We next came to the little village of Andermatt, and just beyond it, at nightfall, reached Hospenthal, fatigued and glad to reach the Meyerhof Hotel, just outside the village. The house, which had accommodations for seventy or eighty guests, was crowded with tourists, among whom was a liberal representation of Americans and Englishmen. In the morning, after discussing a hearty breakfast, we started on our return, having a fine view of the glacier of St. Anna, rising high above the mountain ridges, and glittering in the morning sunshine. We drove back through the same pass, and halted on the Devil's Bridge to watch the waterfall of the Reuss, that leaps and foams down its descent here of a hundred feet, as it passes beneath the bridge, and, looking up, saw the spray of the descending torrent made into beautiful rainbows by the morning sunbeams. There were the terrible masses of rock, the huge, splintered peaks, and tremendous ravines; but the grand effect of ascending in the twilight of afternoon, which is the time chosen, if possible, by tourists, is lost, to a great extent, in the early part of the day.
Once more, adieu to Lucerne; and this time we start from the door of the Schweizerhoff in private conveyance for Interlaken, via the Brunig Pass. We rode along for miles over a smooth, level road, on the very banks of the Lake of the Four Cantons, the scenery being a succession of charming pictures of lake and mountain. Our road led us through several Swiss villages, generally closely built, with narrow and irregular streets, and very dirty. The Swiss peasants that we meet are browned and bent with hard toil. Men and women toil alike, in the fields and by the roadside. All are trained to burden-bearing, which is by means of a long basket made to fit the back and shoulders, the top higher than the head. The women over thirty years of age are coarse and masculine, their faces and hands browned, seamed, and wrinkled with toil. They clamber about in the mountain passes, and gather grass for their herds, carrying the burdens in their baskets, or the manure which may be found on the road during the travelling season, or break stones for mending the roads.
The Brunig road was another one of those wonderful specimens of engineering, with not a loose pebble upon its floor-like surface, the scenery romantic and beautiful, but not of so grand a description as the St. Gothard. We wind through the woods, have occasional glimpses of the valley below, until finally, at the summit of the pass, the magnificent scenery of the Meiringen valley bursts upon the view. This is, as it were, a level, beautiful country, deep between two great ranges of mountains, and you stand upon one and look down upon it, and across to the other.
This smiling valley was like a framed picture in the sunshine; the silver River Aare wound through it, white villages were nestled here and there, orchards bloomed, and fields were verdant, sheltered by the high crags from the north wind, and brown roads wound in and out among finely cultivated farms. Directly opposite us, away over the other side of the valley, rose up the sheer, rocky sides of the mountain wall, out of which waterfalls were spurting and cascades dashing in every direction, to feed the stream below. There were the beautiful falls of the Reichenbach, rushing over the cliff, and dropping hundreds and hundreds of feet down to the valley. The different waterfalls that we could see at the opposite side of the valley seemed like white, waving wreaths hung upon the mountain-sides. To the rear of these, overtopping all at intervals, lofty snow-clads lifted their white crowns into the sunshine. The view of this lovely valley, with its green pastures, meandering rivers, and picturesque waterfalls; its verdant carpet, dotted with villages, and the whole fringed with a belt of firs and dark green foliage, as we looked down into it from our lofty platform, reminded me of the story of the genius who stamped his foot on the mountain, which was cleft open, and showed in its depths to an astonished peasant the lovely country of the elves and fairies, in contrast with the desolation of the rocky crags and mountains that rose about him.
Down we ride, amid beautiful mountain scenery on every side, and finally through the town of Brienz, where the beautiful wood carving is wrought. We have a good view of the Faulhorn in the distance, pass through two or three little Swiss villages, and finally drive into a beautiful green valley, with quite a New England appearance to the pensions, or boarding-houses, which passed, we come to a string of splendid hotels upon one side of the broad road, the other side being open, and affording an unobstructed view of the Jungfrau and its snowy crown. Fatigued with a ten-hours' ride, and sight-seeing, we drive up to the door of the magnificent Hotel Victoria. Price of the carriage hire, extra horses, driver's fee, horse baiting, and all, for the whole day's journey, fifty francs,—ten dollars, or two dollars apiece,—and a very reasonable price it was considered for private conveyance, première classe, at the height of the travelling season.
The hotels at Interlaken are fine establishments, and well kept. The Victoria, where we were domiciled, has fine grounds in front, and commands a view of the Jungfrau glacier. It contains two hundred and forty rooms, and has reading-rooms, parlors, and music-rooms equal to the hotels at our fashionable watering-places. Prices high—about two dollars per day, each person. There are numerous other smaller hotels, where the living is equally good, and the prices are less; and still others, known as pensions, where visitors stay for a few weeks or the season, which are very comfortable, and at which prices are half the rate above mentioned.
Interlaken is beautifully and romantically situated, and is a popular resort for tourists in Switzerland, as a place from which many interesting excursions may be made. We chose ours to be up over the Wengernalp to Grindenwald, sending our carriage around from Lauterbrunnen to Grindenwald, to meet us as we came down by the bridle-path to that place. The ride to Lauterbrunnen was the same succession of beautiful Alpine scenery that I have so often described—lofty mountains, cascades, waterfalls, green slopes, distant snow-clads, dark pines, blue distance, Swiss chalets, and picturesque landscape.
Beggars now begin to be a serious nuisance, especially when your carriage stops at different points for you to enjoy the view. Then boys and girls come with milk, plums, apricots, cheap wood carvings, and curious pebbles, to sell, till one gets perfectly nervous at their approach, especially after the halt, the lame, and the blind have besought you; and one fellow capped the climax, as we were enjoying a beautiful view, by gracefully swaying a toy flexible snake into our carriage, to our most intense disgust and indignation. As you progress, women waylay the carriage at the top of a small ascent, which it must approach slowly, and bawl Swiss songs, ending with an outstretched palm, as you reach them. Boys and men, at certain points in the passes, sound Alpine horns,—a wide-mouthed instrument of wood, six feet in length,—which gives out a sonorous but mellow sound, peculiarly musical in the Alpine echoes. The blowers expect that a few sous will be tossed to them, and children chase you with bunches of mountain flowers to sell.
How people manage to exist far up in some of these wild mountain defiles is a wonder; and it seems as though it must be a struggle for some of them to keep soul and body together: they save every bit of herbage, scrape up manure from the roads, cultivate all they can in the short summers, keep goats and cows, and live on travellers.
The Catholic priests have penetrated every pass and defile in the country, and at their little chapels in the Alps and by the roadsides are rude and fearfully rough-looking representations of our Saviour on the cross, and of various saints undergoing all sorts of tortures. Now and then we meet a party of peasants on foot, men and women travelling over the mountain pass from one canton to another, the leader holding a rosary, and all repeating a prayer together, invoking protection from dangers on the road. The priests, with their long black robes and huge hats, you meet all over Europe. We had one—a jolly fellow he was, too—in the same compartment of a railway carriage on one of the Swiss roads, who laughed, joked, had a pleasant chat with the ladies, asking all sorts of questions about America, and at parting, bade us adieu with an air.