The writings of Mark Twain [pseud.]
Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
i;fm^ -V i;w .11' < ' ^-t 'i I if , i-f, i' t'' ,1 .1 , , ,'' ' r .' 1, CORNELL UNIV*ERSITY LIBRARY UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY Cornell University Library PS 1300.FO7 V.4 The writings of Mark Twain [pseud.J 3 1924 014 317 717 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014317717 AutI|or*a Natwtttil Ihttioti THE WRITINGS OF MARK TWAIN Volume IV f V \ MOUNTAIN CLIMBING A TRAMP ABROAD BY MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL L. CLEMENS) IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II ILLUSTRATED HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON ' /- (I Copyright, 1879. 1899* and 1907, by Samuel L. Clemens Printed in the United States of America ILLUSTRATIONS MOUNTAIN CLIMBING . . . T. de Thuhtru^ . Frontispiece CLIMBING THE RIFFELBERG . T. de Thulstrup . . . «3 THE MATTERHORN I65 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. A Trip by Proxy — Viat to the Furka Regions — Deadman's Lake — Source of the Rhone — Glacier Tables — Storm in the Moun- tains — Grindelwald — Dead Language — Harris' Report . . S CHAPTER II. From Lucerne to Interlaken — The Briinig Pass — Hermit Home o{ St. Nicholas — Landslides — Children Selling Refreshments — How they Harness a Horse — German Fashions . ... 23 CHAPTER IIL The Jungfrau Hotel — A Whiskered Waitress — An Arkansas Bride — Perfection in Discord — A Famous Victory — A Look from a Window — About the Jungfrau 37 CHAPTER rV. The Giesbach Falls— Why People Visit Them — The Kursaal— From Interlaken to Zermatt on Foot — We took a Buggy — Companions — Kandersteg Valley — Race with a Log . . . 4^ CHAPTER V. An Old Guide — A Dangerous Habitation — Mountain Flowers — Mountain Pigs — Chance for Adventure — Ascent of Monte Rosa — Among the Snows — The Summit 59 CHAPTER VI. New Interest — Lake Daubensee — Turning Mountain Comers— Search for a Hat — Hotel des Alpes — Leuk Baths — Gemmi Precipices — Famous Laddets — A Change of Qothing . . 73 (V) vi Contents CHAPTER VII. Sunday Oiurch Bells — Magnificent Glacier — Almost an Accident — The Matterhom — Zermatt — Home of Mountain Climbers —A Fearful Adventure — Never Satisfied 91 CHAPTER Vin. Decision to Ascend the Riffelberg — Preparations — Schedule of Persons and Things — The Advance — The First Accident — Saved by a Miracle — The Guide's Guide 107 CHAPTER IX. Our Expedition Continued — Scientific Researches — A Your^ American Specimen — Arrival at Riffelberg Hotel — Ascent of Comer Grat — Faith in Thermometers — The Matterhom . .124 CHAPTER X. Guide Books — Plans for the Return of the Expedition — A Glacier Train — Parachute Descent — AH had an Excuse — The Gla- cier Abandoned — Journey to Zermatt 141 CHAPTER XI. Glaciers — Glacier Perils — Immense Size — Traveling Glacier— General Movements — Ascent of Mont Blanc — Loss of Guides — Meeting of Old Friends — The Relics at Chamonix . 152 CHAPTER XII. The Matterhom Catastrophe of 1865 — The Matterhom Conquered — The Descent Commenced — A Fearful Disaster — Death of Lord Douglas and Tvfo Others 165 CHAPTER XIII. Switzerland — Graveyard at Zermatt — From St. Nicholas to Visp — Dangerous Traveling — Chillon — Mont Blanc and its Neigh- bors —A Wild Drive — Benefit of Getting Drank . . . .173 CHAPTER XIV. Chamonix — Contrasts — The Guild of Guides — The Returned Tourist — The Conqueror of Mont Blanc— Professional Jeal- ousy — Mountain Music — A Hwt for a NvHSWCg . , . . jgg Contents vij CHAPTER XV. Looking at Mont Blanc —Ascent by Telescope — Safe and Rapid Return — Diplomas Asked for and Refused — Disaster of 1866 — First Ascent of a Woman „ . igg CHAPTER XVI. A Catastrophe which Cost Eleven Lives — Accident of 1870 — A Party of Eleven— Note-books of the Victims — Within Five Minutes of Safety — Facing Death Resignedly 213 CHAPTER XVII. Hotel des Pyramids — Glacier des Bossons — One of the Shows — Advice to Tourists — Glacier ToU Collector — Pure Ice Water — Death Rate — A Pleasure Excursionist 215 CHAPTER XVIII. Geneva — American Manners — GaUantiy — Col. Baker of London — Arkansaw Justice — Safety of Women in America — Town of Chambery — Turin — Insulted Woman — Italian Honesty 225 CHAPTER XIX. In Milan — Incidents Met With — Children — Honest Conductor — The Cathedral — Old Masters— Tintoretto's Picture — Emotional Tourists — Basson's Picture — The Hair Trunk . 240 CHAPTER XX. In Venice — St. Mark's Cathedral — Discovery of an Antique — Riches of St. Mark's — A Church Robber Hanged — Private Diimer — European Food 254 CHAPTER XXI. Why Some Things Are — Art in Rome and Florence — The Fig Leaf Mania — Titian's Venus — Seeing and Describing — A Real Work of Art— Titian's Moses — Home 267 •viii Contents APPENDIX. A.— The Portier Analyzed 273 B. — Heidelberg Castle Described 278 C. — The College Prison and Inmates / . • . . 284 D. — The Awful German Language 290 E.— Legends of the Castle • . 3°8 V. — The Journals of Germany - 314 A TRAMP ABROAD CHAPTER L AN hour's sail brought us to Lucerne again. I Judged it best to go to bed and rest several days, for I knew that the man who undertakes to make the tour of Europe on foot must take care of himself. Thinking over my plans, as mapped out, I per- ceived that they did not take in the Furka Pass, the Rhone Glacier, the Finsteraarhorn, the Wetterhorn, etc. I immediately examined the guide-book to see if these were important, and found they were ; in fact, a pedestrian tour of Europe could not be com- plete without them. Of course that decided me at once to see them, for I never allow myself to do things by halves, or in a slurring, slipshod way. I called in my agent and instructed him to go without delay and make a careful examination of these noted places, on foot, and bring me back a written report of the result, for insertion in my book. I instructed him to go to Hospenthal as quickly as possible, and make his grand start from there; to extend his foot expedition as far as the Giesbach fall, &nd return to me from thence by (9) 10 A Tramp Abroad diligence or mule. I told him to take the courier with him. He objected to the courier, and with some show of reason, since he was about to venture upon new and untried ground ; but I thought he might as well learn how to take care of the courier now as later, therefore I enforced my point. I said that the trouble, delay, and inconvenience of traveling with a courier were balanced by the deep respect which a courier's presence commands, and I must insist that as much style be thrown into my journeys as possible. So the two assumed complete mountaineering cos- tumes and departed. A week later they returned, pretty well used up, and my agent handed me the following Official Report Of a Visit to the Furka Region. By H. Harris, Agent. About seven o'clock in the morning, with perfectly fine weather, we started from Hospenthal, and arrived at the maison on the Furka in a little under quatre hours. The want of variety in the scenery from Hospenthal made the kahkahponeeka weari- some ; but let none be discouraged ; no one can fail to be completely recompensie for his fatigue, when he sees, for the first time, the monarch of the Ober- land, the tremendous Finsteraarhorn. A moment before all was dullness, but 2. pas further has placed us on the summit of the Furka; and exactly in A Tramp Abroad U front of us, at a hopow of only fifteen miles, this magnificent mountain lifts its snow-wreathed preci- pices into the deep blue sky. The inferior moun- tains on each side of the pass form a sort of frame for the picture of their dread lord, and close in the view so completely that no other prominent feature in the Oberland is visible from this bong-a-bong ; nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary grandeur of the Finsteraarhorn and the dependent spurs which form the abutments of the central peak. With the addition of some others, who were also bound for the Grimsel, we formed a large xhvloj as we descended the steg which winds round the shoulder of a mountain toward the Rhone glacier. We soon left the path and took to the ice ; and after wandering amongst the crevasses un peu, to admire the wonders of these deep blue caverns, and hear the rushing of waters through their subglacial chan- nels, we struck out a course toward l' autre cSt/and crossed the glacier successfully, a little above the cave from which the infant Rhpne takes its first bound from under the grand precipice of ice. Half a mile below this we began to climb the flowery side of the Meienwand. One of our party started before the rest, but the Hzize was so great, that we found zkm quite exhausted, and lying at full length in the shade of a large Gestein. We sat down with him for a time, for all felt the heat exceedingly in the climb up this very steep bolwoggoly, and then we set out again together, and arrived at last near the Dead a A Tramp Abroad Man's Lake, at the foot of the Sidelhorn. This lonely spot, once used for an extempore burying place, after a sanguinary battue between the French and Austrians, is the perfection of desolation ; there is nothing in sight to mark the hand of man, except the line of weather-beaten whitened posts, set up to indicate the direction of the pass in the owdawakk of winter. Near this point the footpath joins the wider track, which cpnnects the Grimsel with the head of the Rhone schnawp ; this has been carefully constructed, and leads with a tortuous course among and over les pierres, down to the bank of the gloomy little swosk-swosk, which almost washes against the walls of the Grimsel Hospice. We arrived a little before four o'clock at the end of our day's journey, hot enough to justify the step, taken by most of the partie, of plunging into the crystal water of the snow-fed lake. The next afternoon we started for a walk up the Unteraar glacier, with the intention of, at all events, getting as far as the HUtte which is used as a sleep- ing place by most of those who cross the Strahleck Pass to Grindelwald. We got over the tedious col- lection of stones and dibris which covers Espied of the Gletcker, and had walked nearly three hours from the Grimsel, when, just as we were thinking of crossing over to the right, to climb the cliffs at the foot of the hut, the clouds, which had for some time assumed a threatening appearance, suddenly dropped, and a huge mass of them, driving toward A Tramp Abroad 13 us from the Finsteraarhorn, poured down a deluge of haboolong and hail. Fortunately, we were not far from a very large glacier table ; it was a huge rock balanced on a pedestal of ice high enough to admit oi our all creeping under it for gowkarak. A stream of ^uckittypukk had furrowed a course for itself in the ice at its base, and we were obliged to stand with one Fuss on each side of this, and endeavor to keep ourselves chaud by cutting ste_ps in the steep bank of the pedestal, so as to get a higher place for standing on, as the wasser rose rapidly in its trench. A very cold bzzzzzzzzeeeee accompanied the storm, and made our position far from pleasant; and pres- ently came a flash of Blitzen, apparently in the middle of our little party, with an instantaneous clap oi yokky, sounding like a large gun fired close to our ears ; the effect was startling ; but in a few seconds our attention was fixed by the roaring echoes of the thunder against the tremendous mountains which completely surrounded us. This was followed by many more bursts, none of welche, however, was so dangerously near; and after waiting a long demt- hour in our icy prison, we sallied out to walk through a haboolong which, though not so heavy as before, was quite enough to give us a thorough soaking before our arrival at the Hospice. The Grimsel is certainement a wonderful place; situated at the bottom of a sort of huge crater, the sides of which are utterly savage Gebirge, composed of barren rgcks whjgh cannot eyeti support 3 singl? 14 A Tramp Abroad pine arhre, and afford only scanty food for a herd of gmwkwllolp , it looks as if it must be completely begraben in the winter snows. Enormous avalanches fall against it every spring, sometimes covering everything to the depth of thirty or forty feet; and, in spite of walls four feet thick, and furnished with outside iron shutters, the two men who stay here tvhen the voyageurs are snugly quartered in their distant homes can tell you that the snow sometimes shakes the house to its foundations. Next morning the hogglebumgullup still continued bad, but we made up our minds to go on, and make the best of it. Half an hour after we started, the Regen thickened unpleasantly, and we attempted to get shelter under a projecting rock, but being far too nass already to make standing at all agr/able, we pushed on for the Handeck, consoling ourselves with the reflection that from the furious rushing of the river Aar at our side, we should at all events see the celebrated Wasserfall in grande perfection. Nor were we nappersocket in our expectation; the water was roaring down its leap of 250 feet in a most magnificent frenzy, while the trees which cling to its rocky sides swayed to and fro in the violence of the hurricane which it brought down with it; even the stream, which falls into the main cascade at right angles, and toutefois forms a beautiful feature in the scene, was now swollen into a raging torrent ; and the violence of this " meeting of the waters," about fifty feet below the frail bridge where wa A Tramp Abroad 15 stood, was fearfully grand. While we were looking at it, glucklicheweise a gleam of sunshine came out, and instantly a beautiful rainbow was formed by the spray, and hung in mid air suspended over the awful gorge. On going into the chdlet above the fall, we were informed that a Briicke had broken down near Guttanen, and that it would be impossible to pro- ceed for some time ; accordingly we were kept in our drenched condition for eine Stunde, when some voyageurs arrived from Meiringen, and told us that there had been a trifling accident, aber that we could now cross. On arriving at the spot, I was much inclined to suspect that the whole story was a ruse to make us slowwk and drink the more in the Handeck Inn, for only a few planks had been car- ried away, and though there might perhaps have been some difficulty with mules, the gap was cer- tainly not larger than a mmhglx might cross with a very slight leap. Near Guttanen the haboolong hap- pily ceased, and we had time to walk ourselves tolerably dry before arriving at Reichenbach, wo we enjoyed a good dindzt the Hotel des Alps. Next morning we walked to Rosenlaui, the beau idM of Swiss scenery, where we spent the middle of the day in an excursion to the glacier. This was more beautiful than words can describe, for in the constant progress of the ice it has changed the form of its extremity and formed a vast cavern, as blue as the sky above, and rippled like a frozen ocean. 16 A Tramp Abroad A few steps cut in the whoopjamhoreehoo enabled ua to walk completely under this, and feast our eyes upon one of the loveliest objects in creation. The glacier was all around divided by numberless fissures of the same exquisite color, and the finest wood- Erdbeeren were growing in abundance but a few yards from the ice. The inn stands in a charmani spot close to the cdt^ de la rivihe, which, lower down, forms the Reichenbach fall, and embosomed in the richest of pinewoods, while the fine form of the Wellhorn looking down upon it completes the enchanting bopfile. In the afternoon we walked over the Great Schf?deck to Grindelwald, stopping to pay a visit to the Upper glacier by the way; but we were again overtaken by bad hogglebumgullup and arrived at the hotel in solche a state that the land- lord's wardrobe was in great request. The cloMds by this time seemed to have done their worst, for a lovely day succeeded, which we determined to devote to an ascent of the Faulhorn. We left Grindelwald just as a thunderstorgi was dying away, and we hoped to find guten Wetter up above; but the rain, which had nearly ceased, began again, and we were struck by the rapidly increasing froid as we ascended. Two-thirds of the way up were completed when the rain was exchanged for gnillic, with which the Boden was thickly covered, and before we arrived at the top the gnillic and mist became so thick that we could not see one another at more than \:w&nty poopoo distance, and it became A Tramp Abroad 17 difficult to pick our way over the rough and thickly covered ground. Shivering with cold we turned into bed with a double allowance of clothes, and slept comfortably while the wind howled aiitour de la maison ; when I awoke, the wall and the window looked equally dark, but in another hour I found I could just see the form of the latter ; so I jumped out of bed, and forced it open, though with difficulty from the frost and the quantities of gnillic heaped up against it. A row of huge icicles hung down from the edge of the roof, and anything more wintry than the whole Anblick could not well be imagined ; but the sudden appearance of the great mountains in front was so startling that I felt no inclination to move toward bed again. The snow which had collected upon la fenitre had increased the Finsterniss oder der Dunkelheit, so that when I looked out I was sur- prised to find that the daylight was considerable, and that the balragoomah would evidently rise be- fore long. Only the brightest of les ^toilei were still shining ; the slcy was cloudless overhead, though small curling mists lay thousands of feet below us in the valleys, wreathed around the feet of the moun- tains, and adding to the splendor of their lofty summits. We were soon dressed and out of the house, watching the gradual appoach of dawn, thoroughly absorbed in the first near view of the Oberland giants, which broke upon us unexpectedly after the intense obscurity of the evening before. 18 A Tramp Abroad " Kabaugwakko songwashee Kum Wetterhorn snawpo !" cried some one, as that grand summit gleamed with the first rose of dawn ; and in a few moments the double crest of the Schreckhorn fol- lowed its example ; peak after peak seemed warmed with life, the Jungfrau blushed even more beautifully than her neighbors, and soon, from the Wetterhorn in the east to the Wildstrubel in the west, a long row of fires glowed upon mighty altars, truly worthy of the gods. The wlgw was very severe ; our sleep- ing place could hardly be distingueh from the snow around it, which had fallen to the depth of aflirk during the past evening, and we heartily enjoyed a rough scramble en bus to the Giesbach falls, where we soon found a warm climate. At noon the day before at Grindelwald the thermometer could not have stood at less than lOO degrees Fahr. in the sun; and in the evening, judging from the icicles formed, and the state of the windows, there must have been at least twelve dingblatter of frost, thus giving a change of 80 degrees during a few hours. I said : "You have done well, Harris; this report is concise, compact, well expressed; the language is crisp, the descriptions are vivid and not needlessly elaborated ; your report goes straight to the point, attends strictly to business, and doesn't fool around. It is in many ways an excellent document. But it has a fault, — it is too learned, it is much too learned. What is ' dingblatter ' f" A Tramp Abroad 19 " ' Dingblatter ' is a Fiji word meaning * degrees *." "You knew the English of it, then? " " Oh, yes." "Whatis'g-mllic'?" " That is the Esquimaux term for ' snow *." " So you knew the English for that, too? " "Why, certainly." " What does ' mmbglx ' stand for? * " That is Zulu for ' pedestrian '." " ' While the form of the Wellhorn looking down upon it completes the enchanting bopple' What ia 'bopple' f" « « Picture.' It's Choctaw." " What is ' schnawp ' f " " « Valley.' That is Choctaw, also." "What is ' bolwoggoly' f" "That is Chinese for ' hill'." " ' Kahkahponeeka * f" « * Ascent.' Choctaw." " • But we were again overtaken by bad haggle- bumgullup.' What does ' hogglebumgullup ' mean ? " "That is Chinese for 'weather'." "Is 'hogglebumgullup' better than the English word? Is it any more descriptive ? " "No, it means just the same." " And ' dingblatter ' and ' gniUic,' and ' bopple,* and * schnawp,' — are they better than the English words ?' ' " No, they mean just what the English ones do." " Then why do you use them ? Why have you used all this Chinege and Choctaw and Zulu rubbish?" 20 A Tramp Abroad " Because I didn't know any French but two ot three words, and I didn't know any Latin or Greek at all." "That is nothing. Why should you want to use foreign words, anyhow?" *' To adorn my page. They all do it." "Who is 'all'?" "Everybody. Everybody that writes elegantly. Anybody has a right to that wants to." " I think you are mistaken." I then proceeded in the following scathing manner. "When really learned men write books for other learned men to read, they are justified in using as many learned words as they please — their audience will under- stand them ; but a man who writes a book for the general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated foreign expressions. It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way of sa5nng, * Get the translations made yourself if you want them, this book is not written for the ignorant classes.* There are men who know a foreign language so well and' have used it so long in their daily life that they seem to discharge whole volleys of it into their English writings unconsciously, and so they omit to translate, as much as half the time. That is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the man's readers. What is the excuse for this? The writer would say he only uses the foreign language where the delicacy of bis point capnpt be conveyed in English Very A Tramp Abroad 21 well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he ought to warn the other nine not to buy his book. However, the excuse he offers is at least an excuse; but there is another set of men who are like jou; they know a word here and there, of a foreign language, or a few beggarly little three- word phrases, filcHed from the back of the Diction- ary, and these they are continually peppering into their literature, with a pretense of knowing that language, — what excuse can they offer ? The foreign words and phrases which they use have their exact equivalents in a nobler language, — English; yet they think they " adorn their page " when they say Strasse for street, and Bahnhof for railway station, and so on, — flaunting these fluttering rags of pov- erty in the reader's face and imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the sign of untold riches held in reserve. I will let your ' learning ' remain in your report; you have as much right, I suppose, to ' adorn your page ' with Zulu and Chinese and Choctaw rubbish as others of your sort have to adorn theirs with insolent odds and ends smouched from half a dozen learned tongues whose a-b abs they don't even know." When the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel, he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up. Similar was the effect of' these blister- ing words upon the tranquil and unsuspecting Agent. I can be dreadfully rough on a person when the mood takes me. CHAPTER II. WE now prepared for a considerable walk, — from Lucerne to Interlaken, over the Briinig Pass, But at the last moment the weather was so good that I changed my mind and hired a four-horse car- riage. It was a huge vehicle, roomy, as easy in its motion as a palanquin, and exceedingly comfortable. We got away pretty early in the morning, after a hot breakfast, and went bowling along over a hard, smooth road, through the summer loveliness of Switzerland, with near and distant lakes and moun- tains before and about us for the entertainment of the eye, and the music of multitudinous birds to charm the ear. Sometimes there was only the width of the road between the imposing precipices on the right and the clear cool water on the left with its shoals of uncatchable fishes skimming about through the bars of sun and shadow; and sometimes, in place of the precipices, the grassy land stretched away, in an apparently endless upward slant, and was dotted everywhere with snug little chalets, the peculiarly captivating cottage of Switzerland. The ordinary chalet turns a broad, honest gable (22) A Tramp Abroad 2) end to the road, and its ample roof hovers over the home in a protecting, caressing way, projecting its sheltering eaves far outward. The quaint windows are filled with little panes, and garnished with white muslin curtains, and brightened with boxes of blooming flowers. Across the front of the house, and up the spreading eaves and along the fanciful railings of the shallow porch, are elaborate carvings, — wreaths, fruits, arabesques, verses from Scripture, names, dates, etc. The building is wholly of wood, reddish brown in tint, a very pleasing color. It generally has vines climbing over it. Set such a house against the fresh green of the hillside, and it looks ever so cosy and inviting and picturesque, and is a decidedly graceful addition to the landscape. One does not find out what a hold the chalet has taken upon him, until he presently comes upon a new house, — a house which is aping the town fashions of Germany and France, a prim, hideous, straight-up-and-down thing, plastered all over on the outside to look like stone, and altogether so stiff, and formal, and ugly, and forbidding, and so out of tune with the gracious landscape, and so deaf and dumb and dead to the poetry of its surround- ings, that it suggests an undertaker at a picnic, a corpse at a wedding, a puritan in Paradise. In the course of the morning we passed the spot where Pontius Pilate is said to have thrown himself into the lake. The legend goes that after the Crucifixion his conscience troubled him, and he fled 24 A Tramp Abroad from Jerusalem and wandered about the earth, weary of life and a prey to tortures of the mind. Eventu- ally, he hid himself away, on the heights of Mount Pilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and crags for years ; but rest and peace were still denied him, so he finally put an end to his misery by drowning himself. Presently we passed the place where a man of better odor was born. This was the children's friend, Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas. There are some unaccountable reputations in the world. This saint's is an instance. He has ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children, yet it appears he was not much of a friend to his own. He had ten of them, and when fifty years old he left them, and sought out as dismal a refuge from the world as possible, and became a hermit in order that he might reflect upon pious themes without being disturbed by the joyous and other noises from the nursery, doubtless. Judging by Pilate and St. Nicholas, there exists no rule for the construction of hermits ; they seem made out of all kinds of material. But Pilate attended to the matter of expiating his sin while he was alive, whereas St. Nicholas will probably have to go on climbing down sooty chimneys, Christmas eve, forever, and conferring kindness on other peo- ple's children, to make up for deserting his own. His bones are kept in a church in a village (Sach- seln), which we visited, and are naturally held in A Tramp Abroad 25 great reverence. His portrait is common in the farmhouses of the region, but is believed by many to be but an indifferent likeness. During his hermit life, according to the legend, he partook of the bread and wine of the communion once a month, but all the rest of the month he fasted. A constant marvel with us, as we sped along the bases of the steep mountains on this journey, was, not that avalanches occur, but that they are not occur- ring all the time. One does not understand why rocks and landslides do not plunge down these declivi- ties daily. A landslip occurred three quarters of a century ago, on the route from Arth to Brunnen, which was a formidable thing. A mass of conglom- erate two miles long, a thousand feet broad, and a hundred feet thick, broke away from a cliff three thousand feet high and hurled itself into the valley below, burying four villages and five hundred peo- ple, as in a grave. We had such a beautiful day, and such endless pictures of limpid lakes, and green hills and 'valleys, and majestic mountains, and milky cataracts dancing down the steeps and gleaming in the sun, that we could not help feeling sweet toward all the world ; so we tried to drink all the milk, and eat all the grapes and apricots and berries, and buy all the bouquets of wild flowers which the little peasant boys and girls offered for sale ; but we had to retire from this contract, for it was too heavy. At short distances, — and they were entirely too short, — aU 26 A Tramp Abroad along the road, were groups of neat and comely children, with their wares nicely and temptingly set forth in the grass under the shade trees, and as soon as we approached they swarmed into the road, hold- ing out their baskets and milk bottles, and ran beside the carriage, barefoot and bareheaded, and importuned us to buy. They seldom desisted early, but continued to run and insist, — beside the wagon while they could, and behind it until they lost breath. Then they turned and chased a returning carriage back to their trading post again. After several hours of this, without any intermission, it becomes almost annoying. I do not know what we should have done without the returning carriages to draw off the pursuit. However, there were plenty of these, loaded with dusty tourists and piled high with luggage. Indeed, from Lucerne to Interlaken we had the spectacle, among other scenery, of an unbroken procession of fruit peddlers and tourist carriages. Our talk was mostly anticipatory of what we should see on the down grade of the Briinig, by and by, after we should pass the summit. All our friends in Lucerne had said that to look down upon Meiringen, and the rushing blue-gray river Aar, and the broad level green valley; and across at the mighty Alpine precipices that rise straight up to the clouds out of that valley ; and up at the microscopic chalets perched upon the dizzy eaves of those precipices and winking dimly and fitfully tlwough A Tramp Abroad 27 Ihe drifting veil of vapor; and still up and up, at the superb Oltschibach and the other beautiful cas- cades that leap from those rugged heights, robed in powdery spray, ruffled with foam, and girdled with rainbows — to look upon these things, they said, was to look upon the last possibility of the sublime and the enchanting. Therefore, as I say, we talked mainly of these coming wonders; if we were con- scious of arty impatience, it was to get there in favorable season ; if we felt any anxiety, it was that the day might remain perfect, and enable us to see those marvels at their best. As we approached the Kaiserstuhl, a part of tht harness gave way. We were in distress for a mo- ment, but only a moment. It was the fore-and-aft gear that was broken, — the thing that leads aft from the forward part of the horse and is made fast to the thing that pulls the wagon. In America this would have been a heavy leathern strap; but, all over the continent it is nothing but a piece of rope the size of your little finger, — clothes-line is what it is. Cabs use it, private carriages, freight carts and wagons, all sorts of vehicles have it. In Munich I afterward saw it used on a long wagon laden with fifty-four half barrels of beer ; I had before noticed that the cabs in Heidelberg used it ; — not new rope, but rope that had been in use since Abraham's time, — and I had felt nervous, sometimes, behind it when the cab was tearing down a hill. But I had long been accustomed to it now, and had even become 28 A Tramp Abroad afraid of the leather strap which belonged in its place. Our driver got a fresh piece of clothes-line out of his locker and repaired the break in two minutes. So much for one European feishion. Every country has its own ways. It may interest the reader to know how they "put horses to" on the continent. The man stands up the horses on each side of the thing that projects from the front end of the wagon, and then throws the tangled mess of gear on top of the horses, and passes the thing that goes forward through a ring, and hauls it aft, and passes the other thing through the other ' ng and hauls it aft on the other side of the other horse, opposite to the first one, after crossing them and bringing the loose end back, and then buckles the other thing underneath the horse, and takes another thing and wraps it around the thing I spoke of be- fore, and puts another thing over each horse's head, with broad flappers to it to keep the dust out of his eyes, and puts the iron thing in his mouth for him to grit his teeth on, up hill, and brings the ends of these things aft over his back, after buckling another one around under his neck to hold his head up, and hitching another thing on a thing that goes over his shoulders to keep his head up when he is climbing a hill, and then takes the slack of the thing which I mentioned a while ago, and fetches it aft and makes it fast to the thing that pulls the wagon, and hands the other things up to the driver to steer A Tramp Abroad 29 with. I never have buckled up a horse myself, but I do not think we do it that way. We had four very handsome horses, and the driver was very proud of his turnout. He would bowl along on a reasonable trot, on the highway, but when he entered a village he did it on a furious run, and accompanied it with a frenzy of ceaseless whip crackings that sounded like volleys of musketry. He tore through the narrow streets and around the sharp curves like a moving earthquake, showering his volleys as he went, and before him swept a con- tinuous tidal wave of scampering children, ducks, cats, and mothers clasping babies which they had snatched out of the way of the coming destruction ; and as this living wave washed aside, along the walls, its elements, being safe, forgot their fears and turned their admiring gaze upon that gallant driver till he thundered around the next curve and was lost to sight. He was a great man to those villagers, with his gaudy clothes and his terrific ways. Whenever he stopped to have his cattle watered and fed with loaves of bread, the villagers stood around admiring him while he swaggered about, the little boys gazed up at his face with humble homage, and the landlord brought out foaming mugs of beer and conversed proudly with him while he drank. Then he mounted his lofty box, swung his explosive whip, and away he went again, like a storm. I had not seen any- thing like this before since J w§s a boy, and th? 3** 30 A Tramp Abroad stage used to flourish through the village with the dust flying and the horn tooting. When we reached the base of the Kaiserstuhl, we took two more horses ; we had to toil along with difficulty for an hour and a half or two hours, for the ascent was not very gradual, but when we passed the backbone and approached the station, the driver surpassed all his previous efforts in the way of rush and clatter. He could not have six horses all the time, so he made the most of his chance while he had it. Up to this point we had been in the heart of the William Tell region. The hero is not forgotten, by any means, or held in doubtful veneration. His wooden image, with his bow drawn, above the doors of taverns, was a frequent feature of the scenery. About noon we arrived at the foot of the Briinig Pass, and made a two-hour stop at the village hotel, another of those clean, pretty, and thoroughly well kept inns which are such an astonishment to people who are accustomed to hotels of a dismally different pattern in remote country towns. There was a lake here, in the lap of the great mountains, the green slopes that rose toward the lower crags were graced with scattered Swiss cottages nestling among miniature farms and gardens, and from out a leafy ambuscade in the upper heights tumbled a brawling cataract. Carriage after carriage, laden with tourists and trunks, arrived, and the quiet hotel was soon popu* A Tramp Abroad 31 loua We were early at the table d'hote and saw the ifiople all come in. There were twenty-five, perhaps. They were of various nationalities, but we were the only Americans. Next to me sat an English bride, and next to her sat her new husband, whom she called "Neddy," though he was big enough and stalwart enough to be entitled to his ?ull name. They had a pretty little lovers' quarrel over what wine they should have. Neddy was for obeying the guide-book and taking the wine of the country ; but the bride said : " What, that nahsty stuff I" " It isn't nahsty, pet, it's quite good." " It zs nahsty." "No, it isn'^ nahsty." " It's ^ful nahsty, Neddy, and I shanh't drink it." Then the question was, what she must have. She said he knew very well that she never drank anything but champagne. She added : " You know very well papa always has champagne on his table, and I've always been used to it." Neddy made a playful pretense of being dis- tressed about the expense, and this amused her so much that she nearly exhausted herself with laugh- ter, — and this pleased kzm so much that he repeated his jest a couple of times, and added new and killing varieties to it. When the bride finally recovered, she gave Neddy a love-box on the arm with her fan, and said with arch severity: " Well, you would Aave me, — nothing else wouW 32 A Tramp Abroad do, — so you'll have to make the best of a bad bargain. Do order the champagne, I'm oful dry." So with a mock groan which made her laugh again, Neddy ordered the champagne. The fact that this young woman had never mois- tened the selvedge edge of her soul with a less plebeian tipple than champagne, had a marked and subduing effect upon Harris. He believed she be- longed to the royal family. But I had my doubts. We heard two or three different languages spoken by people at the table and guessed out the national- ities of most of the guests to our satisfaction, but we failed with an elderly gentleman and his wife and a young girl who sat opposite us, and with a gentle- man of about thirty-five who sat three seats beyond Harris. We did not hear any of these speak. But finally the last-named gentleman left while we were not noticing, but we looked up as he reached the far end of the table. He stopped there a moment, and made his toilet with a pocket comb. So he was a German ; or else he had lived in German hotels long enough to catch the fashion. When the elderly couple and the young girl rose to leave, they bowed respectfully to us. So they were Germans, too. Phis national custom is worth six of the other one, for export. 