beautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance of those "relief
maps" which reproduce nature precisely, with the heights and depressions
and 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 knew
we 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 the
middle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was. The locomotive-boiler
stood on end, and it and the whole locomotive were tilted sharply
backward. There were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all
around. These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; this
enables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline.

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

We got front seats, and while the train moved along about fifty yards
on level ground, I was not the least frightened; but now it started
abruptly 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 the
balusters when I was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide down
the 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 this
gave us a few full breaths in comfort; but straightway we would turn a
corner and see a long steep line of rails stretching down below us, and
the comfort was at an end. One expected to see the locomotive pause,
or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously, but it
did nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went it reached the
jumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding smoothly
downstairs, 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-off
valley which