"Ah," said Rollo, "that is the River Aar, I suppose, flowing through Interlachen from one lake to the other. I thought I should see it somewhere here; but I did not know whether it was before the hotels or behind them."
A short distance beyond the stream Rollo saw the lower part of a perpendicular precipice of gray rock. All except the lower part of this precipice was concealed by the fogs and clouds, which seemed to settle down so low upon the landscape in all directions as to conceal almost every thing but the surface of the ground.
"I wonder how high that precipice is," said Rollo to himself.
"I wonder whether I could climb up to the top of it," he continued, still talking to himself, "if I could only find some way to get across the river? There must be some way, I suppose. Perhaps there is a bridge."
Rollo then turned his eye upward to look at the clouds. In one place there seemed to be a break among them, and the fleecy masses around the break were slowly moving along. The place where Rollo was looking was about the middle of the sky; that is, about midway between the horizon and the zenith.[5] While Rollo was looking at this break, which seemed, while he looked at it, to brighten up and open more and more, he saw suddenly, to his utter amazement, a large green tree burst into view in the midst of it, and then disappear again a moment afterwards as a fresh mass of cloudy vapor drifted over. Rollo was perfectly bewildered with astonishment. To see a green tree, clear and distinct in form and bright with the beams of the sun which just at that instant caught upon it, breaking out to view suddenly high up among the clouds of the sky, seemed truly an astonishing spectacle. Rollo had scarcely recovered from the first emotion of his surprise before the clouds parted again, wider than before, and brought into view, first a large mass of foliage, which formed the termination of a grove of trees; then a portion of a smooth, green field, with a flock of sheep feeding upon it, clinging apparently to the steep slope like flies to a wall; and finally a house, with a little blue smoke curling from the chimney. Rollo was perfectly beside himself with astonishment and delight at this spectacle; and he determined immediately to go and ask his uncle to come and see.
He accordingly left the window and made all haste to his uncle's door. He knocked. His uncle said, "Come in." Rollo opened the door. His uncle was standing by the window of his room, looking out. This was on the front side of the hotel.
"Uncle George!" said Rollo, "Uncle George! Come and look out with me at the back window. There is a flock of sheep feeding in a green field away up in the sky!"
"Come and look here!" said Mr. George.
So Rollo went to the window where Mr. George was standing, and his astonishment at what he saw was even greater than before. The clouds had separated into great fleecy masses and were slowly drifting away, while through the openings that appeared in them there were seen bright and beautiful views of groves, green pasturages, smiling little hamlets and villages, green fields, and here and there dark forests of evergreen trees, with peaks of rocks or steep precipices peeping out among them. At one place, through an opening or gap in the nearer mountains, there could be seen far back towards the horizon the broad sides and towering peak of a distant summit, which seemed to be wholly formed of vast masses of ice and snow, and which glittered with an inexpressible brilliancy under the rays of the morning sun.
"That is the Jungfrau,"[6] said Mr. George.