Chapter 27

CHAPTER XXVII [I Spare an Awful Bore]

Close by the Lion of Lucerne is what they call the "Glacier Garden"--and
it is the only one in the world. It is on high ground. Four or five
years ago, some workmen who were digging foundations for a house came
upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age. Scientific men
perceived in it a confirmation of their theories concerning the glacial
period; so through their persuasions the little tract of ground was
bought and permanently protected against being built upon. The soil was
removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered track which the ancient
glacier had made as it moved along upon its slow and tedious journey.
This track was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bed-rock,
formed by the furious washing-around in them of boulders by the
turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers. These huge round
boulders still remain in the holes; they and the walls of the holes are
worn smooth by the long-continued chafing which they gave each other in
those old days. It took a mighty force to churn these big lumps of
stone around in that vigorous way. The neighboring country had a very
different shape, at that time--the valleys have risen up and become
hills, since, and the hills have become valleys. The boulders discovered
in the pots had traveled a great distance, for there is no rock like
them nearer than the distant Rhone Glacier.

For some days we were content to enjoy looking at the blue lake
Lucerne and at the piled-up masses of snow-mountains that border it all
around--an enticing spectacle, this last, for there is a strange and
fascinating beauty and charm about a majestic snow-peak with the sun
blazing upon it or the moonlight softly enriching it--but finally we
concluded to try a bit of excursioning around on a steamboat, and a dash
on foot at the Rigi. Very well, we had a delightful trip to Fluelen, on
a breezy, sunny day. Everybody sat on the upper deck, on benches,
under an awning; everybody talked, laughed, and exclaimed at the wonder
scenery; in truth, a trip on that lake is almost the perfection of
pleasuring. The mountains were a never-ceasing marvel. Sometimes they
rose straight up out of the lake, and towered aloft and overshadowed our
pygmy steamer with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way. Not
snow-clad mountains, these, yet they climbed high enough toward the
sky to meet the clouds and veil their foreheads in them. They were not
barren and repulsive, but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to
the eye. And they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes, that
one could not imagine a man being able to keep his footing upon such a
surface, yet there are paths, and the Swiss people go up and down them