_Wednesday, August 22nd._--_Amsteg._--After Wasen our road at times very steep;--rocky on both sides of the glen; and fewer houses than before. We had left the forest, but smaller fir-trees were thinly sprinkled on the hills. Looking northward, the church tower on its eminence most elegant in the centre of the glen backed by the bare pyramid of Meisen. Images by the wayside though not frequent, I recollect a poor idiot hereabouts, who with smiles and uncouth gestures placed himself under the Virgin and Child, pleading so earnestly that there was no resisting him. Soon after, when I was lingering behind upon a stone, beside a little streamlet of clear water, a procession of mules approached, laden with wine-casks--forty at least--which I had long seen winding like a creeping serpent along the side of the bare hill before me, and heard the stream of sound from their bells. Two neatly-dressed Italian women, who headed the cavalcade, spoke to me in their own sweet language; and one of them had the kindness to turn back to bring me a glove, which I had left on the stone where I had been sitting. I cannot forget her pretty romantic appearance--a perfect contrast to that of the poor inhabitants of her own sex in this district, no less than her soft speech! She was rather tall, and slender, and wore a small straw hat tied with coloured riband, different in shape from those worn in Switzerland. It was the first company of muleteers we had seen, though afterwards we met many. Recrossed the Reuss, and, ascending a very long and abrupt hill covered with impending and shattered crags, had again that river on our left, but the hill carried us out of sight of it. I was alone--the first in the ascent. A cluster of mountain masses, till then unseen, appeared suddenly before me, black--rugged--or covered with snow. I was indeed awe-struck; and, while I sate for some minutes, thought within myself, now indeed we are going among the terrors of the Alps; for the course of the Reuss being hidden, I imagined we should be led towards those mountains. Little expecting to discover traces of human habitations, I had gone but a little way before I beheld, stretching from the foot of the savage mountains, an oblong valley thickly strewn over with rocks, or, more accurately speaking, huge stones; and among them huts of the same hue, hardly to be distinguished, except by their shape. At the foot of the valley appeared a village beside a tall slender church tower;--every object of the same hue except the foaming glacier stream and the grassy ground, exquisitely green among the crags. The hills that flanked the dismal valley told its history:--their precipitous sides were covered with crags, mostly in detached masses, that seemed ready to be hurled down by avalanches. Descending about half a mile we were at the village,[54] and turning into the churchyard to the left, sate there, overlooking the pass of the torrent. Beside it lay many huge fragments of rock fallen from above,