on account of my foot. At Brientz an old woman would give us her presence and conversation till one of my companions courted the daughter. Met between Grindenwald and Interlachen L[ord] B[yron] and Mr. H[obhouse]: we saluted.
September 23.—Got up at 4. Tired of my company; and, finding the expense more than I could afford, I went to their bedrooms to wish them good-bye. Set off at 512; and through fine copse-wooded crags, along the Aar, with cascades on every side, to Meyringen; where I breakfasted with two Germans, an old and a young artist—the old, chatty. Bought a pole. Went to see the Reichenbach, a fine cascade indeed. Thence through the beautiful vale of Nachim-Grunden, where for a moment I planned a sovereignty; but, walking on, my plans faded before I arrived at Guttannen, where I dined.
Rode all the way to-day—horrible, only passable for men and mules: it is the way to St. Gothard. The road is merely huge unequal masses of granite thrown in a line not the straightest. From Guttannen the road went through the wildest and most sublime scenery I ever read of: vegetation less and less, so that, instead of grass, there was moss; then nothing. Instead of trees, shrubs; then nothing—huge granite rocks leaving hardly room for the road and river. The river's bed the most magnificent imaginable, cut
