As we approached Lauterbrunnen, we rode through the romantic valley of the River Lutschine, which rushes and boils over the rocks at such a rate that the cloudy glacier water has exactly the appearance of soap-suds. Here, on this river's banks, rests the picturesque little village of Lauterbrunnen, which name, we were told, signified springs. The little waterfalls and cascades can be seen flashing out in every direction from the lofty mountains that surround it; but chief among them is the superb and graceful Staubbach, that tumbles down from a lofty cliff nine hundred and twenty-five feet in height. The best view of this beautiful fall is at a point nearly half a mile distant, as the water, which is not of great volume, becomes converted into a shower of mist before reaching the ground, after its lofty leap; but at this point, where we had the best view of it, it was like a wreath of snowy foam, broadening at the base into a million of beautiful scintillations in the sunlight, and the effect of the wind was to sway it hither and thither like a huge strip of snowy lace that had been hung down over the green side of the mountain.
Now we take horses, after leaving the road that runs through Lauterbrunnen. Every half hour reveals to us new wonders of Alpine scenery and beauty; we reach the little village of Wengen, and see great peaks rising all around us; upward and onward, and from our mountain path we can look back and down in the valley of Lauterbrunnen, that we have left far, far below; we see the Staubbach fall dwarfed to a little glittering line, and, above it its other waterfall, of several hundred feet, which was not visible from the valley. But still upward and onward we go, and now come to a long ridge, upon which the bridle-path runs, as it were on the back-bone of the mountain. Here we have a view as grand, as Alpine, as Swiss, as one has ever read about or imagined.
Right across the ravine, which appeared like a deep crevasse, scarcely half a mile wide, was a huge blue wall of ice, seamed with great chasms, rent into great fissures, cold, still, awful, and terrible, with its background of lofty mountains covered with eternal snow. Now we had a view of the Jungfrau in all its majesty, as its snow crest sparkled in the sunshine, twelve thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven feet in height. There were the Silverhorn and the Schneerhorn, springing their lofty peaks out of a vast expanse of snow and ice; a whole chain of gigantic cliffs, so lofty in height that you seem to look up into the very heavens at their peaks of dazzling whiteness; the Shreckhorn, twelve thousand two hundred feet high; the Black Monk, a dark mass of rocks, twelve thousand feet, in striking contrast with the snowy mantles that clothe the other mountains.
Great glaciers, miles in extent, put a chill into the air that makes you shudder. The gap that I thought half a mile wide is a space nearly six times that distance across; we feel dwarfed amid the immensity and stupendous grandeur of the scene, and, as we unconsciously become silent, are struck with the unbroken, awful stillness of the Alps.
We are above the murmur of brooks and the rush of waterfalls; no bird or insect chirrups here; there is not even a bush for the wind to sigh through. Now and then a deep, sonorous murmur, as of the sigh of some laboring gnome in the mountain, or the twang of a gigantic harp-string, breaks the silence for a moment, and then dies away. It is a distant avalanche. We listen. It is gone! and all is still, awful, sublime.
We rode on; the view took in a whole chain of lofty mountains: now we pass great walls of crag, three or four thousand feet high, now looked across the ravine at the great glaciers, commencing with layers of snow and ice, and running out till they became a huge sheet of blue ice, the color deepening till it was blue as vitriol; but we were doomed to pay one of the penalties of sight-seeing in the Alps, for swiftly came a thick cloud, shutting out the whole view, and out of it came a heavy shower, drenching all thoroughly. A quarter of an hour of this, and the cloud had passed on, and we had nearly reached the little Hotel Bellevue, our point of destination, and come in sight of a verdant hill-side, a vast green, sheltered slope, in striking contrast to the ice and snow of the other part of the pass.
Our guides made us first halt, and look at the herd of cattle that were feeding upon it, and then pause, and listen to the tinkle of their bells,—more than three hundred in number,—that sounded like a vast music-box in the Alpine stillness. Then we looked away across the valley, and saw the little village of Mürren, the highest village in Switzerland, five thousand and eighteen feet, on a mountain-side; and finally we reached the hotel on the highest point of the little Scheideck, six thousand two hundred and eighty-four feet (Righi is five thousand five hundred and forty-one feet), and as we approached across the little plat of level ground in front of it, found we had arrived at a "reapers' festival;" and there was quite a gathering of peasants, who assemble here on the first Sunday in August, dressed in the Grindenwald costume, for dancing, wrestling, and other festivities. They had been driven in-doors by the rain; the entry of the little hotel was crowded; and however romantic and picturesque the Swiss mountaineer may look in his national costume in the picture-books, or poetical he and the Swiss maiden may be in songs and ballads, there is an odor of garlic and tobacco about them at close quarters that seriously affects poetic sentimentality.
As the rain had ceased, the peasants once more betook themselves to dancing to the music of a cracked clarinet and a melodeon; and another group got up an extemporaneous fight, two of them tumbling down a dozen or fifteen feet into a gully without injury, while we put the house under contribution for wood for a fire in the best room, and were soon drying our clothes by a blaze of claret-wine boxes. A capital mountain dinner, in which tea, honey, sweet bread, butter, and chamois chops figured, was so much better and cheaper than the soggy doughnuts, indigestible pie, sour bread, and cold beans that used to be set before the traveller at the Tip Top House, Mount Washington, New Hampshire, for the tip top price of one dollar a head, that we could not help drawing the comparison.
A rest and an enjoyment of the grand view of mountain chain, snowy peaks, and vast glaciers that surround us, and we start for the descent to Grindenwald. Grand views we had of the Wetterhorn, the Faulhorn, and the upper and lower glaciers of Grindenwald. We pass where avalanches have torn down the mountain-side, and thrown huge boulders about like pebbles, then over patches of open field, where stunted herbage grows, and Alpine roses redden the ground with their blossoms; then we come to woods, pastures, and peasants, and reach Grindenwald just before nightfall, to find our carriage waiting to take us back to Interlaken, which we reached after an absence of about eleven hours.
Interlaken is a grand depository and mart of the Swiss carved wood work, Alpine crystals, &c.; and grand stores of this merchandise, after the fashion of the "Indian stores" at Niagara Falls, attract the tourist. Some of this carving is very beautifully and artistically done, and some of it is cheap and not worth the trouble of taking away; but it is positively amusing to see how some American travellers will load themselves down with this trash because it is cheap. Some of the smoke crystals and rock crystals, fashioned into sleeve-buttons and watch-seals, were both handsome and low priced.