"One of the pillars in this vault is covered with names. I think it is Bonnevard's Pillar. There are the names of Byron, Hunt, Schiller, and ever so many more celebrities. As we were going from the cell our conductress seemed to have a sudden light upon her mind. She asked a question or two of some of our party, and fell upon me vehemently to put my name also there. Charley scratched it on the soft freestone, and there it is for future ages. The lady could scarce repress her enthusiasm; she shook my hand over and over again, and said she had read 'Uncle Tom.' 'It is beautiful,' she said, 'but it is cruel.'
"Monday, July 18. Weather suspicious. Stowed ourselves and our baggage into our voiture, and bade adieu to our friends and to Geneva. Ah, how regretfully! From the market-place we carried away a basket of cherries and fruit as a consolation. Dined at Lausanne, and visited the cathedral and picture-gallery, where was an exquisite Eva. Slept at Meudon.
"Tuesday, July 19. Rode through Payerne to Freyburg. Stopped at the Zähringer Hof,—most romantic of inns.
"Wednesday, July 20. Examined, not the lions, but the bears of Berne. Engaged a voiture and drove to Thun. Dined and drove by the shore of the lake to Interlachen, arriving just after a brilliant sunset.
"We crossed the Wengern Alps to Grindelwald. The Jungfrau is right over against us,—her glaciers purer, tenderer, more dazzlingly beautiful, if possible, than those of Mont Blanc. Slept at Grindelwald."
From Rosenlaui, on this journey, Charles Beecher writes:—
"Friday, July 22. Grindelwald to Meyringen. On we came, to the top of the Great Schiedeck, where H. and W. botanized, while I slept. Thence we rode down the mountain till we reached Rosenlaui, where, I am free to say, a dinner was to me a more interesting object than a glacier. Therefore, while H. and W. went to the latter, I turned off to the inn, amid their cries and reproaches.
"Here, then, I am, writing these notes in the salle à manger of the inn, where other voyagers are eating and drinking, and there is H. feeding on the green moonshine of an emerald ice cave. One would almost think her incapable of fatigue. How she skips up and down high places and steep places, to the manifest perplexity of the honest guide Kienholz, père, who tries to take care of her, but does not exactly know how! She gets on a pyramid of débris, which the edge of the glacier is plowing and grinding up, sits down, and falls—not asleep exactly, but into a trance. W. and I are ready to go on: we shout; our voice is lost in the roar of the torrent. We send the guide. He goes down, and stands doubtfully. He does not know exactly what to do. She hears him, and starts to her feet, pointing with one hand to yonder peak, and with the other to that knife-like edge that seems cleaving heaven with its keen and glistening cimeter of snow, reminding one of Isaiah's sublime imagery, 'For my sword is bathed in heaven.' She points at the grizzly rocks, with their jags and spear-points. Evidently she is beside herself, and thinks she can remember the names of those monsters, born of earthquake and storm, which cannot be named nor known but by sight, and then are known at once perfectly and forever."
After traveling through Germany, Belgium, and Holland, the party returned to Paris toward the end of August, from which place Mrs. Stowe writes:—