MANFRED.

In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me!
I hear ye nomently above, beneath,

Crush with a frequent conflict, but ye pass
And only fall on things that still would live ;
On the young flourishing forest, or the hut
And hamlet of the harmless villager.

The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds
Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell."

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There is no work of the fancy here, no creation of the poet-it is simple description—the plain English of what passes before the traveller who stands here in early summer. The awful silence that follows the crash of an avalanche adds tenfold sublimity and solitude to the Alps.

After having gazed our fill we mounted our animals and began to descend. But the snow-crust would give way every few steps, when down would go horse and rider. After having been thrown two or three times over the head of my animal, I picked myself up for the last time, and with the sullen unamiable remark that he might take care of himself, made my way on foot. Coming at length to solid ground I looked back to see how he got along, and could not but laugh at the sorry figure he cut in the snow. The crust would bear him for several steps, when down he would go to his girth. Extricating himself with great care he would step gingerly along with nose close to the surface and half crouched up as if he expected every moment another tumble. His expectations I must say were seldom disappointed; till at length when he came to where I stood he looked as meek and subdued as a whipped hound.

Mounting, we rode away for the valley of Grindelwald.

IX.

THE GRAND SCHEIDECK: AN AVALANCHE.

The

THE little valley of Grindelwald received us as we descended the Wengern Alp. Before entering it, as we passed down the mountain, up to our hips in snow, one of those picturesque scenes which so often occur in Switzerland burst upon us. From a deep valley directly beneath us, smiling in all the freshness of summer vegetation, came the tinkling of hundreds of bells. green pasturage was literally covered with herds of cattle, and flocks of goats. All around, rose the gigantic snow peaks and hung the fearful precipices, while there on that green secluded spot was the complete impersonation of repose and quiet. The music of those countless bells rung and mingled in the clear mountain air in endless variations, and were sent back by the giant peaks, redoubled and multiplied, till there was a perfect storm of sound. As I passed down through the snow, the echoes grew fainter and fainter, till the mountains held them all in their own bosom-yet that scene of quietness and beauty has left its im. pression forever on my heart.

As I descended into the valley of Grindelwald, and saw the brown huts sprinkled all over the distant slopes, I felt how hard it must be to conquer Switzerland. When an army had wound over the narrow and difficult pass, and driven back the hardy mountaineers, and burned up their homes, still they had not conquered them. Hid amid hollows and fastnesses, unknown to their enemies, they could put them at defiance forever.

While tea was preparing, I walked through the valley and past the parsonage, into which the minister and his two daughters

were just entering, from their evening walk. The valley lay in deep shadow, while the last sunbeams still lingered on a distant glacier, that shone like burnished silver in the departing light. That sweet parsonage, in that quiet spot, amid the everlasting Alps and the roar of its torrents and avalanches, seemed almost beyond the reach of heart-sickening cares and disappointments. I grew weary of my roving, and felt that I had found at last one spot out of human ills. Just then, I remembered that the pastor and his two daughters were clad in deep mourning. "Ah!" I sighed, as I turned away, "death has been here, turning this quiet spot into a place of tears. He treads an Alpine valley with as firm a step and unrelenting a mien as the thronged street; and man may search the world over, and he will only find at last a spot on which to grieve."

While at tea, three peasant girls came into the room and began one of their Alpine choruses, in that high, clear falsetto you hear nowhere but in Switzerland. These chants are singularly wild and thrilling, and in the present instance were full of sweetness; but their effect was lost the moment I remembered it was all done for money.

The day had been one of toil, and the night was disturbed and restless. Unable to sleep, I rose about midnight and looked out of my window, and lo! the moon hung right over a clear, cold glacier, that seemed almost within reach of my hand. The silent, white and mighty form looked like a monster from the unseen world, and I fairly shuddered as I gazed on it. It seemed to hang over the little hamlet like a cold and silent foe. In the morning, I went under it. These masses of ice melt in the summer, where they strike the valley, and the superincumbent weight presses down, urging up rocks and earth that no power of man could stir. This slowly descending glacier had done its share of this work, and had thrown up quite a hill, where it had plunged its mighty forehead in the earth; but had encountered in its passage one rock that seemed a mere projection from the solid stratum below, and hence could not be moved. The glacier had therefore shoved slowly over it, leaving a cave running from the foot up to where the rock lay imbedded in it. I entered this cave, and the green and blue roof was smooth as polished silver, while a pool at

the bottom, acting as a mirror to this mirror, perfectly bewildered the eye in looking into it.

There are two glaciers that descend entirely into the valley, and push their frozen torrents against the bosoms of the green pasturages. Their silvery forms fringed with fir trees, while their foreheads are bathed in the green meadow below, furnish a striking contrast to the surrounding scenery. One can ascend for nearly four miles along the margin of the lower glacier on his mule, and will be amply repaid for the trouble. It was on this glacier that the clergyman of Vevay, M. Mouron, was lost -the account of which is in almost every book of travels. It was supposed at first that his guide had murdered him; but after twelve days search his body was found at the bottom of a crevice in the ice, said to be seven hundred feet deep. A guide was let down to the bottom by a rope, with a lantern round his neck, and after descending twice in vain, the third time was drawn up with the body in his arms. He was much broken and bruised, but it was impossible to tell whether he was killed instantly by the fall, or whether he lay crushed in that awful chasm, breathing his life away in protracted gasps.

Mounting our horses, we started for the grand Scheideck, nearly eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. As we approached that "peak of tempests"--the Wetterhorn-whose bare cliff rose straight up thousands of feet from the path to the regions of eternal snow, one of the guides exclaimed—“ Voila! voila!" and another in German, "Sehen sie! sehen sie !" while I screamed in English, Look! look! And it was time to look; for from the topmost height of the Wetterhorn suddenly arose something like white dust, followed by a movement of a mighty mass, and the next moment an awful white form leaped away, and, with almost a single bound of more than two thousand feet,* came directly into our path, a short distance before us. As it struck the earth, the crushed snow rose like vapour from the foot of a cataract, and rolled away in a cloud of mist over a hill of fir trees, which it sprinkled white in its passage. The shock was like a

* The guide said between two and three thousand feet. I have tried in vain to ascertain the exact distance from the top to the path.

THE WITTERHORN.

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falling rock, and the echo sounded along the Alpine heights like the roll of far off cannon, and died away over their distant tops. One of the guides, belonging to a Scotch gentleman who had that morning joined our party, was an old traveller in the Alps, and he said that in all his wanderings he had never seen any thing equal to it. That serene peak, resting far away up in the clear, rare atmosphere-the sudden commotion, and that swift descending form of terror, are among the distinct and vivid things of memory.

As we rounded the point where this avalanche struck, we came nearly under the most awful precipice that I ever saw or dreamed of. How high that perpendicular wall of Alpine limestone may be I dare not hazard a conjecture, but it makes one hold his breath in awe and dread to look upon it. The highest church spire in America would have been a miniature toy beside it. Crawling along like mere insects past the base of this "peak of tempests," as its name signifies, we began to ascend the last slope of the grand Scheideck. When about half way up I stopped for

a long time, hoping I might see another avalanche spring away from its high resting place. I was fairly out of harm's way, and hence could enjoy the bold leap of a snow precipice from the cliffs of the Wetterhorn. I was the more anxious, as avalanches are generally, to the eye, mere slender torrents streaming down the mountain side. The distance dwindles the roaring, thundering mass to a mere rivulet, but this was massive and awful enough for the gods themselves. But I waited in vain. The bright sun fell full on the dazzling top, but not a snow-wreath started, and I turned away disappointed towards the top of the pass.

The descent into Meyringen was charming. After having passed through the Schwartzwald (dark wild), we came upon a perfectly level, smooth and green pasturage. A gentle rivulet skirted the side of it, while at one end stood a single Swiss cottage. I left the path that went into the hills from the farther corner, and rode to the end and looked back. From my horse's feet, up to the very cliffs that frown in savage grandeur over it, went that sweet greensward; while at the left rose a glacier of the purest white that fairly dazzled the eyes as the sunbeams fell in their noontide splendour upon it. That beautiful, quiet plat