Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. THE SOURCE OF THE KHINE. Hark ! what is that trickling amidst the icy waste that surrounds us ? We have ascended, through the valley, past the last house and the last tree. Higher and higher we mount, clinging close to the narrow path; but now the goal is reached, and the Rhein- wald Glacier lies before us in regal majesty. We gaze breathless—so vast is this gigantic white wall on which our eyes rest; the clouds which pass slowly over the peaks give a dignity and a depth of coloring to the huge masses; but in the midst, in the wall of the glacier, is a small fissure, and from it a slender thread of water breaks forth, white and foaming, and leaps joyously to the earth. This is the Rhine. Now that it has seen the warm light which never penetrates to the depths of the glacier; now that it has once touched the blessed soil of Mother Earth, it will stay and wander for hundreds of miles, until from the recesses of the mountains it returns to the bosom of the sea. The Rhine, as is well known, is formed of two principal arms, the Upper and the Lower Rhine, which unite at Reichnau. A third and smaller arm,which rises at Lukmanier and empties itself at Dis- sentis, is described as the Middle Rhine. But this branch is unimportant, so far as historic and artistic interest is concerned. We will begin with the Lower Rhine. It has its source close by where we stand. What an heroic future has its birth here; what an amount of life hangs on this silver thread ! This rivulet, the future Rhine, has torn itself free from its lonely home. It will glide farther and farther, while, in mute silence, the giant mountain gazes after it as it flows away. The cleft in the glacier-side gapes like a wound in its breast through which its life is ebbing. The enigma of birth, of the p...