stark—­we should need to give ourselves strength!—­I never needed to give myself strength.  There was no good water to be found the whole way!—­I never drank water.  Then, at last, after a brief grunt with the landlord, he struck:—­he simply would not go without wine!  I never wished him to do so, I explained; he might take as much as he chose, and I would pay for it, but he need not count me for anything in calculating how much was necessary.  This made him perfectly happy; and when I answered his question touching cheese in a similar manner, only limiting him to a pound and a half, he rushed off for a large wicker hotte, spacious enough for the stowage of many layers of babies; and in it he packed all our properties, and all his provisions.  The landlord had made his own calculations, and put it at 3lbs. of bread and 2lbs. of cheese; but I cut down the bread on account of its bulk, before I saw the size of the hotte, and Christian seemed to think he had quite enough to carry.

It was about half-past nine when we started from the auberge; and after a short mount in the full sun, we were not sorry to reach the pleasant shade of walnut trees which accompanied us for a considerable distance.  The blue lake lay at our feet on the right, and beyond it the Niesen stood, with wonted grandeur, guarding its subject valleys; more in front, as we ascended transversely, the well-known snow-peaks of the Bernese Oberland glittered high above the nearer foreground, and, sheer above us, on the left, rose the ragged precipices whose flank we were to turn.  The Rothhorn of the Canton Berne lies inland from the Lake of Thun, and sends down towards the lake a ridge sufficiently lofty, terminating in the Ralligstoecke, or Ralligflue, the needle-like point, so prettily ridged with firs, which advances its precipitous sides to the water.  These precipices were formed in historic times, and the sheer face from which half a mountain has been torn stands now as clear and fresh as ever, while a chaos of vast blocks at its foot gives a point to the local legends of devastation and ruin caused by the various berg-falls.  Two such falls are clearly marked by the debris:  one of these, a hundred and fifty years ago, reduced the town of Ralligen to a solitary Schloss; and the other, in 1856, overwhelmed the village of Merligen, and converted its rich pastures into a desert cropped with stones.  A traveller in Switzerland, at the beginning of this century, found that the inhabitants of Merligen were considered in the neighbourhood to be d’une stupidite et d’une betise extremes, and I am inclined to believe that after the last avalanche a general migration to Gonten must have taken place.