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Kansas University Weekly.
Roththal clear down to the habitations of man; and looking across the snow, I see a party of men with their alpenstocks and traveling packs, rapidly decending after their adventurous climb to the summit of the Jungfrau. The path winds among the rocks, and suddenly the village of Trachsellauenen, consisting of one house, a small inn, comes into view.
Farther on, passing the stack of an old silver smelter, standing lone and silent in the dark forest, I noticed that the bridle path has degenerated into a mountain foot path, and now it leads over the Nedla to avoid the deep gorge through which the stream dashes, then through the woods, carpeted on every side with dense green moss. I have passed long ago the last inhabited dwelling; the sun has disappeared behind a bank of clouds; it grows dark and cold, and the sound of distant thunder is heard, while the rain drops begin to patter on the leaves. The rain increases, and the clouds are all around me, so as I come to an old, unoccupied chalet, I sit beneath the projecting eaves and eat my lunch, waiting for the rain to stop falling. The chalet is weather-stained, and of the beautiful, indescribable dark velvety red so characteristis of Alpine buildings, for nearly a hundred years, as the date on the gable informs me, it has stood there in fog and mountain storm, and yet it shows no sign of decay. But the rain continues; so crossing the streams that look like unwashed wool, so loaded are they with the glacier debris, I climb in an atmosphere of clouds up the valley in search of the waterfall that I have seen at a distance. Everywhere there are streams running down the hillsides, and everywhere there is the roar of falling water. Here, according to Baedeker, the great fall should be in full view, but nothing is to be seen but clouds. Am I on the wrong path? I search for some other point of view, and while doing so I notice that the clouds off to the right, where the Tschingel glacier should be, are beginning to break; they are floating away; patches of blue are visible; and without a moment's warning the curtain of cloud rolls
off towards the east, and directly in front of me is the Schmadribach Fall. I am so near that as I look up its foamy slope it seems as if a pent up mountain lake had burst its bounds and was inundating the valley. I am so near to the mass of falling water that the glaciers that feed it, or the mountain tops above it, cannot be seen, only away off to the right the snow fields on the north side of the Breithorn are visible, and nearer at hand on the left the emerald green of the ice masses on the slopes of the Grosshorn. The effect of the picture is so much heightened by the shifting masses of clouds, with the blue patches behind them alternately covering and disclosing the brilliant green of the upland pastures, the furrowed course of the glaciers and the background of snow-capped peaks. The whole range has, within the last two hours received a fresh coating of snow. It is whiter and more dazzling than ever. Words are useless at such a time, and one is impelled only to gaze and worship. This is the head of the Lauterbrunnen valley. To see it is to carry away in the memory a picture more brilliant in coloring and more rich in effects of light and shade than a master hand could paint.
A tired, wet, hungry traveler climbed from the bridge across the Lutschine to the hospitable Wengern calets that night, but he was happy in the opportunity for seeing nature in this mountain valley and in such a charming mood. E.H.S.B.
Kansas Academy of Language and Literature.
The thirteenth annual meeting of the Kansas Academy of Language and Literature was held in Lawrence the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth of April. The meeting, being the thirteenth, was an exceptionally favored one, as the president predicted, and many students and citizens took advantage of the opportunity of hearing our Kansas linguists and litterateurs.
THURSDAY EVENING.
After a short address of welcome by Chancellor Snow, the annual president's address was delivered by Miss Florence Snow, whose volume