The Complete Writings-2 [30]
must be a serious affair if they ever roll out of bed.
Late in the afternoon thunder began to tumble about the hills, and clouds snatched away from our sight the snow-peaks at the end of the valley; and at length the rain fell on those who had just arrived and on the unjust. We took refuge from the hardest of it in a lonely chalet high up on the hillside, where a roughly dressed, frowzy Swiss, who spoke bad German, and said he was a schoolmaster, gave us a bench in the shed of his schoolroom. He had only two pupils in attendance, and I did not get a very favorable impression of this high school. Its master quite overcame us with thanks when we gave him a few centimes on leaving. It still rained, and we arrived in St. Nicolaus quite damp.
There is a decent road from St. Nicolaus to Zermatt, over which go wagons without springs. The scenery is constantly grander as we ascend. The day is not wholly clear; but high on our right are the vast snow-fields of the Weishorn, and out of the very clouds near it seems to pour the Bies Glacier. In front are the splendid Briethorn, with its white, round summit; the black Riffelhorn; the sharp peak of the little Matterhorn; and at last the giant Matterhorn itself rising before us, the most finished and impressive single mountain in Switzerland. Not so high as Mont Blanc by a thousand feet, it appears immense in its isolated position and its slender aspiration. It is a huge pillar of rock, with sharply cut edges, rising to a defined point, dusted with snow, so that the rock is only here and there revealed. To ascend it seems as impossible as to go up the Column of Luxor; and one can believe that the gentlemen who first attempted it in 1864, and lost their lives, did fall four thousand feet before their bodies rested on the glacier below.
We did not stay at Zermatt, but pushed on for the hotel on the top of the Riffelberg,--a very stiff and tiresome climb of about three hours, an unending pull up a stony footpath. Within an hour of the top, and when the white hotel is in sight above the zigzag on the breast of the precipice, we reach a green and widespread Alp where hundreds of cows are feeding, watched by two forlorn women,--the "milkmaids all forlorn " of poetry. At the rude chalets we stop, and get draughts of rich, sweet cream. As we wind up the slope, the tinkling of multitudinous bells from the herd comes to us, which is also in the domain of poetry. All the way up,we have found wild flowers in the greatest profusion; and the higher we ascend, the more exquisite is their color and the more perfect their form. There are pansies; gentians of a deeper blue than flower ever was before; forget-me-nots, a pink variety among them; violets, the Alpine rose and the Alpine violet; delicate pink flowers of moss; harebells; and quantities for which we know no names, more exquisite in shape and color than the choicest products of the greenhouse. Large slopes are covered with them,--a brilliant show to the eye, and most pleasantly beguiling the way of its tediousness. As high as I ascended, I still found some of these delicate flowers, the pink moss growing in profusion amongst the rocks of the GornerGrat, and close to the snowdrifts.
The inn on the Riffelberg is nearly eight thousand feet high, almost two thousand feet above the hut on Mount Washington; yet it is not so cold and desolate as the latter. Grass grows and flowers bloom on its smooth upland, and behind it and in front of it are the snow-peaks. That evening we essayed the Gorner-Grat, a rocky ledge nearly ten thousand feet above the level of the sea; but after a climb of an hour and a half, and a good view of Monte Rosa and the glaciers and peaks of that range, we were prevented from reaching the summit, and driven back by a sharp storm of hail and rain. The next morning I started for the GornerGrat again, at four o'clock. The Matterhorn lifted its huge bulk sharply against the sky, except where fleecy clouds lightly draped it and fantastically blew about it. As I ascended, and turned to look at it, its
Late in the afternoon thunder began to tumble about the hills, and clouds snatched away from our sight the snow-peaks at the end of the valley; and at length the rain fell on those who had just arrived and on the unjust. We took refuge from the hardest of it in a lonely chalet high up on the hillside, where a roughly dressed, frowzy Swiss, who spoke bad German, and said he was a schoolmaster, gave us a bench in the shed of his schoolroom. He had only two pupils in attendance, and I did not get a very favorable impression of this high school. Its master quite overcame us with thanks when we gave him a few centimes on leaving. It still rained, and we arrived in St. Nicolaus quite damp.
There is a decent road from St. Nicolaus to Zermatt, over which go wagons without springs. The scenery is constantly grander as we ascend. The day is not wholly clear; but high on our right are the vast snow-fields of the Weishorn, and out of the very clouds near it seems to pour the Bies Glacier. In front are the splendid Briethorn, with its white, round summit; the black Riffelhorn; the sharp peak of the little Matterhorn; and at last the giant Matterhorn itself rising before us, the most finished and impressive single mountain in Switzerland. Not so high as Mont Blanc by a thousand feet, it appears immense in its isolated position and its slender aspiration. It is a huge pillar of rock, with sharply cut edges, rising to a defined point, dusted with snow, so that the rock is only here and there revealed. To ascend it seems as impossible as to go up the Column of Luxor; and one can believe that the gentlemen who first attempted it in 1864, and lost their lives, did fall four thousand feet before their bodies rested on the glacier below.
We did not stay at Zermatt, but pushed on for the hotel on the top of the Riffelberg,--a very stiff and tiresome climb of about three hours, an unending pull up a stony footpath. Within an hour of the top, and when the white hotel is in sight above the zigzag on the breast of the precipice, we reach a green and widespread Alp where hundreds of cows are feeding, watched by two forlorn women,--the "milkmaids all forlorn " of poetry. At the rude chalets we stop, and get draughts of rich, sweet cream. As we wind up the slope, the tinkling of multitudinous bells from the herd comes to us, which is also in the domain of poetry. All the way up,we have found wild flowers in the greatest profusion; and the higher we ascend, the more exquisite is their color and the more perfect their form. There are pansies; gentians of a deeper blue than flower ever was before; forget-me-nots, a pink variety among them; violets, the Alpine rose and the Alpine violet; delicate pink flowers of moss; harebells; and quantities for which we know no names, more exquisite in shape and color than the choicest products of the greenhouse. Large slopes are covered with them,--a brilliant show to the eye, and most pleasantly beguiling the way of its tediousness. As high as I ascended, I still found some of these delicate flowers, the pink moss growing in profusion amongst the rocks of the GornerGrat, and close to the snowdrifts.
The inn on the Riffelberg is nearly eight thousand feet high, almost two thousand feet above the hut on Mount Washington; yet it is not so cold and desolate as the latter. Grass grows and flowers bloom on its smooth upland, and behind it and in front of it are the snow-peaks. That evening we essayed the Gorner-Grat, a rocky ledge nearly ten thousand feet above the level of the sea; but after a climb of an hour and a half, and a good view of Monte Rosa and the glaciers and peaks of that range, we were prevented from reaching the summit, and driven back by a sharp storm of hail and rain. The next morning I started for the GornerGrat again, at four o'clock. The Matterhorn lifted its huge bulk sharply against the sky, except where fleecy clouds lightly draped it and fantastically blew about it. As I ascended, and turned to look at it, its