Erratic* of the A lps. 293 



formation of gneiss behind it. We learn this from the map of M. 

 Desor, the fellow-traveller of Agassiz, in his " Nouvelles Excursions 

 et Sejours dans les Glaciers, 1845/' These glaciers, or rather the 

 much larger ones which occupied their places at some remote period, 

 must have been the agents which carried the primary boulders across 

 the limestone ridge, and distributed them over a great part of the 

 space from the Wengern Alp, x, to a point near k. On the east 

 side of the lower glacier of Grindelwald, 100 yards from the ice, 

 I found a block of gneiss measuring 35 feet by 20, and 12 in thick- 

 ness, containing 300 cubic yards, and weighing 600 tons. It was 

 most delicately poised on a steep declivity of soil, 800 feet above 

 the rivulet, and well exemplified how nicely the glacier regulates its 

 force in depositing the load it bears on its banks. There were others 

 near it. *§ 9fft ,aoiqiosiq di no <oal£ si&rl. 



The valley extending from Alpnach to Lungern has features of 

 great beauty. The mountains are high, and feathered with wood to 

 their summits, while their declivities abound in groves and glades of 

 the freshest green, and lower down are a few cultivated fields, chalets, 

 villages, and the two sweet lakes. In looking northward the eye 

 rests on the giant forms of the Bigi and Mount Pilatus, the one 

 rising 4480, the other 5570 feet above the lake which bathes their 

 feet. The day, unluckily for us, was wet, and we began the ascent 

 of the Brunig in a heavy rain. But it abated greatly before we 

 reached the summit, and we anticipated a delightful view of the beau- 

 tiful valley of Hasli, and the mountains beyond it. When we emerged 

 from the wood, however, and looked southward, the valley and the 

 mountains had disappeared, and there was nothing before us but a 

 vast expanse of snow-white clouds, above which we stood " like ship- 

 wrecked mariners on desert coast." Such a scene has a touch of 

 the sublime. There is a mystical charm in the feeling of intense 

 loneliness suddenly awakened in the traveller's mind when an image 

 of chaos is thus conjured up afround him, akin to what Noah may 

 have felt in the ark when casting his eye over the boundless waste of 

 waters ; and the illusion is the greater if the traveller is in a strange 

 country. But our chaos was not of long duration. In a little while 

 the Ollchihorn reared its head right in front of us, and was followed 

 by other (i horns" and peaks, rising slowly from the ocean of cloud, 

 like rocks and castles emerging from the canvas in dissolving views, 

 till we had before us an archipelago of islands. After the mass of 

 vapour rolled away from the mountain tops, it settled on the two sides 

 of the great valley of Hasli (the bottom of which we had now 

 reached) leaving the middle clear. Here it clung to the rocks like a 

 festooned curtain, affording us, through rents and openings in its 

 upper parts, many delicious little fairy landscapes, pine woods, pre- 

 cipices, waterfalls, bright green lawns, all placed in a setting of white 

 cloud, and suspended high over our heads, as if belonging to an 

 upper world. The scenery of the Alps has many phases, and those 



