THE JUNGFRAU RAILWAY n 



hours' ascent of the train. And a marvellous scene it is 

 as one rises to the height of 8000 feet, skirting the 

 glaciers which ooze down the rocky sides of the Jungfrau, 

 and mounting far above some of them. At the Scheidegg 

 I changed into a smaller train, and with some thirty 

 fellow- passengers was carried higher and higher by the 

 faithful, untiring electric current. After a quarter of an 

 hour's progress we paused high above the " snout " of 

 the great Eiger glacier, and descended by a short path 

 on to it, examined the ice, its crevasses and layers, and 

 its " glacier-grains," and watched and heard an avalanche. 

 The last time I was here it took a couple of hours to 

 reach this spot from the Scheidegg, and probably neither 

 I nor any of my fellow-passengers could to-day endure 

 the necessary fatigue of reaching this spot on foot. Then 

 we remounted the train, and on we went into the solid 

 rock of the huge Eiger. The train stops in the rock 

 tunnel and we get out to look, through an opening cut 

 in its side, down the sheer wall of the mountain on to 

 the grassy meadows thousands of feet below. 



Then we start again, and on we are driven by the 

 current generated away down there in Lauterbriinnen, 

 through the spiral tunnel, mounting a thousand feet more 

 till we 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 Ice-lake. We 

 lunch in a restaurant cut out as a cavern in the solid rock, 

 and survey the wondrous scene. We are now at a height 

 of 1 0,000 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, accom- 

 panied by guides and held up by ropes, but never till 

 now with perfect ease and tranquility and without 

 " turning a hair," or causing either man or beast to 

 labour painfully on my behalf. We had taken two hours 



