Ice-Caves of France and SwitzerlandBrowne, G. F. (George Forrest)
Science
Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland
Browne, G. F. (George Forrest)
Ice caves
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 Jüstisthal, and mount towards the highest point of
the ridge, the glacière 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 Jüstisthal, 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 fête-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]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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