Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/114

130 Here it is, that the Aar, not far from its source in the glaciers above Grimsel, hurls itself down amongst the rocks, into an abyss of two hundred feet. In this fall, its wildly-agitated mass of waters meets the silver cascade of Arlenbach, from the glaciers of Arlenberg, and uniting, plunge with a deafening thunder into the gulf below, from which ascends a dense cloud of spray. At noon, just when we were there, the sun threw a beaming rainbow over the dark cleft between which the fall is precipitated, and then was thrown out in perfectly dazzling splendor from the dark background of rocks.

The wind was strong on the bridge above the fall, and drove the spray over us. Besprinkled with water, but delighted with the scene, we left the grand, beautifully wild spectacle to continue on our journey.

From Handek, the scenery becomes wilder and more desolate. Trees are no longer seen, vegetation decreases, the mountains become more rigid, blocks of stone cover the land, life seems, by degrees, to be dying out. The glacier rivers roar more loudly, swollen with the torrents from the ice-fields and lakes lying high amongst the mountains. The splendid Gelten fall, seems to plunge down as if out of the very sky. At all distances, the eye meets, on the heights, ice and pointed rocks. The wild falls of the Aar increase the nearer you approach to its source. In some places the bridges have been carried away by it. The people are very busy replacing them, assisting me in my chair across, and through the roaring waters, I don't rightly know how, and I was scarcely dizzy. Now and then, we meet troops of gentlemen and