This same _Alpenglühen_ casts its kaleidoscopic rays directly at the foot of the Oberland on eyes that are incapable of appreciating the wealth of beauty that is around and above them. Here are a most sadly afflicted people; here prevail, to a remarkable degree, _goitre_ and _cretinism_. We find in Juvenal, “_Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus?_” (“Who wonders at goitres in the Alps?”) Congenital cases are not infrequent, but, in a majority of instances, it makes its appearance on a child at about the age of twelve or fourteen. The size these goitrous growths may attain is extraordinary, hanging down on the breast, enormous and unsightly things, recalling the description in “The Tempest,”-- “When we were boys, Who would have believed that there were mountaineers Dew-lapp’d like bulls, whose throats had hanging at ’em Hideous wallets of flesh.” In some portions of this district, the goitre or swelling of the thyroid gland in front of the neck is so prevalent that “Optimus ille est Qui minimus urgetur.” It is not painful, and not always apparently inconvenient, and the few who are free from it are laughed at and called “goose-necked.” A stranger once entering a church in the neighborhood where but few were absolutely free from these unseemly appendages, during service the congregation betrayed improper curiosity, and the pastor, after a sharp reproach for their want of manners, reminded them that it was not the fault of the poor man “if he had no goitre.” By some it is actually considered, in a mild form, to be desirable; for it possesses a positive money value in furnishing exemption from military service. Now and then these monstrous excrescences become too large to be borne, and the poor victims crawl on the ground because they cannot walk upright under the weight. There is a popular as well as scientific belief that water is the vehicle of the poison that produces it; that it is impregnated with _tufa_ or _tuf_ a calcareous matter, whose tendency to concrete among the glands of the neck, aided, perhaps, by stagnant evaporation of narrow villages, produces these wenny protuberances. This goitrous condition is often accompanied with an imperfect or arrested state of mental development known as _cretinism_, a distinct and most distressful form of idiocy. The _cretin_ has an enormous head that drops listlessly on the breast; a vacant countenance; goggling eyes; thick tongue hanging out over moist, livid lips; mouth always open, full of saliva, and exposing decayed teeth; limbs misshapen; and wanting at times even the power of articulation. Many are deaf and dumb,--in fact, physical abortions, with every sign of bodily and mental imbecility. Few of these poor creatures can do any work, and many are even incapable of taking care of themselves, and not safe to leave alone. These distorted, mindless people, of semi-human attributes, excite a pitying disgust by their loathsome appearance,