A chalet is a sweet thing when you buy a little
model of it at home.
After we leave Stalden, the walk becomes more picturesque, the
precipices are higher, the gorges deeper. It required some
engineering to carry the footpath round the mountain buttresses and
over the ravines. Soon the village of Emd appears on the right,--a
very considerable collection of brown houses, and a shining white
church-spire, above woods and precipices and apparently unscalable
heights, on a green spot which seems painted on the precipices; with
nothing visible to keep the whole from sliding down, down, into the
gorge of the Visp. Switzerland may not have so much population to
the square mile as some countries; but she has a population to some
of her square miles that would astonish some parts of the earth's
surface elsewhere. Farther on we saw a faint, zigzag footpath, that
we conjectured led to Emd; but it might lead up to heaven. All day
we had been solicited for charity by squalid little children, who
kiss their nasty little paws at us, and ask for centimes. The
children of Emd, however, did not trouble us. It must be a serious
affair if they ever roll out of bed.
Late in the afternoon thunder began to tumble about the hills, and
clouds snatched away from our sight the snow-peaks at the end of the
valley; and at length the rain fell on those who had just arrived and
on the unjust.
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