[35] Planché.
[36] Mr. and Miss Hayward, Mrs. and Miss Johnson (now Mrs. Jackson) and myself.
[37] Since the foregoing account was drawn up—now nearly six years ago—great improvements have taken place in the Baths of Pfeffers. A good road for char-a-bancs and light cars is constructed from Ragatz to the Baths, and the whole establishment has been taken out of the hands of the monks of the neighbouring monastery, and put into lay hands. The Bad-haus is improved, and better accommodations are provided for strangers. I should not be surprized if this place becomes fashionable one day, and eclipses Wildbad and Toeplitz!
[38] “Le pont est etroit, souvent glissant, et quelquefois on n’est separé que par une seule planche du noir abîme de la Tamina.”
[39] It is surprising that the author of the “Voyage Pittoresque en Suisse,” and even Dr. Ebell, should have been led into the monstrous error of imagining that the torrent of the Tamina had, in the course of ages, hollowed out of the marble rock this profound bed for itself. We might just as well suppose, that the bed of the Mediterranean had been scooped out by the waters of the Hellespont, in their way from the Black Sea to the Atlantic. The mountain was rent by some convulsion of Nature, and apparently from below upwards, as the breadth, at the bed of the Tamina, is far broader than the external crevice above.
[40] This has not always been the case. The talented authoress of “Reminiscences of the Rhine,” &c. appears to have lacked courage for this enterprise, though her beautiful daughters advanced to the further extremity of the gorge.
[41] This circumstance illustrates, in a very remarkable manner, the effects of passing from a hot, or vapour-bath, into cold air or water. The immunity is nearly certain. The hotter the medium from which we start into the cold, the less danger there is of suffering any inconvenience. This principle in Hygiene is more understood than practised. It will be adverted to farther on.
[42] Lest I should be suspected of exaggeration, in this account of the Baths of Pfeffers, I shall here introduce a short extract from “Reminiscences of the Rhine,” &c. by Mrs. Boddington—a work eulogised to the skies in the Edinburgh Review, and its author represented (and, I understand, deservedly) as a lady of very superior talents and strict veracity. After some slight notice of the Bath-house, Mrs. B. proceeds thus:—
“Behind rolls the stormy Tamina, hemmed in at one side by the dark Bath-house and the impending cliffs, while, on the other, a giant wall of perpendicular rock, starting up daringly, and shutting out the world—almost the light of Heaven—closes up the scene. Our guide proposed that we should visit the mineral springs that boil up from the depth of an awful cavern, several hundred paces from the Bath-house. A bridge, thrown from rock to rock, crosses the flood, and a narrow ledge of planks, fixed, I know not how, against the side of the rock, and suspended over the fierce torrent, leads through a long dark chasm to the source. I ventured but a little way; for, when I found myself on the terrifying shelf, without the slightest ballustrade, and felt it slippery, from the continual spray, and saw nothing between us and the yawning gulf, to which darkness, thickening at every step, gave increased horror, I made a few rapid reflections on foolhardiness, and retreated.”
The following lines were found in an Album at an Inn in the Canton of Glarus, in the Summer of 1825, written by an anonymous English tourist, immediately after visiting the Baths of Pfeffers.