There are, as I just said, many hotels in the place; but as there are also six thousand cows in the valley, not travellers, but cheese must be its main reliance. It has another industry in ice, which is cut in blocks out of the glacier, and sent as far even as Paris. The price returned for this is one of the rills of the stream of wealth, which railways are pouring into Switzerland, or enabling it to collect for the outside world. Two great glaciers come down into the village from the two sides of the Mettenberg, which here has the Eiger on its right, and the Wetterhorn on its left.
We had been on the tramp to-day, excluding the halt for luncheon, eight hours. With the exception of not more than five minutes on the little man’s horse, my wife did the whole of it on foot, stepping out briskly even to the long-sought end of Grindelwald.
CHAPTER XI.
INTERLAKEN AGAIN—CHAR UP THE VALLEY OF THE KANDER—WALK OVER THE GEMMI, SLEEPING AT SCHWARENBACH
—rather—
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.—Shakespeare.
September 14.—Returned early in our voiture to Interlaken. From the tramping point of view, the right thing to have done in the afternoon would have been to have ascended one of the ranges of mountains, which shut in Interlaken on the right and left. But it was fair that the little man should have his turn, and his heart was all for the railway, the steamer, and the Lake of Thun: and so we went by rail, and boat, to Thun and back. The railway, with its smart carriages, some of them two stories high, is only a mile or two in length, from Interlaken to its port on the lake, and is a mere toy. As to the sail on the lake, it supplies enough for the eye to feed upon. The chief objects on the south side are the Niesen and the Stockhorn; the two mountains which form the porch of the valley of the Kander, up which lies the road to the Gemmi. The boat was very crowded with people who were going northward; the greater part of them to Berne, the rail for which commences at Thun. About Thun what interests one most at this season, as things are seen from the water, are the gardens of some of the houses on the edge of the lake. The little man, from familiarity with threshing machines and agricultural implements, has a strong turn for machinery; hence the attraction for him of the railway and steamboat. On board the latter he poked about, looking into everything, as if he were taking the opportunity to inspect some of his own property.
This was a day, which, to its end, was given up to the young gentleman, for in the evening he would have us go to the Cursaal to see a display of fireworks. They were pretty good. The best thing was the illumination of a copious jet of water, which was thrown up to the height of about a hundred feet, and fell very much broken and dispersed; the upward rush, and the falling drops, reflecting a powerful red light, which, screened to the spectators, was burnt in front of the fountain. The shrubberies, and trees, all about, were at times illuminated, successively, with red, blue, and white lights: this was meant to be weird and spectral.