Sure enough, very big eyes were made by some of the Herrschaft.  After ascending to a meadow amphitheatre, then resting in a sunny wood, redolent of pine odors, near the foundations of a ruined stronghold, the Burgkofel, we came upon a realm of gigantic boulders.  Some, in the shape of huge granite slabs, formed a rude, continuous broadway; others, scarred and furrowed, but softened and beautified by golden and silver lichen, torn by storms and snow from the cyclopean mountain-walls, were scattered topsy-turvy on either hand; many had become lodged in the river, where they carried on a steady defence against the tumultuous Giessbach, which, having its rise in mountains ten thousand feet high, leapt, foaming milky white, over and between them, forming a long series of bold cascades for a distance of half a dozen miles.  The road continued by the boisterous rapids, hemmed in on the other hand by woods and threatening mountain-walls.  The thunder of the waters prevented continuous conversation:  we therefore admired in silence the grandeur of the scene and the magnificent glimpses which slight curves in the road afforded ever and anon of neighboring mountain-peaks and wooded valleys below.

No carriage of any kind can ascend this road.  It would be difficult indeed for horses; nevertheless, the herds of cattle traverse it in the journey to and from the Olm, their hoofs being able to find foothold on the rock.  Moidel said that the cattle were so delighted to go to the Alps for the summer after the winter’s confinement in the stall that they made the journey with a kind of joyful impatience, going on still more eagerly as they approached the end.  “Not so, however,” added Moidel, “with the pigs.  I have often sat and cried on these rocks at their perverse ways when I have had to bring them up.  They would only stand still and grunt while I begged and prayed and pushed.  When they reached the top a new spirit soon seized them:  they were here, there and everywhere—­in a week’s time leaping like goats, as if they had taken to wine.”

We made the climb slowly, and noon was long passed when we reached the saw-mills, the first houses in the mountain parish of St. Wolfgang or Rein.  The busy, purring mills stood on the edge of the Sarine at the extremity of a flat mountain-valley intersected by innumerable brooks, which, continually overflowing, turn it constantly into a lake.  The grass had been under water a week previously, but was now sufficiently dry for us to sit and rest.  Whilst we were so doing, Ignaz, our traeger, stood before us, his empty basket on his back.

“The barn is swept and garnished in readiness for the Herrschaft, and their bundles and parcels are arranged there in beautiful order—­many bundles, and far heavier than they looked last night.”  Ignaz, however, was of opinion that though the pay was small the gentry meant well by him, and therefore he had not scrupled to take the food the worthy farmer’s wife had offered him, leaving the Christian soul to be repaid by the gentlefolks when they came.  And, moreover, he had advised the landlord at Rein that the gentry were passing through, so that they should not fail to find eatables ready, seeing hunger and weariness were best consoled by food.