Thus laden they were to descend the Gemmi Rocks, and seemed to think it no hardship, returning us chearful looks while we noticed the happy burthens which they carried. Those peasant travellers out of sight, we go on over the same rocky ground, snowy pikes and craggy eminences still bounding the prospect. But ere long we approach the neighbourhood of trees, and overlooking a long smooth level covered with poor yellowish grass, saw at a distance, in the centre of the level, a group of Travellers of a different kind--a party of gentry, male and female, on mules. On meeting I spoke to the two Ladies in English, by way of trying their nation, and was pleased at being answered in the same tongue. The lawn here was prettily embayed, like a lake, among little eminences covered with dwarf trees, aged or blighted; thence, onward to another open space, where was an encampment of cattle sheds, the large plain spotted with heaps of stones at irregular distances.... The turf was very poor, yet so lavishly overspread with close-growing flowers it reminded us of a Persian Carpet. The _silver_ thistle, as we then named it, had a singularly beautiful effect; a glistering star lying on the ground, as if enwrought upon it. An avalanche had covered the surface with stones many years ago, and many more will it require for nature, aided by the mountaineers' industry, to restore the soil to its former fertility. On approaching the destined termination of our descent, we were led among thickets of Alpine Shrubs, a rich covering of berry-bearing plants over-spreading the ground. We followed the ridge of this wildly beautiful tract, and it brought us to the brink of a precipice. On our right, when we looked into the savage valley of Gastron--upwards toward its head, and downwards to the point where the Gastron joins the Kandor, their united streams thence continuing a tumultuous course to the Lake of Thun. The head of the _Kandor Thal_ was concealed from us, to our left, by the ridge of the hill on which we stood. By going about a mile further along the ridge to the brow of its northern extremity, we might have seen the junction of the two rivers, but were fearful of being overtaken by darkness in descending the Gemmi, and were, indeed, satisfied with the prospect already gained. The river Gastron winds in tumult over a stony channel, through the apparently level area of a grassless Vale, buried beneath stupendous mountains--not a house or hut to be seen. A roaring sound ascended to us on the eminence so high above the Vale. How _awful_ the tumult when the River carries along with it the spring tide of melted snow! We had long viewed in our journey a snow-covered pike, in stateliness and height surpassing all the other eminences. The whole mass of the mountain now appeared before us, on the same side of the Gastron vale on which we were. It seemed very near to us, and as if a part of its base rose from that vale.