snow-peak with the sun
blazing upon it or the moonlight softly enriching it--but finally we
concluded to try a bit of excursioning around on a steamboat, and a dash
on foot at the Rigi. Very well, we had a delightful trip to Fluelen, on
a breezy, sunny day. Everybody sat on the upper deck, on benches, under
an awning; everybody talked, laughed, and exclaimed at the wonderful
scenery; in truth, a trip on that lake is almost the perfection of
pleasuring.

The mountains were a never-ceasing marvel. Sometimes they rose straight
up out of the lake, and towered aloft and overshadowed our pygmy steamer
with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way. Not snow-clad
mountains, these, yet they climbed high enough toward the sky to meet
the clouds and veil their foreheads in them. They were not barren and
repulsive, but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye.
And they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes, that one could
not imagine a man being able to keep his footing upon such a surface,
yet there are paths, and the Swiss people go up and down them every day.

Sometimes one of these monster precipices had the slight inclination of
the huge ship-houses in dockyards--then high aloft, toward the sky, it
took a little stronger inclination, like that of a mansard roof--and
perched on this dizzy mansard one's eye detected little things like
martin boxes, and presently perceived that these were the dwellings of
peasants--an airy place for a home, truly. And suppose a peasant should
walk in his sleep, or his child should fall out of the front
yard?--the friends would have a tedious long journey down out of those
cloud-heights before they found the remains. And yet those far-away
homes looked ever so seductive, they were so remote from the troubled
world, they dozed in such an atmosphere of peace and dreams--surely no
one who has learned to live up there would ever want to live on a meaner
level.

We swept through the prettiest little curving arms of the lake, among
these colossal green walls, enjoying new delights, always, as the
stately panorama unfolded itself before us and rerolled and hid itself
behind us; and now and then we had the thrilling surprise of bursting
suddenly upon a tremendous white mass like the distant and dominating
Jungfrau, or some kindred giant, looming head and shoulders above a
tumbled waste of lesser Alps.

Once, while I was hungrily taking in one of these surprises, a