Saturday, July 23. Rode in a voiture from Meyringen to Brienz, on the opposite end of the lake from Interlachen. Embarked in a rowboat of four immense oars tied by withs. Two men and one woman pulled three, and W. and I took turns at the fourth. The boat being high built, flat bottomed, with awning and flagstaff, rolled and tipped so easily that soon H., with remorseful visage, abandoned her attempt to write, and lay down. There is a fresh and savage beauty about this lake, which can only be realized by rowing across.
Interlachen is underrated in the guide books. It has points of unrivalled loveliness; the ruins of the old church of Rinconberg, for example, commanding a fine view of both lakes, of the country between, and the Alps around, while just at your feet is a little lake in a basin, some two hundred feet above the other lakes. Then, too, from your window in the Belvedere, you gaze upon the purity of the Jungfrau. The church, too, where on Sabbath we attended Episcopal service, is embowered in foliage, and seems like some New England village meeting house.
Monday, July 25. Adieu to Interlachen! Ho for Lucerne and the Righi! Dined at Thun in a thunder storm. Stopped over night at Langnau, an out-of-the-way place. H. and G. painted Alpine flowers, while I played violin. This violin must be of spotless pedigree, even as our Genevese friend, Monsieur—, certified when he reluctantly sold it me. None but a genuine AMATI, a hundred years old, can possess this mysterious quality, that can breathe almost inaudible, like a mornbeam in the parlor, or predominate imperious and intense over orchestra and choir, illuminating with its fire, like chain lightning, the arches of a vast cathedral. Enchanted thing—what nameless spirit impregnates with magnetic ether the fine fibres of thy mechanism!
Tuesday, 26. Rode from Langnan to Lucerne just in time to take the boat for Weggis. From the door of the Hotel de la Concorde, at Weggis, the guide chef fitted us out with two chaises à porteur, six carriers, two mules with grooms, making a party of fourteen in all.
After ascending a while the scenery became singularly wild and beautiful. Vast walls and cliffs of conglomerate rose above us, up which our path wound in zigzags. Below us were pines, vales, fields, and hills, themselves large enough for mountains. There, at our feet, with its beautiful islands, bays, capes, and headlands, gleams the broad lake of the four cantons, consecrated by the muse of Schiller and the heroism of Tell. New plains are unrolling, new mountain tops sinking below our range of vision. We plunged into a sea of mist. It rolled and eddied, boiling beneath us. Through its mysterious pall we saw now a skeleton pine stretch out its dark pointing hand—now a rock, shapeless and uncouth, far below, like a behemoth petrified in mid ocean. Then an eddy would sweep a space for the sun to pour a flood of gold on this field far down at our feet, on that village, on this mountain side with its rosy vapor-wreaths, upon yon distant lake, making it a crater of blinding brightness. On we went wrapped in mantles, mist, and mystery, trembling with chilliness and enthusiasm. We reached the summit just as the sunset-gazing crowd were dispersing. And this is Righi Kulm!
Wednesday, 27. At half past three in the morning we were aroused by the Alpine horn. We sprang up, groping and dressing in the dark, and went out in the frosty air. Ascending the ridge we looked off upon a sleeping world. Mists lay beneath like waves, clouds, like a sea. On one side the Oberland Alps stretched along the horizon their pale, blue-white peaks. Other mountains, indistinct in color and outline, chained round the whole horizon. Yes, "the sleeping rocks did dream" all over the wide expanse, as they slumbered on their cloudy pillow, and their dream was of the coming dawn. Twelve lakes, leaden pale or steel blue, dreamed also under canopies of cloud, and the solid land dreamed, and all her wilds and forests. And in the silence of the dream already the tinge of clairvoyance lit the gray east; a dim, diffuse aurora, while yet the long, low clouds hung lustreless above; nor could the eye prophesy where should open the door in heaven. At length, a flush, as of shame or joy, presaged the pathway. Tongues of many-colored light vibrated beneath the strata of clouds, now dappled, mottled, streaked with fire; those on either hand of a light, flaky, salmon tint, those in the path and portal of the dawn of a gorgeous blending and blazoning of golden glories. The mists all abroad stirred uneasily. Tufts of feathery down came up out of the mass. Soft, floating films lifted from the surface and streamed away dissolving. Strange hues came out on lake and shore, far, far below. The air, the very air became conscious of a coming change, and the pale tops of distant Alps sparkled like diamonds. It was night in the valleys. And we heard the cocks crowing below, and the uneasy stir of a world preparing to awake. So Isaiah foresaw a slumbering world, while Messiah's coming glanced upon the heights of Zion, and cried,—
"Behold, darkness shall cover the earth
And gross darkness the people;
But the Lord shall rise upon THEE,
And his glory shall be seen upon thee!"
Hushed the immense crowd of spectators waited; then he came. On the gray edge of the horizon, under the emblazoned strata, came a sudden coal of fire, as shot from the altar of Heaven. It dazzled, it wavered, it consumed. Its lambent lines lengthened sidelong. At length, not a coal, but a shield, as the shield of Jehovah, stood above the east, and it was day. The vapor sea heaved, and broke, and rolled up the mountain sides. The lakes flashed back the conquering splendor. The wide panorama, asleep no more, was astir with teeming life.
Tuesday, July 28. One of the greatest curiosities in Lucerne is the monument to those brave Swiss guards who were slain for their unshaken fidelity to the unhappy Louis XVI. In a sequestered spot the rocky hill side is cut away, and in the living strata is sculptured the colossal figure of a dying lion. A spear is broken off in his side, but in his last struggle he still defends a shield, marked with the fleur de lis of France. Below are inscribed in red letters, as if charactered in blood, the names of the brave officers of that devoted band. From many a crevice in the rock drip down trickling springs, forming a pellucid basin below, whose dark, glossy surface, encircled with trees and shrubs, reflects the image. The design of the monument is by Thorwaldsen, and the whole effect of it has an inexpressible pathos.
[Illustration: of the memorial. Above the grotto reads: