Note 42 — (First Pilgrimage.) (continued 4)
Reading edition
Lest I should be suspected of exaggeration, in this account of the Baths of Pfeffers, I shall here introduce a short extract from “Reminiscences of the Rhine,” &c. by Mrs. Boddington—a work eulogised to the skies in the Edinburgh Review, and its author represented (and, I understand, deservedly) as a lady of very superior talents and strict veracity. After some slight notice of the Bath-house, Mrs. B. proceeds thus:—
“Behind rolls the stormy Tamina, hemmed in at one side by the dark Bath-house and the impending cliffs, while, on the other, a giant wall of perpendicular rock, starting up daringly, and shutting out the world—almost the light of Heaven—closes up the scene. Our guide proposed that we should visit the mineral springs that boil up from the depth of an awful cavern, several hundred paces from the Bath-house. A bridge, thrown from rock to rock, crosses the flood, and a narrow ledge of planks, fixed, I know not how, against the side of the rock, and suspended over the fierce torrent, leads through a long dark chasm to the source. I ventured but a little way; for, when I found myself on the terrifying shelf, without the slightest ballustrade, and felt it slippery, from the continual spray, and saw nothing between us and the yawning gulf, to which darkness, thickening at every step, gave increased horror, I made a few rapid reflections on foolhardiness, and retreated.”
The following lines were found in an Album at an Inn in the Canton of Glarus, in the Summer of 1825, written by an anonymous English tourist, immediately after visiting the Baths of Pfeffers.
[Communicated by C. Raine, Esq.]
Oft hast thou marvell’d much, I trow. At him who twirl’d with well pois’d toe On Strasburg’s pointed spire:— Or him who, on the quivering slope Of the tight-brac’d elastic rope, Could bound in air much higher:— But had they quaffed the fervid wave In Pfeffers’ dark and vapoury cave— (Those half adventurous people)— And paced the dizzy, fragile plank Along the chasm’s terrific flank, They then had scorned the paltry prank Of dancing on a steeple.