The next day I had another fine walk over the Wengern Alp to Grindelwald. The mountain tops were partially veiled in clouds, but there was no uniform covering of mist, and the Silberhorn rose beautifully above me in unsullied whiteness. Grindelwald is as different as possible from Lauterbrunnen. On the north side, the hills rise in steep slopes, thickly set with cottages, and divided into meadows by hedges mixed with trees, to a considerable height, before the wild and craggy Alps begin. The term Alp in Switzerland indicates a mountain pasture, as distinguished from a snowy mountain: the highest summits are consequently never called Alps. Some of our travellers mention this as a corruption of the word, but it has, I think, never been proved that it was not its primitive signification. The Blumlis (flowerless) Alp is agreed on all hands to be a tract covered with perpetual snow, though tradition says it was once the best pasture in Switzerland: it is not however agreed where this Blumlis Alp was placed. Some give the name to a range of glaciers above Lauterbrunnenthal, while others apply it to parts of those above Kanderthal, because, they say, there is a more extensive tract very little above the snow line, which renders the tradition more reasonable. The name of Blumlis Alp in Keller’s map is given to a point 11,370 feet above the sea, which never could have been _Alp_ at all. For my part, if I may not reject the story altogether as a fable, I should incline to adopt the first opinion, because it has nothing but tradition to support it; while there seems a reason for the invention of the second; and it is very possible that some small spot above Lauterbrunnen, now covered with ice, may once have been pasture. The lower glaciers are said to be all on the increase, yet with one exception, (that of Bosson) they all bear evident marks of having been at some period much larger than they are at present, and similar changes may occur in the upper ones without supposing any constant increase of snow and ice.