Letters from Switzerland

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

In the morning we found the path that led us out of the valley to the Glaciers of the Aar. The mountain of earth, rocks, ice and snow that we encountered put to flight all ideas we had formed of a glacier. We seemed to have come to a vast heap of sand, or to the debris brought down by an avalanche, but from the base of it a torrent was rushing of a dirty milky hue, and out of its front we could see rocks of blue ice projecting. Now and then a mass of earth or a huge boulder would be hurled along down the precipice.

And this mighty mass of ice, decaying at the front and pressed down from above, is slowly moving onward at the rate of some twelve inches a day. If a stream of water running across it cuts a wide seam, so that the mass is suddenly brought down, the shock will throw up the ice in ridges, and in various fantastic shapes, as if some great explosion had upheaved the frozen ocean, and the fragments had come down in wild confusion, like the ruins of a crystal city. Then the sun gradually melts the towers, and they assume shapes of dazzling beauty, palaces of glass, silver domes, and shining battlements—making us to wonder that so much beauty and magnificence are seemingly wasted in these dreary solitudes.

Nestled charmingly among the hills is the sweet village of Interlaken. The plain which it adorns stretches from Lake Thun to Lake Brienz, and the quiet retreat it furnishes is improved by hundreds of English people, who make it a summer residence. It combines two advantages, very rarely blended in this world—it is cheap and genteel. A large number of neat boarding-houses, some of them aspiring to the rank of first-class hotels, are scattered along the main street of the village; and at the Hotel des Alpen, the largest establishment and admirably kept, the traveller may find good rooms and board for a dollar a day, and at even less than that if he is disposed to be very economical. We had crossed the Wengern Alp and passed the vale of Grindelwald; had seen an avalanche come down from the side of the Jungfrau, and been amused with the little cascade called the Staubach, about which poets and printers have gone into ecstasies; and we were glad to find so quiet, beautiful, and civilized a spot in which to sit down for a few days and rest.

While we were at Interlaken we made a beautiful excursion on Lake Brienz to the Giesbach Fall. It has some peculiarities that claim for it the very first rank among the falls of Switzerland. See the little stream that issues as from a cleft in the rock, nearly a thousand feet above the waters of the lake. Then among the dark evergreens the white flood comes swelling and plunging into secret abysses where the eye can not search its hidings, but it rises again with a widened torrent, and now spreads a broad bosom of waters over a mighty precipice; and here a bridge has been thrown across in front of the falls, and a gallery cut away behind it, so that it may be circumvented by the visitor who is provided with an overcoat of India rubber, or is willing to take a thorough sponging for sake of the submarine excursion. When I had completed the circuit, a lady was regretting that she could not venture on the tour, but her scruples were instantly removed when I offered her my water-proof, and in a few minutes she returned “charmed” with her trip. Once more the swollen mass of waters plunges over the rocks and shoots out into the lake, in one of the most romantic and beautiful regions that is to be found in this wildly beautiful land.

I pass over the experiences of a few days’ travel, and come suddenly to the summit of the Col de Balm.

Mont Blanc is in sight! Not a faint and doubtful view of a peak among a hundred peaks, but the monarch of the Alps stands there—a king in his glory, revealed from his summit to the base. A cloud is gathered like a halo on his head; but it rises and vanishes as we look upon it with silent admiration and awe. Around him are the Aiguilles or Needles, bare pinnacles of rock stretching up like guards into the heavens, and between are the glaciers—reflecting now the rays of the noonday sun, and among them the Mer de Glace—winding along down the gorges, and resting their cold feet in the vale below.

UNDER THE GEISBACH FALLS.

Afterward I saw Mont Blanc from its base, and sought other heights from which it might be surveyed, but I could find nothing comparable to the view from the Col de Balm. There it stands, towering fifteen thousand eight hundred and ten feet toward the sky, the loftiest summit in Europe, with thirty-four glaciers around it; and as I gazed, it was a strange question to discuss—but one that might well be argued till sundown—is old Ocean, or Niagara, a sublimer sight?

It seems so near the sky that the blue firmament kisses its brow. It is so far off, yet so near, so bright and pure, that the angels might be sporting on its summit and be safe from the intrusion of men. It is a solemn mountain. Even the hills of Syria and Palestine, on which I afterward gazed, Lebanon and Hermon, Carmel and Horeb, with their hallowed memories clustering on them, were not more impressive than this hoary hill—forever clothed in white raiment, standing there like an ivory throne for the King of Kings!