heads. Jolting along on these vehicles, which would go over a house, I
am sure, without being overturned or without being surprised, we
went--the Swiss postillion jolting along at the same round rate up and
down, without ever looking back to see whether the carriages and
passengers follow, yet now and then turning to point to mountains,
glaciers, and cascades. The valley of Lauterbrunn is beautiful; a clear,
rushing cascady stream rushes through it: fine chestnuts, walnuts, and
sycamores scattered about, the verdure on the mountains between the
woods fresh and bright. Pointed mountains covered with snow in the midst
of every sign of flowery summer strike us with a sense of the sublime
which never grows familiar. The height of the Staubach waterfall, which
we saw early in the morning, astonished my mind, I think, more than my
eyes, looking more like thin vapour than water--more like _strings_ of
water; and I own I was disappointed, after all I had heard of it.

We went on to the valley of Grindelwald, where we saw, as we thought two
fields off, a glacier to which we wished to go; and accordingly we left
the _char-a-bancs_, and walked down the sloping field, expecting to
reach it in a few minutes, but we found it a long walk--about two miles.
To this sort of deception about distances we are continually subject,
from the clearness of the air, and from the unusual size of the objects,
for which we have no points of comparison, and no previous habits of
estimating. We were repaid for our walk, however, when we came to the
source of the Lutzen, which springs under an arch of ice in the glacier.
The river runs clear and sparkling through the valley, while over the
arch rests a mountain of ice, and beside it a valley of ice; not smooth
or uniform, but in pyramids, and arches, and blocks of immense size, and
between them clefts and ravines. The sight and the sound of the waters
rushing, and the solemn immovability of the ice, formed a sublime
contrast.