Penetrating secluded regions where frost has been king since the world began, the rail has made even the everlasting glaciers, these frozen cataracts, articles of merchandise. As the quarries in the mountains are worked by the art and spirit of man, so the icebergs that here grow from age to age, and scarcely seem to melt at all, are cut into blocks, and transported by the rail to Paris. The glacier of the Grindelwald is drank in brandy punches at the Grand Hotel and the Louvre. To get the ice, these mighty frozen seas are excavated in galleries and chambers, and magnificent saloons. The depths of snow on the surface exclude the sunbeams, but calcium lights shed a brilliant lustre, reflected as from a thousand mirrors of glass, and in small apartments fitted up for the purpose, the furniture of a well appointed parlor, sofas, chairs, and cushions, invite to cold but not inhospitable repose. When the Mer de Glace is taken by rail down into Italy, and thence by ship to the East Indies, ice will be reasonably cheap in Calcutta. And this will be more readily done than to tow an iceberg from the North Pole. As I said, we left Chillon in the morning, and retraced our course a part of the way by the railroad which passes on the hill-sides, away above the lake, through luxuriant vineyards, and over stupendous gorges, spanned by stone bridges, and arrived before noon at Lausanne. Here we struck out into the interior of Switzerland. And I was at once impressed with the great progress, even in this stationary country, made in the last thirteen years. Then we traversed this wild and wonderful country mainly over paths that no wheel had ever marked, and sometimes by ways that only the footstep of the most cautious traveller might tread. Now, we take the _coupé_, or front compartment of an elegantly fitted up rail-car. It has seats for four persons only, with rests for the head and the feet, and a table before you, and windows in front and sides, so that you can see all that is around you, or write of what you see and feel. Before us are the peaks of untrodden hills, all covered deep in perpetual snows, the pink color on the white like the hues of roses, as the sun shines on but never melts them; here, on the right, I see the lake that yesterday we sailed through from end to end; now it is smooth as a silver sea, and as beautiful; reflecting majestic mountains, and cities and villages where wealth and art and letters and taste have for ages delighted to dwell. And on the other hand, and sometimes on both sides of us, we see Swiss valleys teeming with a busy, peaceful, happy people, whose homes suggest to me the thought of contentment, and therefore happiness. The old city of Romont we pass below, as it stands on a hill with an ancient wall and towers surrounding it; good enough in those old times when bows and spears and stones were the weapons of war, but of no account in these times of Columbiads and Paixhan guns. At the