August 1.—Off at 5 A.M. for Wasen by way of the Susten. The books make it 26¹⁄₂ miles. This I think somewhat beyond the true distance, though two English ladies assured me—they were the only English people I found at the hotel at Hof—that on riding across it yesterday they had found it more than fifty miles. It was a delightful walk, and offered many elements of interest. As to the culture and vegetation; they began with much variety. As we ascended, the walnut trees were the first to disappear from the prairies and the roadside; then the plums and apples. They were succeeded by the region of conifers with its gradations; first the spruce, then the larch, last of all the cembra. They in turn had to make way for the treeless upland pastures. In a Swiss valley the kind of trees around you, or the absence of trees, indicate the height to which you have ascended. They are a kind of natural hypsometer. The thinning out of the villages, and châlets, and prairies keeps pace with the thinning out of the species of trees. The Gadmenbach was never far from the path. You often cross, or see on the opposite side of the valley some blustering torrent, or some mere thread of water, hastening to join it. Cliffs of naked rock appeared at all elevations: sometimes protruded in the valley bottom below you; sometimes higher up on its sides; at all events generally on the summits in sight. At times we had glimpses of distant snowfields. The soil, which the industry of many generations has accumulated and preserved on the surface, is good on this, the Gadmen side of the Pass, and so the predominant colour around us was green of varying tints, generally the lively green of the prairies; at this time at its liveliest, for the hay had lately been carried, and the second growth was again springing up, without bents and seed stalks. There was enough in all this pleasantly to feed the eye and the mind. With these objects before you, you cannot but be kindly disposed towards every peasant you meet, for you see how hard he must be toiling, as his fathers must have done before him, to extort the means of living from the scene which is giving you so much pleasure.
At the distance of an hour or two from Hof, a stream—I was told that its name is Schwazbach—comes tumbling down its rocky course from the mountain on your left, and, rushing under a bridge you cross, hurries on to join the Gadmenbach a little below the bridge. It is composed, in American phrase, of two forks, which unite themselves into a single stream half-a-dozen yards above the bridge. At the point of the rocky interposed peninsula grows a willow of many branches, and no main trunk. The branches form angles with the stream of all dimensions, some being erect, while some were on that day only just clear of the water. My attention was first attracted by the little tree itself, which had managed to establish itself in so conspicuous a situation, and one so likely to have been undermined from either side. You have done well, I thought, to hold on there so long. As I looked at it I found that its branches were peopled with a horde of some hundreds of large black caterpillars. Each was two or three inches long. If my boyish entomological recollections are not at fault, we have not in England a willow-feeding species of this kind. As I observed the colony, thinking that the perpetual din and spray had done them no harm, I noticed that all that were there were on the upper half of the tree. On the lower half the younger leaves of every branch had been eaten off, some completely, some partially, the oldest only being untouched, just as was the case with the leaves of the branches of the upper part of the tree; what, then, had become of those who had eaten them? Down to a certain level every twig had its residents; below that level not one. It was evident that the lower twigs, too, had lately been tenanted; but where were their late tenants? They had not emigrated to the branches immediately above the deserted ones, for those had no more occupants than the topmost branches. Nor would any enemy have cleared off in this regular manner those on the lower branches, and neglected those on the upper ones. There could, therefore, be but one explanation. There had lately been two or three days of continuous heavy rain. This must have swollen our impetuous stream to an additional height of three or four feet. Up to this height, then, the lower branches had been submerged, and all that dwelt upon them swept away; just as might have been the case with the exposed portion of some village of poor peasants, on which an avalanche had fallen. Whether those who had lived in this exposed quarter of the village had been better or worse Christians than others would have had no effect in turning aside, or in bringing down the avalanche, any more than analogous considerations had to do, as we are told, either with the fall, or with the effects of the fall, of the tower of Siloam. With our caterpillars, at all events, no theory of misdoings, or shortcomings, is available. What, then, we call chance, or accident, but which may be nothing of the kind—prevails among caterpillars as well as among Christians. The avalanche falls, and crushes half a village of Christians; the stream rises, and drowns half a colony of sociable caterpillars. There is, however, this difference between the conditions of the two; the caterpillar not having the power of anticipating and guarding against many of the contingencies of its lot, will not, probably, die of natural decay. Sooner or later, in the present, or in the succeeding, stage of its existence, it will fall a prey to some stronger insect, or to some bird or beast—these went to feed the fish, or aquatic insects; but the Christian has that faculty which made him a Christian, and which enables him to foresee and provide against most of the accidents and chances to which he is exposed; and so he has, or should, have, a fair chance of dying of natural decay. The mischief is that he has not been taught to exercise this faculty as much as he might, and ought; and that, therefore, he is still liable to be carried off more frequently than need be by polluted water, polluted air, overwork of body, or of mind, overfeeding, and many other such, not accidents, but preventible causes, among which must be reckoned his having placed his dwelling on a site exposed to avalanches, or floods, or malarious exhalations. Perhaps the time will come when not to do all that we have been permitted to do in the way of providing against the action of such causes will be regarded as irreligious, as a tempting of Providence, as a sinful neglect of the laws of God.
And so I walked on and on, and up and up, pleasantly contemplating the objects of the scene around, pleasantly spinning and weaving thought, and, when tired of that, pleasantly talking to Leuthold. I had already taken a liking to him. He was a clean-built, well-featured man, with a gentle voice, and gentle thoughts. His wife had for some time been in feeble health, and this seemed to be making him still more gentle and thoughtful. I now recall one of his sayings; ‘If a man has health and strength for his work, and is satisfied with his family, he has the best riches.’ His trade was that of furniture-making, by which he supported himself and his family during the winter. Not much can be earned in this way at Innertkirchen; and, therefore, and, too, because like his neighbours he was investing in land all he could save, he had to live hard. His fare during the long winter was potatoes, milk, and coffee, with meat only on Sundays. Of land, however, he had enough for two cows. I was amused at his having brought with him his ice-axe, for this would lead some of those we met to credit me with the intention of essaying difficult ascents, though I was not contemplating anything of the kind. It, however, indicated that he was himself ready for such undertakings. He confided to me his intention of purchasing on his return home some English volume, and of endeavouring by its aid to acquire a knowledge of the language. The following question which, after a pause of some moments, he put to me this morning will show that he had already made a beginning in this study; ‘How many clocks will you dine to-day?’
At last we reached the little inn of Stein, at the foot of the great Stein glacier. We were here 6,122 feet above the sea, and about 1,300 below the Pass. For some time all that was bright, and soft, and humanly pleasing in the scene had been dying out. On our left we had lost the lofty ridge of the Gadmen Fluh, now screened by the Wendenhorn, behind which, and so out of sight to us, it was rising into the Titlis, its culminating point. On our right were grand ravine-torn, and perpendicular-faced precipices. At the little inn we found ourselves close upon the glacier. As this mighty mass has been advancing for the last thirty years, you will think that in the arrangements of inexorable Nature the days of the little inn are numbered; and so as you sit outside, in the warm sunshine, a rock for your table and seat, and the green turf for your footstool, with your bread and cheese and wine before you, and with the herd of kine, some quietly grazing around you, and some lying down, and meditatively chewing the cud, you will feel as if the vast icefield beside and above you were some cold-blooded, remorseless, living monster, that is leisurely and irresistibly advancing in his own fashion to spread himself over, and obliterate all around you. The turf, however, and the little inn will not be unavenged, for the sun, whose warmth you are now feeling so delightful at this altitude, or a diminution of pressure from the snowfields above, will some day oblige the monster to recoil again to his own proper domain of eternal cold and barrenness.
Having finished your bread and cheese, and chopine of wine, and well sunned yourself, your muscles will have recovered their tone, and you will begin to make the last ascent along the side of the northern mountain. The mighty monster is here a little beneath you, on your right, as it were sleeping with one of his feet resting against the mountain you are passing along, the other being to the west of the rocky eminence before you. His vast body and shoulders are spread out for many an acre between this eminence and the heights of the Sustenhörner and Thierberg, on which reposes his snowy, shaggy head. His hugeness, form, and position, make him worthy of far more notice than he has as yet received. The reason why so few go to see him is, I believe, that the books overstate the walk that is required for going. Of this, if taken from the west, an hour may be struck off at its commencement by starting from Hof instead of from Meiringen, which reduces it to ten hours of not hard work even for a first walk, as I found it this day. Or, if this be considered too much, it may be divided into two easy stages, by sleeping at Stein; and who would not be glad to sleep more than 6,000 feet above his usual level, and at the foot of so grand a glacier?
Having reached the summit of the Pass, an entirely different scene presents itself to your view. The aspects and colouring, and whole character of the Meienthal are almost the reverse of those of the Gadmenthal. It is but thinly clad with turf, which, too, is of sombre tints. There is none of the lively green you have left behind you. The forest is a long time in reappearing, and nowhere throughout do the pines grow vigorously. Here on this side man has to struggle more hardly to maintain himself. The villages are fewer and further between. Wherever you turn bleakness and barrenness are the predominant suggestions. This gives you new effects, and by simplifying the mountain masses, makes them appear grander.
After three hours, or more, you see straight before you a somewhat steep, half pine-clad ridge. You advance towards it, and at somewhat over ten hours from Hof, including your halt at Stein, you find yourself at Wasen in the valley of Uri, on the road to the St. Gothard, and that the mountain which had lately been before you, and which is a fine termination to your walk, is the western range of the Valley of Uri.
August 2.—Walked to Andermatt for breakfast. The building of the new hotels I noticed last year at Göschenen, the northern entrance of the St. Gothard tunnel, was going on as briskly as then. Of course, before the railway is completed, there will be a post-road across the Susten, and so that route will have become a feeder to these hotels; and this new road will itself be fed by another from the Valais over the Grimsel, and through the Haslithal; and so there will be a considerable stream of people who, from that direction, will take the rail at Göschenen. There will also be many who will for this purpose come to the same point from the Grisons by way of Andermatt. Possibly, therefore, they may not be building too many hotels. At all events the tide of travellers in Switzerland is still rising, and probably will continue to rise, for we cannot at present imagine any reason for its subsiding, or point to any instances in which hotel building appears to have been overdone.