I feel a deep and ever-increasing sympathy with explorers of strange lands whose narratives a harsh world pronounces exaggerations. What if they do say that the unknown animal which darts across their path has five heads and seventeen legs? There is a glamour over everything in an utterly new place,—the very atmosphere is deceptive. After a while, things assume their natural proportions, but at first it seems as if one really did see with one's own eyes all these redundant members. Even here in the beaten track of travel, writing as honestly as possible from my own point of view, I feel like begging my friends to put no faith in anything I say. The mountains in themselves are intoxicating enough to turn one's head; but then of course much depends upon the kind of head one possesses. Recently, at sunset by a lake, we were looking over the water at a mountain view,—soft, wooded slopes near us, huge rocky masses beyond, height upon height rising in hazy blue, the snowy summits just touched by the Alpine glow,—when some strangers approached. Berlin has the honor of being their dwelling-place, we ascertained afterwards.
“Lieber Mann,” said the lady, “just look at all that snow!”
“Snow!” replied the lieber Mann, “snow in summer! But that is impossible!”
“I think it must be snow,” said the wife, doubtfully. Then, “But only see the beautiful mountains.”
“Hm, hm,” remarks the lieber Mann, regarding them superciliously through his eye-glass; “I can't say that they are particularly well-formed!” Here, at least, is a head that is secure; no jocund day on the misty mountain-tops, no broad, magnificent ranges at high noon, and no twilight with “mountains in shadow, forests asleep,” have power to move that astute Kopf a fraction of an inch. “They have better mountains in Berlin,” remarked a German friend in an undertone.
Bludenz is a little town in the Vorarlberg, which means, you know,—or you don't know,—the country lying before the Adler or Arlberg, and the Arlberg is the watershed between the Rhine and Danube, and the boundary between the Vorarlberg and the Tyrol. This sounds guide-bookish,—and very naturally, as I have copied it word for word from Baedecker,—but one must say something of praiseworthy solidity once in a while. Bludenz is a railway terminus, which fact may not interest the world at large, but it did us hugely. We rejoiced in the thought of the great post-wagon, the cracking of whips and blowing of horns, and long, delightful, breezy rides over the hills and far away. Our after-experience of this lively whip-cracking and horn-blowing has led us to the conclusion that it is decidedly at its best in the opera, where the Postilion of Lonjoumeau sings his pretty song and cracks his whip for a gay refrain; and that it is all very well, when you yourself are going off early in the morning amid the prodigious noise and the excitement of stowing away passengers and packages, while a crowd of village loafers stand gazing and gaping at you,—in short, when you are “in it,” you know; but when it is only other people who are going, only they for whom all the noise is made and you are roused from your gentle slumbers at half past four perhaps, you do not regard the postilion and his accomplishments with unqualified admiration.
You wish you had gone to the “Eagle,” or the “Ox,” or the “Lamb,” or the “Swan,” or the “Lion,” or to any other beast or bird, rather than to the “Post,” where the “Post” omnibus and its relations make your mornings miserable. These are always the names of the inns in these little towns. There is usually a “Crown” too, and often an “Iron Cross.” But people with nerves mustn't go to the “Post.” Our party left its nerves in the city before starting off on a rough tour, yet even we have suffered at various inns which bear the names of “Post,” but which should properly be called “Pandemonium.”
Our first postilion wore the regulation long-boots, a postilion hat, and silver pansies in his ears. He cracked his whip nobly,—as well as we have heard Sontheim in the theatre at Stuttgart, and that is no faint praise. He was the jolliest of men, on the best of terms with all the dwellers among the mountains. He stopped at every inn and house where a glass of wine was to be had, and I think I may say invariably drank it. All the goodwives joked with him and smiled at him; all the men had a friendly word for him, and all the peasant-girls who had lovers in distant villages were continually stopping our great ark to send packages, letters, or messages to the absent swain. He seemed to be for the whole region a friend, patron, and adviser, a tutelary deity in fact, and grand receptacle for confidences. He had a shrewd, kind face, large clear eyes, and had driven among these mountains twenty-six years. It really did not seem a bad way of spending one's days, always going over the mountain-passes, knowing everybody and loved by everybody in the country round. I admired him extremely, and felt very much elated at the honor of sitting up on the box with so important a personage.
He told us a story of an Englishman who was inquiring how much it would cost to be driven to a certain point.
The driver replied so many gulden.