We had not intended a visit to the glaciers of Grindelwald, but the day growing fine and the road thither tempting us as we approached the bridge, our resolution altered. The narrow road winds along precipices, high above the Black Lutschine, and till it brought us within sight of the glaciers, with the domes and spires of snow which shoot up above them, I thought less interesting than the way to Lauterbrunnen. The two glaciers are well seen from the inn windows and its garden. The Mettenberg separates them, the Wetterhorn forming the boundary of that nearest Lauterbrunnen.
The places occupied by these seas of ice were once, according to tradition, fertile valleys, for in one of them was discovered a buried chapel and a bell, bearing the date 1044. From the arch of an ice cavern in this upper glacier issues the Black Lutschine; green pastures, with wild flowers and strawberries growing at their edge, are here on a level with the masses of ice ever encroaching, like death advancing to grasp childhood.
In 1790, the innkeeper of Grindelwald, crossing the glacier while driving a few sheep home from the mountains, slipped down a crevice, and found himself laid, with a broken arm only, beneath a vault of ice, and beside the torrent. Guided by the dim light which crept through the fissures, he followed along its edge, and issued through the arch into the world; he was still living when Ebel wrote.
The clergyman who in 1821 explored the glacier between the Mettenberg and Eigher, met with a similar accident, but which ended fatally. He fell to a depth of seven hundred feet, and his body, recovered after twelve days of vain attempts, lies buried in the cemetery of Grindelwald.
We dined in company of a most hungry and silent young German, and returned to Unterseen; the drive back lovelier than you can conceive, for in the place of mist we had sun and shadow; the torrent sparkling, and the distant snow blending gold with rose colour.
The horses were found in safety, Grizzle demanding oats with the impatience and attitudes of a wild beast. It is mournful to shut oneself within a lonely room in a strange inn. I walked, while the light remained, up the flight of steps which, just opposite our hotel, lead to the church, whose grey tower has the Harder for background. In the churchyard was something sadder than solitude,—the tomb of an only son, who perished, aged twenty-two, in the precipices of the Harder; rose trees were cultivated on the turf, and a bench placed opposite, where sits his mother, who, for the last ten years, has every summer made a six weeks’ pilgrimage from her far home to his grave.
We drank tea at one table of the enormous room, while a noisy Parisian party from the Rue St. Martin, or thereabouts, supped at the other, a young man of the family throwing cakes in the air and catching them in his mouth after the manner, he said himself, of the bears of Berne; there are various modes of seeking instruction when travelling: and a lady, large and red-faced, informed her companions, for our benefit, “how the douaniers had complimented her on her black eyes, and how they said they were a rarity in Switzerland!”
Rising early, we left Unterseen by the old road, which passes through Interlaken and along the rocky bank of the river. In admiration of the lake all the way, and having enjoyed a lovely ride, and seen, without a cloud to shroud them, the whole range of snow peaks with romantic names which surround the Blummis Alp and Jungfrau, we reached Baumgarten early, and rejoiced in exchanging the solitude of the dark old inn for the society of Mr. ——, his pretty wife, and her gay children.