He never got that post-office.

To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded, after about nine hours’ waiting, that the man who proposes to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to “put up at Gadsby’s” and take it easy.  It is likely that a fish has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years; but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it.  One may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris, but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there in modern times is a thing they don’t fish for at all—­the recent dog and the translated cat.

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