Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands Volume Ii Part 23

Thursday, July 14. Spent a social evening at Mrs. La V.'s, on the lake sh.o.r.e. Mont Blanc invisible. We met M. Merle d'Aubigne, brother of our hostess, and a few other friends. Returned home, and listened to a serenade to H. from a glee club of fifty performers, of the working men of Geneva. The songs were mostly in French, and the burden of one of them seemed to be in words like these:--

"Travaillons, travaillez, Pour la liberte!"

Friday, July 15. Mrs. C. and her two daughters are here from Paris.

They intend to come to Madame Fazy till we leave.

Sat.u.r.day, July 16. Our whole company resorted to the lake, and spent the forenoon on its tranquil waters. If this life seem idle, we remember that there must be valleys between mountains; and as, in those vales, tired mountaineers love to rest, so we, by the silver sh.o.r.e of summer Leman, while away the quiet hours, in this interval, between great mountain epochs Chamouni and Oberland.

Monday, July 18. Weather suspicious. Stowed ourselves and our baggage into our _voiture_, and bade adieu to our friends and to Geneva.

Ah, how regretfully! From the market-place we carried away a basket of cherries and fruit, as a consolation. Dined at Lausanne, and visited the cathedral and picture gallery, where was an exquisite _Eva._ Slept at Meudon.

Tuesday, July 19. Rode through Payerne to Freyburg. Stopped at the Zahringer Hof--most romantic of inns. Our gentlemanly host ushered us forth upon a terrace overhanging the deep gorge of the Saarine, spanned, to the right and left of us, by two immense suspension bridges, one of which seemed to spring from the hotel itself. Ruins of ancient walls and watch towers lined the precipice.

After dinner we visited the cathedral to hear the celebrated organ.

The organist performed a piece descriptive of a storm. We resigned ourselves to the illusion. Low, mysterious wailings, swelling, dying away in the distance, seeming at first exceedingly remote, drew gradually near. Fitful sighings and sobbings rose, as of gusts of wind; then low, smothered roarings. Anon came flashes of lightning, rattling hail, and driving rain, succeeded by bursts of storm, and howlings of a hurricane--fierce, furious, frightful. I felt myself lost in a snow storm in winter, on the pa.s.s of Great St. Bernard.

One note there was of strange, terrible clangor--bleak, dark, yet of a lurid fire--that seemed to prolong itself through all the uproar, like a note of doom, cutting its way to the heart as the call of the last archangel. Yes, I felt myself alone, lost in a boundless desert, beyond the abodes of man; and this was a call of terror-stern, savage, gloomy--the call as of fixed fate and absolute despair.

Then the storm died away, in faint and far-off murmurs; and we broke, as it were, from the trance, to find ourselves, _not_ lost, but here among the living. We then drove quietly to Berne.

Wednesday, July 20. Examined, not the lions, but the bears of Berne.

It is indeed a city of bears, as its name imports. There are bears on its gates, bears on its fountains, bears in its parks and gardens, bears every where. But, though Berne rejoices in a fountain adorned with an image of Saturn eating children, nevertheless, the old city--quaint, quiet, and queer--looks as if, bear-like, it had been hybernating good-naturedly for a century, and were just about to wake up.

Engaged a _voiture_, and drove to Thun. Dined, and drove by the sh.o.r.e of the lake to Interlachen, arriving just after a brilliant sunset.

Thursday, July 21. S. and G. remained at the Belvedere. W., II., and I took a guide and _voiture_ for Lauterbrunn. Here we visited Byron's apocalyptic horse-tail waterfall, the Staubbach. This waterfall is very sublime, all except the water and the fall. Whoever has been "under the sheet" at Niagara will not be particularly impressed here. This picture is sufficiently accurate, with the exception of the cottage. People here do not build cottages under waterfalls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _of the waterfall and cliff rising sharply to the left of the roadway. A cabin appears to be located very near its base._]

Here we crossed the Wengern Alps to Grindelwald. The Jungfrau is right over against us--her glaciers purer, tenderer, more dazzlingly beautiful, if possible, than those of Mont Blanc. Slept at Grindelwald.

LETTER x.x.xVIII.

DEAR CHILDREN:--

To-day we have been in the Wengern Alps--the scenes described in Manfred. Imagine us mounting, about ten o'clock, from the valley of Lauterbrunn, on horseback--our party of three--with two guides. We had first been to see the famous Staubbach, a beautiful, though not sublime, object. Up we began to go among those green undulations which form the lower part of the mountain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _of narrow, high alpine meadows with grazing livestock._]

It is haying time; a bright day; all is cheerful; the birds sing; men, women, and children are busy in the field. Up we go, zigzag; it grows steeper and steeper. Now right below me is a field, where men are literally working almost on a perpendicular wall, cutting hay; now we are so high that the houses in the valley look like chips. Here we stand in a place two thousand feet above the valley. There is no shield or screen. The horse stands on the very edge; the guide stops, lets go his bridle, and composedly commences an oration on the scene below. "0, for mercy's sake, why do you stop here?" I say. "Pray go on." He looks in my face, with innocent wonder, takes the bridle on his arm, and goes on.

Now we have come to the little village of Wengern, whence the Wengern Alps take their name. How beautiful! how like fairyland! Up here, midway in air, is a green nook, with undulating dells, and shadowy, breezy nests, where are the cottages of the haymakers. The Delectable Mountains had no scene more lovely. Each house has its roof heavily loaded with stones. "What is that for?" I ask. "The whirlwinds," says my guide, with a significant turn of his hands. "This is the school house," he adds, as we pa.s.s a building larger than the rest.

Now the path turns and slopes down a steep bank, covered with hayc.o.c.ks, to a little nook below, likewise covered with new hay. If my horse is going to throw me any where, I wish it may be here: it is not so bad a thing to roll down into that hay. But now we mount higher; the breezy dells, enamelled with flowers and gra.s.s, become fewer; the great black pines take their place. Right before us, in the purest white, as a bride adorned for her husband, rises the beautiful Jungfrau, wearing on her forehead the Silver Horn, and the Snow Horn.

The Silver Horn is a peak, dazzlingly bright, of snow; and its crest is now seen in relief against a sky of the deepest blue. See, also, how those dark pines of the foreground contrast with it, like the stern, mournful realities of life seen against the dazzling hopes of heaven.

There is something celestial in these mountains. You might think such a vision as that to be a bright footstool of Heaven, from which the next step would be into an unknown world. The pines here begin to show that long white beard of moss which I admire so much in Maine. Now, we go right up over their heads. There, the tall pines are under our feet. A little more--and now above us rise the stern, naked rocks, where only the chamois and the wild goat live. But still, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, looks forth the Jungfrau.

We turn to look down. That Staubbach, which in the valley seemed to fall from an immense precipice, higher than we could gaze, is now a silver thread, far below our feet; and the valley of Lauterbrunn seems as nothing. Only bleak, purplish crags, rising all around us, and silent, silver mountains looking over them.

"That one directly before you is the Monk," says C., calling to me from behind, and pointing to a great snow peak.

Our guide, with animation, introduced us by name to every one of these snow-white genii--the Falhorn, the Schreckhorn, the Wetterhorn, the great Eiger, and I cannot remember what besides. The guides seem to consider them all as old friends.

Certainly nothing could be so singular, so peculiar as this ascension.

We have now pa.s.sed the limit of all but gra.s.s and Alpine flowers, which still, with their infinite variety, embroider the way; and now the _auberge_ is gained. Good night, now, and farewell.

That is to say, there we stopped--on the summit, in fair view of the Jungfrau, a wall of rock crowned with fields of eternal snow, whose dazzling brightness almost put my eyes out. My head ached, too, with the thin air of these mountains. I thought I should like to stay one night just to hear avalanches fall; but I cannot breathe well here, and there is a secret sense of horror about these sterile rocks and eternal snows. So, after dinner, I gladly consent to go down to Grindelwald.

Off we start--I walking--for, to tell the truth, I have no fondness for riding down a path as steep in some places as a wall; I leave that to C., who never fears any thing. So I walked all the way to Grindelwald, nine miles of a very rough road. There was a lady with her husband walking the same pa.s.s, who had come on foot the whole way from Lauterbrunn, and did not seem in the least fatigued. My guide exhausted all his eloquence to persuade me that it was better to ride; at last I settled him by saying, "Why, here is a lady who has walked the whole route." So he confined himself after that to helping me find flowers, and carrying the handkerchief in which I stowed them. Alas!

what herbarium of hapless flowers, laid out stark, stiff, and motionless, like beauty on its bier, and with horrible long names written under them, can ever give an idea of the infinite variety and beauty of the floral crown of these mountains!

The herbarium resembles the bright, living reality no more than the _morgue_ at St. Bernard's is a specimen of mountain travellers.

Yet one thing an herbarium is good for: in looking at it you can recall how they looked, and glowed, and waved in life, with all their silver-crowned mountains around them.

After we arrived at Grindelwald, tired as I was, I made sketches of nine varieties, which I intend to color as soon as we rest long enough. So much I did for love of the dear little souls.

One noticeable feature is the predominance of _yellow_ flowers.

These, of various kinds, so abound as to make a distinct item of coloring in a distant view. One of the most common is this--of a vivid chrome yellow, sometimes brilliantly striped with orange.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _of a flowered bract._]

One thing more as to botanical names. What does possess botanists to afflict the most fragile and delicate of earth's children with such mountainous and unp.r.o.nounceable names? Now there was a dear little flower that I first met at St. Bernard--a little purple bell, with a fringe; it is more particularly beautiful from its growing just on the verge of avalanches, coming up and blossoming through the snow. I send you one in this letter, which I dug out of a snow bank this morning.

And this fair creation--this hope upon a death bed--this image of love unchilled and immortal--how I wanted to know it by name!

[Ill.u.s.tration: _of a tiny plant with a single flowering stem and two simple circular leaves._]

Today, at the summit house of the mountain, I opened an herbarium, and there were three inches of name as hopeless and unp.r.o.nounceable as the German of our guides, piled up on my little flower. I shut the herbarium.

This morning we started early from Grindelwald--that is, by eight o'clock. An unclouded, clear, breezy morning, the air full of the sounds of cascades, and of the little bells of the herds. As we began to wind upward into that delectable region which forms the first stage of ascent, I said to C., "The more of beautiful scenery I see, the more I appreciate the wonderful poetry of the Pilgrim's Progress." The meadows by the River of Life, the Delectable Mountains, the land of Beulah, how often have I thought of them! From this we went off upon painting, and then upon music, the freshness of the mountain air inspiring our way. At last, while we were riding in the very lap of a rolling field full of gra.s.s and flowers, the sharp blue and white crystals of the glacier rose at once before us.

"O, I want to get down," said I, "and go near them."

Down I did get, and taking what seemed to be the straightest course, began running down the hill side towards them.

"No, no! Back, back!" shouted the guide, in unimaginable French and German. _"Ici, ici!"_

I came back; and taking my hand, he led me along a path where travellers generally go. I went closer, and sat down on a rock under them, and looked up. The clear sun was shining through them; clear and blue looked the rifts and arches, all dripping and beautiful. We went down upon them by steps which a man had cut in the ice. There was one rift of ice we looked into, which was about fifty feet high, going up into a sharp arch. The inside of this arch was clear blue ice, of the color of crystal of blue vitriol.

Here, immediately under, I took a rude sketch just to show you how a glacier looks close at hand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _of the broken and chiseled surface of a glacier._]

C. wanted, as usual, to do all sorts of improper things. He wanted to stone down blocks of ice, and to go inside the cave, and to go down into holes, and insisted on standing particularly long on a spot which the guide told him was all undermined, in order that he might pelt a cliff of ice that seemed inclined to fall, and hear it smash.