“Oh, this is luck! We shan’t have to go out at all—yonder are the mountains, in full view."
That was glad news, indeed. It made us cheerful right away. One could see the grand Alpine7 masses dimly outlined against the black firmament8, and one or two faint stars blinking through rifts9 in the night. Fully2 clothed, and wrapped in blankets, and huddled10 ourselves up, by the window, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat, while we waited in exceeding comfort to see how an Alpine sunrise was going to look by candlelight. By and by a delicate, spiritual sort of effulgence11 spread itself by imperceptible degrees over the loftiest altitudes of the snowy wastes—but there the effort seemed to stop. I said, presently:
“There is a hitch5 about this sunrise somewhere. It doesn’t seem to go. What do you reckon is the matter with it?”
“I don’t know. It appears to hang fire somewhere. I never saw a sunrise act like that before. Can it be that the hotel is playing anything on us?”
“Of course not. The hotel merely has a property interest in the sun, it has nothing to do with the management of it. It is a precarious12 kind of property, too; a succession of total eclipses would probably ruin this tavern13. Now what can be the matter with this sunrise?”
Harris jumped up and said:
“I’ve got it! I know what’s the matter with it! We’ve been looking at the place where the sun set last night!”
“It is perfectly14 true! Why couldn’t you have thought of that sooner? Now we’ve lost another one! And all through your blundering. It was exactly like you to light a pipe and sit down to wait for the sun to rise in the west.”
“It was exactly like me to find out the mistake, too. You never would have found it out. I find out all the mistakes.”
“You make them all, too, else your most valuable faculty15 would be wasted on you. But don’t stop to quarrel, now—maybe we are not too late yet.”
But we were. The sun was well up when we got to the exhibition-ground.
On our way up we met the crowd returning—men and women dressed in all sorts of queer costumes, and exhibiting all degrees of cold and wretchedness in their gaits and countenances16. A dozen still remained on the ground when we reached there, huddled together about the scaffold with their backs to the bitter wind. They had their red guide-books open at the diagram of the view, and were painfully picking out the several mountains and trying to impress their names and positions on their memories. It was one of the saddest sights I ever saw.
Two sides of this place were guarded by railings, to keep people from being blown over the precipices17. The view, looking sheer down into the broad valley, eastward18, from this great elevation—almost a perpendicular19 mile—was very quaint20 and curious. Counties, towns, hilly ribs21 and ridges22, wide stretches of green meadow, great forest tracts23, winding24 streams, a dozen blue lakes, a block of busy steamboats—we saw all this little world in unique circumstantiality of detail—saw it just as the birds see it—and all reduced to the smallest of scales and as sharply worked out and finished as a steel engraving25. The numerous toy villages, with tiny spires26 projecting out of them, were just as the children might have left them when done with play the day before; the forest tracts were diminished to cushions of moss27; one or two big lakes were dwarfed28 to ponds, the smaller ones to puddles29—though they did not look like puddles, but like blue teardrops which had fallen and lodged30 in slight depressions, conformable to their shapes, among the moss-beds and the smooth levels of dainty green farm-land; the microscopic31 steamboats glided32 along, as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty33 time to cover the distance between ports which seemed only a yard apart; and the isthmus34 which separated two lakes looked as if one might stretch out on it and lie with both elbows in the water, yet we knew invisible wagons35 were toiling36 across it and finding the distance a tedious one. This beautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance of those “relief maps” which reproduce nature precisely37, with the heights and depressions and other details graduated to a reduced scale, and with the rocks, trees, lakes, etc., colored after nature.
I believed we could walk down to Waeggis or Vitznau in a day, but I knew we could go down by rail in about an hour, so I chose the latter method. I wanted to see what it was like, anyway. The train came along about the middle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was. The locomotive-boiler stood on end, and it and the whole locomotive were tilted38 sharply backward. There were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all around. These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; this enables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline.
There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the “lantern wheel” of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards39 its motion on the down trip. About the same speed—three miles an hour—is maintained both ways. Whether going up or down, the locomotive is always at the lower end of the train. It pushes in the one case, braces40 back in the other. The passenger rides backward going up, and faces forward going down.
We got front seats, and while the train moved along about fifty yards on level ground, I was not the least frightened; but now it started abruptly41 downstairs, and I caught my breath. And I, like my neighbors, unconsciously held back all I could, and threw my weight to the rear, but, of course, that did no particular good. I had slidden down the balusters when I was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters in a railway-train is a thing to make one’s flesh creep. Sometimes we had as much as ten yards of almost level ground, and this gave us a few full breaths in comfort; but straightway we would turn a corner and see a long steep line of rails stretching down below us, and the comfort was at an end. One expected to see the locomotive pause, or slack up a little, and approach this plunge42 cautiously, but it did nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went it reached the jumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding43 smoothly44 downstairs, untroubled by the circumstances.
It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the precipices, after this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-off valley which I was describing a while ago.
There was no level ground at the Kaltbad station; the railbed was as steep as a roof; I was curious to see how the stop was going to be managed. But it was very simple; the train came sliding down, and when it reached the right spot it just stopped—that was all there was “to it”—stopped on the steep incline, and when the exchange of passengers and baggage had been made, it moved off and went sliding down again. The train can be stopped anywhere, at a moment’s notice.
There was one curious effect, which I need not take the trouble to describe—because I can scissor a description of it out of the railway company’s advertising45 pamphlet, and save my ink:
“On the whole tour, particularly at the Descent, we undergo an optical illusion which often seems to be incredible. All the shrubs46, fir trees, stables, houses, etc., seem to be bent47 in a slanting48 direction, as by an immense pressure of air. They are all standing49 awry50, so much awry that the chalets and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down. It is the consequence of the steep inclination51 of the line. Those who are seated in the carriage do not observe that they are going down a declivity52 of twenty to twenty-five degrees (their seats being adapted to this course of proceeding53 and being bent down at their backs). They mistake their carriage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure of the normal plain, and therefore all the objects outside which really are in a horizontal position must show a disproportion of twenty to twenty-five degrees declivity, in regard to the mountain.”
By the time one reaches Kaltbad, he has acquired confidence in the railway, and he now ceases to try to ease the locomotive by holding back. Thenceforth he smokes his pipe in serenity54, and gazes out upon the magnificent picture below and about him with unfettered enjoyment55. There is nothing to interrupt the view or the breeze; it is like inspecting the world on the wing. However—to be exact—there is one place where the serenity lapses56 for a while; this is while one is crossing the Schnurrtobel Bridge, a frail57 structure which swings its gossamer58 frame down through the dizzy air, over a gorge59, like a vagrant60 spider-strand.
One has no difficulty in remembering his sins while the train is creeping down this bridge; and he repents61 of them, too; though he sees, when he gets to Vitznau, that he need not have done it, the bridge was perfectly safe.
点击收听单词发音
1 fumbled | |
(笨拙地)摸索或处理(某事物)( fumble的过去式和过去分词 ); 乱摸,笨拙地弄; 使落下 | |
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2 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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3 boons | |
n.恩惠( boon的名词复数 );福利;非常有用的东西;益处 | |
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4 providence | |
n.深谋远虑,天道,天意;远见;节约;上帝 | |
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5 hitch | |
v.免费搭(车旅行);系住;急提;n.故障;急拉 | |
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6 hitched | |
(免费)搭乘他人之车( hitch的过去式和过去分词 ); 搭便车; 攀上; 跃上 | |
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7 alpine | |
adj.高山的;n.高山植物 | |
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8 firmament | |
n.苍穹;最高层 | |
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9 rifts | |
n.裂缝( rift的名词复数 );裂隙;分裂;不和 | |
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10 huddled | |
挤在一起(huddle的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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11 effulgence | |
n.光辉 | |
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12 precarious | |
adj.不安定的,靠不住的;根据不足的 | |
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13 tavern | |
n.小旅馆,客栈;小酒店 | |
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14 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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15 faculty | |
n.才能;学院,系;(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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16 countenances | |
n.面容( countenance的名词复数 );表情;镇静;道义支持 | |
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17 precipices | |
n.悬崖,峭壁( precipice的名词复数 ) | |
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18 eastward | |
adv.向东;adj.向东的;n.东方,东部 | |
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19 perpendicular | |
adj.垂直的,直立的;n.垂直线,垂直的位置 | |
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20 quaint | |
adj.古雅的,离奇有趣的,奇怪的 | |
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21 ribs | |
n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 );(船或屋顶等的)肋拱;肋骨状的东西;(织物的)凸条花纹 | |
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22 ridges | |
n.脊( ridge的名词复数 );山脊;脊状突起;大气层的)高压脊 | |
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23 tracts | |
大片土地( tract的名词复数 ); 地带; (体内的)道; (尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的)短文 | |
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24 winding | |
n.绕,缠,绕组,线圈 | |
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25 engraving | |
n.版画;雕刻(作品);雕刻艺术;镌版术v.在(硬物)上雕刻(字,画等)( engrave的现在分词 );将某事物深深印在(记忆或头脑中) | |
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26 spires | |
n.(教堂的) 塔尖,尖顶( spire的名词复数 ) | |
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27 moss | |
n.苔,藓,地衣 | |
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28 dwarfed | |
vt.(使)显得矮小(dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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29 puddles | |
n.水坑, (尤指道路上的)雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 ) | |
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30 lodged | |
v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 );暂住;埋入;(权利、权威等)归属 | |
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31 microscopic | |
adj.微小的,细微的,极小的,显微的 | |
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32 glided | |
v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 );掠过;(鸟或飞机 ) 滑翔 | |
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33 mighty | |
adj.强有力的;巨大的 | |
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34 isthmus | |
n.地峡 | |
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35 wagons | |
n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 );铁路货车;小手推车 | |
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36 toiling | |
长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 ); 艰难缓慢地移动,跋涉 | |
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37 precisely | |
adv.恰好,正好,精确地,细致地 | |
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38 tilted | |
v. 倾斜的 | |
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39 retards | |
使减速( retard的第三人称单数 ); 妨碍; 阻止; 推迟 | |
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40 braces | |
n.吊带,背带;托架( brace的名词复数 );箍子;括弧;(儿童)牙箍v.支住( brace的第三人称单数 );撑牢;使自己站稳;振作起来 | |
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41 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
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42 plunge | |
v.跳入,(使)投入,(使)陷入;猛冲 | |
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43 gliding | |
v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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44 smoothly | |
adv.平滑地,顺利地,流利地,流畅地 | |
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45 advertising | |
n.广告业;广告活动 a.广告的;广告业务的 | |
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46 shrubs | |
灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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47 bent | |
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的 | |
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48 slanting | |
倾斜的,歪斜的 | |
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49 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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50 awry | |
adj.扭曲的,错的 | |
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51 inclination | |
n.倾斜;点头;弯腰;斜坡;倾度;倾向;爱好 | |
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52 declivity | |
n.下坡,倾斜面 | |
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53 proceeding | |
n.行动,进行,(pl.)会议录,学报 | |
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54 serenity | |
n.宁静,沉着,晴朗 | |
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55 enjoyment | |
n.乐趣;享有;享用 | |
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56 lapses | |
n.失误,过失( lapse的名词复数 );小毛病;行为失检;偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 );陷入;倒退;丧失 | |
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57 frail | |
adj.身体虚弱的;易损坏的 | |
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58 gossamer | |
n.薄纱,游丝 | |
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59 gorge | |
n.咽喉,胃,暴食,山峡;v.塞饱,狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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60 vagrant | |
n.流浪者,游民;adj.流浪的,漂泊不定的 | |
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61 repents | |
对(自己的所为)感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的第三人称单数 ) | |
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62 eventual | |
adj.最后的,结局的,最终的 | |
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