The early train from Berne catches the first boat on the Lake of Thun, and I landed at the second station on the lake, the village of Gonten or Gunten.  M. Thury’s list states that the glaciere known as the Schafloch is on the Rothhorn, in the Canton of Berne, 4,500 metres of horizontal distance from Merligen, a village on the shore of the lake; and from these data I was to find the cave.  Gonten was apparently the nearest station to Merligen, and as soon as the small boat which meets the steamer had deposited me on the shore, I asked my way, first to the auberge, and then to Merligen.  The auberge was soon found, and coffee and bread were at once ordered for breakfast; but when the people learned my eventual destination, they would not let me go to Merligen.  A man, to whom—­for no particular reason—­I had given two-pence, called a council of the village upon me, and they proceeded to determine whether I must have a guide from Gonten, or only from a nameless chalet higher up.  The discussion was noisy, and was conducted without words:  they do not speak, those men of Gonten—­they merely grunt, and each interprets the grunts as he wills.  My two-penny friend told me what it all meant, in an obliging manner, but in words less intelligible than the grunts; and one member of the council drew out so elaborate a route—­the very characters being wild patois—­splitting the morning into quarter-stundes and half-quarter-stundes, with a sharp turn to the right or left at the end of each, that, as I drank my coffee, I determined to take a guide from the village, whatever the decision of the council might be.  Fortunately, things took a right turn, and when breakfast was finished, a deputation went out and found a guide, suspiciously like one of their number who did not return, and I was informed that Christian Opliger would conduct me to the Schafloch for five francs, and a Trinkgeld if I were satisfied with him.  In order to prove to me that he had really been at the cave, six days before, with two Bernese gentlemen, he seized my favourite low-crowned white hat, and endeavoured to knead it into the shape of the cave.

Our affairs took a long time to arrange, for grunts and pantomime are not rapid means of communication, when it comes to detail.  The great question in Christian’s mind seemed to be, what should we take with us to eat and drink? and when he propounded this to me with steady pertinacity, I, with equal pertinacity, had only one answer—­a cord and a hatchet.  At last he provided these, vowing that they were ridiculously unnecessary, but comprehending that they must be forthcoming, as a preliminary to anything more digestible; and then I told him, some dry bread and no wine.  This drove him from grunts to words.  No wine! it would be so frightfully hot on the mountains!—­I told him I never drank wine when I was hot.  But it would be so terribly cold in the cave!—­I never drank wine when I was cold.  But the climbing was sehr