the lakes, giving varying views of great beauty. While, ever as with
beckoning fingers, the great peaks, snow-capped or rock-summitted, call
one across the verdant meadows into the higher valleys of Kienthal,
Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwaid, and Kandersteg, to the terraced heights
above or up amid the great wild passes.
Interlaken is, above all, a garden of green. Perhaps the unusual amount
of rain which falls to the lot of this valley accounts for its verdure.
In any event, park, woods, meadow, garden, even the mountain sides are
green, a vari-colored green, and interspersed with an abundance
of flowers. Nowhere is the eye offended by anything inartistic or
unpicturesque, but, on the contrary, the charm is so comprehensive that
the visitor looks from place to place, from this bit to that bit, and
ever sees new beauty.
To complete all, to accentuate in the minds of some this impression of
green, is the majestic Jungfrau. Other views may be grander and more
magnificent, but no view of the Jungfrau can compare in loveliness to
that from Interlaken. A great white glistening mass, far up above green
meadows, green forests, and green mountains, rises this peak, a shining
summit of white. Fitly named the Virgin, the Jungfrau gives her
benediction to Interlaken, serenely smiling at the valley and at the
town lying so quietly at her feet--the Jungfrau crowned with snow,
Interlaken drest in green!
In the golden glory of the sun, in the silver shimmer of the moon, the
Jungfrau beckons, the Jungfrau calls! "Come," she seems to say, "come
nearer! Come up to the heights! Come close to the running waters!
Come." And that invitation falls on no unwilling ears, but in to the
Grindelwald and to the Lauterbrunnen and up to Muerren go those who love
the majestic Jungfrau! What a wonderful trip this is! It may shatter
some ideals in being taken to such a height in a railway train, but even
against one's convictions as to the proper way of seeing a mountain,
when all has been said, the fact remains that this trip is wonderful
beyond words. There is a strangeness in taking a train which leaves a
garden of green in the early morning and in a few hours later, after
valley and pass and tunnel, puts one out on snow fields over 11,000 feet
above the sea, where are seen vast stretches of white, almost level with
the summit of the Jungfrau close at hand, and below, stretching for
miles, on the one side the great Aletsch Glacier, and on the other side
the green valleys enclosed by the everlasting hills!
The route is by way of Lauterbrunnen, Wengen, and the Scheidegg, and
after skirting the Eiger Glacier going by tunnel into the very bowels of
the mountain. At Eigerwand, Rotstock, and Eismeer are stations, great
galleries blasted out of the rock, with corridors leading to openings
from which one has marvelous views.[31] Eismeer looks directly upon the
huge sea of snow and ice, with immense masses of dazzling white so close
as to make one reel with awe and astonishment. In fact, this view is
really oppressive in its wild magnificence, so near and so grand is it.
The Jungfraujoch is different. One is out in the open, so to speak;
one walks over that vast plateau of snow over 11,000 feet high in the
glorious sunlight, above most of the nearer peaks and looking down at a
beautiful panorama. On one side of this plateau is the Jungfrau, on the
other the Moench, either of which can be climbed from here in about three
hours.
Yet the eye lingers longer in the direction of the Aletsch Glacier than
anywhere else, this frozen river running for miles and turning to the
right at the little green basin of water full of pieces of floating ice,
called the Marjelen Lake, or See, at the foot of the Eggishorn, which is
unique and lovely. Long ago it was formed in this corner of the glacier,
and its blue waters are really melted snow, over which float icebergs
shining in the sun. In such a position the lake underlaps the glacier
for quite a distance, forming a low vaulted cavern in the ice. Every now