Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/58

52 geographical position of the district in which we are at present. We had now, for three hours, been ascending the mountainous region which separates Valais from Berne. This is, in fact, the great track of mountains which runs in one continuous chain from the Lake of Geneva to Mount St. Gothard, and on which, as it passes through Berne, rest the great masses of ice and snow. Here "above" and "below" are but the relative terms of the moment. I say, for instance, beneath me lies a village; and, in all probability, the level on which it is built is on a precipitous summit, which is far higher above the valley below than I am above it.

As we turned an angle of the road, and rested a while at a hermitage, we saw beneath us, at the end of a lovely green meadow-land which stretched along the brink of an enormous chasm, the village of Inden, with its white church exactly in the middle of the landscape, and built altogether on the slope of the hillside. Beyond the chasm another line of meadow-lands and pine forests went upwards, while right behind the village a vast cleft in the rocks ran up the summit. On the left hand the mountains came right down to us, while those on our right stretched far away into the distance; so that the little hamlet, with its white church, formed, as it were, the focus toward which the many rocks, ravines, and mountains all converged. The road to Inden is cut out of the precipitous side of the rock, which, on your left going to the village, lines the amphitheatre. It is not dangerous, although it looks frightful enough. It goes down on the slope of a rugged mass of rocks, separated from the yawning abyss on the right by nothing but a few poor planks. A peasant with a mule, who was descending at the same time as ourselves, whenever he came to any dangerous points, caught his beast by the tail, lest the steep descent should cause him to slip, and roll into