CHAPTER XXV.

Lake of the Dead. Glacier of the Rhone. Pass of the Furca.

THE night was cold and cloudless. By the rising moon, the scene of awful desolation around the Hospice, cold as it was, was covered with a veil of loveliness. It is scarcely possible to convey an idea of the beauty of the moonlight night in such a region. This morning the air is of a crystal clearness, but a fathomless, white ocean of cloud fills the valley beneath us, while the grisly sharp peaks and ridges around us and above, rise into a bright shining sky.

Close at the summit of the pass, about half an hour from the Hospice, 8400 feet above the sea, you coast the margin of a little dark, still lake, into which the bodies of dead travellers, who perished by the way, have been launched for burial. It therefore goes by the name of the Dead Sea, or Lake of the Dead. These names are singularly in keeping with the effect of the scenery upon the mind, so wild, so grim, yet so majestic, so seemingly upon the confines of the supernatural world, where it seems as if imprisoned silent genii, still and awful, were gazing upon you, as if the eye of these heaven-scaling mountains watched you, and would petrify and fasten you, as you flit careful like a spectre across the vast and dream-like landscape. A small glacier, which you have to cross, falls into this Lake and feeds it, and the peak of the Seidelhorn rises above it with the snowy Schreckhorn towering through the mountain ridges from the Aar glacier. The magnificent white range of the Gries glacier sweeps glittering on the other side.

A little distance beyond this death-lake you come suddenly upon the view of the glacier of the Rhone, very far below you, a grand and mighty object, with the furious Rhone itself issuing from the ice, like a whole menagerie of wild beasts from their

cages. Down it roars, with the joy of liberty, swift and furious through the Valley, leaping, dashing, thundering, foaming. Remembering the career it runs, how it sometimes floods the valleys like a sea, by how many rivers it is joined, and how it pours dark and turbid into the Lake of Geneva, and out again regenerated as clear as crystal from Switzerland into France, and so into the Mediterranean, it is interesting to stand here far above its mighty cradle, and look down upon its source. The glacier is a stupendous mass of ice-terraces clear across the Valley, propped against an overhanging mountain, with snowy peaks towering to the right and left. There is a most striking contrast between the bare desolation of the rocks on the Grimsel side, and the grassy slopes of the mountains in companionship with this. glacier. Your path coasts along its margin, amidst a thick fringe of bushes and flowers, from which you can step down upon the roofs and walls of the ice-caverns, and look into the azure crevasses, and hear the fall, the gurgle, and hurrying subglacial rush of unconscious streams just born as cold as death. Their first existence is in a symphony of dripping music, a prelude to the babble of the running rill, and then, as they grow older, they thunder like the trumpet of a cataract. Far above you, herds of cattle are seen browsing on the steep mountain side, so steep, that it seems as if they must hold on to the herbage to keep from falling. The voices of the herdsmen echo down the Valley; you half expect to see the whole group slide, like an avalanche, into the glacier below.

There are, more properly speaking, two glaciers of the Rhone, for as you pass up towards the Furca, you see a rapid stream rushing from a glacier that cuts the sky above you to the right, and pouring cavernous and cataractical, into the Lower Glacier, from whence it afterwards issues in the same stream which constitutes the Rhone. From the pass of the Furca, which costs you a hard climb to surmount, there is a grand and varied view of the Finsteraarhorn and the Schreckhorn, with the more distant snowy mountains. From thence into the Valley of the Sidli Alp you have a rapid descent, which carries you over wide steep fields of ice and snow, down which you may glide, if you please, like a falling star, though not so softly. There is a most ex

citing and dangerous delight in flying with your Alpenstock down such an abrupt immense declivity. You feel every moment as if you might plunge headlong, or break through into some concealed abyss, to be laid away in crystal on the secret shelves of the deep mountain museum; but bating that, you enjoy the somewhat perilous excursion, as much as you ever did when a wild, careless boy, plunging into snowbanks, skating with the ice bending beneath you, or sliding fiercely down the steep hill, and shouting at the top of your voice, Clear the coast! to the manifest danger of all astonished passengers. The path along the terra firma of the mountain is also in some parts hazardous, since a single false step, or a slip at the side, might prove fatal.

On the Furca pass you are at the boundary between the Cantons Valais and Uri, and you have, within a circle of little more than ten miles around you, the sources of five prominent rivers, some of them among the largest in Europe; the Rhine, the Rhone, the Reuss, the Ticino, and the Aar; some tumbling into the Mediterranean, some into the German Sea. You have passed two of their most remarkable feeding glaciers, those of the Rhone and the Aar. The course of the river Reuss you are now to follow in the pass and valley of the St. Gothard.

Continuing our course from the Furca, for a long distance there is no habitation whatever, except for the swine, or the dead, until you come down to the Realp, a cluster of some dozen houses, where the Capuchin friars have a convent, and own the inn. One of these men, in his coarse brown robe, with a hempen cord about it, entered while I was taking some refreshment, and stepped up to the barometer. Really, the corded friars do often look as if they had been just cut down from the gallows, or were going thereto. What a queer choice of vestments and symbols! It reminds one of the passage concerning "them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart-rope.” Nevertheless, notwithstanding the rope, the friars may be very kind and hospitable men, when they have the means.

Seeing him watch the glass, I made to him the very original remark that the weather was very fine. Yes, said he, but we shall have bad weather very soon. Hearing this, I also ran to the barometer, for the sound of bad weather is startling to a pedes

trian among the mountains, and found indeed that the mercury was falling. Thereupon I at once determined to push on, if possible, to the Devil's bridge, that I might see at least the finest part of the St. Gothard pass while the weather was clear, since little is to be seen when it rains or is misty on the mountains. So my guide led me by a shorter cut across the rocky pastures on the left side of the Urseren Valley, without stopping at Hospenthal, that I might have ample time to survey the pass by daylight.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The Devil's Bridge. Savage defiles of the Reuss.

THE Valley of Urseren, into which we have descended from the Furca, is one of the highest inhabited vales in Switzerland, 4356 feet above the level of the sea, perfectly destitute of trees, yet covered with soft green pasturage, and affording subsistence to four dairy-keeping, cattle-rearing, cheese-making villages, with 1360 inhabitants. The cheese and red trout are much recommended by the guidebooks, but we had satisfied a traveller's appetite at the inn of the friars, and were not cognizant of the temptation. The Hospice of the St. Gothard lies a couple of hours farther up the pass, from whence you go down by innumerable zigzags into sunny Italy.

We made haste across the river, and through the village of Andermatt, about a mile beyond which you are separated from the Devil's Bridge only by the right shoulder of an inaccessible mountain. From the green, smooth, and open meadows of Andermatt, you abruptly enter this mountain, through the long gallery or tunnel of Urnerloch, hewn in the solid rock over the river Reuss, 180 feet in length, and wide enough for carriages. Before this grand tunnel was bored, the mountain, shutting down perpendicular into the roaring river, had to be passed by a rude suspension gallery of boards outside, hung down by chains amidst the very spray of the torrent. It was a great exploit to double this cape.

You are not at all prepared for the scene which bursts upon you on the other side, for you have been luxuriating in meadows, and there is no sign of change; it is really like a hurricane in the West Indies; you are one moment under a clear sky, you see a black cloud, and down comes the fierce tornado. So from the green and quiet slopes of the sheltered Urseren Valley, after