The Rigi, in fact, owing to its peculiar configuration and structure, is less hurt by this eruption of mountain railways than any other mountain in the Alps. The hill is really a whole agglomeration of hills--of which the Rigi Kulm (5,905 feet) is merely the culminating summit--which occupy very roughly the rectangular area that lies between the lakes of Lucerne, Zug, and Lowerz, and are formed largely of horizontal layers of red conglomerate, or pudding-stone, rock. The hill is thus distinctly of the lumpy type of mountain, as opposed to its rival, Pilatus, which belongs to the vertical, or peaked; and owes what beauty it possesses to its long bands of ruddy precipice, down which dangle short spouts of more or less exiguous cascade, and to the solemn masses of dark wood that gird its middle flanks. The towering crags of Pilatus, like tongues of shivering flame, have here no rival in these long, parallel belts of forest, rock, and open lawn, that rise above the lake in stately tier above tier, and are hardly wilder at their summits than along the margin of the lake: "And as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view." It is not difficult among glades like these for a mountain railway to worm its way obscurely, and to hide its ugly presence beneath the garment of thick woods. [Illustration: LOOKING ACROSS THE LAKE.] It is the fashion to spend the night on the Rigi, and to witness the sunrise next day. The writer has done it once, but the experience was disappointing: it was already broad daylight, and the whole landscape was already coldly visible, when the little group of shivering penitents was marshalled on the summit to watch the up-burst of a sun that itself seemed cold and grey. It may be better worth the trouble if one rises for actual daybreak, or when the sun issues forth more royally from his chamber in the east. On the whole, perhaps, it is better to avoid the Rigi in its stereotyped sensational aspects, and to investigate its secret--for secret to yield it assuredly has--unconventionally, and out of the season. I have crossed its saddle from Goldau to Weggis, between the Rigi Rotstock and the Schild, during the later days of March, when the track by which I climbed was still white with virgin snow. This was, in fact, the old pilgrim path by which devotees once ascended--may possibly still ascend--to worship at the little upland chapel (rebuilt in 1715-21) of Our Lady of the Snow ("Maria zum Schnee"). This shrine is the centre of a little colony, the oldest and quaintest of all that have developed on the Rigi; and just because it lies in a hollow of the summit peaks, and commands no distant views, has escaped the bitter ravages of modern exploitation. The spot is called Rigi Klösterli, because inhabited all the year round by a little group of Capuchin friars from the community at Arth, who dwell in the little hospice and serve the little chapel. This