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The last time I was here it took a couple of hours to reach this spot from the Scheidegg, and probably neither I nor any of my fellow-passengers could to-day endure the necessary fatigue of reaching this spot on foot. Then we remounted the train, and on we went into the solid rock of the huge Eiger.
Then we start again, and on we are driven by the current generated away down there in Lauterbrünnen, through the spiral tunnel, mounting a thousand feet more till we are landed at an opening cut on the further side of the rocky Eiger, which admits us to an actual footing on the great glacier called the Eismeer, or Icelake.
On the way back I left the train at the foot of the Eiger glacier, and walked down with my companion amongst the rocks of the moraine and over the sparse turf of these highest regions of life. Everywhere was a profusion of gentians, the larger and darker, as well as the smaller, bluest of all blue flowers.
Only bleak, purplish crags, rising all around us, and silent, silver mountains looking over them. "That one directly before you is the Monk," says C., calling to me from behind, and pointing to a great snow peak. Our guide, with animation, introduced us by name to every one of these snow-white genii the Falhorn, the Schreckhorn, the Wetterhorn, the great Eiger, and I cannot remember what besides.
Suppose that we are standing upon the Wengern Alp; between the Mönch and the Eiger there stretches a round white bank, with a curved outline, which we may roughly compare to the back of one of Sir E. Landseer's lions. The ordinary tourists the old man, the woman, or the cripple, who are supposed to appreciate the real beauties of Alpine scenery may look at it comfortably from their hotel.
'Which is the sham, Miss Clara? he asked. 'That Eiger mountain there. 'Ah! so I thought. 'Then you are of my opinion, Mr Osborne? 'You mean the mountain is shamming, don't you looking far off when really it is near? 'Not at all. When it looked last night as if it hung right over our heads, it was shamming. See it now far away there! 'But which, then, is the sham, and which is the true?
A kind of hazy ether floats around them an indescribable aerial halo which no painter ever represents. Who can paint the air that vivid blue in which these sharp peaks cut their glittering images? Of all peaks, the Eiger is the most impressive to me.
This is the case with the Wetterhorn and Eiger at Grindelwald, and with the Grande Jorasse above the Col de Ferret.
Around them arose the snow mountains, whose names were as familiar to Rudy as they were to every child in the neighbourhood: "the Jungfrau," "the Mönch," and "the Eiger." Rudy had never been so high before, had never before trodden on the vast sea of snow, which lay there with its immoveable waves. The wind blew single flakes about, as it blows the foam upon the waters of the sea.
After a quarter of an hour the train passes through a tunnel 240 feet in length, and over an iron bridge of the same length, by means of which the Schnurtobel, a deep gorge with picturesque waterfalls, is crossed. At Station Freibergen a beautiful mountain scene presents itself, and the eye rests upon the glittering, ice-covered ridge of the Jungfrau, the Monk, and the Eiger.
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