This is Alpine solitude. All around me
were these deep, green dells, from which comes up the tinkle of bells,
like the dropping of rain every where It seems to me the air is more
elastic and musical here than below, and gives grace to the commonest
sound. Now I look back along the way we have been travelling. I look
at the strange old cloudy mountains, the Eiger, the Wetterhorn, the
Schreckhorn. A kind of hazy ether floats around them--an indescribable
aerial halo--which no painter ever represents. Who can paint the
air--that vivid blue in which these sharp peaks cut their glittering
images? Of all peaks, the Eiger is the most impressive to me.
[Illustration: _of the sharp pointed Eiger, with mountain goats on a
pinnacle in the foreground._]
It is a gigantic ploughshare of rock, set up against the sky, its
thin, keen, purple blade edged with glittering frost; for so sharp is
its point, that only a dazzling line marks the eternal snow on its
head.
I walked out as far as I could on a narrow summit, and took a last
look. Glaciers! snows! mountains! sunny dells and flowers! all good
by. I am a pilgrim and a stranger.
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