This auberge has been built on the Grimsel of late years for the accommodation of travellers across the mountain passes; and it forms a convenient night’s resting place in a two day’s journey on foot or horseback (the only modes of threading these Alpine paths) between the valley of Meyringen and that of Urseren.  It may be useful briefly to notice this route, in which the traveller will be charmed with a succession of scenery on Nature’s grandest scale.  After leaving Meyringen and its beautiful valley, called the Vale of Hasli, he looks down from the top of a mountain pass upon a small compact, oval-shaped valley, named, we believe Hasligrund, into which he descends, and then climbs the mountains on the opposite side.  Proceeding onward, he reaches a small place, Handek, formed of a few wood chalets, and giving its name to one of the finest waterfalls in Switzerland.  The accessories of the sublimest scenery give additional interest to the beauty of the fall, at which our traveller will feel inclined to linger; he should endeavour to be there about noon, when the sun irradiates the spray like dancing rainbows.  The rest of the day’s route is, in general, ascending, and partly across splendid sweeps of bare granite, until his eyes are gladdened with the sight of the auberge.

On the second morning he crosses the remaining summit of the mountain, and rises to cross the Furca, passing beside the Glacier of the Rhone; perhaps the finest in all the Alps, which looks like a vast torrent suddenly frozen in its course while tossing its waves into the most fantastic forms.  The traveller afterwards descends into the Valley of Urseren, which extends straight before him for the distance of perhaps twelve miles, with the Reuss winding through it, and the neat town of Andermatt shining out from the opposite extremity.  He passes through the singular village of Realp, where he may refresh himself with a draught of delicious Italian red wine, and afterwards arrives at the little bleak town of Hospital, situated at the foot of the St. Gothard, over which a new carriage-road into Italy has lately been made, with galleries winding up the mountain as far as the eye can reach.  He may either take up his quarters for the night at Hospital, or proceed about a mile farther to Andermatt, where the road turns off at right angles, and where he may hire a car, if he wishes to go on the same evening across the romantic Devil’s Bridge to Amstag, a pretty village in the bend of the splendid valley of the Reuss, whence the road leads on to Altorf and Fluellen, on the bank of the lake of the Four Cantons, the scene of the heroic exploits of William Tell.