walk over the grimsel by the aar valley, helle platte, falls of handeck, to meiringen

these are thy glorious works, parent of good;

almighty, thine this universal frame,

thus wondrous fair; thyself how wondrous, then!

unspeakable, who sitt’st above the heavens

to us invisible, or dimly seen

in these thy lowest works.—milton.

september 11.—we were off at 6 a.m. for a long day over the grimsel pass to meiringen. as usual, my wife and i on foot, and the little man on horseback. you begin the ascent of the mountain immediately from the hotel. it is stiff walking all the way to the top, which is reached in about an hour. the height above the sea is somewhat more than 7,000 feet. on the side of the mountain the most conspicuous plant is the rhododendron, the rose of the alps. on the summit of the pass is a dark tarn. the mephitic hospice, about three fourths of a mile off, is 700 feet below. soon after you begin the descent you come upon indications of former glacier action in 150polished slabs of gneiss all around you. on your right is a rugged glacier, among still more rugged pinnacles of rock. before you and to the left, is a world of snowy mountains, of which you catch some glimpses. after a few yards of descent from the hospice the path strikes the aar, fresh from its exit from the upper and lower aar glaciers. it then turns to the right along the margin of the torrent: the torrent and the path passing side by side through a narrow defile, overtopped, right and left, with precipitous mountains. after a time the path leaves the margin of the torrent, having first been carried over it by a narrow stone bridge. everywhere you find indications of the great height to which the glaciers reached in some remote epoch. among these are several instances of deep horizontal lines, graven along the apparently perpendicular face of the mountain, at a height of even 2,000 feet above the valley. in a place called helle platte, or the open plain, the path is carried over what was formerly the bed of the glacier; the gneiss still retaining the polish that was given to its surface so many millenniums ago. this extends for about a quarter of a mile, the interstices, between the mighty slabs of gneiss being filled with fringes and patches of stunted rhododendrons, and of the pinus pumilio, a spreading dwarf pine, that does not reach more than three or four feet from the ground; but which, notwithstanding its diminutive size, conveys 151to you, far more impressively than its lofty congeners, the idea of great age. this scene surrounded by naked mountain masses, as rugged as adamantine, stirs the mind deeply. the effect culminates as you pass the bridge, beneath which the torrent of the aar roars and dashes along its rock-impeded channel. no animal life is seen, with the one exception of a multitude of butterflies, glancing to and fro in the clear warm sunshine, like winged flowers. your thought is interested by the contrast between their feeble fragile beauty and the force and savagery of surrounding nature.

the way in which i saw that the aar had cut its channel through the gneiss suggested to me the inquiry, whether what had enabled it to do this was not the fact that the pebbles and broken rock the torrent brought down were gneiss, so that it was gneiss which it had to dash against the sides and bottom of its channel. perhaps torrent-borne fragments of gneiss may widen and deepen a gneiss channel as effectually as fragments of lime-stone may a lime-stone channel.

at eleven miles from the rhone glacier you reach handeck: a small expanse of greenest alpine meadow, intermixed with pine-forest, and surrounded with dark craggy mountains. here we called a halt for luncheon, and a cigar. it was a bright, airy day; one to be for ever remembered. many travellers came and went; some facing up, some down the pass. 152fortunately this charming spot has not yet been disfigured by a staring stone hotel. the suave landlord, and expectant porter, have not yet invaded it. but i am afraid that they cannot be far off. at all events for the present, may it long remain so! you have the wooden châlet, with its low panelled reception room, innocent of gilding and of paint; the green rock-strewn turf coming up to the door; and the bench along the wall outside. you can here get a mutton-chop that has not been first passed through a bath to make potage for yesterday’s visitors, and then, for you, had its impoverishment thinly disguised by having been dipped into a nondescript sauce piquante.

this charming halting-place is enriched with far the best waterfall in switzerland—the fall of the handeck. the staubbach, byron’s magniloquence nevertheless, and the rest of them, are only overflows of house-gutters. there, where they are, just at the first stage of the watershed of europe, they can be accepted as being very much what they ought to be; but one cannot be impressed with them as waterfalls. here, however, is something of quite a different kind: not so much from the volume of the falling water, as from its character, and the point of view from which it is seen. two or three hundred yards below the châlet the aar is chafing along its clean rock-channel, strewn with boulders as large as houses; on a sudden it takes a leap, of about two hundred feet, into a dark, 153appalling, iron-bound chasm. precisely at the point, where it takes this leap, the handeck, coming blustering down on the left, at a right angle to the aar, takes the same leap. the two cataracts are mingled together, midway in the chasm. a wooden bridge has been thrown over the falls. you stand upon this, and see the hurrying torrents dashing themselves into the deep chasm below you. you are half stunned by their angry roar. you observe that they have no power to undermine, and wear away, the granite against which they are dashing, and breaking themselves. the frail bridge vibrates under your feet. fortunately you are looking down the fall instead of up, and this, by engendering an irrational sense of the possibility of your slipping into it, heightens the effect. for some hours about midday—we were there at that time—it is crowned with the prismatic bow.

here my wife took a horse for the rest of the day, being too ill of the hôtel du glacier du rhône to walk any further. after some miles the savage character of the scenery began to relent. this mitigation went on increasing, till at last we found ourselves crossing the emerald meadows of guttanen—a village of châlets. next came the little town of imhof. here an hotel, and a brewery, a good road, and the slackened pace of the aar made it evident that we were out of the mountains; and the plain at meiringen was soon reached. this was a walk of about twenty-six miles. 154as all the hard work came in the first hour, it was a very much easier day than the twenty-seven miles up the southern side of the simplon.

as we were in meiringen by 4.20 p.m., there was time for a walk up the hill, close to the hotel, to see the falls of the reichenbach. i was glad to find the little man ready to accompany me, for he had been so silent all day that i had been thinking he was fatigued, or not well. when we had got some way up the hill we met a frenchman coming down, who told us that a toll would soon be levied upon us; his comment upon the fact being that we should have to pay for looking at the mountains, if it could in any way be managed. regarding this toll as a piece of extortion, and not at all caring to see the fall, we returned to the hotel. if i had thought it really worth going to see, i should, acting on the wisdom i had purchased at ponte grande, have eliminated from consideration, though perhaps with a growl, the meanness and rapacity of the demand, as irrelevant matter, and have gone on; but it was getting late, and we thought we had seen enough of the fall from the road as we were entering meiringen.