beneath the colored light, rich, gleaming and dazzling. But while we gazed, the hue changed, and purple equal to Tyrian dye for robe of Roman emperor tumbled over purple rocks, and dashed up violet spray into the air. Once more, and the rocks were ingots, the stream was Pactolus itself, the bark on trees at the brink were as if Midas himself had smote them, and the branches bore gold leaf above the yellow current. But it changed again, and a torrent red as ruby gushed over the rocks, the ravine was lighted with a red glare as of a conflagration, and as we gazed on those spurting, tumbling crimson torrents there was something horribly suggestive in the sight.

"Blood, blood! Iago."

But we did not see it long in that light, for the herbage, trees, and foliage were next clothed in an emerald hue, till the ravine looked like a peep into Aladdin's cavern, and the torrent was of that deep green tinge which marks that great bend of the falling water when it pours with such majestic sweep over the crag near Table Rock, at Niagara.

The green faded gradually, the torrent leaped a few moments in paler light, cascade after cascade disappeared; we were again in darkness, and the exhibition was over. Preceded by our lantern-bearers, we gained the boat, and our crew started out into the blackness of the lake for the opposite sh.o.r.e, and for one of the dozen groups of lights that marked the landings.

We were compelled to bear with the "Bear" for one night, but cannot commend it as the "Great Bear" or a planet of much brilliancy; so we bore away from it early in the morning for the opposite sh.o.r.es, again to see the falls by daylight, ere the steamer started on the return trip to Interlaken. The ascent is a series of curves up a delightful, romantic pathway, and when part way up crosses a bridge commanding a view of a portion of the falls; but from the charming terrace near the hotel, the sight of the series of six or seven successive leaps or continuous cascades of the water as it rushes down an impetuous foaming torrent from a height of three to four hundred feet in the mountain wall is magnificent. We sat beneath the trees and enjoyed the sight till the last moment, and saw, by turning towards the lake, that the steamer had left the opposite sh.o.r.e, then reluctantly tore ourselves away from the charming scene, and descended to the pier.

A pleasant sail back to Interlaken, an omnibus ride over to a steamboat landing, and we were once more embarked on another Swiss lake,--Lake Thun,--a beautiful sheet of water ten miles long, a portion of its banks covered with vineyards, and the view of Alps on Alps, in every direction in the distance, most magnificent; there were our old acquaintances, the Jungfrau, Monk, Eiger, and Wetterhorn, also the Faulhorn, and dozens of others, with their pure frosted summits and blue glaciers all around us as we paddled over the little blue lake, till reaching the town of Thun, we stepped into the railway carriage of the Central Swiss Railway, and in an hour were at Berne, at the fine hotel known as the Bernerhoff, which commands a view of the whole line of snow-clad Bernese Alps in one continuous chain in the distance, looking like gigantic ramparts thrown up by t.i.tans. This city is on the River _Aare_, or, rather, on the high bank above it; for the river is more than a hundred feet below, and that portion of the city towards its bank seems placed, as it were, on a grand terrace for a lookout to the distant mountains.

If the tourist has not previously learned that the Bear is the heraldic emblem of Berne, he will learn that fact before he has been in the city a quarter of an hour. Two granite bears guard the city gates; a shield in the Corn Exchange is upheld by a pair of them, in wood; fountains have their effigy carved upon the top; and in the cathedral square, keeping guard of a large bronze statue of a mounted knight in full armor, Rudolf von Erlach, are four huge fellows, the size of life, in bronze, at the four corners of the pedestal. Then the city government keep a bears' den at the public expense--a huge circular pit, in which three or four living specimens of their tutelar deity solemnly promenade or climb a pole for buns and biscuits from visitors.

Wood-carving can be bought at Berne of very pretty and artistic execution, and the wood-carvers have exhausted their ingenuity in producing groups of bears, engaged in all sorts of occupations. I had no idea what a comical figure this clumsy beast makes when put in such positions. We have stopped at many a shop window and laughed heartily at the comical groups. Here were a party of bears playing at ten-pins: a solemn old Bruin is adding up the score; another, with one foot advanced and the ball poised, is about to make a ten strike, and a bear with body half bent forward watches the effect of the roll. Another group represented a couple at the billiard table, with one, a rakish-looking cub, making a scientific stroke, and his companion, another young "buster," with arm akimbo and cigar in mouth, watching them. There was a group of bear students, all drunk, arm in arm; two old bears meeting and shaking hands on 'Change; whole schools studying, with a master putting the rod upon a refractory bear; and a full orchestra of bears playing on every variety of musical instrument; in fact, bears doing almost everything one had seen men do, and presenting a most irresistibly comic appearance. These figures were all carved from wood, and were from a couple of inches to six inches in height. Scarce any tourist leaves without a bear memento.

The great music-box and carved wood-work stores here are museums in their way. Of course the more elaborate and best wrought specimens of wood-carving command high prices, but nothing like the extortions of the fancy goods stores in America. Berne is a grand place to buy music-boxes in carved wood-work, and cuckoo clocks; some of these contrivances are very ingenious. We visited one great "_magasin_" near the hotel, where they had photograph alb.u.ms, with carved wood covers, that played three tunes when you opened them; cigar buffets that performed a polka when you turned out the weed to your guests; work-boxes that went off into quadrilles when you lifted the lid, and tables that performed grand marches when you twisted their drawer-k.n.o.bs. Every once in a while the cuckoos darted out of one or two of the threescore clocks, of which no two were set alike, bobbed their heads, cuckooed, and went back again with a snap; and there was one clock fashioned like a Swiss _chalet_, from the door of which at the hour a figure of a little fellow, six inches in height, emerged, and, raising a horn to his mouth, played an air of a minute's duration, and retired. Fatigued, I sank into a chair whose arms were spread invitingly, when I was startled by that well-known air, the Sailor's Hornpipe, going off as if somebody had put a band of music into my coat-tail pocket. Springing to my feet, the music stopped; but as I sat down, away it went again right underneath me. It was a musical chair, and I _sat_ it playing.

We strolled through the curious old streets with the sidewalks under the arcades of the buildings, saw the curious old clock-tower, where, a few minutes before the hour, an automaton c.o.c.k crows, and then it is struck by a comical figure with a bell and a hammer, while a troop of automaton bears appear, and march around on a wooden platform. An old fellow with an hour-gla.s.s turns it over, and the c.o.c.k concludes the performance by again flapping his wings and crowing.

One of the most delightful places of promenade in the city is the cathedral terrace, a broad, shady walk, three or four hundred feet long and two hundred or more wide. It is one hundred feet above the river, and about ninety above the city street at the base. This terrace commands a fine view of the whole range of distant mountains, and is a favorite resort on summer evenings, where one may enjoy an ice-cream, cigar, cup of coffee, or light wine, and long after the twilight has deepened in the valley, watch the rosy hue that varies its tints upon the shining mountain peaks in the distance.