h, in which some German travelers
sit drinking their wine, and sputtering away in harsh gutturals. The
inn is very neat inside, and we are well served. Stalden is high; but
away above it on the opposite side is a village on the steep slope,
with a slender white spire that rivals some of the snowy needles.
Stalden is high, but the hill on which it stands is rich in grass. The
secret of the fertile meadows is the most thorough irrigation. Water
is carried along the banks from the river, and distributed by numerous
sluiceways below; and above, the little mountain streams are brought
where they are needed by artificial channels. Old men and women in the
fields were constantly changing the direction of the currents. All the
inhabitants appeared to be porters: women were transporting on their
backs baskets full of soil; hay was being backed to the stables;
burden-bearers were coming and going upon the road: we were told that
there are only three horses in the place. There is a pleasant girl who
brings us luncheon at the inn; but the inhabitants for the most part
are as hideous as those we see all day: some have hardly the shape of
human beings, and they all live in the most filthy manner in the
dirtiest habitations. A chalet is a sweet thing when you buy a little
model of it at home.

After we leave Stalden, the walk becomes more picturesque, the
precipices are higher, the gorges deeper. It required some
engineering to carry the footpath round the mountain buttresses and
over the ravines. Soon the village of Emd appears on the right,--a
very considerable collection of brown houses, and a shining white
church-spire, above woods and precipices and apparently unscalable
heights, on a green spot which seems painted on the precipices; with
nothing visible to keep the whole from sliding down, down, into the
gorge of the Visp. Switzerland may not have so much population to
the square mile as some countries; but she has a population to some
of her square miles that would astonish some parts of the earth's
surface elsewhere. Farther on we saw a faint, zigzag footpath, that
we conjectured led to Emd; but it might lead up to heaven. All day
we had been solicited for charity by squalid little children, who
kiss their nasty little paws at us, and ask for centimes. The
children of Emd, however, did not trouble us. It must be a serious
affair if they ever roll out of bed.

Late in the afternoon thunder began to tumble about the hills, and