The ‘Ecu’ promised us dinner in half an hour, and we strolled about in the garden of that unsophisticated hotel for an hour and a half, reconciled to the delay by the beauty of the neighbouring hills, the winding of the valley giving all the effect of a mountain-locked plain, with barriers decked with firs.  It will readily be conceived, however, that three practical English people could not be satisfied to feed on beauty alone for any very great length of time, and we caught the landlady and became peremptory.  She explained that dinner was quite ready, but she had intended to give us the pleasure of an agreeable society, consisting of sundry Swiss who were due in another half-hour or so:  she yielded, nevertheless, to our representations, and promised to serve the meal at once.  We were speedily summoned to the salle-a-manger, and entered a low smoke-stained wooden chamber, with no floor to speak of, and with huge beams supporting the roof, dangerous for tall heads.  The date on the door was 1690, and the chamber fully looked its age.  There was a long table of the prevailing hue, with a similar bench; and on the table three large basins, presumably containing soup, were ranged, each covered with its plate, and accompanied by a ricketty spoon of yellow metal and a hunch of black bread.  A., who was hungry enough and experienced enough to have known better, began promptly a most pathetic ‘Why surely!’ but the landlady stopped her by opening a side door, and displaying a comfortable room in which a well-appointed table awaited us:—­she had taken us through the kitchen rather than through the salon, in which were peasants smoking.  We were somewhat disconcerted when we heard that the unwashed-looking place was the kitchen; but the landlady had made up for it by scrubbing her husband, who waited upon us, to a high pitch of presentability, and further experience showed that the ‘Ecu’ is to be highly commended for the excellence and abundance and cheapness of its foods.

There are many natural curiosities in and near the Val de Travers, which well repay the labour that must be expended upon them.  The Temple des Fees, on the western side of the Valley of Verrieres, used to be called the most beautiful grotto in Switzerland; and the great Cavern of La Baume, near Motiers, is said to be exceedingly wonderful.  We were shown the entrance to a line of caverns in the hills above Couvet, and were informed that it was possible to pierce completely through the range, and pass out at the other side within sight of Yverdun.  One of the caverns in this valley had been explored by some of A. and M.’s Swiss friends, and the account of what they had gone through was by no means inviting, seeing that the prevailing material was damp clay of a solid character, arranged in steep slopes, up which progression must be made by inserting the fingers and toes as far as might be into the clay; and, of course, when the handful of unpleasant mud came away,