"And I think," said Mr. George to Rollo, after having made this calculation, "we had better save that money, and have it to buy beautiful colored engravings of Swiss scenery with when we get to Geneva."
"I think so too," said Rollo.
So it was concluded to take but one horse with them, on the understanding that each of the travellers was to walk half the way.
Rollo accordingly, when the horse was brought to the door, climbed up upon his back with the guide's assistance, and, after adjusting his feet to the stirrup, prepared to set out on the ascent. His heart was bounding with excitement and delight.
When all was ready the party moved on, Rollo on the horse and Mr. George and Henry walking along by his side. They proceeded a short distance along the road, and then turned into a path which led towards the side of the valley opposite to the Staubach. They soon reached the foot of the slope, and then they began to ascend. The path grew more and more steep as they proceeded, until at length it became very precipitous; and in some places the horse was obliged to scramble up, as it were, as if he were going up stairs. Rollo clung to his seat manfully in all these places; and he would have been sometimes afraid were it not that, in every case where there could be even any apparent danger, Henry would come to his side and keep by him, ready to render assistance at a moment's notice whenever any should be needed. In this way the party moved slowly on up the face of the mountain, making many short turns and windings among the rocks and going back and forth in zigzags on the green declivities. Sometimes for a few minutes they would be lost in a grove of firs, or pines; then they would come out upon some rounded promontory of grass land or projecting peak of rocks; and a few minutes afterwards they would move along smoothly for a time upon a level, with a steep acclivity, rough with rocks and precipices on one side, and an abrupt descent on the other down which a stone would have rolled a thousand feet into the valley below.
Of course the view of the valley became more commanding and more striking the higher they ascended. Rollo wished at every turn to stop and look at it. He did stop sometimes, the guide saying that it was necessary to do so in order to let the horse get his breath a little; for the toil for such an animal of getting up so steep an ascent was very severe. Rollo would have stopped oftener; but he did not like to be left behind by his uncle George, who, being active and agile, mounted very rapidly. Mr. George would often shorten his road very much by climbing directly up the rocks from one turn of the road to the other; while the horse, with Rollo on his back, was compelled to go round by the zigzag.
At last, after they had been ascending for about half an hour, Mr. George stopped, at a place where there was a smooth stone for a seat by the side of the path, to wait for Rollo to come up; and, when Rollo came, Mr. George took him off the horse to let him rest a little. The view of the valley from this point was very grand and imposing. Rollo could look down into it as you could look into the bed of a brook in the country, standing upon the top of the bank on one side. The village, the inn, the little cottages along the roadside, the river, the bridges, and a thousand other objects, all of liliputian size, were to be seen below; while on the farther side the streaming Staubach was in full view, pouring over the brink of the precipice and falling in a dense mass of spray on the rocks at the foot of them.
Rollo could understand now, too, where the fall of the Staubach came from; for above the brink of the precipice, where the water came over, there was now to be seen a vast expanse of mountain country, rising steep, but not precipitously, far above the summit of the precipice, and of course receding as it ascended, so as not to be seen from the valley below. From the elevation, however, to which Rollo had now attained, the whole of this vast region was in view. It was covered with forests, pasturages, chalets, and scattered hamlets; and in the valleys, long, silvery lines of water were to be seen glittering in the sun and twisting and twining down in foaming cascades to the brink of the precipice, where, plunging over, they formed the cataracts which had been seen in the valley below. The Staubach was the largest of these falls; and the stream which produced it could now be traced for many miles as it came dancing along in its shining path down among the ravines of the mountains.
"I see now what makes the fall of the Staubach," said Rollo.