Töpfer, in his story entitled “Les Deux Scheidegg,” gives a most enthusiastic description of an avalanche. I think I like the view from Pilatus better than from Rigi; but from both the mountains look like a colossal ocean in a storm and suddenly stricken by the sight of Medusa’s face!
Ned took me in his motor-boat on several trips around the lake which has so many names. I was not really so much interested in the William Tell region as I suppose I should have been. Suppose it were proved as decisively as Tell, as Eindridi with King Olaf, as Hemingr with King Harald, or as Geyti, son of Alask, have been proved to be mere sun myths, that Napoleon and Apollo were really the same, and that George Washington was only a sun myth! His axe corresponds to the bow and arrow; it cuts down the cherry-tree of darkness with its glittering edge and brings liberty to his fellow-man. Who would then care, for any sentimental reasons, to go to Mount Vernon? Why, Schiller, himself, never saw the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons any more than Coleridge ever saw Chamonix; he got all his local colour from Goethe’s descriptions. To go to the Tell Chapel is to participate in a fraud! Yet the natives each year take part in a sort of folk-play, which has all the solemnity of a semi-religious celebration. I did not care to stop as we passed by; still less when we took passage in a big Zeppelin dirigible and looked down upon the big sprawling lake winding among its mountains!
ON THE LAKE OF LUCERNE.
Ned actually waked up enough to walk with me about Lucerne; like one who always has the opportunity, he had never before been through the two covered bridges past the imposing water tower or scrutinized the quaint wall paintings. He went with me to see the famous Lion of Lucerne—one of the few memorial monsters that do not pall on acquaintance. The little pool in front adds immensely to the effect.
I had to tear myself away from the pleasant and luxurious home of my friend. I went back to Lausanne by a somewhat different route, taking in Sarnen, Meyringen and Brienz, and then going by steamboat from end to end of the Brienzersee, not failing to spend a few hours at the Giessbach. They illuminate it at night, but there is something immodest about such an exhibition; it is like catching sight of a wood-nymph or a water-fairy. I remember once seeing a great fire at Niagara Falls and the river actually turned red with shame. But, by moonlight, without artificial streams of light, it must be enchanting.
I made a little stay at Interlaken, and from there I ran over to Lauterbrunnen, where the Staubbach falls over its frowning suicidal cliffs and dies before it reaches the valley. It is weird and ghostlike—the spirit of a waterfall. I walked far up into the valley, and, coming back to the hotel once more, saw that delicate blush on the Jungfrau. I don’t wonder Thomas Gray declares that “the mountains are ecstatic and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year.” I would go farther and say that as one grew older, one should live among them or in sight of them.