We spent eleven days in Grindelwald this time, enjoying the (comparative) comforts of home and recuperating for another trip. It rained a good deal. But we managed to work in a number of walks and another picnic or so, and we had some moonlight evenings of surpassing loveliness. Frater ran across two Princeton men he knew in the village one day, and I asked them to stay to dinner with a brave show of hospitality, making rapid mental plans in the meantime for the acquiring of two more forks, spoons, knives, plates and glasses. However, they could not come, so it was all right.
It was during this period that the avalanches from the Wetterhorn became so numerous. There is a sheer drop of four or five thousand feet on the side towards the Grosse Scheidegg and at the top of it, sloping back steeply, an immense accumulation of snow. The summer’s meltings were beginning to tell on this, and every once in a while a great mass would detach itself and come sliding down over the edge of the cliff with a roar like thunder. It looked like a great foaming cascade, and would often keep pouring for several minutes, so that the one who first noticed it would call the others, who would leave what they were doing and get to windows or veranda in time to see a part of it. These phenomena came to be of daily occurrence, and we finally grew too blasé to run to the window when called.
Another beautiful effect we enjoyed was the rainbow that almost always followed a shower. One end of the bow generally came down in front of the Mettenberg cliffs, just opposite us, and lost itself in the foliage growing over the banks of the Lütschine.
Just before we left we had our first reminder of autumn in a snow-storm which covered the Männlichen slopes in front of us and the Faulhorn and Schwarzhorn ridges behind us with fine white powder.
XV
On the 27th of August we started out for our second trip, by rail this time, looking quite conventional and civilized. The Mother and the Elder Babe accompanied us as far as Thun.
From Interlaken to Thun we took the lake steamer. It is a pretty enough trip, but everybody does it, and the presence of a swarming ant-hill of tourists somehow spoils the pleasure of the Nature-lover, while affording amusement to the specialist in humanity.
We watched many of our fellow-passengers with more or less interest, but of them all there lingers in my memory only the old gentleman with the Santa Claus white beard whose bare feet were encased in Greek sandals. This with an otherwise entirely conventional get-up. We were by no means the only ones whose attention was attracted by this devotee of the barefoot cure. His strength of mind in braving popular curiosity certainly deserved reward, and I hope he got it.