After about two hours' climbing we find ourselves at a place called Oberes Dächli, and half way up the ascent; now we leave the woods below, and begin to have a view of huge peaks rising all about us; as we mount still higher, the air grows pure, bracing, and invigorating. Pedestrians think climbing the Alps is pastime, songs are sung with a will, and American songs, especially the choruses, make the guides stare with astonishment.
Hurrah! Here is Righi Staffel, four thousand nine hundred feet above the level of the sea, and a good hour's pull from our last halt; and now our guides lead us out to a sort of bend in the pathway, and we begin to see what we have climbed to enjoy. From this bend, which overhangs, and seems to form, as it were, a sort of proscenium box of the scene, we look down on the grand view below us—Lake Lucerne, Arth, the road we have passed, the mountains swelling blue in the distance.
What beautiful views we have had as we ascended! An attempt at description would be but a series of rhapsodies. Let any one who has seen the view from the Catskill Mountains imagine the scene filled in with eight Swiss lakes shining in the sunlight, dozens of Swiss villages in the valleys, chapels on the mountain-sides, ribbons of rivers sparkling in the distance, the melodious tinkle of cow-bells from the many herds on the mountain-sides below, coming up like the faint notes of a musical box, and the whole framed by a lofty chain of mountain peaks, that seem to rim in the picture in a vast oval. The view changed twenty times in the ascent, and a faint idea may be had of its grandeur and beauty.
"But wait till you reach the Kulm, if you want to see a view," says one, pointing to the tip-top hotel of the mountain, on its great platform above us.
"Will monsieur ride now?"
"Pshaw! No."
The rest of the distance is so short—just up there—that monsieur, though breathless and fatigued, will do no such thing, and so sits down on a broad, flat stone, to look at the view and recover wind for the last brief "spurt," as he thinks; and the guide, with a smile, starts on.
We have learned a lesson of the deceptive appearance of distance in the mountains, for what appeared at most a ten minutes' journey, was a good half hour's vigorous climb before the hotel of Righi-Kulm was gained; and we stood breathless and exhausted in the portico, mentally vowing never to attempt mountain climbing on foot when horses could be had—a vow with which, perhaps, the last portion of the journey over a path made slippery by a shower, making the pedestrian's ascent resemble that of the arithmetical frog in the well, whose retrogression amounted to two thirds of his progression, had something to do—and a vow which, it is unnecessary to say, was not rigidly adhered to.
But Righi-Kulm was gained. Here we were, at a large, well-kept hotel. The rattle of the French, German, Italian, and English tongues tells us that Switzerland has attractions for all nations, and the fame of her natural scenery attracts all to worship at its shrine. A brief rest, after our nearly four hours' journey, and we are called out, one and all, to see the sun set. Forth we went, and mounted on a high, broad platform, a great, flat, table-like cliff, which, when contemplating the scene below, I could liken only to a Titanic sacrificial altar, erected to the Most High, it jutted out so towards heaven, with all the world below it.
But were we to be disappointed in the sunset?