Leaving Amstegg, I passed the whole day among snowy, sky-piercing Alps, torrents, chasms and clouds!  The clouds appeared to be breaking up as we set out, and the white top of the Reassberg was now and then visible in the sky.  Just above the village are the remains of Zwing Uri, the castle begun by the tyrant Gessler, for the complete subjugation of the canton.  Following the Reuss up through a narrow valley, we passed the Bristenstock, which lifts its jagged crags nine thousand feet in the air, while on the other side stand the snowy summits which lean towards the Rhone Glacier and St. Gothard.  From the deep glen where the Reuss foamed down towards the Lake of the Forest Cantons, the mountains rose with a majestic sweep so far into the sky that the brain grew almost dizzy in following their outlines.  Woods, chalets and slopes of herbage covered their bases, where the mountain cattle and goats were browsing, while the herd-boys sang their native melodies or woke the ringing echoes with the loud, sweet sounds of their wooden horns; higher up, the sides were broken into crags and covered with stunted pines; then succeeded a belt of bare rock with a little snow lying in the crevices, and the summits of dazzling white looked out from the clouds nearly three-fourths the height of the zenith.  Sometimes when the vale was filled with clouds, it was startling to see them parting around a solitary summit, apparently isolated in the air at an immense height, for the mountain to which it belonged was hidden to the very base!

The road passed from one side of the valley to the other, crossing the Reuss on bridges sometimes ninety feet high.  After three or four hours walking, we reached a frightful pass called the Schollenen.  So narrow is the defile that before reaching it, the road seemed to enter directly into the mountain.  Precipices a thousand feet high tower above, and the stream roars and boils in the black depth below.  The road is a wonder of art; it winds around the edge of horrible chasms or is carried on lofty arches across, with sometimes a hold apparently so frail that one involuntarily shudders.  At a place called the Devil’s Bridge, the Reuss leaps about seventy feet in three or four cascades, sending up continually a cloud of spray, while a wind created by the fall, blows and whirls around, with a force that nearly lifts one from his feet.  Wordsworth has described the scene in the following lines: 

    “Plunge with the Reuss embrowned by terror’s breath,
    Where danger roofs the narrow walks of Death;
    By floods that, thundering from their dizzy height,
    Swell more gigantic on the steadfast sight,
    Black, drizzling crags, that, beaten by the din,
    Vibrate, us if a voice complained within,
    Loose hanging rocks, the Day’s blessed eye that hide,
    And crosses reared to Death on every side!”