Lauterbrunnen

“ The last glorious vision showed itself as we descended from Lauterbrunnen; in the evening, regretting the neglect of nature to provide men with eyes in their backs. The moonlight reflected from the all-enveloping shroud of snow, slept on the lower ridges before us, and gave a mysterious beauty to the deep gorge of the white Lübschine ”

“ The moon struggled through and upward at last into the open sky, and the clouds broke away enough so that great masses of the Eiger-Mönch-Jungfrau group came into sight, looking even more stupendously huge from being partly hidden. The valleys seemed bottomless abysses—their floors four thousand feet below being utterly lost in blackness. And on the other side of the Lauterbrunnen Valley the billowy snow peaks, quite free from clouds, rolled away, all silver in the moonlight. ”

“ After an hour we reach Lauterbrunnen, and leave the carriage at the door of an inn, where a crowd bargains and waits for guides and horses. We swell the number. When we are served, we mount to our places, and file out of the straggling village, turning before we reach the Staubach Falls—a stream of silvery spray that never touches earth, but swings and waves in mid-air. The ascent grows more and more steep. The recent rain has added to the icy streams, which filter constantly from snows above, and the horses sink in the mire, or slide and slip in a way by no means reassuring. ”

“ I made a little stay at Interlaken, and from there I ran over to Lauterbrunnen, where the Staubbach falls over its frowning suicidal cliffs and dies before it reaches the valley. It is weird and ghostlike—the spirit of a waterfall. I walked far up into the valley, and, coming back to the hotel once more, saw that delicate blush on the Jungfrau. I don’t wonder [Pg 453] Thomas Gray declares that “the mountains are ecstatic and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year.” I would go farther and say that as one grew older, one should live among them or in sight of them. ”

“ All tourists in Switzerland come hither, almost of necessity. No other point is quite so central for excursions. None is more easy of approach. As its name 125 indicates, it lies between two famous lakes which rival one another in respect to beauty. Before it, also, are the charming vales of Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, which lead one into the very heart of the Bernese Oberland. ”

“ I should prefer it even to Thun, for its green plain nestles more closely under the hills. The pensions are built on the same line, but apart; 60 with a mountain back and mountain view, their gardens surrounding them, and a noble avenue of old walnut-trees extending the whole length they occupy. The road to Lauterbrunnen winds through shady lanes and crosses meadows of Swiss verdure, and then lies beneath wooded hills, on the summit of one of which rises Unspunnen, the castle of Byron’s Manfred ”

“ Its elements, though majestic, are exceedingly downright and simple, whereas those of the rest of the Lake of Lucerne are multiform, subtle, and complex. Whatever be the impression that it effects on the spectator, it is likely to accomplish this at once; it is no finer at the head than at the foot; and all that it has of grandeur (and nothing of the kind in the Alps is grander) is flashed upon us in a moment, in complete and final revelation, when first it comes into vision between the piers at Trieb and Brunnen. It varies, of course, in splendour as the day is bright or dull ”

“ The entire ridge gives as good a scramble as any one fond of rock-climbing can wish for. Nowhere excessively difficult, it is always sensational, and the rocks are big and firm. Most of the time the party is right on the crest, and can glance straight down to the Lauteraar glacier on the one hand or to the Strahlegg on the other. The Lauteraarhorn is seldom taken; probably on account of the trouble of getting at it. People also seem to think that if they have been up the Schreckhorn, they have seen everything of interest in that direction. ”

“ The attraction here, of course, is the majestic Bay of Uri, which comes into view with startling suddenness, in a few revolutions of the paddles, as the steamer approaches the quay at Brunnen; and whose splendour, luckily, neither monster hotel, nor monster crowd, nor the presence of the great St. Gothard railway (here first insistently apparent on the margin of the lake) ,
"nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy." ”

“ Brunnen, which is called the port of Schwyz, and from which it is distant about three miles, is singularly crushed and over-weighted by the great hotels on the Seelisberg and the Axenfels, and has suffered perhaps more severely by the exploitation of its neighbourhood than any other single station on the lake. ”

“ The bathing at Lauterbach is certainly perfect. You walk along a footpath on the edge of low cliffs, shaded all the way from the door of the hotel to the bathing-huts by the beechwood, the water heaving and shining just below you, the island of Vilm opposite, the distant headland of Thiessow a hazy violet line between the misty blues of sea and sky in front, and at your feet moss and grass and dear common flowers flecked with the dancing lights and shadows of a beechwood when the sun is shining. ”

“ Of the five great primary divisions of the Vierwaldstättersee—and one is driven, however anxious to preserve the configuration of the cross, to recognize a fifth, and separate, division in the Bay, or Lake, of Uri—of the five great divisions of the Lake of Lucerne, that which extends to the quays of Lucerne itself is the most placid and domestic in respect of actual shore-line. True, there is always a background of lofty mountain, sufficiently magnificent and sufficiently near at hand to impress itself on the landscape as a component, and even dominant, feature ”

“ The road from Lucerne to Küsnacht, where it skirts this bay beyond the big, scrambling village of Meggen, is one of the pleasantest view-points within easy touch of Lucerne whence to enjoy across the water the noble mountain background that screens the south shore of the main lake. On a mild spring evening, when this splendid landscape is an ætherialized study in black and white; when the snowflakes and cowslips are pushing up in thousands through the quickly growing grass; when the host of margent rushes scarcely quivers in the stillness ”

“ As we mounted up toward Lausanne, the ancient terrace about two hundred and fifty feet above the present level of the lake is very noticeable. In fact the low tract between Lausanne and Yverdun, on the Lake of Neuchâtel, which corresponds to that level, gives colour to the theory that the Lake of Geneva once emptied in that direction and communicated with the North Sea instead of with the Mediterranean as now. How small an obstacle it takes entirely to change the course of a river or of a man’s life! ”

“ W., II., and I took a guide and voiture for Lauterbrunn. Here we visited Byron's apocalyptic horse-tail waterfall, the Staubbach. This waterfall is very sublime, all except the water and the fall. Whoever has been "under the sheet" at Niagara will not be particularly impressed here. This picture is sufficiently accurate, with the exception of the cottage. People here do not build cottages under waterfalls.
[Illustration: of the waterfall and cliff rising sharply to the left of the roadway. A cabin appears to be located very near its base.]
Here we crossed the Wengern Alps to Grindelwald. ”

“ Those who approach Lucerne directly by the railway fitly approach the most dramatic of lakes by the most dramatic of vestibules. For those who use their eyes, indeed, there are abundant distant hints of the coming splendour; the Alps are first visible, in tolerably clear weather, as we descend the long wall of Jura on to the Aar at Aarberg; and further on, beyond the peaty flats round the Mauensee, and as we quit the lake of Sempach, Pilatus and Rigi, like two tall sentinels ”

“ The vale of the Reuss at Altdorf, and indeed as far south as Amsteg, where it is blocked, as it were, by the huge pyramid of the Bristenstock, and where the floor of the valley first begins to rise in earnest towards the far-away col of the St. Gothard, is merely a prolongation of the mountain basin of the Urnersee, with the substitution of flat green pasture for a pavement of crystal lake. Of the Bay of Uri itself I feel that I have said little, yet feel,62 with some sincerity, that there is little to be said. ”

“ We do not care if they do....
The great quay of Lucerne is delightful; as good as the seashore at Dieppe or Trouville. Before you, limpid and blue, lies the lake, which from the character of its shores, at once stern and graceful, is the finest in Switzerland. In front rises the snow-clad peaks of Uri, to the left the Rigi, to the right the austere Pilatus, almost always wearing his high cap of clouds. ”

“ It is often the case that antiquarian remains owe their discovery to the mere accident of agricultural operations, peat-cutting, drainage, etc. Such operations are, however, usually confined to small lakes and bogs. The idea of partially lowering the surface of the extensive sheets of water in the Jura valley, comprising the lakes of Bienne, Neuchâtel, and Morat, was too chimerical to be ever entertained in the interests of archæology. ”

“ Then we come to low shaggy rocks, forming pretty little bays, and a singular rock appears before us in the water, the terminating point of the promontory. That point passed, the Kusnach branch opening out on our left hand, we are soon on the body of the lake, from which the four smaller branches of Lucerne, Winkel, Alpnach, and Kusnach may be said to proceed. The lake is full and stately; the mountains are magnificent. The town of Lucerne, its red roofs softened (even in the sunshine of this bright day) by distance, is an elegant termination of its own compartment, backed by low hills. ”

“ One cannot bear too much exaltation. After having dwelt awhile among the sublimities of Nature, it is a relief to come down to her more common and familiar aspects; the sunshine is doubly grateful after the gloom of Alpine passes; meadows and groves are more pleasant to the eye than snow-clad peaks; and more sweet to the ear than the roar of mountain torrents, is the murmur of softly-flowing streams. From Lucerne, our way lies over that undulating country which we had surveyed the day before from the summit of the Righi, winding around the Lake of Zug, and ending at the Lake of Zurich. ”

“ Its upper 59reach, which makes the eastern boundary of the Schwaben, is as ghastly a scene of smash as the world can show. It is nothing but a collection of irregular pools dug by big shells during months of battle. The pools are long enough and deep enough to dive into, and full to overflowing with filthy water. Sometimes the pressure of the water bursts the mud banks of one of these pools and a rush of water comes, and the pools below it overflow, and a noise of water rises in that solitude which is like the mud and water of the beginning of the world before any green thing appeared. ”

“ The most immediately mountainous in character, because no other big Swiss lake, as already intimated,7 extends itself so deeply into the heart of giant hills, or is bordered so immediately by steep and rugged mountains. Thus Lucerne gains in surprise and mystery what it loses in simple graciousness; is dramatic and startling where other lakes are tranquil and merely soothing; and is certainly, to sum up, the most splendid and magnificent lake in the Alps, if not the most dignified and beautiful. ”

“ Lucerne, July 17th.—A short ride from Interlaken this morning early brought us to Lake Brienz, which we sailed across, stopping for a short time at Giessbach to see the falls, which are formed from numerous cascades. Their reputation is the greater part of them. We left the steamer at Brienz and took steam cars to travel over the Brunig Pass. Until this summer, travellers have been obliged to make this journey by carriage or mules. The new railroad is narrow, and the sides of the little cars are of glass, so that the scenery all about us can be easily seen. ”

“ It is called the Brun, and gives its name to Burnley. The rocks are a sandstone sufficiently warm in color to give a very pleasant contrast to the green foliage, and the forms of them are so broken that in sunshine there are plenty of fine accidental lights and shadows. It was one of my greatest pleasures to follow the course of this stream, with a leaping-pole, up to the moors, where it flowed through a wide and desolate valley or hollow in the hills. As the aspect of a stream is continually changing with the seasons and the quantity of water, it is always new. ”

“ Looking eastward from the quays or the lake at Lucerne across the shining expanses of water to the great background of snow-clad Alps—visualizing those Alps in memory as we sit22 later on at home, by the side of a winter fire—most of us have probably an impression only of a very lovely, and very magnificent, but also very vague and inchoate, huddle of confused and indefinite hills. ”

“ The lake of Lucerne is encompassed on all sides by high mountains that rise abruptly from the water;—sometimes their bare fronts descend perpendicularly and cast a black shade upon the waves;—sometimes they are covered with thick wood, whose dark foliage is interspersed by the brown bare crags on which the trees have taken root. In every part where a glade shews itself in the forest it appears cultivated, and cottages peep from among the woods. The most luxuriant islands, rocky and covered with moss, and bending trees, are sprinkled over the lake. ”