y,
terminating in the Ralligstoecke, or Ralligflue, the needle-like point,
so prettily ridged with firs, which advances its precipitous sides to
the water. These precipices were formed in historic times, and the sheer
face from which half a mountain has been torn stands now as clear and
fresh as ever, while a chaos of vast blocks at its foot gives a point to
the local legends of devastation and ruin caused by the various
berg-falls. Two such falls are clearly marked by the _debris_: one of
these, a hundred and fifty years ago, reduced the town of Ralligen to a
solitary Schloss; and the other, in 1856, overwhelmed the village of
Merligen, and converted its rich pastures into a desert cropped with
stones. A traveller in Switzerland, at the beginning of this century,
found that the inhabitants of Merligen were considered in the
neighbourhood to be _d'une stupidite et d'une betise extremes_, and I
am inclined to believe that after the last avalanche a general migration
to Gonten must have taken place.

Christian's patois was of so hopeless a description, that I was tempted
to give it up in despair, and walk on in silence. Still, as we were
together for a whole long day, for better or for worse, it seemed worth
while to make every effort to understand each other, else I could learn
no local tales and legends, and Christian would earn but little
_Trinkgeld_; so we struggled manfully against our difficulties. A
confident American lady, meditating Europe, and knowing little French
and no German, is said to have remarked jauntily that if the worst came
to the worst she could always talk on her fingers to the peasants; but I
did not attempt to avail myself of the results of early practice in that
universal language. Christian's answers--the more intelligible parts of
them--were a stratified succession of _yes_ and _no_, and as he was a
man naturally polite and acquiescent, the assentient strata were of more
frequent occurrence; but of course, beyond showing his good-will, such
answers were of no practical value. At length, after long perseverance,
we were rewarded by the appearance of a curiosity which eventually gave
each the key to the other's cipher. This was a strong stream of water,
flowing out of the trunk of a growing tree, at a height of six feet or
so from the ground; and I was so evidently interested in the phenomenon,
that Christian exerted himself to the utmost, at last with success, to
explain the construction of the