For, notwithstanding “the madding crowd,” Interlaken is a little gem of a mountain town, with an undertone of repose and nobility, as if the spirit of the Alps asserted herself, reigning, as one might say, for all not ruling.  And always smiling at the people, as it were, is the majestic Jungfrau, ever seeming close at hand, altho’ eight miles away....

The pleasures of this little Swiss resort are exhaustless.  The wooded hills of the Rugen give innumerable walks amid beautiful forests, with all their wealth of pine and larch and hardwood, their moss-clad rocks and waving ferns.  In that pleasant shade hours may be passed close to nature.  The lakes not only offer delightful water trips, but also charming excursions along the wooded shores, sometimes high above the lakes, giving varying views of great beauty.  While, ever as with beckoning fingers, the great peaks, snow-capped or rock-summitted, call one across the verdant meadows into the higher valleys of Kienthal, Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwaid, and Kandersteg, to the terraced heights above or up amid the great wild passes.

Interlaken is, above all, a garden of green.  Perhaps the unusual amount of rain which falls to the lot of this valley accounts for its verdure.  In any event, park, woods, meadow, garden, even the mountain sides are green, a vari-colored green, and interspersed with an abundance of flowers.  Nowhere is the eye offended by anything inartistic or unpicturesque, but, on the contrary, the charm is so comprehensive that the visitor looks from place to place, from this bit to that bit, and ever sees new beauty.

To complete all, to accentuate in the minds of some this impression of green, is the majestic Jungfrau.  Other views may be grander and more magnificent, but no view of the Jungfrau can compare in loveliness to that from Interlaken.  A great white glistening mass, far up above green meadows, green forests, and green mountains, rises this peak, a shining summit of white.  Fitly named the Virgin, the Jungfrau gives her benediction to Interlaken, serenely smiling at the valley and at the town lying so quietly at her feet—­the Jungfrau crowned with snow, Interlaken drest in green!

In the golden glory of the sun, in the silver shimmer of the moon, the Jungfrau beckons, the Jungfrau calls!  “Come,” she seems to say, “come nearer!  Come up to the heights!  Come close to the running waters!  Come.”  And that invitation falls on no unwilling ears, but in to the Grindelwald and to the Lauterbrunnen and up to Muerren go those who love the majestic Jungfrau!  What a wonderful trip this is!  It may shatter some ideals in being taken to such a height in a railway train, but even against one’s convictions as to the proper way of seeing a mountain, when all has been said, the fact remains that this trip is wonderful beyond words.  There is a strangeness in taking a train which leaves a garden of green in the early morning and in a few hours later, after valley and pass and tunnel, puts one out on snow fields over 11,000 feet above the sea, where are seen vast stretches of white, almost level with the summit of the Jungfrau close at hand, and below, stretching for miles, on the one side the great Aletsch Glacier, and on the other side the green valleys enclosed by the everlasting hills!