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Next morning, early, we drove to the Rhone valley and took the train for Visp. There we shouldered our knapsacks and things, and set out on foot, in a tremendous rain, up the winding gorge, toward Zermatt.
They will remember the funny adventure with "the man who speaks English," and, no doubt, unite with us in warmly commending the Hotel Lion d'Or at Sion as the nastiest inn in Switzerland. When one leaves the dusty Rhone Valley, and turns southward from Visp, he plunges into the wildest and most savage part of Switzerland, and penetrates the heart of the Alps.
I certainly never thought of putting in a letter at Sion, as I arrived there about three hours after Fister left me, it being only two stages from Martigny; and besides, I had enough to do that morning in thinking what I should want at Zermatt, and was engaged at Sion, while we changed horses, in buying wax candles and rice. It was unlucky that I lost post at Visp," etc.
Being in the neighbourhood, and wishing to assure myself whether the sculptor of the Saas-Fee chapels had or had not come lower down the valley, I examined every church and village which I could hear of as containing anything that might throw light on this point. I was thus led to Vispertimenen, a village some three hours above either Visp or Stalden.
All through that journey, from Paris to Lausanne, from Lausanne to Visp, from Visp to Zermatt, horror of the Matterhorn hung over me like a pall.
Nicholas we crossed a bridge over the raging torrent of the Visp, and came to a log strip of flimsy fencing which was pretending to secure people from tumbling over a perpendicular wall forty feet high and into the river.
Soon the village of Emd appears on the right, a very considerable collection of brown houses, and a shining white church-spire, above woods and precipices and apparently unscalable heights, on a green spot which seems painted on the precipices; with nothing visible to keep the whole from sliding down, down, into the gorge of the Visp.
We watered the caravan at the cold stream which rushes down a trough near the end of the village, and soon afterward left the haunts of civilization behind us. About half past five o'clock we arrived at a bridge which spans the Visp, and after throwing over a detachment to see if it was safe, the caravan crossed without accident.
Fed as it is by many mountain streams, the Visp is always full, and the more so, when in summer the melting ice adds to its volume. Then it is a sight long remembered, as roaring, rollicking, rushing along it is a brawling mass of waters, often working havoc with banks, road, village, and pastures.
We had a fine view, from here, of the energetic Visp, as it makes its first plunge into the world from under a huge arch of solid ice, worn through the foot-wall of the great Gorner Glacier; and we could also see the Furggenbach, which is the outlet of the Furggen Glacier.
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