[Illustration: of a glacier's terminus, with animals and small buildings in the foreground.]
On the whole, the glacier of Rosenlaui paid for looking—even at dinner time—which is saying a good deal.
JOURNAL—(CONTINUED.)
FRIDAY, July 22, Grindelwald to Meyringen. On we came, to the top of the Great Schiedich, 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. I waved my cap and made a bow. A glacier!—go five rods farther to see a glacier! Catch me in any such folly. The fact is, Alps are good, like confections, in moderation; but to breakfast, dine, and sup on Alps surfeits my digestion.
Here, for example, I am writing these notes in the salle-à-manger of the inn, where other voyagers are eating and drinking, and there H. is 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 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 ploughing 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 knifelike 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.
Mountains are Nature's testimonials of anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must. In them hearts that have ceased to rejoice, and have learned to suffer, find kindred, and here, an earth worn with countless cycles of sorrow, utters to the stars voices of speechless despair.
And all this time no dinner! All this time H. is at the glacier! How do I know but she has fallen into a crevasse? How do I know but that a cliff, one of those ice castles, those leaning turrets, those frosty spearmen, have toppled over upon her? I shudder at the reflection. I will write no more.
I had just written thus far, when in came H. and W. in high feather. O, I had lost the greatest sight in Switzerland! There was such a chasm, a mountain cut in twain, with a bridge, and a man to throw a stone down; and you could hear it go boom, and he held his hat! "Not a doubt of that," said I. Then there was a cavern in the ice, and the ice was so green, and the water dripped from the roof, and a great river rushed out. Such was the substance of their united enthusiasm.
But, alas! it was not enough to lose the best glacier in Switzerland; I must needs lose two cascades and a chamois. Just before coming to Meyringen, I was composedly riding down a species of stone gridiron, set up sidewise, called a road, when the guide overtook me, and requested me to walk, as the road was bad. Stupid fellow! he said not a word about cascades and chamois, and so I went down like a chamois myself, taking the road that seemed best and nearest, and reached the inn an hour before the rest. After waiting till I became alarmed, and was just sending back a messenger to inquire, lo, in they came, and began to tell me of cascades and chamois.
"What cascade? What chamois? I have not seen any!" And then what a burst! "Not seen any! What, two cascades, one glacier, and a four-year-old chamois, lost in one day! What will become of you? Is this the way you make the tour of Switzerland?"