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The gates of the town are closed on the Sabbath day during the hours of service, and an outward respect paid to the day which is creditable to the people. In the hotel, a small room has been fitted up neatly as a chapel for an English service, a custom not unusual in Switzerland, where English travellers are flocking constantly.

The scenery improves as we ascend the Rhine. The banks are steeper, the hills are bolder; the water rushes more rapidly through winding channels, and the people we meet bear more characteristic features of another country. It is a Catholic holiday. We are meeting the peasantry in great numbers, dressed in their best clothes, some of them gaily; blooming lasses in snow white muslin and no bonnets, but sweet pretty head-dresses and pink ribbons tied as pretty girls in all countries know how to tie them; they are gathering at the churches, and as they wend their way through green fields to the highway, they give a romantic air to the rural picture we are looking on. Many of them are paired, and as they saunter along hand in hand, and now and then with an arm thrown lovingly round the waist, we know them as probably paired for life, and send up a little prayer that they may jog along as pleasantly all the way through.

"The finest Cataract in Europe" is at Schaffhausen. We arrived at sunset, just in time to see the falls before the last rays had faded into night. The Rhine is here 300 feet broad, and after foaming and rushing furiously for a mile or two it takes a bold leap over a shelving precipice sixty feet high, and plunges into a bay of waters below, boiling like a mighty caldron and sending up perpetual clouds of spray. In the midst of the cataract two columnar rocks rise perpendicularly, dividing the fall into three unequal parts. One of these rocks is clothed with shrubbery and the steep banks on either side are lined with trees. A castellated mansion crowns the summit on one side, and several buildings grace the other, so that nature and art have here combined to make a picture of wild romantic beauty, in which there is enough of grandeur to entitle it, at times, to be called sublime. Certainly we should so pronounce it, if we had not seen the waterfalls of America.

We climbed up to the hotel Weber, which stands on the brow of the hill, and the good man of the house gave us a chamber in full view of the falls, where we went to sleep with the roar of the tumult of many waters in our ears, making music the last we heard at night, and the first in the morning. Now the grandeur of the distant Alps began to appear. Long ranges, peak towering above peak, are seen; the names of some of them are familiar, as they stand there inviting us to come to their feet. Let us go.

And this brings us to Constance.

CONSTANCE AND ZURICH.

A decaying Town--the Kaufhaus--Famous Council--Dungeon of Huss--Scene of Martyrdom--House of Huss--Lake Constance--the Ride to Zurich--Villages--the Valley--Hotel Baur--a Swiss Cottage--the Furnishing--Miles Coverdale--Zwingle--Lavater's Grave--the Library--Sunset View from the Botanical Garden.

The old Cathedral is here, where those martyrs stood when the sentence of death was passed upon them, and the model of the dungeon not three feet wide and ten feet long, with the identical door and window in it, where Huss was confined for many weary months. Here too is the hurdle on which he was dragged to the place of execution, and when we had examined these and many interesting objects which a Catholic claiming to be the friend of Huss showed us, we walked out of the old chamber, and following the long street to the Huss Gate, found beyond the walls of the town, in the midst of a garden, the spot where these blessed men were caught up by chariots of fire into heaven. An old Capuchin convent, deserted now, is standing near it, and so peaceful and fertile seemed these fields as we stood in the midst of the fruits and flowers, it was hard to believe an infuriated mob had once rioted here, and religious persecution kindled the fires of martyrdom on the flesh of men of whom the world was not worthy.

In the Council Chamber are wax figures of these martyrs, bearing the records which I copied. "Jerome of Prague, called Faulfisch, a learned man of great celebrity, the friend and defender of John Huss, born at Prague, March 14, 1362; burned alive in consequence of the order of the Council of Constance, May 30, 1417, in the 55th year of his age. Jerome walked to the place of punishment, as though he went to a place of rejoicing. When the executioner was going to set fire to the pile behind him, Jerome said to him, 'Come here, light it before me, for if I had feared the fire, I would not have been here.'"

"John Huss, of Housenitts in Bohemia, born July 6, 1373, rector of the University and lecturer at Prague, burned alive at Constance in consequence of the order of the Council, July 6, 1415, in the 42d year of his age. His last words were, 'I resign my soul to the hands of my God and my Redeemer.'"

Returning from the place of execution, we paused in front of the house in which John Huss lodged before he was imprisoned. A rude image in stone of the Reformer, but a strongly marked likeness, was on the outside. Every one we met could tell us which way to go to find the Huss house, and though there are but a few hundred Protestants in the whole city, the idea seemed to be general that a good man was wrongfully and cruelly murdered when Huss was burned.

In the after part of the day, as the shades of evening were drawing around us, we had a boat and went out on the Lake, and skirted along its shores, passing a large monastery where a few brothers of the Augustine order are still maintained, and a few miles beyond is a long and beautifully planted nunnery which was suppressed in 1838, and converted into a hospital, though the sisters are permitted to live and die there, without adding to their number. This is the largest of all the Swiss lakes, and lies 1255 feet above the level of the sea. We floated around until the evening became so cool that we were glad to go ashore. Passing an ancient-looking church of which the door was standing open, we walked in: a solitary lamp was burning near the altar, and the sound of voices led us down the aisle to a door opening into one of the cloisters where a group of boys were on their knees, repeating prayers in concert, and vieing with each other in the loudness and sing-song tone with which they performed the service. We returned to our hotel by the light of lamps hung in the middle of a chain stretched across the street, and went early to bed as we were early to rise.

It is said that the sunset view of the city, valley, lake, and mountains is not surpassed by any scene in Switzerland. We had been so busy in these old and interesting scenes, that the day was gone before we knew it, and as we walked out to climb the hill, from which the view is to be had, we feared the sun had already set. Part of the old rampart of the town remains, an elevated mound which has been tastefully laid out with walks and planted with shrubs and flowers, for a botanical garden. On the summit fine shade-trees stand, and here is one of the most beautiful promenades in the world. The sun was half an hour high, and just as we reached the hill-top it began to come down from behind a dense cloud, like a mass of molten gold distilled into a transparent globe. Its liquid form appeared to tremble as it came forth; but the face of nature smiled in his returning beams. The nearer summits first caught the brightness, and then the more distant, invisible before, now stood forth in their majesty, shining in the sunlight. Below me lay the lake like a silver sea. And all along its shores and far up the hill-sides, thousands of white cottages and villas, the abodes of wealth and peace and love, sweet Swiss homes, rejoiced in the sunshine, as they sent up their evening psalm of praise from ten thousand happy hearts to God. A hundred years hence our valleys may be so peopled: but we have none now like this. For a thousand years these hill-sides have been tilled, and all these acres, wrested from the forest, and subdued by the hand of industry and art, have been planted with corn and wine, neat and many splendid mansions have been reared in every nook and on every sunny slope, and now on all sides the panorama seems to present the very spot where learning, religion, taste and peace would delight to find a refuge and a home. It is now sunset in the valley. The lake is dark. The last ray has played on the spire of St. Peter and the Minster. But the dome of the Dodi still gleams in the sun, and the far-off Glarus and Uri are reflecting his lingering beams.

They are gone. The rose-tints have faded from the loftiest summit of snow, and the sun has gone down to rise on those dearer to me than his light, in a distant land.

THE MOUNTAIN TOPS.

Climbing the Utleberg--Fat woman on a donkey--First Alpine view--The valley, lake and hills--Haunts of Lavater, Zimmerman, Klopstock, Gessner--The work of Escher--Coming Down--Baur Hotel--Lake Zurich--Lake Zug--Golda--Land-side--Ruin--Ascent of the Rigi--The best route--Chapels by the way--Mary of the Snow--Convent and monks--The Summit--The Company--Change of Temperature--Sunset--Supper--Night--Sunrise--Glory of the view--Getting down again--Fat man done up.

August 19.

Rankin challenged me this morning to walk to the heights of Utleberg, on the Albis ridge, to the west of Zurich. The Utleberg is only three thousand feet high! and that is a small matter in Switzerland. After a cup of coffee we set off at eight in the morning, and without guide or mules we wandered out of the town, across the river, and through beautiful vineyards, with luxuriant grapes, not ripe enough to be tempting. We climbed along up the hill-side. Other parties were on their way, some German, some French, some English, none American but ourselves. At the foot of the hill we met a flock of milk white goats, which their owner was driving down from the mountains to sell in town; beautiful creatures; for the first, we learned that beauty could be affirmed of a goat. Here the lame and the lazy supplied themselves with mules, and a comical figure of a fat German lady on a miserable little donkey, will be an amusing memory for many a day. When she was half way up the mountain she looked so jaded with the jerking, that we thought she would have suffered less if she had carried the donkey. We cut stout sticks in the forest, and pushed on, stopping now and then to pick flowers, or to examine a leech or a lizard, in the pools and streams by the side of the path, resting when tired, but pressing onward and upward, steadily and slowly; encouraged often by the splendor of the scene below, as we caught it from some opening in the woods, and feeling that we had the day before us and nothing else to do. The ascent became steeper as we pressed along, and it doubtless seemed steeper to us the more we were wearied with the way, but we made it in less than two hours, winding around the mighty rock that caps the apex, and entered the house of refreshment before we looked off into the world below.

The only incident to give variety to our return was losing the way, and making the walk a mile longer; but that was of small account to Swiss pedestrians, ambitious of doing great things, and making nothing of climbing a mountain, and coming down before dinner.

There are many routes to the Rigi. Of course we went by the best. Every traveller does; at least he thinks so, and that often amounts to the same thing. But in this as in every other road up hill in life, before a man gets half way up, he wishes he had taken the other. So it matters little, if he only reaches the top at last. The steamboat on the Zurigsee, leaves at eight in the morning, and at least a hundred passengers crowded the little thing, when with a lovely breeze and a fine clear day we were off for the Rigi.

The glory of the Rigi is at sunset and sunrise, and then there is none unless the sky is clear. Nor are you sure of a clear sky up there, if it were ever so bright when you left the base. The group of mountains known by the name of Rigi, of which the highest peak is alone the object of interest to the traveller, stand so isolated by the lakes of Zug and Lucerne from the rest of the ridges and ranges, that the view from the summit, especially at the close of the day and at sunrise, is unequalled. It stands up there alone, as an observatory from which to see the others. An hour on the boat brought us to the village of Horgen, where we were carried by stages across the country to Zug, on a lake of the same name. At Horgen about sixty passengers were landed, and we found that our tickets had been numbered as they were given to us on board the boat, and we were to be seated in the coaches accordingly. My number was forty-seven, very near the end of the list, but it turned up a very good seat, on the shady side of the stage, a very important matter in the middle of a hot day for a ride of three hours. Not a winding but very much of a zig-zag road, led us over the hill country that divides the lakes. Sometimes we had delightful views, deep ravines through which the mountain streams were finding their way; on the crest, the Rigi and Pilatus first meet the eye, and then rapidly we make our way to the borders of the lake, on which stands the little town of Zug, the capital of the Canton of that name, the least among the tribes. After a hasty dinner at the tavern we embarked on another steamboat, and still smaller than the one on the Zurich Lake. What a lovely sheet of water is this Lake Zug! It lies eighteen hundred feet higher than the sea; and all around it except at the head, the richly cultivated shores are sloping away from the water's edge. But just before us, as we are going South, the noble Rigi rises from the shore of the Lake, and in the clear water the whole of that vast mountain clothed with verdure to the very summit is reflected so perfectly, that instead of looking up to study the ridges and precipices and forests and flocks on its rugged sides, it is pleasanter to study it as it lies there in the depths of this pellucid sea. We reached the South end, or head of the lake about three in the afternoon, and here we arranged to ascend the mountain.

The ascent from Arth is made by many, but it is far better to push on through the village to Goldau, and there look at the evidences of the awful work of ruin and death that was wrought in 1806 by the slide of a large part of the Rossberg mountain; burying 450 human beings in one living grave. There is the fresh white side of the mountain, as if the half of it had fallen away yesterday. It is 5000 feet high; and lies in great strata of pudding stone, which is very liable to be split asunder by the water that filters between the layers. You can see the ranges in the strata as the sun falls on this bare side, and it seems as if what was left lying there, might one of these days come down to find the half that left it fifty years ago. Then a portion three miles long and a thousand feet broad and at least a hundred feet thick broke away from the rest, after a long succession of heavy rains; and came down into the valley, teeming with a population of happy peasantry, and overwhelmed them with the most awful deluge of modern times. So sudden was the rush of rocks and earth, that a party of travellers going up the Rigi, where I ascended, were met by the torrent; seven had passed on 200 yards ahead of the other four and were caught by the descending avalanche, and never seen again. The valley is now covered with vast rocks and masses of the conglomerate, which then came down, and with so much force that some of them now lie scattered some distance up the hill on the other side of the vale! Fifty years have not restored the valley to its former fertility and beauty. One of its lakes was nearly filled up, and now little pools are seen where once was the bed of a handsome sheet of water. The stories told of individual cases of suffering, of whole families perishing, and what is on some accounts more distressing, of some being taken and others left, are so many that I will not attempt to repeat them now. I walked into the beautiful little church at Goldau, a gem, and on each side of the front door is a black slab with a record of names of some of those who perished in that dreadful day. This is a Roman Catholic Canton, as I had evidence presently.

A new scene opens on the eye of the traveller when for the first time he arrives at the foot of a mountain with a large party, and prepares to ascend. We led off on foot from Arth to Goldau, supposing that the fifty or more from the boat would strike up the hill immediately. But they followed us: some with guides, some without: some carrying their own packs, others with a servant to help them: some were ladies ready to foot it to the summit: some were to be carried in a chair on a bier by four bearers: the lame and the lazy are expected to ride on horses. I was in the former class to-day, recovered from my Utleberg tramp, and was glad to have good company to keep me in countenance, for I was a little ashamed of myself in taking a horse when so many, and some of them ladies, were going up on foot.

The path for a mile is gently ascending, and then takes a shaded gorge in the hills, and on this account is greatly to be preferred to those paths which lead from Arth and Weggis, around the mountain, exposing the pilgrim all the way, to the rays of the sun. Now we are mounting steadily: turning frequently in the saddle to look at the constantly enlarging and ennobling view. Now and then a little cascade diversifies the hour: or we stop to refresh ourselves from the many rills that are gurgling by the path. The noise of running streams and waterfalls is constantly heard, and on the stillness of the air the tintinabula or tinkling of the bells on the necks of the dun-colored cows, that are feeding in numerous herds all up the sides of the mountain, comes gently to the ear as soft music.

All along up the mountain are small sheds, called chapels or stations, with some rude image of the Saviour in it, and pilgrims, to whom indulgences were promised by the Pope in the seventeenth century, are going from one to the other stopping at each and saying their prayers. I dismounted and entered one; where the most hideous sight met my eye which I have yet seen in the miserable Romish worship. A full life size figure of Christ sinking to the earth beneath the weight of the cross is carved in wood; the countenance indicating agony, but such a horrid face to personate the Saviour! and a wig on his head of long dirty hair hanging over his shoulders! It was sickening, and I was glad to hasten away from it, as rapidly as possible.

These praying stations, thirteen in number, lead on to a neat church called "Mary of the Snow," and around it are lodging-houses for pilgrims who are very numerous in the month of August. A small convent is here, where four or five monks of the Capuchin order reside; they do service in the church, and among the mountains where their priestly aid is required. These lodging-houses are sometimes resorted to by invalids for the benefit of the mountain air, and the whey of goat's milk, which can be had in great abundance here. Beggars beset your path from the valley to the mountain top: old men and old women, young men and young women, and little children trained to toddle into the road and put out their hand before they can speak so as to be understood. Many of these are not in want; but every bit of money that can be extracted from travellers is clear gain.

The steepest of the ascent is over, long before you reach the summit, and the last mile of winding way is a very easy and pleasant ride. The change of atmosphere is great; and an overcoat is needed at once, if you are warm with walking. Fortunately you have had no chance to get the view for some time, till it bursts upon you all at once as you plant your feet on the mountain top, on a piece of table-land, of half an acre, that forms a magnificent platform from which to behold this scene. More than two hundred people are there before us: most of them parties travelling for pleasure from all parts of the civilized world, with guides, couriers and servants, a singular group to find yourself among so suddenly and so far above the level of "the world and the rest of mankind." One large hotel, and one small one are to shelter this company for the night, and we are so fortunate as to find that we are to have a small room with three beds, just under the roof, with holes about the size of a hat to admit light and air! That is better than none, and some of these people will have none. Still the two hotels on the summit, and one half an hour down, the Rigi Staffel, afford abundant accommodations to company, unless as in the present instance, the weather has been bad for a week, and hundreds have been waiting for a fair day, and the promise of a good night above. The Album of the house in which visitors register their names records the disappointment of many who have climbed up to see nothing but that mysterious mist which so often shrouds the mountain tops. Probably the greater part of visitors are thus mocked, for it is cloudy up here more than half the time. One party thus groans:

"Seven weary up-hill leagues we sped, The setting sun to see; Sullen and grim he went to bed, Sullen and grim went we. Nine sleepless hours of night we passed The rising sun to see, Sullen and grim he rose again, Sullen and grim rose we."

Not such was our fate. The sun was half an hour high when we reached the highest peak; and the first Alpine panorama was around us. Other views had been partial: this was a great circle of the heavens and the earth, three hundred miles in circumference! A few clouds in the western sky were gorgeously crimson in the declining sun, but the atmosphere was clear enough to reveal every mountain, every lake, every village, city, forest and plain, with the cottages innumerable, dotting the valleys. At our feet the Lakes of Lucerne and Zug are apparently underneath the mountain, and they stretch themselves so curiously among the hills, that we can scarcely determine to what sheets of water they belong, or whether they are new lakes and not those seen before. And away at a distance are other waters, some of them very small, but giving beauty and variety to the plains below. The villages lying close by have their historic interest. All this region is William Tell's. His name is associated with many a spot on which the eye is resting. A neat little chapel is built to mark the place where he shot his oppressor Gessler. Here at the right is the Lake and town of Zug, and just behind it, rises the spire of the church of Cappel, where Zwingle fell on the field of battle. But turning from the views at the West and North, and looking to the South and East, and such a prospect of Alps on Alps is seen as no one had believed could be piled into sight from a single point. The Bernese Alps clothed in perpetual robes of snow; those of Unterwalden and Uri, with the dull blue glaciers in the midst of them; sending up the peaks of Jungfrau, the Titlis, Rothstock and Bristenstock, are directly in front, and on to the Eastward, is the broad white head of the Dodi, the Sentis and the Glarish; but these are a few only of the many named and unnamed that are now reflecting the sunset from their white crowns, or retiring into the shades of evening as the sun goes down. We look to the South East into an opening called the Muotta Thal, where Suwarrow and Massena with their hostile armies fought bloody battles in the midst of fearful crags and precipices, and we wonder that this land of mountains and ice has been selected as the scene for so much warfare and blood. The sun was now sinking to the edge of the horizon. A lady standing near me said, "It is fit to light such a scene as this!" There was a fitness between the sun and the scene that was truly striking and glorious. The hum of the hundred voices was hushed. It was also fit that we should be still while the sun took his last look of our world that night.

It is for a wonder to me that Switzerland has produced so few poets, but not strange that some of the noblest strains of English poetry have been penned under the inspiration of these Alpine views. They awaken a train of emotions so profoundly new, and at the same time so elevating and sublime, that the heart wishes to utter itself in the passionate language of poetry rather than in the duller words of prose. "These are thy works," O God: before the mountains were built, and before the hills, thou wert here. Thou didst "prepare the heavens, the earth, the fields, and the highest part of the dust of the world." Thou hast weighed the Alps in a balance, and held these mountains in the hollow of thy hand. They shall flow down at thy presence, when thou comest to shake terribly the earth. They stand now, because thou, Lord, dost hold them up, for giants as they are, and touching thy heavens, they still lean on thee.

During this half hour of observation on the summit of the Rigi, we had been wrapped in our cloaks to protect us from the cold. As soon as the sun was gone, we were glad to go into the house, where a table for a hundred guests was spread, with a hot supper sufficient for half the number; and before ten o'clock we were sound asleep. Those who could not find beds spent the night in the dining hall, entertaining themselves and disturbing the rest, but we were so far above them that we heard nothing till the blast of a wooden horn rung through the halls, informing us that the sun would be up before us if we did not hasten to meet him. We hurried on our clothes, wrapped up warmly, and in a few moments stood with our faces to the East, intently watching, like worshippers of the Sun, the first signs of his coming. One single peak was precisely between us and the sun, and as the earliest tints of the morning began to redden it, the appearance was not unlike that of a kindling fire in the summit. The blaze gathered around it, and seemed to shoot away into the regions of ice and snow; and then far into the clouds above, the bright hues of day were cast, and the crowd stood still, anxious to enjoy the first view of the emerging sun. The horn was blown again by the trumpeter, a miserable mode of announcing that the King was coming, as if he needed a herald as he rode up the East in his chariot of gold and fire. There was just haze enough in the atmosphere to dim the sun of his dazzling brightness, and we could look steadily on his face as he rose behind the mountain, and seemed to pause on the summit, and calmly to look down on the world he had left in darkness a few hours before. Then peak after peak, and mountain ridges, and domes and minarets, fields of fresh snow, and forests of living green, began to catch the morning tints: gorges in the hill sides would lie there in deep shadow, and bosoms of virgin snow, bared to the rising sun, would blush when he looked in upon them, while villages and hamlets in the vale below are still wrapped in the shades of the gray dawn, and have not thought of waking yet to begin another day. We spent an hour or two in the enjoyment of this magnificent prospect, which we are told is one of the most delightful we are to have in Switzerland; and when the sun was fairly up to the dwellers in the vale as well as to us on the mountain top, we turned our backs upon him, took a cup of coffee in the Rigi Culm, and bade farewell to the most splendid of all the prospects we had ever seen, or expect to see on earth. I am greatly moved in the presence of Niagara; and there have formed impressions of the active power and glory of the great Creator, such as are conveyed by no other of the works of God. But now I am looking on the silent evidence of his creating might in a new and wonderful form; and it seems to me but a short step from those shining glaciers and snow-crowned palaces to the central throne of Him who sitteth in the circle of the heavens. "O Lord God of Hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? The heavens are thine: the earth also is thine; as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them: the north and the south thou hast created them; Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name. Thou hast a mighty arm; strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand."

As we had ascended the Rigi from Goldau, on the eastern side, we now went down on the western to Weggis. We were in no haste: the day was before us, and we had nothing to do but to walk till we were tired, choose a shady spot commanding a fine view of the lake of Lucerne and the surrounding hills, and then rest and enjoy the scene. The bells from the herds of cattle far below us, and sometimes above us, and the strains of music from the villages in the vales, would come floating to us on the morning air, while nature with all her voices was making one rich psalm. The descent is far less fatiguing than climbing up, but when continued for two or three hours it becomes exceedingly exhausting. We provided ourselves with pike staffs having a Chamois horn for a head, and with these we resisted the too constant downward tendency, using them as a drag to a wheel, and making the greatest effort to hold back. On this path to or from the Rigi is a boarding and bathing house, over a spring of very clear cold water to which invalids resort; and as walking on the mountain side for an hour or so after bathing is part of the discipline, I have no doubt that the establishment works many wonderful cures. A chapel of the Holy Virgin is close by, where prayers are daily said for the shepherds on the precipices, whose lives are in constant danger while they pursue the duties to which they are trained. Half an hour below the chapel, the path leads through a mighty archway formed by two huge masses of rock supporting a third between them. Some great convulsion of nature has thrown them into this remarkable position, and they show in their make the nature of all the upper strata of these hill sides, which are in constant danger of sliding down when the water works its way under them, and separates them from the lower. Here we sat down and refreshed ourselves: a cool breeze rushing through the passage, and making a delightful resting place for weary travellers.

I said it was easier far to go down than up. So it is, but one who carries much weight, or who has not considerable powers of endurance should be cautious of making the experiment. A very heavy gentleman who came to the foot of the mountain with us yesterday, and rode up, with his son, a fine lad of fourteen, running along by the side of the horse, attempted to come down on foot. We overtook him; and just then he lay down on the grass by the side of a beautiful spring of water: he was exhausted, and had sent his son down for help. Presently the faithful and noble boy came running up the mountain with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread, and soon four stout men with a chair, whom the lad had outstripped, came on, and the heavy gentleman was carried by hand the rest of the way. I met them afterwards at the foot of the hill, and congratulated the father on his safe arrival; and more on being the father of such a boy.

LUCERNE AND THE LAND OF TELL.

The Lake--Avalanches--Pontius Pilate--Lucerne--Dance of Death--Fishing--Storm on the Lake--Ramble among the Peasantry--Two Dwarfs--On the Lake--Rifle Shooting--Chapel of William Tell--Scenes in his Life--Altorf--Hay-Making--a Great Day.

There is no life in this little settlement except when the boat arrives with travellers for the Rigi: the mountain comes down so suddenly to the shore that there is hardly room for dwellings, and a few inhabitants only are scattered along on the water's edge. But it is on the shore of the most enchanting lake in Europe, and at a point where some of the finest views of this lake are to be had. We sat on the bank to see the sun set, a sight of which one never tires; hundreds of travellers have passed up or down the Rigi to-day, and of that whole number we are the only two who have cared to rest here to study and admire the scenery, and at the same time refresh ourselves for future pilgrimages.

We have been exploring the town to find what of interest may be in it, though it is scarcely worth while for any man to look down for a moment while he is in Switzerland, unless he is on the top of a hill. But Lucerne has one peculiar feature of interest, in its covered bridges adorned with curious paintings. In Berlin a gallery for al enemies. Now that Yar Afzal is dead, those damned Wazulis will be on our heels. I'm surprized we haven't sighted them behind us already.'

'Who was that man you rode down?' she asked.

'I don't know. I never saw him before. He's no Ghuli, that's certain. What the devil he was doing there is more than I can say. There was a girl with him, too.'

'Yes.' Her gaze was shadowed. 'I can not understand that. That girl was my maid, Gitara. Do you suppose she was coming to aid me? That the man was a friend? If so, the Wazulis have captured them both.'

'Well,' he answered, 'there's nothing we can do. If we go back, they'll skin us both. I can't understand how a girl like that could get this far into the mountains with only one man--and he a robed scholar, for that's what he looked like. There's something infernally queer in all this. That fellow Yar Afzal beat and sent away--he moved like a man walking in his sleep. I've seen the priests of Zamora perform their abominable rituals in their forbidden temples, and their victims had a stare like that man. The priests looked into their eyes and muttered incantations, and then the people became the walking dead men, with glassy eyes, doing as they were ordered.

Yasmina did not reply. She glanced at the stark outlines of the mountains all about them and shuddered. Her soul shrank from their gaunt brutality. This was a grim, naked land where anything might happen. Age-old traditions invested it with shuddery horror for anyone born in the hot, luxuriant southern plains.

The sun was high, beating down with fierce heat, yet the wind that blew in fitful gusts seemed to sweep off slopes of ice. Once she heard a strange rushing above them that was not the sweep of the wind, and from the way Conan looked up, she knew it was not a common sound to him, either. She thought that a strip of the cold blue sky was momentarily blurred, as if some all but invisible object had swept between it and herself, but she could not be sure. Neither made any comment, but Conan loosened his knife in his scabbard.

They were following a faintly marked path dipping down into ravines so deep the sun never struck bottom, laboring up steep slopes where loose shale threatened to slide from beneath their feet, and following knife-edge ridges with blue-hazed echoing depths on either hand.

The sun had passed its zenith when they crossed a narrow trail winding among the crags. Conan reined the horse aside and followed it southward, going almost at right angles to their former course.

'A Galzai village is at one end of this trail,' he explained. 'Their women follow it to a well, for water. You need new garments.'

Glancing down at her filmy attire, Yasmina agreed with him. Her cloth-of-gold slippers were in tatters, her robes and silken under-garments torn to shreds that scarcely held together decently. Garments meant for the streets of Peshkhauri were scarcely appropriate for the crags of the Himelians.

Coming to a crook in the trail, Conan dismounted, helped Yasmina down and waited. Presently he nodded, though she heard nothing.

'A woman coming along the trail,' he remarked. In sudden panic she clutched his arm.

'You will not--not kill her?'

Presently a woman appeared around the crook of the trail--a tall, slim Galzai girl, straight as a young sapling, bearing a great empty gourd. She stopped short and the gourd fell from her hands when she saw them; she wavered as though to run, then realized that Conan was too close to her to allow her to escape, and so stood still, staring at them with a mixed expression of fear and curiosity.

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