Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/100

116 and broken up by time. The poisonous Aconitum napellus, or Christmas rose, gives an agreeable effect, for it is the announcement of vegetation. From the lofty region of the Daulear See of the Engsten Alps, the path descends, sometimes over rocks, sometimes through the beds of torrents, along a naked wall of rock as far as Adelboden. Between the long icy valleys of the lake of Thun, in the bosom of the mountain, which extends westward from Niesen to Stockhorn, descending the while to Leman, lies the Oberland, a labyrinth of innumerable valleys, through which the Sarine, Simmen, Kander, Engstetenbach, and the two Lutschine rivers, increased by innumerable streams, proceed along their wild and devious courses to the Aar, or to the lake of Thun.

“In the highest regions, however, where grass can grow, you meet with herdsmen and their herds, whilst the fertile heights of Asia are desolate, because Asia wants that which blesses the Oberland—freedom.”

Thus far my R., both for your benefit and mine, have I followed J. von Muller's description of the Oberland, because I acknowledge myself totally bewildered in the labyrinths of the Alpine country, which the powerful Swiss wanders through with a safe, though it may be somewhat plodding step, and I was not able to give you, like a new Ariadne, a guiding thread through them. I can merely show you one and another picture from it, whilst I go on spinning the thread of my narrative. I look upon the