Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands Volume Ii Part 24

The poor guide was as distressed as a hen when her ducks take to the water; he ran, and called, and shouted, in German, French, and English, and it was not till C. had contrived to throw the head of the little boy's hatchet down into a _creva.s.se_, that he gave up.

There were two francs to pay for this experiment; but never mind! Our guide book says that a clergyman of Yevay, on this glacier, fell into a _creva.s.se_ several hundred feet deep, and was killed; so I was glad enough when C. came off safe.

He ought to have a bell on his neck, as the cows do here; and _apropos_ to this, we leave the glacier, and ride up into a land of pastures. Here we see a hundred cows grazing in the field--the field all yellow with b.u.t.tercups. They are a very small breed, prettily formed, and each had on her neck a bell. How many notes there are in these bells! quite a diapason--some very deep toned, and so on up to the highest! how prettily they sound, all going together! The bells are made of the best of metal, for the tone is of an admirable quality.

0, do look off there, on that patch of snow under the Wetterhorn! It is all covered with cows; they look no bigger than insects. "What makes them go there?" said we to our guides.

"_To be cool_" was the answer.

Hark! what's that? a sudden sound like the rush of a cascade.

"Avalanche! avalanche!" exclaimed the guide. And now, pouring down the sides of the Wetterhorn, came a milk-white cascade, looking just like any other cascade, melting gracefully over the rocks, and spreading, like a stream of milk, on the soiled snow below.

This is a summer avalanche--a mere _bijou_--a fancy article, got up, or rather got down, to entertain travellers. The winter avalanches are quite other things. Witness a little further in our track, where our guide stops us, and points to a place where all the pines have been broken short off by one of them. Along here some old ghostly pines, dead ages ago, their white, ghastly skeletons bleached by a hundred storms, stand, stretching out their long, bony arms, like phantom giants. These skeleton pines are a striking image; I wonder I have not seen them introduced into pictures.

There, now, a little ahead, is a small hut, which marks the summit of the grand Scheidich. Our horses come up to it, and we dismount. Some of the party go in to sleep--I go out to climb a neighboring peak. At the foot of this peak lay a wreath of snow, soiled and dirty, as half-melted snow always is; but lying amid the green gra.s.s and luxuriant flowers, it had a strange air. It seemed a little spot of death in the green lap of rejoicing life--like that death-spot which often lies in the human heart--among all seeming flowers, cold and cheerless, unwarmed by the sunbeam, and unmelted by the ray that unfolds thousands of blooms around.

Now, I thought, I have read of Alpine flowers leaning their cheeks on the snows. I wonder if any flowers grow near enough to that snow to touch it. I mean to go and see. So I went; there, sure enough, my little fringed purple bell, to which I have given the name of "suspirium," was growing, not only close to the snow, but in it.

Thus G.o.d's grace shining steadily on the waste places of the human heart, brings up heavenward sighings and aspirations which pierce through the cold snows of affliction, and tell that there is yet life beneath.

I climbed up the gra.s.sy sides of the peak, flowers to the very top.

There I sat down and looked. This is Alpine solitude. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 ma.s.s 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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. She gets on a pyramid of _debris_, which the edge of the glacier is ploughing and grinding up, sits down, and falls--not asleep exactly--but into a trance. W. and I are ready to go on; we shout; our voice is lost in the roar of the torrent. We send the guide. He goes down, and stands doubtfully. He does not know exactly what to do.

She hears him, and starts to her feet, pointing with one hand to yonder peak, and with the other to that knifelike edge, that seems cleaving heaven with its keen and glistening cimeter of snow, reminding one of Isaiah's sublime imagery, "For my sword is bathed in heaven." She points at the grizzly rocks, with their jags and spear points. Evidently she is beside herself, and thinks she can remember the names of those monsters, born of earthquake and storm, which cannot be named nor known but by sight, and then are known at once, perfectly and forever.

Mountains are Nature's testimonials of anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must. In them hearts that have ceased to rejoice, and have learned to suffer, find kindred, and here, an earth worn with countless cycles of sorrow, utters to the stars voices of speechless despair.

And all this time no dinner! All this time H. is at the glacier! How do I know but she has fallen into a _creva.s.se_? How do I know but that a cliff, one of those ice castles, those leaning turrets, those frosty spearmen, have toppled over upon her? I shudder at the reflection. I will write no more.

I had just written thus far, when in came H. and W. in high feather.

O, I had lost the greatest sight in Switzerland! There was such a chasm, a mountain cut in twain, with a bridge, and a man to throw a stone down; and you could hear it go _boom_, and _he held his hat!_ "Not a doubt of that," said I. Then there was a cavern in the ice, and the ice was so green, and the water dripped from the roof, and a great river rushed out. Such was the substance of their united enthusiasm.

But, alas! it was not enough to lose the best glacier in Switzerland; I must needs lose two cascades and a chamois. Just before coming to Meyringen, I was composedly riding down a species of stone gridiron, set up sidewise, called a road, when the guide overtook me, and requested me to walk, as the road was bad. Stupid fellow! he said not a word about cascades and chamois, and so I went down like a chamois myself, taking the road that seemed best and nearest, and reached the inn an hour before the rest. After waiting till I became alarmed, and was just sending back a messenger to inquire, lo, in they came, and began to tell me of cascades and chamois.

"What cascade? What chamois? I have not seen any!" And then what a burst! "Not seen any! What, two cascades, one glacier, and a four-year-old chamois, lost in one day! What will become of you? Is this the way you make the tour of Switzerland?"

Sat.u.r.day, July 23. Rode in a _voiture_ from Meyringen to Brienz, on the opposite end of the lake from Interlachen. Embarked in a rowboat of four immense oars tied by withs. Two men and one woman pulled three, and W. and I took turns at the fourth. The boat being high built, flat bottomed, with awning and flagstaff, rolled and tipped so easily that soon H., with remorseful visage, abandoned her attempt to write, and lay down. There is a fresh and savage beauty about this lake, which can only be realized by rowing across.

Interlachen is underrated in the guide books. It has points of unrivalled loveliness; the ruins of the old church of Rinconberg, for example, commanding a fine view of both lakes, of the country between, and the Alps around, while just at your feet is a little lake in a basin, some two hundred feet above the other lakes. Then, too, from your window in the Belvedere, you gaze upon the purity of the Jungfrau. The church, too, where on Sabbath we attended Episcopal service, is embowered in foliage, and seems like some New England village meeting house.

Monday, July 25. Adieu to Interlachen! Ho for Lucerne and the Righi!

Dined at Thun in a thunder storm. Stopped over night at Langnau, an out-of-the-way place. H. and G. painted Alpine flowers, while I played violin. This violin must be of spotless pedigree, even as our Genevese friend, Monsieur--, certified when he reluctantly sold it me. None but a genuine AMATI, a hundred years old, can possess this mysterious quality, that can breathe almost inaudible, like a mornbeam in the parlor, or predominate imperious and intense over orchestra and choir, illuminating with its fire, like chain lightning, the arches of a vast cathedral. Enchanted thing--what nameless spirit impregnates with magnetic ether the fine fibres of thy mechanism!

Tuesday, 26. Rode from Langnan to Lucerne just in time to take the boat for Weggis. From the door of the Hotel de la Concorde, at Weggis, the guide _chef_ fitted us out with two _chaises a porteur_, six _carriers_, two mules with grooms, making a party of fourteen in all.

After ascending a while the scenery became singularly wild and beautiful. Vast walls and cliffs of conglomerate rose above us, up which our path wound in zigzags. Below us were pines, vales, fields, and hills, themselves large enough for mountains. There, at our feet, with its beautiful islands, bays, capes, and headlands, gleams the broad lake of the four cantons, consecrated by the muse of Schiller and the heroism of Tell. New plains are unrolling, new mountain tops sinking below our range of vision. We plunged into a sea of mist. It rolled and eddied, boiling beneath us. Through its mysterious pall we saw now a skeleton pine stretch out its dark pointing hand--now a rock, shapeless and uncouth, far below, like a behemoth petrified in mid ocean. Then an eddy would sweep a s.p.a.ce for the sun to pour a flood of gold on this field far down at our feet, on that village, on this mountain side with its rosy vapor-wreaths, upon yon distant lake, making it a crater of blinding brightness. On we went wrapped in mantles, mist, and mystery, trembling with chilliness and enthusiasm.

We reached the summit just as the sunset-gazing crowd were dispersing.

And this is Righi Kulm!

Wednesday, 27. At half past three in the morning we were aroused by the Alpine horn. We sprang up, groping and dressing in the dark, and went out in the frosty air. Ascending the ridge we looked off upon a sleeping world. Mists lay beneath like waves, clouds, like a sea. On one side the Oberland Alps stretched along the horizon their pale, blue-white peaks. Other mountains, indistinct in color and outline, chained round the whole horizon. Yes, "the sleeping rocks did dream"

all over the wide expanse, as they slumbered on their cloudy pillow, and their dream was of the coming dawn. Twelve lakes, leaden pale or steel blue, dreamed also under canopies of cloud, and the solid land dreamed, and all her wilds and forests. And in the silence of the dream already the tinge of clairvoyance lit the gray east; a dim, diffuse aurora, while yet the long, low clouds hung l.u.s.treless above; nor could the eye prophesy where should open the door in heaven. At length, a flush, as of shame or joy, presaged the pathway. Tongues of many-colored light vibrated beneath the strata of clouds, now dappled, mottled, streaked with fire; those on either hand of a light, flaky, salmon tint, those in the path and portal of the dawn of a gorgeous blending and blazoning of golden glories. The mists all abroad stirred uneasily. Tufts of feathery down came up out of the ma.s.s. Soft, floating films lifted from the surface and streamed away dissolving.

Strange hues came out on lake and sh.o.r.e, far, far below. The air, the very air became conscious of a coming change, and the pale tops of distant Alps sparkled like diamonds. It was night in the valleys. And we heard the c.o.c.ks crowing below, and the uneasy stir of a world preparing to awake. So Isaiah foresaw a slumbering world, while Messiah's coming glanced upon the heights of Zion, and cried,--

"Behold, darkness shall cover the earth And gross darkness the people; But the Lord shall rise upon THEE, And his glory shall be seen upon thee!"

Hushed the immense crowd of spectators waited; then he came. On the gray edge of the horizon, under the emblazoned strata, came a sudden coal of fire, as shot from the altar of Heaven. It dazzled, it wavered, it consumed. Its lambent lines lengthened sidelong. At length, not a coal, but a shield, as the shield of Jehovah, stood above the east, and it was day. The vapor sea heaved, and broke, and rolled up the mountain sides. The lakes flashed back the conquering splendor. The wide panorama, asleep no more, was astir with teeming life.

Tuesday, July 28. One of the greatest curiosities in Lucerne is the monument to those brave Swiss guards who were slain for their unshaken fidelity to the unhappy Louis XVI. In a sequestered spot the rocky hill side is cut away, and in the living strata is sculptured the colossal figure of a dying lion. A spear is broken off in his side, but in his last struggle he still defends a shield, marked with the _fleur de lis_ of France. Below are inscribed in red letters, as if charactered in blood, the names of the brave officers of that devoted band. From many a crevice in the rock drip down trickling springs, forming a pellucid basin below, whose dark, glossy surface, encircled with trees and shrubs, reflects the image. The design of the monument is by Thorwaldsen, and the whole effect of it has an inexpressible pathos.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _of the memorial. Above the grotto reads:_

HELVETIORUM FIDEI AC VIRTUTI

_On the monument's plinth can be read the following:_

DIE X AUGUSTI II ET III SEPTEMBRIS MDCCXCII HAEC SUNT NOMINA EORUM OUTNE SACRA (illegible) (illegible) DUES XXVI DUCES ]