CHAPTER XVIII. MORE MOUNTAINS-MORE MISHAPS. -Ye toppling crags of ice, Ye avalanches, which a breath draws down, Tendons une main bienfaisante Manfred. A cet infortuné que le ciel nous presente; VOLTAIRE. Fais ce que tu dois,-arrive ce qui pourra! LETTER XVI. CAROLINE ST. CLAIR TO MRS. BALCARRIS. Sept. 10, Grindelwald-still! MORE than one day has elapsed and still I am here, and here for many days more I am - likely to remain. Little did I think, — — but I must tell my tale from the beginning. The morning following our arrival, as usual, rose bright and beautiful, though so cold that we found a good deal of snow had fallen during the night, upon the surrounding mountains. Mounted on horseback, we all set off after breakfast to cross the great Scheideck to Meyringen. We diverged from the path to visit the great glacier of Grindelwald, and as Mrs. Cleveland, who had never seen an avalanche, expressed a strong desire to behold one, the guides led us to a neighbouring height, from whence she could look down upon their fall. We stood upon a flat ledge or terrace, from which sloped down a shelving declivity, as steep as the roof of a house, and about the same breadth; beneath which was a precipice, whose stony sides, very nearly perpendicular, were jagged with rough rocks, partially covered with fresh fallen snow. But it was close to us on one side, and beyond this sort of shelf or terrace, on which we were standing, where the steep declivity of the mountain's top above terminated in a tremendous precipice, that we were directed to watch for the expected avalanche. While waiting for it, we heard the report of a gun, which probably loosened a body of snow, for almost immediately it rolled down the declivity above, and fell over the brink of the precipice into the ravine beneath, with the noise of thunder. A second discharge of a gun very near to us, almost immediately followed, and a bird fell dead at our feet, on the shelving rock before us. A gentleman with two guides now appeared in view, from the rocks behind us, who immediately made his apologies to Mrs. Cleveland for having, in ignorance of our vicinity, startled her with inadvertently firing so near her. At the first glance I saw, to my inexpressible confusion, that the stranger was no other than the identical knight of the rings. I turned my back to him, and threw down my veil, turning it up again, so as to fall double over my face, in the hope that he would not recognise me; but while Colonel Cleveland talked eagerly to him about game, shooting, chamois, &c. he came forward and went down upon the steep and dangerous declivity before us, to examine his birdalthough one of his guides was then in the act of picking it up. He now turned round, and exactly faced me. I could not support his gaze, and moving away a few steps, I went down upon the steep shelf of the rock, and stooped, in order the better to conceal my face, to pick a beautiful flower, of a variety of the saxifrage, which was growing a little way over the ledge;while stooping, I heard Mrs. Cleveland call out with a scream-Good God, Caroline!' and at the same instant, Colonel Cleveland shouted, "The bear! the bear!" Startled at this double alarm, I sought, with a hasty effort, to recover my footing on the ledge above, but the snow, which was quite soft and fresh fallen, gave way under my feet-I fell-and must inevitably have slipped over the edge of the precipice, had not the stranger, who was standing on the same shelving rock, a few paces from me, sprung forward and intercepted my fall;—his guide, at that moment, caught hold of me, and I was safe;-but, dreadful to relate, by the effort he made to stop my fall, he lost his own footing, staggered back a pace or two, and before our eyes, was precipitated over the edge of the preci pice, into the ravine beneath! Never, while I live, shall I forget the feelings of that moment. I cannot yet recall it to my mind without sensations of shuddering agony, which no words can describe. Horror-struck by the fatal consequences of my rash folly, I stood transfixed to the spot in speechless despair. Nothing but the wild hope, for such it seemed to every one else, that he might possibly yet be alive and be saved, preserved me from distraction. From the precipice not being perfectly perpendicular, he had rolled a long way down its side among the rough stones and rocks, with frightful rapidity, but his actual fall had not been so tremendous. Now however, he lay on the broken snows and icy bed of the last avalanche, still and motionless as death. The next avalanche must inevitably overwhelm him. The guides said it would take nearly an hour to go by the long circuit round to the bottom of the precipice, and I implored them to procure ropes without a moment's delay, and to let themselves down from the place where we were standing, to the bottom. 'It was to no use,' they said, he must be dead,' |