LETTER XXXVIII.
DEAR CHILDREN:—
To-day we have been in the Wengern Alps—the scenes described in Manfred. Imagine us mounting, about ten o'clock, from the valley of Lauterbrunn, on horseback—our party of three—with two guides. We had first been to see the famous Staubbach, a beautiful, though not sublime, object. Up we began to go among those green undulations which form the lower part of the mountain.
[Illustration: of narrow, high alpine meadows with grazing livestock.]
It is haying time; a bright day; all is cheerful; the birds sing; men, women, and children are busy in the field. Up we go, zigzag; it grows steeper and steeper. Now right below me is a field, where men are literally working almost on a perpendicular wall, cutting hay; now we are so high that the houses in the valley look like chips. Here we stand in a place two thousand feet above the valley. There is no shield or screen. The horse stands on the very edge; the guide stops, lets go his bridle, and composedly commences an oration on the scene below. "0, for mercy's sake, why do you stop here?" I say. "Pray go on." He looks in my face, with innocent wonder, takes the bridle on his arm, and goes on.
Now we have come to the little village of Wengern, whence the Wengern Alps take their name. How beautiful! how like fairyland! Up here, midway in air, is a green nook, with undulating dells, and shadowy, breezy nests, where are the cottages of the haymakers. The Delectable Mountains had no scene more lovely. Each house has its roof heavily loaded with stones. "What is that for?" I ask. "The whirlwinds," says my guide, with a significant turn of his hands. "This is the school house," he adds, as we pass a building larger than the rest.
Now the path turns and slopes down a steep bank, covered with haycocks, to a little nook below, likewise covered with new hay. If my horse is going to throw me any where, I wish it may be here: it is not so bad a thing to roll down into that hay. But now we mount higher; the breezy dells, enamelled with flowers and grass, become fewer; the great black pines take their place. Right before us, in the purest white, as a bride adorned for her husband, rises the beautiful Jungfrau, wearing on her forehead the Silver Horn, and the Snow Horn. The Silver Horn is a peak, dazzlingly bright, of snow; and its crest is now seen in relief against a sky of the deepest blue. See, also, how those dark pines of the foreground contrast with it, like the stern, mournful realities of life seen against the dazzling hopes of heaven.
There is something celestial in these mountains. You might think such a vision as that to be a bright footstool of Heaven, from which the next step would be into an unknown world. The pines here begin to show that long white beard of moss which I admire so much in Maine. Now, we go right up over their heads. There, the tall pines are under our feet. A little more—and now above us rise the stern, naked rocks, where only the chamois and the wild goat live. But still, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, looks forth the Jungfrau.
We turn to look down. That Staubbach, which in the valley seemed to fall from an immense precipice, higher than we could gaze, is now a silver thread, far below our feet; and the valley of Lauterbrunn seems as nothing. Only bleak, purplish crags, rising all around us, and silent, silver mountains looking over them.
"That one directly before you is the Monk," says C., calling to me from behind, and pointing to a great snow peak.