There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the “lantern wheel” of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards its motion on the down trip.  About the same speed—­three miles an hour—­is maintained both ways.  Whether going up or down, the locomotive is always at the lower end of the train.  It pushes in the one case, braces back in the other.  The passenger rides backward going up, and faces forward going down.

We got front seats, and while the train moved along about fifty yards on level ground, I was not the least frightened; but now it started abruptly downstairs, and I caught my breath.  And I, like my neighbors, unconsciously held back all I could, and threw my weight to the rear, but, of course, that did no particular good.  I had slidden down the balusters when I was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters in a railway-train is a thing to make one’s flesh creep.  Sometimes we had as much as ten yards of almost level ground, and this gave us a few full breaths in comfort; but straightway we would turn a corner and see a long steep line of rails stretching down below us, and the comfort was at an end.  One expected to see the locomotive pause, or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously, but it did nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went it reached the jumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding smoothly downstairs, untroubled by the circumstances.

It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the precipices, after this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-off valley which I was describing a while ago.

There was no level ground at the Kaltbad station; the railbed was as steep as a roof; I was curious to see how the stop was going to be managed.  But it was very simple; the train came sliding down, and when it reached the right spot it just stopped—­that was all there was “to it”—­stopped on the steep incline, and when the exchange of passengers and baggage had been made, it moved off and went sliding down again.  The train can be stopped anywhere, at a moment’s notice.

There was one curious effect, which I need not take the trouble to describe—­because I can scissor a description of it out of the railway company’s advertising pamphlet, and save my ink: 

“On the whole tour, particularly at the Descent, we undergo an optical illusion which often seems to be incredible.  All the shrubs, fir trees, stables, houses, etc., seem to be bent in a slanting direction, as by an immense pressure of air.  They are all standing awry, so much awry that the chalets and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down.  It is the consequence of the steep inclination of the line.  Those who are seated in the carriage do not observe that they are doing down a declivity of twenty to twenty-five degrees (their seats being adapted to this course of proceeding and being bent down at their backs).  They mistake their carriage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure of the normal plain, and therefore all the objects outside which really are in a horizontal position must show a disproportion of twenty to twenty-five degrees declivity, in regard to the mountain.”