Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/28

44 promenade, and the hotels are empty. Nothing now is to be heard in the valley but the ringing of cattle-bells, and this music is not of the most melodious description.

The valley is a plain between two lakes and the mountain-walls which follow them from shore to shore. Two rivers, the Aar and the Lutschine, flow through it with rapid course; but the general levelness of the ground, and the growing crops, prevent their being seen, except you are close upon their banks, and the immense heights on either side of the valley prevent you having an idea of its width. To me it appeared only as a moderate leap from one mountain-wall to the other, and on all sides the view is circumscribed, so that I confess to having felt myself considerably oppressed by the close neighborhood of the Titans, which, at this point, are more imposing by their mass than by their beauty, and which, morning and evening, cast their cold, dark shadows across the valley, so that it is there gloomier at the same hour than anywhere else in the neighborhood. The empress of the valley, the lofty Jungfrau, which is so magnificent when seen from a distance, is here a lofty, broad-shouldered Medusa, which seems ready to crush her worshipers. Ha! I would not live here!

But Hohbuhl's wood, opposite the giantess, is beautiful, and the view from its heights is celebrated. I set out on a morning walk and voyage of discovery there, and lost myself completely among its paths, which were covered with autumn leaves, so that I could not find a single elevation where I could obtain a general view, not even to ascertain whereabout I