A Tramp Abroad

  CHAPTER XXIX

  [Looking West for Sunrise]

  He kept his word. We heard his horn and instantly got up. It was darkand cold and wretched. As I fumbled around for the matches, knockingthings down with my quaking hands, I wished the sun would rise in themiddle of the day, when it was warm and bright and cheerful, and onewasn't sleepy. We proceeded to dress by the gloom of a couple sicklycandles, but we could hardly button anything, our hands shook so.I thought of how many happy people there were in Europe, Asia, andAmerica, and everywhere, who were sleeping peacefully in their beds,and did not have to get up and see the Rigi sunrise--people who didnot appreciate their advantage, as like as not, but would get up in themorning wanting more boons of Providence. While thinking these thoughtsI yawned, in a rather ample way, and my upper teeth got hitched on anail over the door, and while I was mounting a chair to free myself,Harris drew the window-curtain, and said:

  "Oh, this is luck! We shan't have to go out at all--yonder are themountains, in full view."

  That was glad news, indeed. It made us cheerful right away. One couldsee the grand Alpine masses dimly outlined against the black firmament,and one or two faint stars blinking through rifts in the night. Fullyclothed, and wrapped in blankets, and huddled ourselves up, by thewindow, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat, while we waited inexceeding comfort to see how an Alpine sunrise was going to look bycandlelight. By and by a delicate, spiritual sort of effulgence spreaditself by imperceptible degrees over the loftiest altitudes of the snowywastes--but there the effort seemed to stop. I said, presently:

  "There is a hitch about this sunrise somewhere. It doesn't seem to go.What do you reckon is the matter with it?"

  "I don't know. It appears to hang fire somewhere. I never saw a sunriseact like that before. Can it be that the hotel is playing anything onus?"

  "Of course not. The hotel merely has a property interest in the sun, ithas nothing to do with the management of it. It is a precarious kind ofproperty, too; a succession of total eclipses would probably ruin thistavern. Now what can be the matter with this sunrise?"

  Harris jumped up and said:

  "I've got it! I know what's the matter with it! We've been looking atthe place where the sun _set_ last night!"

  "It is perfectly true! Why couldn't you have thought of that sooner? Nowwe've lost another one! And all through your blundering. It was exactlylike you to light a pipe and sit down to wait for the sun to rise in thewest."

  "It was exactly like me to find out the mistake, too. You never wouldhave found it out. I find out all the mistakes."

  "You make them all, too, else your most valuable faculty would be wastedon you. But don't stop to quarrel, now--maybe we are not too late yet."

  But we were. The sun was well up when we got to the exhibition-ground.

  On our way up we met the crowd returning--men and women dressed inall sorts of queer costumes, and exhibiting all degrees of cold andwretchedness in their gaits and countenances. A dozen still remained onthe ground when we reached there, huddled together about the scaffoldwith their backs to the bitter wind. They had their red guide-books openat the diagram of the view, and were painfully picking out the severalmountains and trying to impress their names and positions on theirmemories. It was one of the saddest sights I ever saw.

  Two sides of this place were guarded by railings, to keep people frombeing blown over the precipices. The view, looking sheer down intothe broad valley, eastward, from this great elevation--almost aperpendicular mile--was very quaint and curious. Counties, towns, hillyribs and ridges, wide stretches of green meadow, great forest tracts,winding streams, a dozen blue lakes, a block of busy steamboats--we sawall this little world in unique circumstantiality of detail--saw it justas the birds see it--and all reduced to the smallest of scales and assharply worked out and finished as a steel engraving. The numerous toyvillages, with tiny spires projecting out of them, were just as thechildren might have left them when done with play the day before; theforest tracts were diminished to cushions of moss; one or two big lakeswere dwarfed to ponds, the smaller ones to puddles--though they did notlook like puddles, but like blue teardrops which had fallen and lodgedin slight depressions, conformable to their shapes, among the moss-bedsand the smooth levels of dainty green farm-land; the microscopicsteamboats glided along, as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty time tocover the distance between ports which seemed only a yard apart; and theisthmus which separated two lakes looked as if one might stretch out onit and lie with both elbows in the water, yet we knew invisible wagonswere toiling across it and finding the distance a tedious one. Thisbeautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance of those "reliefmaps" which reproduce nature precisely, with the heights and depressionsand other details graduated to a reduced scale, and with the rocks,trees, lakes, etc., colored after nature.

  I believed we could walk down to Waeggis or Vitznau in a day, but I knewwe could go down by rail in about an hour, so I chose the latter method.I wanted to see what it was like, anyway. The train came along about themiddle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was. The locomotive-boilerstood on end, and it and the whole locomotive were tilted sharplybackward. There were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open allaround. These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; thisenables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline.

  There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the "lanternwheel" of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls thetrain up the hill or retards its motion on the down trip. About the samespeed--three miles an hour--is maintained both ways. Whether going up ordown, the locomotive is always at the lower end of the train. It pushesin the one case, braces back in the other. The passenger rides backwardgoing up, and faces forward going down.

  We got front seats, and while the train moved along about fifty yardson level ground, I was not the least frightened; but now it startedabruptly downstairs, and I caught my breath. And I, like my neighbors,unconsciously held back all I could, and threw my weight to the rear,but, of course, that did no particular good. I had slidden down thebalusters when I was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide downthe balusters in a railway-train is a thing to make one's flesh creep.Sometimes we had as much as ten yards of almost level ground, and thisgave us a few full breaths in comfort; but straightway we would turn acorner and see a long steep line of rails stretching down below us, andthe comfort was at an end. One expected to see the locomotive pause,or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously, but itdid nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went it reached thejumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding smoothlydownstairs, untroubled by the circumstances.

  It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the precipices,after this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-offvalley which I was describing a while ago.

  There was no level ground at the Kaltbad station; the railbed was assteep as a roof; I was curious to see how the stop was going to bemanaged. But it was very simple; the train came sliding down, and whenit reached the right spot it just stopped--that was all there was "toit"--stopped on the steep incline, and when the exchange of passengersand baggage had been made, it moved off and went sliding down again. Thetrain can be stopped anywhere, at a moment's notice.

  There was one curious effect, which I need not take the trouble todescribe--because I can scissor a description of it out of the railwaycompany's advertising pamphlet, and save my ink:

  "On the whole tour, particularly at the Descent, we undergo an opticalillusion which often seems to be incredible. All the shrubs, fir trees,stables, houses, etc., seem to be bent in a slanting direction, as by animmense pressure of air. They are all standing awry, so much awry thatthe chalets and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down. Itis the consequence of the steep inclination of the line. Those whoare seated in the carriage do not observe that they are going down adeclivity of twenty to twenty-five degrees (their seats being adaptedto this course of pro
ceeding and being bent down at their backs). Theymistake their carriage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure ofthe normal plain, and therefore all the objects outside which reallyare in a horizontal position must show a disproportion of twenty totwenty-five degrees declivity, in regard to the mountain."

  By the time one reaches Kaltbad, he has acquired confidence in therailway, and he now ceases to try to ease the locomotive by holdingback. Thenceforth he smokes his pipe in serenity, and gazes out upon themagnificent picture below and about him with unfettered enjoyment. Thereis nothing to interrupt the view or the breeze; it is like inspectingthe world on the wing. However--to be exact--there is one place wherethe serenity lapses for a while; this is while one is crossing theSchnurrtobel Bridge, a frail structure which swings its gossamer framedown through the dizzy air, over a gorge, like a vagrant spider-strand.

  One has no difficulty in remembering his sins while the train iscreeping down this bridge; and he repents of them, too; though he sees,when he gets to Vitznau, that he need not have done it, the bridge wasperfectly safe.

  So ends the eventual trip which we made to the Rigi-Kulm to see anAlpine sunrise.