One finds the evening gossipers of the Kursaal scarcely less fascinating when they focus their talents on nearer regions; for “distant meadows” are not always “the greenest.” Agreeable things are to be heard of Schynige Platte, whither, it appears, you journey by cogwheel railway up steep gradients in an observation car behind a violently puffing locomotive, past pretty toy stations, around dizzy corners, through the startling blackness of unexpected tunnels, and so on out and up to the giddy plateau and an overpowering prospect of snowfields, misty valleys, gorges, and cataracts upon which you gaze in spellbound astonishment from the comfortable terrace of the “Alpenrose.” From no other viewpoint, they tell you, does the stupendous Mönch (Monk) seem to stand out so squarely in the middle distance in his cowl of snow, playing his traditional rôle of discouraging duenna between the coveted Jungfrau and the eager Eiger whom he repels with an eternal arm of glittering, blue ridge-ice.
When the conversation takes up Grindelwald, it becomes so attractive that you make a mental note to go there the first thing in the morning. It seems you are to take one of those droll little coaches of the Bernese Oberland Road marked “B.O.B.,” and proceed delightedly up the green valley of the Lütschine. Very soon will loom before you the bleak shoulders of the Wetterhorn, seared and precipitous, capped and pocketed with snow; the overwhelming pyramid of the Eiger, fearful with gorge and chasm; the regal Jungfrau, immaculate and stupendous; and, most uncommon spectacle of all, the awe-inspiring glacier—a frozen tumble of scarred boulders and grimy icebergs, pierced by glittering ice grottoes and ridged with terraced ways from which you stare down into yawning black gulfs that are fringed with giant icicles pendent from the frozen ledges. What was it Coleridge said of glaciers?
“Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!”
But many there will be at the Kursaal to tell you such tales of the enchanted Lauterbrunnen Valley as to incline you to reconsider any resolution about going first to Grindelwald. There, it is clear, we are to find quality rather than quantity: a narrow ravine through the mountains, carpeted with the greenest of turf and hung with glorious waterfalls that come tumbling down from lofty limestone precipices. We are to drive beside a turbulent stream set with occasional châlets whose projecting roofs will suggest broad-brimmed hats jammed down over their eyes, and here and there we shall come across a white stone church. Shortly there will be raging, leaping torrents all about us, vaulting down great cliffs of strange and startling appearance, and a vista of wonderland will open before us with the stately Steinberg enthroned in the midst. Next, climax on climax, the incomparable Staubbach! Before this queen of cataracts every other “hanging thread” is instantly and hopelessly dwarfed, as it launches its “wreaths of dangling water-smoke” from a thousand feet above. We will think this “dust brook” a mere feathery spray fluttered in a capricious breeze, so astonishing is the evidence of the resistance of the air and the friction of the rocks back of it; but once we have gone behind it and observed the “perpetual iris” made by the sun in shining through, it will appear a wonder beyond classification. Byron fancied it “the tail of the White Horse”; Wordsworth called it “the sky-born waterfall”; and Goethe’s dripping song of it runs:—
“In clouds of spray,
Like silver dust,
It veils the rock
In rainbow hues;