steamboats glided along, as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty time to cover the distance between ports which seemed only a yard apart; and the isthmus which separated two lakes looked as if one might stretch out on it and lie with both elbows in the water, yet we knew invisible wagons were toiling across it and finding the distance a tedious one.  This beautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance of those “relief maps” which reproduce nature precisely, with the heights and depressions and other details graduated to a reduced scale, and with the rocks, trees, lakes, etc., colored after nature.

I believed we could walk down to Waeggis or Vitznau in a day, but I knew we could go down by rail in about an hour, so I chose the latter method.  I wanted to see what it was like, anyway.  The train came along about the middle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was.  The locomotive-boiler stood on end, and it and the whole locomotive were tilted sharply backward.  There were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all around.  These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; this enables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline.

There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the “lantern wheel” of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards its motion on the down trip.  About the same speed—­three miles an hour—­is maintained both ways.  Whether going up or down, the locomotive is always at the lower end of the train.  It pushes in the one case, braces back in the other.  The passenger rides backward going up, and faces forward going down.

We got front seats, and while the train moved along about fifty yards on level ground, I was not the least frightened; but now it started abruptly downstairs, and I caught my breath.  And I, like my neighbors, unconsciously held back all I could, and threw my weight to the rear, but, of course, that did no particular good.  I had slidden down the balusters when I was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters in a railway-train is a thing to make one’s flesh creep.  Sometimes we had as much as ten yards of almost level ground, and this gave us a few full breaths in comfort; but straightway we would turn a corner and see a long steep line of rails stretching down below us, and the comfort was at an end.  One expected to see the locomotive pause, or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously, but it did nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went it reached the jumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding smoothly downstairs, untroubled by the circumstances.

It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the precipices, after this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-off valley which I was describing a while ago.

There was no level ground at the Kaltbad station; the railbed was as steep as a roof; I was curious to see how the stop was going to be managed.  But it was very simple; the train came sliding down, and when it reached the right spot it just stopped—­that was all there was “to it”—­stopped on the steep incline, and when the exchange of passengers and baggage had been made, it moved off and went sliding down again.  The train can be stopped anywhere, at a moment’s notice.