A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

He objected to the courier, and with some show of reason,

since he was about to venture upon new and untried ground;

but I thought he might as well learn how to take care of

the courier now as later, therefore I enforced my point.

I said that the trouble, delay, and inconvenience

of traveling with a courier were balanced by the deep

respect which a courier’s presence commands, and I must

insist that as much style be thrown into my journeys

as possible.

So the two assumed complete mountaineering costumes

and departed. A week later they returned, pretty well

used up, and my agent handed me the following

Official Report

OF A VISIT TO THE FURKA REGION. BY H. HARRIS, AGENT

About seven o’clock in the morning, with perfectly

fine weather, we started from Hospenthal, and arrived at

the MAISON on the Furka in a little under QUATRE hours.

The want of variety in the scenery from Hospenthal made

the KAHKAHPONEEKA wearisome; but let none be discouraged;

no one can fail to be completely R’ECOMPENS’EE for

his fatigue, when he sees, for the first time, the monarch

of the Oberland, the tremendous Finsteraarhorn. A moment

before all was dullness, but a PAS further has placed us

on the summit of the Furka; and exactly in front of us,

at a HOPOW of only fifteen miles, this magnificent mountain

lifts its snow-wreathed precipices into the deep blue sky.

The inferior mountains on each side of the pass form

a sort of frame for the picture of their dread lord,

and close in the view so completely that no other prominent

feature in the Oberland is visible from this BONG-A-BONG;

nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary grandeur

of the Finsteraarhorn and the dependent spurs which form

the abutments of the central peak.

With the addition of some others, who were also bound

for the Grimsel, we formed a large XHVLOJ as we descended

the STEG which winds round the shoulder of a mountain

toward the Rhone Glacier. We soon left the path and took

to the ice; and after wandering amongst the crevices UN PEU,

to admire the wonders of these deep blue caverns, and hear

the rushing of waters through their subglacial channels,

we struck out a course toward L’AUTRE CO^T’E and crossed

the glacier successfully, a little above the cave from

which the infant Rhone takes its first bound from under

the grand precipice of ice. Half a mile below this

we began to climb the flowery side of the Meienwand.

One of our party started before the rest, but the HITZE

was so great, that we found IHM quite exhausted,

and lying at full length in the shade of a large GESTEIN.

We sat down with him for a time, for all felt the heat

exceedingly in the climb up this very steep BOLWOGGOLY,

and then we set out again together, and arrived at last

near the Dead Man’s Lake, at the foot of the Sidelhorn.

This lonely spot, once used for an extempore burying-place,

after a sanguinary BATTUE between the French and Austrians,

is the perfection of desolation; there is nothing in sight

to mark the hand of man, except the line of weather-beaten

whitened posts, set up to indicate the direction of the pass

in the OWDAWAKK of winter. Near this point the footpath joins

the wider track, which connects the Grimsel with the head

of the Rhone SCHNAWP; this has been carefully constructed,

and leads with a tortuous course among and over LES PIERRES,

down to the bank of the gloomy little SWOSH-SWOSH, which

almost washes against the walls of the Grimsel Hospice.

We arrived a little before four o’clock at the end

of our day’s journey, hot enough to justify the step,

taking by most of the PARTIE, of plunging into the crystal

water of the snow-fed lake.

The next afternoon we started for a walk up the Unteraar glacier,

with the intention of, at all events, getting as far

as the HU”TTE which is used as a sleeping-place by most

of those who cross the Strahleck Pass to Grindelwald.

We got over the tedious collection of stones and DE’BRIS

which covers the PIED of the GLETCHER, and had walked