When I told him that he spoke much better German than the rest of the people in Gonten, he informed me that he had worked among foreigners, in proof whereof he held out his fingers; but all that I could gather from the invited inspection was, that, whatever his employment might have been, he could not be said to have come out of it with clean hands.

He had been employed, he explained, in German dye-works, and there had learned something better than the native patois.

About this time, too, I was able to make him understand that, as he carried more than I, he must call a halt whenever he felt so inclined; upon which he patted me affectionately on the back, and, if I could remember the word he used, I believe that I should now know the Swiss-German for a brick.
Our object was to pass along the side of the lake, at a considerable elevation, till we reached the east side of the Rothhorn range, when we were to turn up the Juestisthal, and mount towards the highest point of the ridge, the glaciere lying about an hour below the summit, in the face of the steep rock.

The cliffs became very grand on either side, as soon as we entered this valley, the Juestisthal, especially the precipices of the Beatenberg on the right; and our path lay through woods which have sprung up on the site of an early _Berg-lauine._ The guide-books call attention to a cavern with a curious intermittent spring in this neighbourhood.

English tourists should feel some interest in the Cave of S.Beatus, inasmuch as its canonised occupant went from our shores to preach the Gospel to the wild men of the district, and died in this cave at a very advanced age.