When will the landscape tire the view!
The mountains’ fall, the rivers’ flow;
The wooded valleys, warm and low;
The windy summits wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky;
Town and village; tower and farm;
Each give to each a double charm.—Dyer.
August 21.—From Glarus by the Pragel Pass to Brunnen is thirty-eight miles. As we intended to sleep at Brunnen, we took a char for the first nine miles to Vorauen, where the carriage road ends. We were under weigh at 6 A.M. You are now in the Klönthal; so good a valley that it would be better for those to whom walking is not a pain to do it on foot. You enter it as you leave Glarus. The Glärnish is on your left; on your right steep-sided mountains—ill-clad, but the better for that. On leaving Glarus you do not immediately lose sight of factories. The last of them are at Riedern. Of course you are invited to leave the road, to see, at a few yards’ distance, that the torrent of the Klönthal, like other Swiss torrents, has not forgotten to cut, for the astonishment of tourists, deep into the rock a rugged channel, at the bottom of which, with much dashing and hurrying, it is still continuing its excavations. This, at one point or other of their brief run, all Swiss torrents regard as an imperative duty. In somewhat more than an hour you reach the Klönsee; two miles, or so, in length, and narrow. The lofty, massive Glärnish rises, almost vertically, from its opposite side. The lake is sheltered; and this morning it reflected, as a mirror, the blue sky, and the Glärnish, with its precipices, woods, and snow streaks. You are told that there are still a few chamois on these lofty summits. You think it an illegitimate and cruel use of the rifle to exterminate so agile, graceful, and brave a creature, that only asks, as its portion of the world, for the inaccessible rocks and snow-fields. When you reach the head of the lake, you find that what was, once, its upper part is now marsh, passing into meadow. You then come to the inn of Vorauen. Its site has been ill chosen. It seems as if it had dropped out of the clouds upon the open, level, treeless dank grass. There is an unfinished, untidy, repellent aspect about it, both within and without. You are glad that you are not going to stop at it. Here you leave your carriage; and should you have had the driver we had, you will shake his hand, and say adieu, with a perceptible sense of regret that you are to see his face, his manly good-natured face, no more.
At Richisau, three miles from Vorauen, we engaged a horse for the little man to take him to the top of the Pass. Richisau is a very different kind of place from Vorauen. Instead of being on the damp, naked meadow, it is among woods and mountains. The difference is not unappreciated; for at Vorauen we did not find a soul: here were sixty visitors, many of whom we had passed, strolling about the woods we had just come through. Many more we saw seated, in the shade, under the large, ancient, detached sycamores that surround the inn. I call it an inn, because there were so many people using the little, shed-like structures, which were all that we saw. Had it not been for the visitors we should not have supposed that there was any inn at all. The landlord, however, is now building a large hotel—not quite a monster, still a goodly structure of stone. Any oversights, therefore, or misapprehensions of the kind we might have fallen into, will not, for the future, be possible. Almost all the visitors—all, as far as we saw—were Germans and Swiss; chiefly the latter. The landlord and his wife are of the simple-minded, smiling, obliging sort; and so we will wish that their new house may be a success. For people intending to do the whole Pass, whether from Glarus, or from Schwyz, of course on foot, the best arrangement would be to go as far as Richisau by the afternoon of the first day. To stop at Vorauen would be in every respect a mistake. To stop at Richisau would, I believe, be in every respect a gain.
As the Col is only 5,000 feet above the sea, and as you have at Richisau a good part of the ascent behind you, you will find no stiff work between Richisau and the summit. There are no striking mountain ranges, or masses, in sight as you complete the ascent; nor when you have made the top. A little beyond the Col are two summer châlets for herdsmen, with a huddling brook in front of them. Here we called a halt for our mid-day cold meats and diluted medoc. For the use of a table brought out, and set for us by the side of the stream, the herdsmen were satisfied with what was left upon it, including a half-franc: it would have been better had it been a whole one. But as, in Switzerland, the price of brandy, except in hotels, is little more than the cost of manufacture, the materials from which it is made being only apples, potatoes, and such-like, which are abundant and cheap, in that half-franc was concentrated an amount of force capable of transmutation into a deep carouse.