If I ever take that journey again I shall wear a smoke helmet and
be comfortable. But always between tunnels there were views to
be seen that would have revived one of the Seven Sleepers. Now,
on the great-granddaddy-longlegs of all the spidery trestles that
ever were built, we would go roaring across a mighty gorge, its
sides clothed with perpendicular gardens and vineyards, and with
little gray towns clustering under the ledges on its sheer walls
like mud-daubers' nests beneath an eave. Now, perched on a ridgy
outcrop of rock like a single tooth in a snaggled reptilian jaw,
would be a deserted tower, making a fellow think of the good old
feudal days when the robber barons robbed the traveler instead of
as at present, when the job is so completely attended to by the
pirates who weigh and register baggage in these parts.
Then - whish, roar, eclipse, darkness and sulphureted hydrogen! - we
would dive into another tunnel and out again - gasping - on a
breathtaking panorama of mountains. Some of them would be standing
up against the sky like the jagged top of a half-finished cutout
puzzle, and some would be buried so deeply in clouds that only their
peaked blue noses showed sharp above the featherbed mattresses of
mist in which they were snuggled, as befitted mountains of Teutonic
extraction. And nearly every eminence was crowned with a ruined
castle or a hotel. It was easy to tell a hotel from a ruin - it
had a sign over the door.
At one of those hotels I met up with a homesick American. He was
marooned there in the rain, waiting for the skies to clear, so he
could do some mountain climbing; and he was beginning to get moldy
from the prevalent damp. By now the study of bathing habits had
become an obsession with me; I asked him whether he had encountered
any bathtubs about the place. He said a bathtub in those altitudes
was as rare as a chamois, and the chamois was entirely extinct;
so I might make my own calculations. But he said he could show
me something that was even a greater curiosity than a bathtub, and
he led me to where a moonfaced barometer hung alongside the front
entrance of the hotel.
He said he had been there a week now and had about lost hope; but
every time he threatened to move on, the proprietor would take him
out there and prove that they were bound to have clearing weather
within a few hours, because the barometer registered fair. At
that moment streams of chilly rain-water were coursing down across
the dial of the barometer, but it registered fair even then.
