A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

at a franc apiece, not to jodel any more. There is somewhat

too much of the jodeling in the Alps.

About the middle of the afternoon we passed through

a prodigious natural gateway called the Felsenthor,

formed by two enormous upright rocks, with a third lying

across the top. There was a very attractive little

hotel close by, but our energies were not conquered yet,

so we went on.

Three hours afterward we came to the railway-track. It

was planted straight up the mountain with the slant

of a ladder that leans against a house, and it seemed

to us that man would need good nerves who proposed

to travel up it or down it either.

During the latter part of the afternoon we cooled our

roasting interiors with ice-cold water from clear streams,

the only really satisfying water we had tasted since we

left home, for at the hotels on the continent they

merely give you a tumbler of ice to soak your water in,

and that only modifies its hotness, doesn’t make it cold.

Water can only be made cold enough for summer comfort by

being prepared in a refrigerator or a closed ice-pitcher.

Europeans say ice-water impairs digestion. How do they

know?–they never drink any.

At ten minutes past six we reached the Kaltbad station,

where there is a spacious hotel with great verandas which

command a majestic expanse of lake and mountain scenery.

We were pretty well fagged out, now, but as we did

not wish to miss the Alpine sunrise, we got through our

dinner as quickly as possible and hurried off to bed.

It was unspeakably comfortable to stretch our weary limbs

between the cool, damp sheets. And how we did sleep!–for

there is no opiate like Alpine pedestrianism.

In the morning we both awoke and leaped out of bed at the

same instant and ran and stripped aside the window-curtains;

but we suffered a bitter disappointment again: it

was already half past three in the afternoon.

We dressed sullenly and in ill spirits, each accusing

the other of oversleeping. Harris said if we had brought

the courier along, as we ought to have done, we should

not have missed these sunrises. I said he knew very well

that one of us would have to sit up and wake the courier;

and I added that we were having trouble enough to take

care of ourselves, on this climb, without having to take

care of a courier besides.

During breakfast our spirits came up a little, since we

found by this guide-book that in the hotels on the summit

the tourist is not left to trust to luck for his sunrise,

but is roused betimes by a man who goes through the halls

with a great Alpine horn, blowing blasts that would

raise the dead. And there was another consoling thing:

the guide-book said that up there on the summit the guests

did not wait to dress much, but seized a red bed blanket

and sailed out arrayed like an Indian. This was good;

this would be romantic; two hundred and fifty people

grouped on the windy summit, with their hair flying and

their red blankets flapping, in the solemn presence of the

coming sun, would be a striking and memorable spectacle.

So it was good luck, not ill luck, that we had missed

those other sunrises.

We were informed by the guide-book that we were now

3,228 feet above the level of the lake–therefore

full two-thirds of our journey had been accomplished.

We got away at a quarter past four, P.M.; a hundred yards

above the hotel the railway divided; one track went

straight up the steep hill, the other one turned square

off to the right, with a very slight grade. We took

the latter, and followed it more than a mile, turned a

rocky corner, and came in sight of a handsome new hotel.

If we had gone on, we should have arrived at the summit,

but Harris preferred to ask a lot of questions–as usual,

of a man who didn’t know anything–and he told us to go

back and follow the other route. We did so. We could ill

afford this loss of time.