Interlaken, July 3, 1858.
I have come out of the eternal snows, and upon my arrival here find your letter. You do not give your address at G...., and yet it seems to me that it is at that place I should write to you. I hope you will have the wit to go to the post-office, or that the post-office will have the wit to carry the letter to you. To the present time our travels have been favoured by the weather. We had rain nowhere but at the Grimsel, which compelled us to spend two nights in that magnificent funnel. The journey had its difficulties. There was a great deal of snow, and it continued to fall. I had a tumble into a hole with my horse; but we pulled ourselves out without other inconvenience than rather too much coolness for an hour or two. A Yankee lady whom we met made at the same spot a picturesque somersault. I am sun-blistered, and my skin is peeling from my forehead to my neck.
I have visited the glacier of the Rhone, which I do not advise you to do; nevertheless, it is the most beautiful place I have seen up to the present time. I have made a fairly accurate sketch of it, which I will show you. I shall hope to meet you in Vienna in October. It is an attractive city, containing some Roman ruins which I shall have the pleasure of explaining to you and of revisiting in your society.
Give me your commissions for Venice. I have not determined by which route I shall go to Innsbruck, whether by Lake Constance, or through Lindau, or perhaps Munich; but I shall certainly pass through Innsbruck, for I am to go to Venice by way of Trent, and not by vulgar Splugen. Write to me, therefore, at Innspruck without dilly-dallying too long about it....
CLXXIX
Innspruck, July 25, 1858.
I arrived here last night, where I found your letter of ancient date....
My itinerary has changed altogether. After having travelled entirely through the Oberland, I went to Zurich. There I was seized with the desire to see Salzburg, and I crossed over Lake Constance to Lindau, and thence to Munich, where I lingered several days visiting the museum.
Salzburg seems to me to deserve its reputation, by which I mean its German reputation. Happily, to most tourists it is an unknown country. Near by there is a mountain called the Gagsberg, standing in almost the same position as the Righi, from which one sees spread before him the same panorama of lakes and mountains. The lakes are poor affairs, to be sure, but the mountains are infinitely more splendid than those surrounding the Righi. Add to this the fact that there are no English tourists to bore you with their faces, and that you are in the midst of the most absolute solitude, knowing to a certainty—which is an important consideration—that at the end of a three hours’ walk you will enjoy a good dinner at Salzburg.
I went yesterday into the Zitterthal, which is a charming valley, one end of which is inclosed by a great glacier. The mountains to the right and the left rise sharply before you, which is the same inconvenience that one suffers in Switzerland: there is no foreground, no means of determining the real height of surrounding objects.