Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/27

Rh and the lake dimpled by playful winds. We left behind us the lovely idyllian scenery of the lake with its verdant park-like shores, and advanced rapidly towards the Titans, Eiger, Monch, and the fern-like Fru, or Blumlis Alp, and many others. The loftiest Alps of the Oberland stood before us in mingled magnificence. At length stepped out the twelve-thousand-eight-hundred-foot-high Jungfrau, and it seemed as if we were about to steam directly into her bosom. But the vessel swung abruptly to the left, and the snow-clad giants stood on our right; behind us the pyramidal Niesen: more distant, the new-old castle Schadow, which rises so picturesquely out of the waves; and we entered a bay between the mountains, in whose gloomy shadow we landed upon a verdant shore. We are at Neuhaus. Before us lies a plain, surrounded by immense mountain-heights. A friendly German lady and her daughter offered me a seat in their carriage, and thus we drove to Interlachen, a small town situated on a tongue of land between the lakes of Thun and Brienz, from which circumstance it probably derives its name: Inter-lacus.

The mountain air, the baths in the Aar which flows through the valley, the facility by which, from this place, the most celebrated scenes of the Oberland can be reached, have of late years made Interlachen a great resort of travelers in Switzerland, and large hotels have altogether driven away the shepherds' huts from the valley. As yet, the season for the baths has not commenced. The water of the Aar is quite too cold before midsummer, and the air of the valley too cold also. It is, therefore, now very quiet on the grand