belittled, by contrast, to what I have likened it to,—a cosy and carpeted parlor. It was so high above the Kandersteg
THE GASTERNTHAL.
valley that there was nothing between it and the snow peaks. I had never been in such intimate relations with the high altitudes before the snow peaks had always been remote and unapproachable grandeurs, hitherto, but now we were hob-a-nob,—if one may use such a seemingly irreverent expression about creations so august as these.
We could see the streams which fed the torrent we had followed issuing from under the greenish ramparts of glaciers; but two of three of these, instead of flowing over the precipices, sank down into the rock and sprang in big jets out of holes in the mid-face of the walls.
The green nook which I have been describing is called the Gasternthal. The glacier streams gather and flow through
