Round about, there was perfect silence and solitude. Long stretches of mist were hovering over the wild valley, where the Sitter comes out of the Seealpsee; whilst at the side, a towering wall of rocks, fringed by scanty green plants, rose up towards heaven.
The mountain glens, which in the present days, are inhabited by a merry and numerous race of herdsmen, were then but scantily peopled. Only the cell of the Abbot of St. Gall stood there in the valley; surrounded by a few small, humble cottages.
After the bloody battle of Zulpich, a handful of liberty-loving Allemannic men, who could not learn to bend their necks to the Franconian yoke had settled down in that wilderness. Their descendants were still living there, in scattered, shingle-covered houses, and in summer they drove their herds up into the Alps. They were a race of strong and healthy mountaineers, who, untouched by the goings on in the world at large, enjoyed a simple free life, which they bequeathed to the following generations.
The path which was followed by our traveller, became steeper and rougher. He now stood before a steep overhanging wall of rocks. A heavy drop of water had fallen on his head from above; upon which he cast up a searching look, to see whether the grim canopy of stones, would yet delay falling down, till he had passed by. Rocky walls, however, luckily can remain longer in an oblique position, than any structure made by human hands; so nothing fell down, but a second drop.
Leaning with his left hand on the stone wall, the man continued his way, which, however, became narrower with every step he took. The dark precipice at his side came nearer and nearer; a giddy depth yawning up at him, ... and now all trace of a pathway ceased altogether. Two mighty pine-trunks were laid over the abyss, serving as a bridge.
"It must be done," said the man, boldly stepping over it. Heaving a deep sigh of relief, when his feet touched ground again on the other side, he turned round to inspect the dangerous passage, somewhat more at his leisure.
It was a narrow promontory, above and below which there was a steep, yellowish grey wall of rocks. In the depth below, scarcely visible, was the mountain-brook Sitter, like a silver band in the green valley, whilst the seagreen mirror of the Seealpsee, seemed to hide itself shyly between the dark fir-trees. Opposite, in their armour of ice and snow, there rose the host of mountain-giants; and the pen feels a shudder of delight pass through it, when called upon to write down their names. The long stretched bewildering Kamor; the tremendous walls of the Boghartenfirst; the Sigelsalp and Maarwiese, on whose battlements grows a luxurious vegetation, like moss on the roofs of old houses. Then, the mysterious keeper of the secret of the lake, the "old man," with his deeply furrowed stone-forehead, and hoary head,--the chancellor and bosom-friend of the mighty Säntis.
"Ye mountains and vales, praise the Lords!" exclaimed the wanderer, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the spectacle before him. Many hundreds of mountain-swallows fluttered out of the crevices between the rocks. Their appearance was like a good omen for the lonely traveller.
He made some steps onwards. There, the wall of rocks had many a fissure, and he saw a twofold cavern. A simple cross, made of rudely carved wood, stood beside it. Stems of fir-trees, heaped up on one side, and interlaced with branches of the same, in the manner of a blockhouse, bore witness to its being a human habitation. Not a sound interrupted the stillness around.
The stranger knelt down before the cross, and prayed there a long while.