Before eight o’clock next morning, we started for Coire. Down and down we drove by the banks of the roaring and foaming Rhine, the road and river being beautifully wooded. The drive was most charming. At every mile the river got larger, while the mountains reared their heads above, to heights varying from 8,000 to 11,000 feet. In about two hours’ time we reached the Via Mala, where the mountains or rocks converge, and the river dashes far below, in some places nearly hidden by the pines thickly set upon the precipitous banks, wherever they can obtain a footing. At one time the pass may have been a dangerous one; but now, although it be still impressive, the road is good, and there is nothing to fear, notwithstanding the cliffs rise perpendicularly to a great height, higher even than they appear to do. Yet, were a mass of rock to loosen and fall, and block up the road or tear it away, it would be decidedly awkward for persons passing. The gorge, at which you look straight up and straight down, is well seen from a bridge, where a man was ready to plump a big stone into the torrent far down in the depths below. Everybody walks through the pass; the most indifferent to grand effects could hardly sit still in his carriage. I suppose it is possible to get to some safe place near the water, as photographs have been taken looking up to the bridge; and so seen, it appears perched high above, over steep and even impending rocks, which, save for a tree here and there, are smooth and bare, and form a narrow, ugly, perilous cleft, through which the river flows at the bottom.