In the endeavour to explain all this to me, Christian succeeded so perfectly, that for the rest of the day we understood each other very well.  When I told him that he spoke much better German than the rest of the people in Gonten, he informed me that he had worked among foreigners, in proof whereof he held out his fingers; but all that I could gather from the invited inspection was, that, whatever his employment might have been, he could not be said to have come out of it with clean hands.  He had been employed, he explained, in German dye-works, and there had learned something better than the native patois.  About this time, too, I was able to make him understand that, as he carried more than I, he must call a halt whenever he felt so inclined; upon which he patted me affectionately on the back, and, if I could remember the word he used, I believe that I should now know the Swiss-German for a brick.

Our object was to pass along the side of the lake, at a considerable elevation, till we reached the east side of the Rothhorn range, when we were to turn up the Juestisthal, and mount towards the highest point of the ridge, the glaciere lying about an hour below the summit, in the face of the steep rock.  The cliffs became very grand on either side, as soon as we entered this valley, the Juestisthal, especially the precipices of the Beatenberg on the right; and our path lay through woods which have sprung up on the site of an early Berg-lauine. The guide-books call attention to a cavern with a curious intermittent spring in this neighbourhood.  English tourists should feel some interest in the Cave of S. Beatus, inasmuch as its canonised occupant went from our shores to preach the Gospel to the wild men of the district, and died in this cave at a very advanced age.  His relics remaining there, his fete-day attracted such crowds of pilgrims, that reforming Berne sent two deputies in 1528 to carry off the saint’s skull, and bury it between the lakes; but still the pilgrimages continued, and at length the Protestant zeal of Berne went to the expense of a wall, and they built the pilgrims out in 1566.  S. Beatus is said to have been converted by S. Barnabas in Britain, and to have gone to Rome, whence S. Peter sent him out to preach.  His relics were conveyed to Lucerne in 1554, because heresy prevailed in the country where his cave lies, and an arm is among the proud possessions of pilgrim-pressed Einsiedeln.  The saint was originally a British noble, by name Suetonius; and Dempster drops a letter from his name, and with much ingenuity makes him collateral ancestor of a Scottish family—­’The Setons, tall and proud.’[56]

When we arrived at the last chalet, Christian turned to mount the grass slope on our left hand, which led to the part of the rocks in which the entrance to the Schafloch was to be sought.  I never climbed up grass so steep, and before we had gone very far we were hailed by a succession of grunts, which my companion interpreted into assurances from some invisible person that we were going wrong.  The man soon appeared, in the shape of a charcoal-burner, and told us that we were making the ascent much more difficult than it need be made, and also, that we should come to some awkward rock-climbing by the route we had chosen.  It was too late, however, to turn back; so we persevered.