Rollo in Switzerland Part 11

So saying, Mr. George turned in his seat and looked at that side of the road which had been behind them. There was a field there, and a young girl about seventeen years old--with a very broad-brimmed straw hat upon her head, and wearing a very picturesque costume in other respects--was seen digging up the ground with a hoe.

The blade of the hoe was long, and it seemed very heavy. The girl was digging up the ground by standing upon the part which she had already dug and striking the hoe down into the hard ground a few inches back from where she had struck before.

"Do the women work in the fields every where in Switzerland, Henry?"

said Mr. George.

The guide's name was Henry. He could not speak English, but he spoke French and German. Mr. George addressed him in French.

"Yes, sir," said Henry; "in every part of Switzerland where I have been."

"In America the women never work in the fields," said Mr. George.

"Never?" asked Henry, surprised.

"No," said Mr. George; "at least, I never saw any."

"What do they do, then," asked Henry, "to spend their time?"

Mr. George laughed. He told Rollo, in English, that he did not think he had any satisfactory answer at hand in respect to the manner in which the American ladies spent their time.

"I pity that poor girl," said Rollo, "hoeing all day on such hard ground. I think the men ought to do such work as that."

"The men have harder work to do," said Mr. George; "climbing the mountains to hunt chamois, or driving the sheep and cows up to the upper pasturages in places where it would be very difficult for women to go."

"We must turn round every now and then," said Rollo, "and see what is behind us, or we may lose the sight of something very extraordinary."

"Yes," said Mr. George; "I heard of a party of English ladies who once went out in a char a banc to see a lake. It happened that when they came to the lake the road led along the sh.o.r.e in such a manner that the party, as they sat in the carriage, had their backs to the water. So they rode along, looking at the scenery on the land side and wondering why they did not come to the lake. In this manner they continued until they had gone entirely around the lake; and then the coachman drove them home. When they arrived at the hotel they were astonished to find that they had got home again; and they called out to the coachman to ask where the lake was that they had driven out to see. He told them that he had driven them all round it!"

Rollo laughed heartily at this story, and Henry would probably have laughed too if he had understood it; but, as Mr. George related it in English, Henry did not comprehend one word of the narration from beginning to end.

In the mean time the horse trotted rapidly onward along the valley, which seemed to grow narrower and narrower as they proceeded; and the impending precipices which here and there overhung the road became more and more terrific. The Lutschine, a rapid and turbid stream, swept swiftly along--sometimes in full view and sometimes concealed. Now and then there was a bridge, or a mill, or some little hamlet of Swiss cottages to diversify the scene. Mr. George and Rollo observed every thing with great attention and interest. They met frequent parties of travellers returning from Grindelwald to Lauterbrunnen--some on foot, some on horseback, and others in carriages which were more or less s.p.a.cious and elegant, according to the rank or wealth of the travellers who were journeying in them.

At length they arrived at the fork of the valley. Here they gazed with astonishment and awe at the stupendous precipice which reared its colossal front before them and which seemed effectually to stop their way.

On drawing near to it, however, it appeared that the valley divided into two branches at this point, as has already been explained. The road divided too. The branch which led to the right was the road to Lauterbrunnen. The one to the left Rollo supposed led to Grindelwald. To make it sure, he pointed to the left-hand road and said to Henry,--

"To Grindelwald?"

"Yes, sir," said Henry, "to Grindelwald."

The scenery now became more wild than ever. The valley was narrow, and on each side of it were to be seen lofty precipices and vast slopes of mountain land--some smooth and green, and covered, though very steep, with flocks and herds, and others feathered with dark evergreen forests, or covered with ragged rocks, or pierced with frightful chasms. Here and there a zigzag path was seen leading from hamlet to hamlet or from peak to peak up the mountain, with peasants ascending or descending by them and bearing burdens of every form and variety on their backs. In one case Rollo saw a woman bringing a load of hay on her back down the mountain side.

The valley, bordered thus as it was with such wild and precipitous mountain sides, might have had a gloomy, or at least a very sombre, expression, had it not been cheered and animated by the waterfalls that came foaming down here and there from the precipices above, and which seemed so bright and sparkling that they greatly enlivened the scene.

These waterfalls were of a great variety of forms. In some cases a thin thread of water, like the jet from a fire engine, came slowly over the brink of a precipice a thousand feet in the air, and, gliding smoothly down for a few hundred feet, was then lost entirely in vapor or spray.

In other cases, in the depth of some deep ravine far up the mountain, might be seen a line of foam meandering for a short distance among the rocks and then disappearing. Rollo pointed to one of these, and then said to Mr. George,--

"Uncle, look there! There is a short waterfall half way up the mountain; but I cannot see where the water comes from or where it goes to."

"No," said Mr. George. "It comes undoubtedly from over the precipice above, and it flows entirely down into the valley; but it only comes out to view for that short distance."

"Why can't we see it all the way?" asked Rollo.

"I suppose," said Mr. George, "it may flow for the rest of the way in the bottom of some deep chasms, or it may possibly be that it comes suddenly out of the ground at the place where we see it."

"Yes," said Rollo. "I found a great stream coming suddenly out of the ground at Interlachen."

"Where," asked Mr. George.

"Right across the river," said Rollo. "I went over there this morning."

"How did you get over?" said Mr. George.

"I went over on a bridge," said Rollo. "I took a little walk up the road, and pretty soon I came to a bridge which led across the river. I went over, and then walked along the bank on the other side. There was only a narrow s.p.a.ce between the river and the precipice. The ground sloped down from the foot of the precipice to the water. I found several very large springs breaking out in this ground. One of them was _very_ large. The water that ran from it made a great stream, large enough for a mill. It came up right out of the ground from a great hole all full of stones. The water came up from among the stones."

"And where did it go to?" asked Mr. George.

"O, it ran directly down into the river. The place was rather steep where it ran down, so that it made a cascade all the way."

"I should like to have seen it," said Mr. George.

"Yes," said Rollo; "it was very curious indeed to see a little river come up suddenly out of the ground from a great hole full of stones."

Talking in this manner about what they had seen, our travellers went on till they came to Lauterbrunnen. They found a small village here, in the midst of which was a large and comfortable inn. There were a number of guides and several carriages in the yards of this inn, and many parties of travellers coming and going. The princ.i.p.al attraction of the valley, however, at this part of it, is an immense waterfall, called the Fall of the Staubach, which was to be seen a little beyond the village, up the valley. This is one of the most remarkable waterfalls in all Switzerland. A large stream comes over the brink of a precipice nearly a thousand feet high, and descends in one smooth and continuous column for some hundreds of feet, when it gradually breaks, and finally comes down upon the rocks below a vast ma.s.s of foam and spray.

Rollo and Mr. George could see this waterfall and a great many other smaller ones which came streaming down over the faces of the precipices, along the sides of the valley, as they came up in the char a banc, before they reached the inn.

"I don't see how such a large river gets to the top of such a high hill," said Rollo.

That this question should have arisen in Rollo's mind is not surprising; for the top of the precipice where the Staubach came over seemed, in fact, the summit of a sharp ridge to any one looking up to it from the valley below; and Rollo did not imagine that there was any land above.

The apparent wonder was, however, afterwards explained, when our travellers began to ascend the mountain on the other side of the valley that afternoon to go up to the Wengern Alp.

The guide drove the char a banc to the door of the inn, and Mr. George and Rollo got out. They went into the inn and ordered dinner.

"We are going to see the Staubach," said Mr. George to the waiter, "and we will be back in half an hour."

"Very well," said the waiter; "your dinner shall be ready."

So Mr. George and Rollo came out of the inn again in order to go and see the waterfall.

They were beset at the door by a number of young men and boys, and also by several little girls, some of whom wanted to sell them minerals or flowers which they had gathered among the rocks around the waterfall; and others wished to guide them to the place.

"To the Staubach? To the Staubach?" said they. "Want a guide? Want a guide?"

They said this in the German language. Mr. George understood enough of German to know what they meant; but he could not reply in that language.

So he said, in French,--

"No; we do not wish any guide. We can find the way to the Staubach ourselves. There it is, right before our eyes."