Having procured five small and steady horses accustomed to the locality, a party of three ladies and two gentlemen[36] started from the little town of Ragatz on a beautiful morning in August, and commenced a steep and zig-zag ascent up the mountain, through a forest of majestic pines and other trees. In a quarter of an hour, we heard the roar of a torrent, but could see nothing of itself or even its bed. The path, however, soon approached the verge of a dark and tremendous ravine, the sides of which were composed of perpendicular rocks several hundred feet high, and at the bottom of which the TAMINA, a rapid mountain torrent, foamed along in its course to the valley of Sargans, there to fall into the upper Rhine. The stream itself, however, was far beyond our view, and was only known by its hollow and distant murmurs. The ascent, for the first three miles, is extremely fatiguing, so that the horses were obliged to take breath every ten minutes. The narrow path, (for it is only a kind of mule-track,) often winded along the very brink of the precipice, on our left, yet the eye could not penetrate to the bottom of the abyss. After more than an hour of toilsome climbing, we emerged from the wood, and found ourselves in one of the most picturesque and romantic spots that can well be imagined. The road now meanders horizontally through a high, but cultivated region, towards, the village of Valentz, through fields, gardens, vineyards, and meadows, studded with chaumiers and chalets, perched fantastically on projecting ledges of rock, or sheltered from the winds by tall and verdant pines. The prospect from Valentz, or rather from above the village, is one of the most beautiful and splendid I have anywhere seen in Switzerland. We are there at a sufficient distance from the horrid ravine, to contemplate it without terror, and listen to the roaring torrent, thundering unseen, along its rugged and precipitous bed. Beyond the ravine we see the monastery and village of Pfeffers, perched on a high and apparently inaccessible promontory, over which rise alpine mountains, their sides covered with woods, their summits with snow, and their gorges glittering with glaciers. But it is towards the East that the prospect is most magnificent and varied. The eye ranges, with equal pleasure and astonishment, over the valley of Sargans, through which rolls the infant Rhine, and beyond which the majestic ranges of the Rhetian Alps, ten thousand feet high, rise one over the other, till their summits mingle with the clouds. Among these ranges the SCESA-PLANA, the ANGSTENBERG, the FLESCH, (like a gigantic pyramid,) and in the distance the Alps that tower round Feldkirck are the most prominent features. During our journey to the baths, the morning sun played on the snowy summits of the distant mountains, and marked their forms on the blue expanse behind them, in the most distinct outlines. But, on our return,