‘Some, perhaps, of the monstrosity is in your own perverted vision. And what there is of it in aberrant humanity cannot be mended by dislike, contempt, and hard words, but only by setting right the conditions of its growth.’
From this point, your seat near the hotel, you may observe that the glacier, as far as you can see it, is bordered on both sides by a perfectly clean margin of loose stones on the foot of either mountain. This margin appears to reach up from the glacier to the wood or turf or lichen-stained rock above, whichever it may be, for a space of two or three hundred feet. Its line is quite unbroken and uniform in height on both sides. It is a very marked feature when observed from this point. Of course all these are moraine stones and rocks, and are now actually on the marginal ice of the glacier, or have been deposited somewhat above its margin, at times when the glacier, having been flowing at a higher level than at present, was again subsiding.
From another seat, in front of the hotel, you look down on Brieg, 5,000 feet beneath you. Beyond Brieg you have a better view than at Rieder Alp of Monte Leone, and of the Fletschhorn, with the zigzags of the Simplon in the wooded depression between them. If you turn your eye to the right, or south-west, you will have before you, some twenty-five miles off, the Zermatt Alps. This morning, when we first saw them, there was a level sea of unbroken cloud resting on their shoulders, which concealed everything below. The substructure was entirely lost, and the snowy summits were floating on the sea of cloud.
A storm swept by us in the afternoon, at about the same hour as the one we had witnessed two days previously at the Eggischhorn. Its character was different. It came on with so violent a squall of wind, that some ladies who were caught in it found it difficult to get back to the hotel. There was not much rain at our height, or just where we were. The clouds were not dense; so that through them we could see the near mountains, looking indistinct and weird, like the ghosts of mountains. But the most interesting effect of this storm was one that was brought about just opposite to us, and exactly over Brieg. For more than an hour two squadrons of clouds came sailing along, on exactly opposite courses; one down the valley to Brieg, and the other up the valley to Brieg. But over Brieg they never met. They were continuously and unfailingly absorbed and dissipated before they came into collision. This I supposed was caused by a large column of heated air ascending incessantly from the heated plain of Brieg.
A word about these two hotels on the Eggischhorn and Bell Alp. Their hard-beset landlords thoroughly understand their business. They also understand their customers. In your dealings with them it is of no manner of use to put yourself out or to bluster. They are quite familiar with all that kind of thing, and know exactly how to dispose of it. These are just the problems they have to solve every day, for some months every year. How are a score or so of persons more than the house was constructed to hold, some of them very impatient, some of them not very rational, to be accommodated without accommodation, and to be taken in without being imposed upon? All of this score are persons who have come up, either in the teeth of the answers they received to their telegrams; or who dated their telegrams from places they were on the point of leaving, and so could not receive the answers sent to them; or who telegraphed at the moment they were about to commence the ascent; or who had never thought of using, or who had wilfully abstained from using the wires. Some, though they appear to have dropped from the clouds, appear, nevertheless, to be still up in them. Our countrymen, we all know—and we pride ourselves on its being so—like to go where they will find difficulties, and much that will be disagreeable. But then it is not in logical, though it may be in human concatenation, that they should be annoyed at finding what they are in search of. The masters of these two hotels show their knowledge of the world, and their good sense, by the ease with which they dispose of all such cases.
As to charges; if you will only consider the height at which you are up in, or above, the clouds, and that everything you may want—milk is the single exception—has to be brought up on horseback or on men’s backs from the valley, and that each journey is a day’s work, you will not look upon them as excessive.
The moral of the whole is, that in the case of many, a visit to the Eggischhorn, or Bell Alp, is a dearly bought pleasure, if to them a pleasure at all. Impatient elderly gentlemen, and strong-minded ladies of whatever age, who know what they are entitled to, and will insist on having it, ought to consider beforehand whether, in their cases, the pleasure will be worth the price.
Of course this does not apply to those who can foresee what, under the circumstances, is to be expected; and who are not in the habit of expecting impossibilities; and who have imagination enough to see things from other points of view than the single one of what they themselves, at the moment, want; and who can submit to paying in discomfort, or in any other unavoidable way, the necessary price for what to them will be well worth it. Some even of the Intransigentes of travel, whose manner it is to kick against the pricks, will not think that the price was too high, when, at home, they look back to what they saw at the Eggischhorn, and at the Bell Alp.
CHAPTER XV.
BRIEG—THE VALAIS—LAUSANNE AND GIBBON—DETAILS AND PLAN OF THE EXCURSION—CONCLUSION.