Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/122

138 has neither the beauty nor the grandeur of the glacier of the Rhone. The Reuss, insignificant in comparison with the Rhone in its after career, has, at its source, a much more rapid and wilder character; and many little streams soon hasten down from the mountain to increase its waters. It grows rapidly by these means, and hurries along with still greater violence in a direction contrary to that of the Rhone. How similar are the life-career of rivers and heroes! I know not whether any one has ever worked out this idea more beautifully than Tegner, in his little poem, “The River.”

Our road lay along the course of the Reuss; but our road was a narrow foot-path upon the slope of a steep mountain, so narrow and in such bad condition, that I often felt myself in danger of my life, and was in a continual state of amazement that a road in considerable use should be left in a condition which, from that very cause, must often lead to the occurrence of misfortunes.

Again and again, we met troops of travelers on horseback or on foot, and that this did not happen in the narrowest and most dangerous parts of the road, was prevented by the guides, who went with their long Alpine staffs at the head of the procession. More difficult, however, became the dilemma when, at one point of the road between the precipice and the mountain-wall, our advance was stopped by a cow. She stood there immovably, with her horn-decorated brows facing us, and seemed to think to herself, as I did, “What is to be done now? One of us must