Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/119

Rh Gletscher. But I do not notice these, and scarcely feel any uneasiness about the steep path, on the sharp turnings of which, now slippery with the rain, my bearers can hardly keep their footing. All my senses are fascinated by the astonishing scene. But every moment the air becomes warmer and the wind stiller. The Rhone Gletscher in all its grandeur lies before us, below us; we sink down into its bosom and only beauty and pleasantness meet us on every hand; summer air and splendor in the home of eternal winter! Behold the scene as I saw it, as I see it at this moment.

At the foot of the broad snow-fall, between Gallenstock, Gersthorn and Gelmerhorn, rises an immense cupola of ice, surrounded on three sides by Alps towering to the sky; and on the fourth, extending towards an open extent of valley, two buks flow from the two sides of the icy cupola; these, at a little distance, flow together into one stream, and soon afterwards uniting with the waters of two warm springs, the eye follows their course, far, far in the distance, through the valley which opens to the southeast. This is the —the eternal, born from the bosom of the eternal rest. The Rhone is here like a lively boy who springs, full of play, from his mother's lap. Its course is brisk but calm; its color milky, and nothing in its being betokens its future fate and grandeur; nothing, the mighty river whose floods almost annually desolate countries and cities, but whose waters also form valleys of unequaled fertility, and which, far away from its Swiss cradle, feed the cheerful vines of France in the valley of Avignon.