Ascent of the Jungfrau in 1841, 323 
attractive; and in contemplating the ebullitions of those va- 
poury masses which continually rose from the bottom of the 
Rottthal, as from an immense caldron, it seemed to me that 
it was nearly such as my juvenile fancy had formerly repre- 
sented the mouths of hell, that merciless gulf, into which at 
pleasure I plunged all those who had the misfortune not to 
think and believe like myself. 
When we had all again returned to the elbow or projecting 
angle mentioned above, Jacob poured out a glass of wine for 
each of us, and we drank with great feeling to the health of 
Switzerland.* We then stretched ourselves for an instant on 
the snow to contemplate as naturalists the spectacle which sur- 
rounded us. I question whether there exists in the central 
chain a point more fitted to afford an exact view of the true 
form of mountains, respecting which ideas more or less erro- 
neous are generally entertained. Before seeing these colossi 
of the Alps near at hand, it often happened, when contem- 
plating them from the plain, that I was astonished at the con- 
trast which prevailed between the almost cutting ridges of the 
Schreckhorn, and particularly of the Finsteraarhorn, and the 
great pyramids of the Jungfrau, the Ménch, and the Eiger. 
I constrained myself to find some vague explanation of this 
singular difference in the action of the raising force ; and as I 
saw the latter only in front, it seemed to me natural that their 
extreme breadth implied a proportional thickness. Here, on 
the summit of the Jungfrau, when we were so placed as to 
command them on all sides, I was not a little surprised to see 
that the Monch, which I had believed to be so massive, is no- 
thing more than an immense ridge nearly as sharp as the Fin- 
steraarhorn, but running from east to west, while the latter is 
directed from north to south. The Jungfrau itself is far from 
being so compact as it appears from Berne and even from In- 
terlacken; and in this respect it does not gain by being seen 
close at hand ; for, instead of forming a continuous mass, it is 
composed of a series of ridges drawn up one behind another, 
* It is, no doubt, from inadvertence that the Constitutionnel Neuchdtelois 
has omitted this toast in the translation there published of a letter addressed 
by us to M. Schneider, Counsellor of State at Berne, and inserted in the 
number of the Verfassungsfreund for 2d September 1841, 
