e are landed at an opening cut on the
further side of the rocky Eiger, which admits us to an actual footing
on the great glacier called the Eismeer, or Icelake. We lunch at a
restaurant cut out as a cavern in the solid rock, and survey the
wondrous scene. We are now at a height of 10,000 feet, and in the real
frozen ice-world, hitherto accessible only to the young and vigorous.
I have been there in my day with pain, danger, and labour, accompanied
by guides and held up by ropes, but never till now with perfect ease
and tranquillity and without "turning a hair," or causing either man
or beast to labour painfully on my behalf. We had taken two hours only
from Lauterbruennen; in former days we should have started in the small
hours of the morning from the Scheidegg, and have climbed through many
dangers for some six or seven hours before reaching this spot.

I confess that I am not enchanted with all of the modern appliances
for saving time and labour--the telegraph, the telephone, the
automobile, and the aeroplane. But these mountain railways fill me
with satisfaction and gratitude. When the Jungfrau railway was first
projected, some athletic Englishmen with heavy boots and ice-axes,
protested against the "desecration" of regions till then accessible
only to them and to me, and others of our age and strength. They
declared that the scenery would be injured by the railway and its
troops of "tourists." As well might they protest against the
desecration caused by the crawling of fifty house-flies on the dome of
St. Paul's. These mountains and glaciers are so vast, and men with
their railroads so small, that the latter are negligible in the
presence of the former. No disfiguring effect whatever is produced by
these mountain railways; the trains have even ceased to emit smoke
since they were worked by electricity. I quite agree with those who
object to "funiculars." The carriages on these are hauled up long,
straight gashes in the mountain side, which have a hideous and
disfiguring appearance. But I look forward with pleasure to the
completion of the Jungfrau railway to the summit. I hope that the
Swiss engineers will carry it through the mountain, and down along the
side of the great Aletsch glacier to the Bel Alp and so to Brieg. That
would be a glorious route to the Simplon tunnel and Italy!

I took three hours in the unwearied train descending from the Eismeer
to Interlaken, and was back in my hotel in comfortable time fo