Catoctin clarion. [volume] (Mechanicstown, Md.) 1871-1940, 1896-09-10

the smoking compartment and later
from Mainz to Bingen in compartment
where smoking was prohibited. This
was better than the other and cleaner,
in fact about like our ordinary street
car in Baltimore. The second class
carriages in Germany are very nice and
very comfortable; much better than our
American coaches, excepting the Pull
man and parlor coaches. The journey
today lasted from $50 a. m. to l p. m.
with about an hour lntermission divid-
ed into two waits of Is and As minutes
respectively and was rather tiresome.
| forgot to mention the great Tun Of
Heidelberg in my letter of yesterday: 1t
is shown as q great attraction. When
l saw it yesterday was scarcely at all
interested. Today thinking over it it
does seem rather remarkable. Not that
such thing could be built, but that it
should have been built and really filled
with wine-it must have taken an enor.
nous quantity to fill it. 1t is quite in
terestlng to know that the wine was
pumped up stairs to the banquet hall
as we pump water from we'll. The
old pump is quite curiosity with its
heavy long iron handle. We saw just
such one in the village Of Wislcck and
a woman using it. l caught snap
shot of her.
Tomorrow if the weather is fair we
begin our ride down the Rhine, the
really pretty part of the Rhine of which
we have yet seen nothing.
Monday July q.
Top of the GEMMI PASS. $50 p. m.
Well, we have had grand day. At
$50 this morning we left Lermutt and
in three or four hours reached Lenk
Station. We had a sandwich and a
glass of milk and then with our bundles
strapped upon our backs and our coats
on our arms started for the Gemmi
Pass. 1t was climb steep grades from
the frst-Chimney Rock is play in COM
parison-and the sun was tremendously
hot so that in less than an hour we were
wet thro' with perspiration. Up, up,
up, for q hours, faster than we should
have gone. The view was very, very
beautiful and the road wound in and
out around the mountain often couple
hundred feet of rock rising straight up
into the air on our right and on our
left a precipice of the same depth
way back in our rear we could see the
mountains on the other side of the
Rhone valley, snow capped and wreath
ed in clouds while ahead the great, bare,
brown, rock ribbed sides of the Gemml
rose a mile above US. We have today
climbed up into the air just one mile
and are going to spend the night on top
of the Gemmi. Snow lies all around US
and it is quite cold. Within 200 yards
of the door of the house there is the bot
tom of glacier, and inst around the
corner Of the house one could step OIL
and go down | do not know how many
thousands Of feet. The climb this after
noon was one of the great events of our
trip. 1t was grand and we can never
forget it-but very hard work-just
bend forward and put one foot before
the other until you ache and ache and
you think you must stop right there.
AS usual we climbed it considerably in
side guide book time from which infer
that we are stronger than the ordinary
tourist or that we do not know how to
climb yet. The view from here is
simply magnificent. The hotel itself is
surrounded by savage rocks partly GOV
cred with snow and great drifts lie in
all the hollows but way off to the south
lie range upon range CT grand snow
covered peaks conspicuous among them
the lovely Weisshorn. You cannot i'm
agine how beautiful they look in their
shifting covering of milky white cloud,
then melts away, and then one here, one
there in all their glittering wilderness
they look like some new world unpro-
famed by the foot of man. Way up
among the clouds they seem not of the
earth earthly.
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK