Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20.djvu/235

1867.] ings of which rendered it very attractive. I found enough to admire in every farm-house by the wayside, with its warm wood-color, its quaint projecting balconies, and coat of shingle mail. When the ravine opened, and the deep valley of Urnäsch, before me, appeared between cloven heights of snow, disclosing six or eight square miles of perfect emerald, over which the village is scattered, I was fully repaid for having pressed farther into the heart of the land. There were still two hours until night, and I might have gone on to the Rossfall,—a cascade three or four miles higher up the valley,—but the clouds were threatening, and the distant mountain-sides already dim under the rain.

At the village inn I found several herdsmen and mechanics, each with a bottle of Rheinthaler wine before him. They were ready and willing to give me all the information I needed. In order to reach the Toggenburg, they said, I must go over the Krätzernwald. It was sometimes a dangerous journey; the snow was many cubits deep, and at this time of the year it was frequently so soft that a man would sink to his hips. To-day, however, there had been thunder, and after thunder the snow is always hard-packed, so that you can walk on it; but to cross the Krätzernwald without a guide,—never! For two hours you were in a wild forest, not a house, nor even a Sennhütt' (herdsman's cabin) to be seen, and no proper path, but a clambering hither and thither, in snow and mud; with this weather, yes, one could get into Toggenburg that way, they said, but not alone, and only because there had been thunder on the mountains.

But all night the rain beat against my chamber window, and in the morning the lower slopes of the mountains were gray with new snow, which no thunder had packed. Indigo-colored clouds lay heavily on all the Alpine peaks; the air was raw and chilly, and the roads slippery. In such weather the scenery is not only shrouded, but the people are shut up in their homes,—wherefore further travel would not have been repaid. I had already seen the greater part of the little land, and so gave up my thwarted plans the more cheerfully. When the post-omnibus for Herisau came to the inn door, I took my seat therein, saying, like Schiller's Sennbub ', "Ihr Matten, lebtwohl, Ihr sonnigen Weiden!"

The country became softer and lovelier as the road gradually fell towards Herisau, which is the richest and stateliest town of the Canton. I saw little of it except the hospitable home of my friend the Chancellor, for we had brought the Alpine weather with us. The architecture of the place, nevertheless, is charming, the town being composed of country-houses, balconied and shingled, and set down together in the most irregular way, every street shooting off at a different angle. A mile beyond, I reached the edge of the mountain region, and again looked down upon the prosperous valley of St. Gall. Below me was the railway, and as I sped towards Zurich that afternoon, the top of the Sentis, piercing through a mass of dark rain-clouds, was my last glimpse of the Little Land of Appenzell.