The Wild Kirchlein, in Appenzell, is now visited rather by tourists than by pilgrims. A huge limestone precipice rises above the Bodmenalp, that is a paradise of wild flowers. A hundred and seventy feet up the cliff gapes a cavern, and at its mouth is a tiny chapel. It is reached by what is now a safe pathway and over a bridge cast across a chasm. But formerly the ascent could not be made without danger. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, some Alpine shepherds, who had reached the cave, reported that they had seen in it the remains of an altar. This aroused interest, and in the summer of 1621 a Capuchin named Tanner ascended to the cave, blessed, and consecrated it as a place of pilgrimage. He said mass there and preached. He was shortly afterwards called away to Freiburg, and for thirty years the cave was disregarded and neglected. But at the end of that time Tanner returned to Appenzell, and interested the parish priest Ulmann in it. When war broke out between Schwyz and Zurich in 1656, Ulmann concealed the treasures of the church in the cave. This drew attention to it, and shortly after an altar was furnished with what was needful, and on the Feast of S. Michael in 1657 mass was again said there. Various matters --loss of friends, and contests with the secular authorities--wearied Ulmann, and he resolved on retiring as a hermit to the cave in the cliff, taking with him, however, an attendant. The swallows left, the winter storms came on, yet he braved the wind and cold, and remained a tenant of the cave for two winters and as many summers; but then, by order of the Bishop, he left to act as chaplain to a convent in Lindau. There he spent nine years, till falling ill, he felt a craving for the purer air of his Appenzell home, and obtained leave to return and again re-tenant the beloved cave. In his last will he bequeathed the Upper Bodmen Alp that was his ancestral inheritance for the maintenance of the Holy Grotto. After his death the little chapel with its tower was built, and a Capuchin friar occupied the hermitage. In 1853, the last hermit there, Brother Antony Fassler, fell down the precipice whilst gathering herbs. Since then there has been no such picturesque object to lead the visitor through the recesses of the cavern and show the stalactites; that office is now performed by the innkeeper of the hotel on the Alp.