The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-20 00:00:00

ALPINE TOURISTS.

(Front the Times' Correspondent.)
INTERLAKEN, Sept. 16

September is the finest month of the year all the
world over—at least, north of the equator ; but I
greatly doubt whether there ever was such a Sep-
tember as falls this year to the lot of Germany and
Switzerland. With the single exception of the even-
ing and morning of my ascent of the Righi, I may
well say that I have not seen a speck of cloud or
mist on the mountains ever since I first came in
sight of them. Indeed, even fine weather is a bless-
ing of which we may have too much. We drove up
yesterday to the Grindelwald, and it was rather a
novel than a pleasant sensation to be broiling so
fearfully in the midst of all that snow and ice. A
mere walk to the Upper Glacier, a short time from
the inn, was too much for one of my companions, a
well-knit middle-aged Scotchman, who well-nigh
fainted from the unusual heat, and whom we had to
leave behind in mid career. There was hardly any
great relief within the greenish cave which Helvetian
industry has dug into the solid ice-mass, flooring it
with planks and gravel, so as to make it dry and
unslippery for the tiniest satin shoe—hardly any
shelter even there from the diaphanous vault as they
would through a polished window-pane. Alas for
the poor glaciers ! alas for the scanty waterfalls !
The Swiss have lately taken to lighting up their
world-renowned cataracts at night withßengal lights.
Crowds flock to Schaffhausen, to Meyringen and
Brienz, to see the falls of the Rhine, the Giessbach,
and the upper and lower Reichenbachs thus tricked
out. I do not venture to say anything of the
Rhine falls, because its supplies are almost as
inexhaustible as those of Niagara, and because
the sun will have to dry the Alps to their very
core before it affects the main stream otherwise
than by swelling it all the higher the
fiercer it burns. But as to the poor silver-
thread of the Giessbach, which has only the
parched rock-springs of the Faulhorn to depend
upon for its wealth of waters, why I passed it the
other day from the lake, and it had dwindled down
to such meagre proportions that I could not wonder
at the thrift of its exhibitors if they thought they
could show it to the best advantage as a candle-
light beauty. As to the Grindelwald glaciers, their
mud-stained slopes, which in my time used to come
down to the stream far below the village, are now
melting away like tapers in a Roman procession on
a sirocco-day. Well it is for Switzerland and
Europe that the year, however hard it may die, must
come to its end ; else one would not give much for
the ice-house of the Alps, in spite of its 9,000 to
• 15,000 feet•altitude.

Meanwhile, the effect of this prolonged drought
on the rarefied atmosphere is something magic.
From earliest dawn to latest twilight the naked eye
lords it over the loftiest summits and scans the
deepest chasms as if armed with the strongest tele-
scope. We followed yesterday every step of two
adventurous mountain climbers, as, helped by four
guides, they crept up the crags and cliffs of that
stupendous pyramidal mass which is called the Wet-
terhorn. Up we saw them creeping, creeping, now
half hidden, now hanging over the edge of the bare
precipice. The sight took away our breath as if it
had been that of Blondin on the tight rope above the
din of the great Canadian waterfall, and, together
with that intense feeling of awe, there came on our
nerves a thrill of envy, a longing to be up with
them, to leap from rock to rock, to tremble and
totter on the brink of the yawning abyss. It is thus
that one madman makes many.
But, if such are the days, what shall we say of
the nights—the lengthening nights, the touch of
whose chill almost imperceptibly shrivels up the
rich verdure of the walnut trees, setting off their
embrowned boughs against the gem besprinkled
vividness of the meadow-green ? What of the even-
ings with the pale twilight lingering in the pure
heavens long after the brown mountains and
their deepest shadows are blended into indistin-
guishable darkness ? What of the morning, when
the diamond rays of the great winter stars pierce
through the flimsy gauze of our window curtains, all
fluttering, as it were, with the boding consciousness
of the apprcaching death with which that first faint
streak of dawn inevitably threatens them? What
shall we say? Why, that the evening and the morn-
ing are only one more day added to our long holiday
of enjoyment. _

SEPT. 17.

The Hotel des Alpes at Interlaken is almost ex-
clusively an English house; at least, by keeping
Eriglish hours, you can live here for weeks without
hearing any other language spoken than the Eng-
lish. We have a 7 o'clock table (Rote here spread for
us, with a view to accommodate the latest pleasure
seekers, and allow them to see the last blush of the
setting sun on the Jungfrau, before that lovelybride
puts on her spotless attire, and withdraws for the
night. Pleasant it is to sit at that English 7 o'clock
table d'hote. We were no less than 60 or 70 last
evening; the ladies, in their simple but neat and
careful toilette, the men free from all traces of their
day's toil in their unceremonious morning costumes.
A fine set of people they were, with all their varieties
of age and sex, rank, condition, and tastes, with
one characteristic feature in common—self-respect
and sell-control. Here a widow in deep mourning,
a stately dame with a lot of grown-up daughters,
whose bright eyes and rich complexion only receive
fresh lustre from the uniform gloom of their sable
apparel. There a father with his son, the fine old
English gentleman and the chip of the old block,
healthy-looking, cheerful, inseparable from and
necessary to one another, here on the Continent, as
in their old home in Hampshire or Oxfordshire, that
old home where they are all in all to each other,
probably, since a cruel death-stroke made the irre-
parable
gap in their too happy household. Beside
me, on the right, three young friends, fresh from
college, full of hope, full of energy, looking forth
earnestly and undauntedly into the world before
them ; on my left, a more than middle-aged matron,
a self-protected female, new to the world—to the
Continental world at least, looking at things with
obvious, though tolerably well-dissembled perplexity,
the greatest wonder in the midst of all these peaks,
passes, and glaciers being that of seeing herself
among them all, the wonder whether it can indeed
be herself, the same whom so many summers and so
many winters have seen assiduous at her tea and
gossip in her " small but select" circle at Brighton
or Leamington, the very soul of book clubs arid
Dorcas Societies, a pillar of her ultra-Evangelical
chapel, a very king-maker among deacons, over-
seers, and ministers. Opposite to me a set of hob-
bledehoy brothers, at home from one of the Clapham
academies ; further down a bevy of boardinc, school
sisters, with bare arms and pink elbows ; at the head
of the table, on the right, a weather-beaten Indian
veteran, with grizzled beard ; at the other end a
smooth-faced divine of the old school, with lank,
glossy hair and unexceptionably starched white tie.
Scattered here and there amid the groups, several
unassuming,
Alpine old-stagers, young in years
knowing yet
ye t m a tu re
in
mountain experience,
bland, courteous, makin g no advances, yets
ageneral meeting
all politeness half-way ; coming in late as
rule, hardly looking round for acquaintance, but
slightly nodding at a fellow clubman here and there
as they sit down to their soup and look over the
Wein-karte.
There are no loud voices audible ; the very chil-
dren are awed or disciplined into order. Most of
the assembled guests would have a great deal to say
for themselves. Hardly one of them but comes
from the Oberland ; has, may be, crossed the Furka
and Grimsel within the last twelve hours, or
woke this morning on the top of the Faul-
horn ; hardly one but is off to-morrow to
the Scheideck or the Gemmi, or has bold aspira-
tions to Zermatt, and. the sea of ice round the
Itiffieberg. But your il...aglishman travels to take in
sensation ; to treasure them up, not to lavish them
out in vain declamation a;nd verbiage. By and by the
talk begins, warms up, becomes tolerably general,
talk between friends, talk among strangers ; no one
here grudges a kind atm Ter to a modest question ;
no one stares at you if yo u break in upon matters
with which you are unconirned, or even if you set
him right on subjects with which he thought himself
thoroughly convemiant. The Alps seem to create an
unwonted expanisivene ss of heart and soul among
English people, ty prq mote the readiest feeling of