The scenery, always grand and imposing, changes with every bend in the road, and always gives a view better than the preceding one. We are now at an altitude where the fragrant spruce lines the narrow roadway, and covers the hillside with everlasting green. Way over there, where the cold gray of the rocks is hidden under a mantle of green, on which the sun and clouds make ever-changing pictures, is a bright, flashing stream, dancing and sparkling in the sunlight, as it falls tumultuously from rock to rock, now losing itself in a chasm hundreds of feet deep, then springing out again further down, until at length it worries and frets itself over the crags and cliffs till it reaches the valley, and flows tranquilly and smoothly along to the lake. It typifies life, with its early struggles, its constant striving for the rest and quiet that comes at last.
Now we approach the summit of the mountains. All around, as far as the eye can reach, is nothing but a series of rough, jagged crags, the peaks of the irregular range of mountains. Not the forest-covered hills we have been riding through, but vast piles of everlasting snow, which even the fierce and angry sun is unable to make any impression upon.
THE TROUBLES OF TIBBITTS.
But we were not permitted to take all the enjoyment possible out of the wondrous views. There never was a party that did not have a professor in it, who knows all about everything, and who considers it his mission to instruct everybody else. Add to this, a courier who knows all the stock show points, professionally, and life becomes a burden. Some peak would come to our view higher and grander than any we had encountered. And then the courier:
“Ladies unt shentlemen, dot ish—”
The Professor, who had charge of Tibbitts:
“Lemuel, particularly note that mountain peak. It is—”
“Of course it is,” said Tibbitts. “What am I here for, anyhow? What did I sail across the Atlantic, and come to Switzerland for? Why do you and that other weazened monkey interrupt me when I am contemplating nature, by calling my attention to it, and asking me to note it? Havn’t I got eyes? Don’t I know the difference between a Western prairie and an Alpine peak? And as for the names of the places, havn’t I got a guide book, and can’t I read? Am I a baby in my A B Abs? Curious you can’t let a fellow alone.”
The faro bankeress was asleep, she had been for many miles, and her husband was asking her why they charged a franc for a little bit of ice, at the last hotel, when the mountains were all covered with it.
The road, which, up to this time, had been comparatively pleasant, now assumed a more dangerous look to those who have only known wide paved streets. It winds along the very edge of precipices, where a single balk would send us all tumbling down three or four thousand feet. At places it is cut out of the side of the hill, so that on one side there is a solid wall of rock rising high above our heads, while on the other is a sheer descent of thousands of feet. As we rattle around the sharp curves there is an involuntary clutching at the seats, for it seems certain that the carriage cannot keep the road. But the Swiss voiturier is an expert driver, and his horses are sure footed, so there is not the slightest danger, perilous though it may seem.