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 beautifully cut peak had caught the first ray of the sun, and burned with a rosy glow.Some great clouds drifted high in the air: the summits of the Breithorn, the Lyscamm, and their companions, lay cold and white; but the snow down their sides had a tinge of pink.When I stood upon the summit of the Gorner-Grat, the two prominent silver peaks of Monte Rosa were just touched with the sun, and its great snow-fields were visible to the glacier at its base.The Gorner-Grat is a rounded ridge of rock, entirely encirled by glaciers and snow-peaks.The panorama from it is unexcelled in Switzerland.
Returning down the rocky steep, I descried, solitary in that great waste of rock and snow, the form of a lady whom I supposed I had left sleeping at the inn, overcome with the fatigue of yesterday's tramp.
Lured on by the apparently short distance to the backbone of the ridge, she had climbed the rocks a mile or more above the hotel, and come to meet me.She also had seen the great peaks lift themselves out of the gray dawn, and Monte Rosa catch the first rays.We stood awhile together to see how jocund day ran hither and thither along the mountain-tops, until the light was all abroad, and then silently turned downward, as one goes from a mount of devotion THE BATHS OF LEUKIn order to make the pass of the Gemmi, it is necessary to go through the Baths of Leuk.The ascent from the Rhone bridge at Susten is full of interest, affording fine views of the valley, which is better to look at than to travel through, and bringing you almost immediately to the old town of Leuk, a queer, old, towered place, perched on a precipice, with the oddest inn, and a notice posted up to the effect, that any one who drives through its steep streets faster than a walk will be fined five francs.I paid nothing extra for a fast walk.The road, which is one of the best in the country, is a wonderful piece of engineering, spanning streams, cut in rock, rounding precipices, following the wild valley of the Dala by many a winding and zigzag.
The Baths of Leuk, or Loeche-les-Bains, or Leukerbad, is a little village at the very head of the valley, over four thousand feet above the sea, and overhung by the perpendicular walls of the Gemmi, which rise on all sides, except the south, on an average of two thousand feet above it.There is a nest of brown houses, clustered together like bee-hives, into which the few inhabitants creep to hibernate in the long winters, and several shops, grand hotels, and bathing-houses open for the season.Innumerable springs issue out of this green, sloping meadow among the mountains, some of them icy cold, but over twenty of them hot, and seasoned with a great many disagreeable sulphates, carbonates, and oxides, and varying in temperature from ninety-five to one hundred and twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit.
Italians, French, and Swiss resort here in great numbers to take the baths, which are supposed to be very efficacious for rheumatism and cutaneous affections.Doubtless many of them do up their bathing for the year while here; and they may need no more after scalding and soaking in this water for a couple of months.
Before we reached the hotel, we turned aside into one of the bath-houses.We stood inhaling a sickly steam in a large, close hall, which was wholly occupied by a huge vat, across which low partitions, with bridges, ran, dividing it into four compartments.