Letters from Switzerland
by Samuel Irenæus Prime · English · Gutenberg #45097 · 362,332 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Letters from Switzerland
Author: Samuel Irenæus Prime
Release date: March 9, 2014 [eBook #45097]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS FROM SWITZERLAND ***
Transcriber's Notes:
When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has
been surrounded by _underscores_. Ditto marks have been replaced by the
text they represent. The oe ligature has been replaced by the letters oe.
Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. In particular,
punctuation has been normalized and duplicate words were removed. Other
corrections are listed below with the original text (top) and the
replacement text (bottom):
Contents: Gerni
Gemmi
Chapter I: herren
Herren
Schaffhaussen
Schaffhausen
Chapter II: intere t
interest
Chapter III: caries
carries
Chapter IV: withont
without
Chapter V: fouud
found
Chapter VI: Agazziz
Agassiz
eating-roon
eating-room
Chapter VII: cotages
cottages
Reichenback
Reichenbach
Alpback
Alpbach
white lace vails
white lace veils
Chapter VIII: replendent
resplendent
Grindenwald
Grindelwald
Chapter IX: visiters
visitors
puplis
pupils
Chapter X: businesss
business
Chapter XII: T56M[symbol]
The
Chapter XIII: benificent
beneficent
Grindewald
Grindelwald
Chapter XIV: fearfuly
fearfully
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: INTERLACHEN AND THE JUNGFRAU.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letters from Switzerland.
---------------------
BY
SAMUEL IRENÆUS PRIME,
AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN EUROPE AND THE EAST,"
&C., &C.
---------------------
NEW YORK:
SHELDON & COMPANY, 115 Nassau Street.
BOSTON: GOULD & LINCOLN.
1860.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
SHELDON & COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of
New-York.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I
BASLE AND THE RHINE.
The Three Kings--Cathedral--Council of Basle--Puritan rules--Dance of
Death--Seats in the Diligence--Supplement--The Rhine--An Alderman in
trouble--Dining in haste--English manners--Girls in holiday
dress--Falls of the Rhine--Niagara--Up the river--Old
nunneries--Gottlieben--Prisons of Huss and Jerome of Prague.
Pages 9-20
CHAPTER II
CONSTANCE AND ZURICH.
A decaying Town--the Kaufhaus--Famous Council--Dungeon of Huss--Scene of
Martyrdom--House of Huss--Lake Constance--the Ride to
Zurich--Villages--the Valley--Hotel Baur--a Swiss Cottage--the
Furnishing--Miles Coverdale--Zwingle--Lavater's Grave--the
Library--Sunset View from the Botanical Garden.
Pages 21-31
CHAPTER III.
THE MOUNTAIN TOPS.
Climbing the Utleberg--Fat woman on a donkey--First Alpine view--The
valley, lake and hills--Haunts of Lavater, Zimmerman, Klopstock,
Gessner--The work of Escher--Coming Down--Baur Hotel--Lake
Zurich--Lake Zug--Golda--Land-side--Ruin--Ascent of the Rigi--The
best route--Chapels by the way--Mary of the Snow--Convent and
monks--The Summit--The Company--Change of
Temperature--Sunset--Supper--Night--Sunrise--Glory of the
view--Getting down again--Fat man done up.
Pages 32-53
CHAPTER IV.
LUCERNE AND THE LAND OF TELL.
The Lake--Avalanches--Pontius Pilate--Lucerne--Dance of
Death--Fishing--Storm on the Lake--Ramble among the Peasantry--Two
Dwarfs--On the Lake--Rifle Shooting--Chapel of William Tell--Scenes
in his Life--Altorf--Hay-Making--a Great Day.
Pages 54-80
CHAPTER V.
PASS OF ST. GOTHARD
The Priest's Leap--The Devil's Bridge--Night on the
Mountains--Storm--Hospenthal--the Glaciers--a Lady in Distress--the
Furca Pass--Glacier of the Rhone--Heinrich and Nature--Heinrich asks
after God--Scene in the Hospice.
Pages 81-106
CHAPTER VI.
GLACIERS OF THE AAR.
My new Friend--a Wonderful Youth--Hospice of the Grimsel--the Valley--a
comfortable Day--Glaciers of the Aar--a Gloomy Vale--Climbing a
Hill--View of the Glacier--Theory of its Formation--Caverns in the
Ice--Incidents of Men falling in--My Leap and Fall--an Artist
Lost--Return.
Pages 107-121
CHAPTER VII.
MOUNTAINS, STREAMS AND FALLS.
Pedestrianism--Mountain Torrents--Fall of the Handek--The Guide and his
Little Ones--Falls of the Reichenbach--Perilous Point of View.
Pages 122-145
CHAPTER VIII.
A GLACIER AND AVALANCHE.
Alpine Horn--Beggars--The Rosenlaui Glacier--Beautiful Views--Glorious
Mountain Scenes--Mrs. Kinney's "Alps"--A Lady and Babe--The Great
Scheidek--Grindelwald--Eagle and Bear--Battle with Bugs--Wengern
Alp--A real Avalanche--The Jungfrau.
Pages 146-165
CHAPTER IX.
INTERLACHEN AND BERNE.
The Staubach Fall--Lauterbrunnen--Interlachen--Cretins and Goitre--Dr.
Guggenbuhl--Giesbach Fall--Berne--Inquisitive Lady--Swiss
Creed--Crossing the Gemmi--Leuchenbad Baths.
Pages 166-180
CHAPTER X.
MONKS OF ST. BERNARD.
The Char-a-banc--the Napoleon Pass--Travellers in
winter--Monks--Dogs--Dinner--Music--Dead House--Contributions--a
Monk's Kiss.
Pages 181-192
CHAPTER XI.
FIRST SIGHT OF MONT BLANC.
The Host of Martigny--Vale of the Drance--Mount Rosa--Tete Noire--Col de
Balm--The Monarch of the Alps.
Pages 193-204
CHAPTER XII.
GENEVA
A good House--Prisoner of Chillon--Calvin--Dr. Malan--Dr. Gaussen--Col.
Tronchin--the Cemetery.
Pages 205-213
CHAPTER XIII.
PICTURES IN SWITZERLAND.
Waterfalls--Constance--Zurich--William Tell--Glaciers--the Monarch.
Pages 214-246
CHAPTER XIV.
SAXON SWYTZ.
A Model Guide--the Bastei--Banditti of old--a Cataract to Order--Scaling a
Rampart--Konigstein--the Kuhstall--the Great Winterberg--Prebisch
Thor--Looking Back.
Pages 247-264
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SWITZERLAND.
---------------------
CHAPTER I.
BASLE AND THE RHINE.
The Three Kings--Cathedral--Council of Basle--Puritan rules--Dance of
Death--Seats in the Diligence--Supplement--The Rhine--An Alderman in
trouble--Dining in haste--English manners--Girls in holiday
dress--Falls of the Rhine--Niagara--Up the river--Old
nunneries--Gottlieben--Prisons of Huss and Jerome of Prague.
Switzerland, to be seen aright, must be entered from Germany. Many
travellers rush from Paris to Geneva, and beginning with Chamouni and
Mont Blanc come down from the greater to the less, tapering off with the
beautiful instead of rising to the sublime. One lovely summer day in the
early part of the month of August, we left Baden Baden, where we had
been resting after a tour in Belgium, Holland, Prussia, Saxony, Saxon
Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, and Bohemia, and came by the Duke of
Baden's railroad to Basle.
The hotel de _Trois Rois_, or, _Three Kings_, was reluctant to receive
us, so great was the rush of company. Large as some of our own first
class hotels, it was crowded to overflowing, but we found lodgings for
three at the top of the house. It stands on the very borders of the
river Rhine, which rushes by with a powerful current, and the verandah
in front overhanging the stream is a pleasant lounge after a weary day
of travel. Lodgings for three gentlemen, or in German, "fur drei
Herren," we had so often asked for, that we came to be called the "Drei
Herren," or "dry herring," as it sounded in our English ears.
The river forms a broad and noble stream along the sloping bank on which
the city stands; the Jura mountains rise on one side, and the hills of
the Black Forest on the other, while the intermediate region is richly
covered with vegetation, and the villas of a wealthy class of people who
have retired from the city, or who own the soil. Basle is a goodly town,
and if the people have some rigid notions of morality in the judgment of
travellers of easy virtue, it is refreshing to come into a city where
the shops are closed of a Sunday, and every one is required to be at
home by eleven o'clock at night. A city that bore so conspicuous a part
in the Reformation, and still cherishes the ashes of so many great and
good men, ought not to lose its veneration for the spirit and principles
of the past. In the _Cathedral_, now in process of renovation, we stood
over the dust of the learned Erasmus, read his epitaph in Latin, walked
among the beautiful cloisters which have been burial places for the wise
and good for more than _six_ hundred years! where the monuments stand of
Grynæus, and Meyer, and OEcolampadius, men who were mighty in the
Scriptures, in the days when such men were few. We walked through the
portal of St. Gallus, under the statues of Christ and Peter, and the
wise and foolish Virgins, and admired the pulpit of three pieces of
stone, carved with great skill and effect; and then we were led to the
chamber where the Council of Basle held its sessions, beginning in 1436,
and lasting eight years. It has undergone no alterations in the four
hundred years which have since elapsed. In the _Library_ are preserved
manuscripts of Luther, Melancthon, Erasmus and Zwingle, and a huge
volume in which illustrious visitors had inscribed their names for two
hundred years. The celebrated pictures of the _Dance of Death_ once
adorned the walls of the Dominican church in Basle, and a few of them
still preserved are now hung up in this collection, among others of
greater merit but less fame, by Holbein. A beautiful picture, which I
have seen attempted with far less success before, presents a Venus
sleeping by the side of a stream, and a skull lying near her, and
flowers blooming around, to illustrate the lines: _Mortis imago sopor:
velut amnis labitur ætas, vix forma reliquium pulvis et ossa manent._
"The image of death is sleep: like the river life glides away, and dust
and bones, the only relics of departed beauty, are left behind." In the
next room the same sentiment is more impressively taught from an
uncovered sarcophagus, in which a female mummy grins horribly at you, as
you look into the narrow house which she has slept in for two or three
thousand years.
The architecture of this old Swiss town is very curious, and many of the
most antique gateways and fortifications, towers and walls, remain to
this hour, showing the quaint but not bad devices in the way of
ornament, which were in use 450 years ago. In old times, too, they had
moral laws here quite as stringent as those imputed to our New England
ancestors. On the Sabbath, no one might go to church unless dressed in
black; the number of dishes and the quantity of wine for a dinner party
were regulated by law, as well as the style and quality of clothes. The
good people used to put religious mottoes over their doors, and one or
two public houses still have them:
"In God I build my hopes of grace,
The ancient Pig's my dwelling place."
And another still more earnest:
"Wake and repent your sins with grief,
I'm called the Golden Shin of Beef."
The gates of the town are closed on the Sabbath day during the hours of
service, and an outward respect paid to the day which is creditable to
the people. In the hotel, a small room has been fitted up neatly as a
chapel for an English service, a custom not unusual in Switzerland,
where English travellers are flocking constantly.
Basle is the great starting point for Swiss travelling for those who
enter the German frontier. We have now come to the end of railroads, and
must depend on horses or go afoot. The sooner one takes his place in the
_diligence_ after arriving, the more likely he is to have a good seat
when he wishes to depart, and though we were early for this, no less
than twelve had the start of us, and the coach carried only nine. "You
shall have a _supplement_," we were told, and at nine in the morning
with twenty-five travellers we were at the _Post Office_, to be
despatched with the mails and the females to Schaffhausen. This posting
is a Government concern, and the postmaster has charge of the horses as
well as the letters. There was no place but the middle of the street in
which to remain, till at the appointed hour the heavy diligence lumbered
up to the door: the nine predestinated thereunto took their seats; an
omnibus and one or two carriages by way of supplement, received the rest
of us, many grumbling grievously that they had not places in the coach,
and others preferring as we did, an easy carriage with a party of four.
The postillion dressed in a yellow jacket with a brass horn under his
arm, with which he amused himself and the country people as he passed,
mounted the box, and we soon crossed the Rhine, and followed its banks
upward for many a pleasant mile. The morning was fine after a rainy
night, clear, cool and bracing; the distant Alps were constantly in
sight on the right, and the winding, often rapid, always beautiful
river, with its vine-clad shores and smiling cottages was by our side.
We left the carriage at _Lauffenburg_, and walked to the banks of the
Rhine, where the river is choked into a narrow gorge, and dashes with
terrible force through a deep sunk channel, among opposing rocks, making
a fearful pass in which an English nobleman lost his life, attempting to
make the rapids in a little boat. Resuming our seats, we found one of
our fellow travellers belonging to the diligence, Alderman ---- of New
York left behind. The coach was out of call, and the best he could do
was to mount the edge of the postillion's single seat in front of our
carriage and ride on to the next post town. The Alderman was heavy, the
place was too strait for him, and I suggested that a _franc_ would buy
the whole seat. He tried the effect of it, the postillion took the
silver, dropped down upon the foot rest, and the Alderman had the seat
to himself. In an hour we stopped to dine. Perhaps we were here a few
moments sooner than mine host of the _Waldshut_ Hotel expected us, for
the dinner was not on the table, but it gave us a fine opportunity to
observe a specimen of manners sufficiently characteristic to be made a
matter of record. At the table there sat ten English, six German, and
seven American ladies and gentlemen. The dishes were slow in coming in;
the English gentlemen all having ladies under their care, left the
table, rushed into the kitchen, seized the best dishes of meats they
could find, brought them to their own places, and helping themselves and
their ladies, devoured them in the presence of the more barbarous
Germans and Americans, who looked on with amazement. I took the liberty
of remarking that it was an outrage, of which I had never before seen an
example in civilized life, and was happy to observe that the practice
was confined to a single nation out of the number represented here. An
English lady gave me an approving nod, but the men were too far gone in
beef and sour wine to pay any attention to lessons in good breeding. As
might be expected, the leader in this grab-game grumbled at his bill,
declared he was charged for more wine than he had drunk, and laid
himself out in abusing Swiss taverns in general, and this in particular,
till the postman's horn summoned him and the rest to their seats.
The scenery improves as we ascend the Rhine. The banks are steeper, the
hills are bolder; the water rushes more rapidly through winding
channels, and the people we meet bear more characteristic features of
another country. It is a Catholic holiday. We are meeting the peasantry
in great numbers, dressed in their best clothes, some of them gaily;
blooming lasses in snow white muslin and no bonnets, but sweet pretty
head-dresses and pink ribbons tied as pretty girls in all countries know
how to tie them; they are gathering at the churches, and as they wend
their way through green fields to the highway, they give a romantic air
to the rural picture we are looking on. Many of them are paired, and as
they saunter along hand in hand, and now and then with an arm thrown
lovingly round the waist, we know them as probably paired for life, and
send up a little prayer that they may jog along as pleasantly all the
way through.
"The finest Cataract in Europe" is at Schaffhausen. We arrived at
sunset, just in time to see the falls before the last rays had faded
into night. The Rhine is here 300 feet broad, and after foaming and
rushing furiously for a mile or two it takes a bold leap over a shelving
precipice sixty feet high, and plunges into a bay of waters below,
boiling like a mighty caldron and sending up perpetual clouds of spray.
In the midst of the cataract two columnar rocks rise perpendicularly,
dividing the fall into three unequal parts. One of these rocks is
clothed with shrubbery and the steep banks on either side are lined with
trees. A castellated mansion crowns the summit on one side, and several
buildings grace the other, so that nature and art have here combined to
make a picture of wild romantic beauty, in which there is enough of
grandeur to entitle it, at times, to be called sublime. Certainly we
should so pronounce it, if we had not seen the waterfalls of America.
The only place to see a fall to perfection is directly in front of it.
We are told to cross the river and go up the hill to a jutting crag and
there in the midst of the spray, contemplate the "hell of waters,"
roaring and tumbling madly on their way into the dreadful deeps below.
We went over, but nothing satisfies me but to see a waterfall from its
base. It was an easy matter to induce two stout oarsmen to put the nose
of their skiff into the teeth of the cataract, and drive her up as near
to the falling torrent as their strength would fetch her. I knew the
strong current would send the little shell down stream, like an arrow,
when they crossed the eddies and struck the channel; and so it proved.
We toiled on till the spray-like rain covered us, and there we looked up
at the white waves as they marched in fury down upon us, threatening to
overwhelm the frail bark tossing on the surface as a shell. When we had
studied the scene from various points of view, we returned to the shore
and met a party of English gentlemen and ladies at Castle _Worth_, which
commands a fine sight of the falls. "How does it compare with Niagara,"
one of them enquired of me. I replied, "We do not love to make
comparisons between these beautiful scenes and those we have left at
home. Nature there is more majestic in her works, and there is no sight
on earth where so much majesty crowned with beauty is revealed as in the
cataract of Niagara. You see that hill which bounds this valley on the
west and that higher one which shuts it in above where the Rhine comes
down: those hills are not so far asunder as the river of Niagara is at
the moment it falls! It is a lake broader than this beautiful vale and
the precipice to whose brow it comes is loftier than the turrets of that
castle, now fading from our view. It comes not creeping down the rocks
like _that_, but gathering itself up and with one mighty leap, clearing
the barrier, it pours its awful flood, as if an ocean had been spilled,
into the abyss below. In the moonlight and in the sunshine rainbows are
twined upon its brow, and garlands of diamonds hang from the summit to
the base, in beauty indescribable."
We climbed up to the hotel Weber, which stands on the brow of the hill,
and the good man of the house gave us a chamber in full view of the
falls, where we went to sleep with the roar of the tumult of many waters
in our ears, making music the last we heard at night, and the first in
the morning. Now the grandeur of the distant Alps began to appear. Long
ranges, peak towering above peak, are seen; the names of some of them
are familiar, as they stand there inviting us to come to their feet. Let
us go.
_Aug. 16._--Refreshed by a sweet sleep, and ready for another fine day,
we were taken after breakfast to the village of Schaffhausen, where a
small steamboat received us for _Constance_. The current of the Rhine
above the falls is not so swift as below, but the waters are the same
deep green, increased by the reflection of the beautiful sloping banks,
covered with luxuriant vineyards. The vines are trained on short upright
poles, not on arbors as with us, and at a distance they look not unlike
our corn fields. But the river is so narrow here that we seem to be in
the midst of them, and enjoy the labors of the dressers, as they work in
the sun. Now we are passing the old nunneries of Paradies, and
Katherinethal, and that ancient castle above the town of Stein is
Hohenlingen, once the abode of the masters of all this soil. Here is the
island of _Reichenau_, where the remains of an ancient monastery are
seen, and on the right as we are ascending is the castle of
_Gottlieben_, where John Huss and Jerome of Prague were confined in
gloomy dungeons from which they were dragged to trial and death.
And this brings us to Constance.
CHAPTER II.
CONSTANCE AND ZURICH.
A decaying Town--the Kaufhaus--Famous Council--Dungeon of Huss--Scene of
Martyrdom--House of Huss--Lake Constance--the Ride to
Zurich--Villages--the Valley--Hotel Baur--a Swiss Cottage--the
Furnishing--Miles Coverdale--Zwingle--Lavater's Grave--the
Library--Sunset View from the Botanical Garden.
Forty thousand people once lived together within the walls of Constance.
Now less than seven thousand are here. But the old and curious houses
still stand, many of them without inhabitants, and the whole city
apparently asleep at noonday as we entered. The historic interest
hanging about Constance is very great, and will always render it
attractive to the traveller. On the borders of the lake of Constance,
and but a very few feet from the landing, we saw the _Kaufhaus_, built
in 1338, and memorable as the place in which the great "Council of
Constance" sat in 1414-18, whose decision for good and for evil were so
momentous in the Church of Rome. We walked up the solid steps into the
second story, one wide low room supported by heavy wooden pillars, and
with a rough plank floor like that of a barn. Here, in this room, more
than four hundred years ago were assembled from all parts of the
Christian world, no less than thirty cardinals, four patriarchs, twenty
archbishops, one hundred and fifty bishops, two hundred professors of
theology, besides princes, ambassadors, civil and ecclesiastical,
abbots, priors, and inferior churchmen. The chair in which the Emperor
Sigismund sat, and the chair in which the Pope presided, stand as they
stood then, and various relics of those times, historically associated
with the Council, are gathered, forming a Museum of unusual interest.
Before this council John Huss and Jerome of Prague were brought from
their dungeons, and though the Council was assembled professedly to
reform the church, it condemned these holy men to the flames.
The old Cathedral is here, where those martyrs stood when the sentence
of death was passed upon them, and the model of the dungeon not three
feet wide and ten feet long, with the identical door and window in it,
where Huss was confined for many weary months. Here too is the hurdle on
which he was dragged to the place of execution, and when we had examined
these and many interesting objects which a Catholic claiming to be the
friend of Huss showed us, we walked out of the old chamber, and
following the long street to the Huss Gate, found beyond the walls of
the town, in the midst of a garden, the spot where these blessed men
were caught up by chariots of fire into heaven. An old Capuchin convent,
deserted now, is standing near it, and so peaceful and fertile seemed
these fields as we stood in the midst of the fruits and flowers, it was
hard to believe an infuriated mob had once rioted here, and religious
persecution kindled the fires of martyrdom on the flesh of men of whom
the world was not worthy.
In the Council Chamber are wax figures of these martyrs, bearing the
records which I copied. "Jerome of Prague, called Faulfisch, a learned
man of great celebrity, the friend and defender of John Huss, born at
Prague, March 14, 1362; burned alive in consequence of the order of the
Council of Constance, May 30, 1417, in the 55th year of his age. Jerome
walked to the place of punishment, as though he went to a place of
rejoicing. When the executioner was going to set fire to the pile behind
him, Jerome said to him, 'Come here, light it before me, for if I had
feared the fire, I would not have been here.'"
"John Huss, of Housenitts in Bohemia, born July 6, 1373, rector of the
University and lecturer at Prague, burned alive at Constance in
consequence of the order of the Council, July 6, 1415, in the 42d year
of his age. His last words were, 'I resign my soul to the hands of my
God and my Redeemer.'"
Returning from the place of execution, we paused in front of the house
in which John Huss lodged before he was imprisoned. A rude image in
stone of the Reformer, but a strongly marked likeness, was on the
outside. Every one we met could tell us which way to go to find the Huss
house, and though there are but a few hundred Protestants in the whole
city, the idea seemed to be general that a good man was wrongfully and
cruelly murdered when Huss was burned.
In the after part of the day, as the shades of evening were drawing
around us, we had a boat and went out on the Lake, and skirted along its
shores, passing a large monastery where a few brothers of the Augustine
order are still maintained, and a few miles beyond is a long and
beautifully planted nunnery which was suppressed in 1838, and converted
into a hospital, though the sisters are permitted to live and die there,
without adding to their number. This is the largest of all the Swiss
lakes, and lies 1255 feet above the level of the sea. We floated around
until the evening became so cool that we were glad to go ashore. Passing
an ancient-looking church of which the door was standing open, we walked
in: a solitary lamp was burning near the altar, and the sound of voices
led us down the aisle to a door opening into one of the cloisters where
a group of boys were on their knees, repeating prayers in concert, and
vieing with each other in the loudness and sing-song tone with which
they performed the service. We returned to our hotel by the light of
lamps hung in the middle of a chain stretched across the street, and
went early to bed as we were early to rise.
_Aug. 17._--We went by diligence to Zurich to-day. The ride was
pleasant. Some of the Swiss towns we passed through were very pretty,
showing so much taste in the grounds about the houses, that one was sure
there was a pleasant home. Part of the way was called the Roman road,
and the remains of the ancient presence of that people are still
visible. The river _Thur_ flows along in the valley of the road, and its
banks are lined with frequent mansions. Chateaus of elegance are on the
hill-sides, and just after leaving Constance we passed one in which the
present Emperor of France once resided, and which still belongs to him.
_Frauenfeld_ is a fine town where we paused to dine, and I there
celebrated the day as an anniversary that I am quite sure was not
forgotten elsewhere. _Winterthur_ is really a beautiful city. Its
streets intersect one another at right angles, and each intersection has
an arched gateway, surmounted by a tower with a clock. As we advance
into Switzerland, the scenery becomes more commanding: now and then a
sharp blue peak shoots up into the sky, and as the road descends we lose
sight of it again, to see the same and others as we rise. At last as the
day was closing, we came suddenly upon Zurich, the capital of the canton
of the same name, the most thriving city in Switzerland, and rejoicing
in the midst of one of the most beautiful valleys in the world. I should
be deemed extravagant were I to speak of it as it appeared to me when
descending through vineyards and gardens, and among elegant mansions, to
the shores of the lake on which this city stands. The Hotel _Baur_ is
the largest and best in the town, but it was crowded, and the
gentlemanly landlord said the best he could do for us was to give us
rooms in a private house adjoining his own. To this we assented with the
more readiness, as it would bring us at once into the residence of the
Swiss, and we could see more of their indoor life than the hotel would
furnish. There is no carpet on the floor, except a beautiful square on
which the centre-table with a pot of flowers is standing. A piano with
music and books is on one side, a sofa covered with white dimity on the
other. The chamber looks out on a square, and the windows fill the
entire front of the room, but rich lace curtains hang before them, and
some of the panes of glass are replaced with porcelain pictures of
exceeding loveliness. Before the mirror is suspended a vase, like a
pendant lamp, in which a plant is growing, with its leaves as on silver
threads falling gracefully on every side of it. Another flower-pot has a
plant trained upon a flat frame, in the centre of which is one of these
porcelain pictures through which the light is streaming. Around the
walls are many engravings in neat frames, and on the mantel and
side-tables are various ornaments, chiefly curiously carved figures in
wood, or beautiful glass-work, all displaying the taste of their
possessor, and telling us all the time that these are the domestic
precincts of some one who has let the lodgings for a season. These
delicate cushions of pink silk with white lace edging, assure me that a
lady is the rightful tenant; but I am tired, and shall slip into the
linen sheets. Good night.
_Aug. 18._--To-day we have been exploring Zurich, a city famous in the
history of the Reformation and dear to every Protestant heart. Here the
exiles of England, when Bloody Mary was on the throne, found a
hiding-place from her bitter persecutions. Here the first entire English
version of the Bible, by _Miles Coverdale_, was printed in 1535. From my
window I see the cathedral where Zwingle, the soldier of the Reformation
who resisted unto blood striving against sin, once thundered the wrath
of heaven upon the abominations of the Church of Rome. Here is the house
yet standing in which he passed the last six years of his noble life.
The clock of St. Peter is now striking. This church had for its pastor
for twenty-three years the celebrated _Lavater_, author of the work on
Physiognomy. He was born here, and in the door of the parsonage which I
visited to-day, he was shot by a brutal soldier, when the town was taken
by the French in 1799. He had given wine and money to his murderer but a
few minutes before: and though he lingered for three months, he refused
to give up the name of the assassin to the French commander, who desired
to punish the atrocious deed. I plucked a flower and a sprig of myrtle
from his grave in the humble churchyard of St. Anne, where a simple
tablet to his memory bears this inscription: "J. C. Lavater's Grave.
Born 15th Nov. 1741. Died 2d Jan. 1801." In the town library of 45,000
volumes, admirably arranged, is a fine marble bust of Lavater, and also
of Pestalozzi, with portraits of Zwingle and many other reformers. But I
was more interested in reading several manuscript letters in Latin, by
Lady Jane Grey, Joanna Graia, addressed to Bullinger. The beautiful
execution of the writing, the quotations in Greek and Hebrew, the spirit
they breathed, and the fate of their lovely author, gave them sacred
interest. Here, too, in his own Bible is the family record of Zwingle
and his wife Anna Bullinger; and many Greek and Arabic manuscripts which
Dr. Raffles or Dr. Sprague would give a heap of guineas to get.
It is said that the sunset view of the city, valley, lake, and mountains
is not surpassed by any scene in Switzerland. We had been so busy in
these old and interesting scenes, that the day was gone before we knew
it, and as we walked out to climb the hill, from which the view is to be
had, we feared the sun had already set. Part of the old rampart of the
town remains, an elevated mound which has been tastefully laid out with
walks and planted with shrubs and flowers, for a botanical garden. On
the summit fine shade-trees stand, and here is one of the most beautiful
promenades in the world. The sun was half an hour high, and just as we
reached the hill-top it began to come down from behind a dense cloud,
like a mass of molten gold distilled into a transparent globe. Its
liquid form appeared to tremble as it came forth; but the face of nature
smiled in his returning beams. The nearer summits first caught the
brightness, and then the more distant, invisible before, now stood forth
in their majesty, shining in the sunlight. Below me lay the lake like a
silver sea. And all along its shores and far up the hill-sides,
thousands of white cottages and villas, the abodes of wealth and peace
and love, sweet Swiss homes, rejoiced in the sunshine, as they sent up
their evening psalm of praise from ten thousand happy hearts to God. A
hundred years hence our valleys may be so peopled: but we have none now
like this. For a thousand years these hill-sides have been tilled, and
all these acres, wrested from the forest, and subdued by the hand of
industry and art, have been planted with corn and wine, neat and many
splendid mansions have been reared in every nook and on every sunny
slope, and now on all sides the panorama seems to present the very spot
where learning, religion, taste and peace would delight to find a refuge
and a home. It is now sunset in the valley. The lake is dark. The last
ray has played on the spire of St. Peter and the Minster. But the dome
of the Dodi still gleams in the sun, and the far-off Glarus and Uri are
reflecting his lingering beams.
They are gone. The rose-tints have faded from the loftiest summit of
snow, and the sun has gone down to rise on those dearer to me than his
light, in a distant land.
CHAPTER III.
THE MOUNTAIN TOPS.
Climbing the Utleberg--Fat woman on a donkey--First Alpine view--The
valley, lake and hills--Haunts of Lavater, Zimmerman, Klopstock,
Gessner--The work of Escher--Coming Down--Baur Hotel--Lake
Zurich--Lake Zug--Golda--Land-side--Ruin--Ascent of the Rigi--The
best route--Chapels by the way--Mary of the Snow--Convent and
monks--The Summit--The Company--Change of
Temperature--Sunset--Supper--Night--Sunrise--Glory of the
view--Getting down again--Fat man done up.
August 19.
Rankin challenged me this morning to walk to the heights of Utleberg, on
the Albis ridge, to the west of Zurich. The Utleberg is only three
thousand feet high! and that is a small matter in Switzerland. After a
cup of coffee we set off at eight in the morning, and without guide or
mules we wandered out of the town, across the river, and through
beautiful vineyards, with luxuriant grapes, not ripe enough to be
tempting. We climbed along up the hill-side. Other parties were on their
way, some German, some French, some English, none American but
ourselves. At the foot of the hill we met a flock of milk white goats,
which their owner was driving down from the mountains to sell in town;
beautiful creatures; for the first, we learned that beauty could be
affirmed of a goat. Here the lame and the lazy supplied themselves with
mules, and a comical figure of a fat German lady on a miserable little
donkey, will be an amusing memory for many a day. When she was half way
up the mountain she looked so jaded with the jerking, that we thought
she would have suffered less if she had carried the donkey. We cut stout
sticks in the forest, and pushed on, stopping now and then to pick
flowers, or to examine a leech or a lizard, in the pools and streams by
the side of the path, resting when tired, but pressing onward and
upward, steadily and slowly; encouraged often by the splendor of the
scene below, as we caught it from some opening in the woods, and feeling
that we had the day before us and nothing else to do. The ascent became
steeper as we pressed along, and it doubtless seemed steeper to us the
more we were wearied with the way, but we made it in less than two
hours, winding around the mighty rock that caps the apex, and entered
the house of refreshment before we looked off into the world below.
I had not felt myself in Switzerland till on this summit, we saw for the
first time a real Alpine view. It has _points_ of view peculiar to
itself, nationally characteristic; there is nothing got up on the same
scale and the same plan in any other part of God's great world. Why it
pleased him to heap these hills in such "confusion unconfused," in this
little country, we do not know, but they who would see the most
remarkable of his works in mountain-building, must come here and climb
up to some of the highest peaks, where they can take in at once as much
of the majesty of the scene as each man's mind can hold. Rankin and I
reasoned some time on the question whether these lofty ranges were
clouds in the heavens or mountains propping up the sky. Now the problem
is solved. What we thought might be white clouds, are the snowy ridges
of the distant hills, and the dark blue mountains are now facing us as
from one height across the valley we see them without looking up.
The vale of Zurich lies at our feet. The lake for twenty-five miles, and
with a breadth of not more than three, stretches itself more like a
river than a lake, through the valley to the south as far as we can see;
and the hills rise very gradually from the water affording the most
delightful grounds for vineyards; while scores of villages, each with
its church spire, are scattered on each side, and between the villages
so many dwellings are seen, that the whole valley, with its dense
population, seems but one great family; certainly, it is one
neighborhood, where industry, religion, intelligence and happiness,
ought to flourish and have their reward. Thalwyl may be seen away to the
south, near to which Lavater wrote a portion of his work on Physiognomy;
and still farther on is Richtensweil, where Zimmerman lived, whose work
on "Solitude" celebrates the praises of this spot. So does Klopstock in
his ode, and Gessner, the Swiss poet, who was born in Zurich and has a
monument reared to his memory in one of its delightful promenades.
There, too, is Stafa, where Goethe once resided, and Rapperschuyl, with
the longest bridge in the world, it is said, four thousand eight hundred
feet, or three-fourths of a mile; but I think the Cayuga bridge is
longer. There lies a beautiful islet, in which Ulrich Von Hutten, the
friend of Luther, found a refuge and a grave. Look away to Usnach, and
you see a valley out of which the river _Linth_ is flowing; connected
with it is a remarkable story. Yesterday in the churchyard of St. Anne,
we saw a massive rough stone, with a polished spot in the midst of it,
on which was engraved in gilt letters, "Escher, Von der Linth," or
Escher of the Linth. The title had plainly been given him for some work
connected with the Swiss river of that name. Some thirty or forty years
ago the river, coming down from the glaciers, and bringing with it a
vast quantity of stones and soil, had become so much obstructed, that
the valley was repeatedly overflowed, terrible pestilences followed, and
the inhabitants swept off in great numbers. Conrad Escher suggested to
the government the idea of digging a new bed for the river, and turning
its waters off into another lake, the Wallenstadt, where its deposits
would be received without injury. This lake he connected with that of
Zurich by a navigable canal, and so complete was the success of all his
suggestions, that he is looked upon as a national benefactor. Just
there, at the opening of the valley, a tablet has been placed in the
solid rock, with an appropriate inscription. But that is not all. Hard
by it is an institution for the education of the poor of the canton,
which is called after his name; and a factory where the Linth colony are
at work, who were brought here and supported while the great work was in
progress on which they were employed.
Whichever way the eye turns from this point of observation, it finds
something interesting or wonderful on which to rest. We are now in the
morning of our tour in Switzerland, and have been assured again and
again that this is _mere_ beauty, compared with the glory that awaits us
hereafter. But those mighty mountains crowned with eternal snow, and
piercing the very skies with their sharp peaks, or supporting the
heavens with their broad white shoulders, are certainly most majestic
works of God, and what more and greater there can be, it is beyond
imagination to conceive. Not many travellers climb up here. They are in
such haste to see the Rigi and the Passes, and the Vale of Chamouni,
that they do not give a day to Zurich, the most classic and picturesque
of any of the cantons of Switzerland. An English gentleman and lady are
up here with me, who have just been traversing this whole country on
foot. They are full of delight with the view, though they have seen
everything else that is to be seen.
The only incident to give variety to our return was losing the way, and
making the walk a mile longer; but that was of small account to Swiss
pedestrians, ambitious of doing great things, and making nothing of
climbing a mountain, and coming down before dinner.
We are at Zurich now. Mr. _Baur_ has the most elegant "Hotel and
Pension" on the verge of the Lake of Zurich, that I have seen in Europe.
He calls this, as well as the Hotel in front of the Post Office, after
his own name, and gives them a degree of personal attention unequalled
by any landlord into whose hands it was ever my pleasure to fall. In
most of the hotels in Europe, the proprietor keeps himself out of sight,
and trusts the entire management of affairs to his assistants, the head
waiter being the most of a man you are ever able to find. Mr. Baur is
everywhere at once: receives his guests on their arrival, makes himself
acquainted with their wants, and sees that they are attended to without
fail. His new house on the lake with a charming garden in front, is one
of the most delightful places for a weary traveller to rest in for a few
days.
There are many routes to the Rigi. Of course we went by the best. Every
traveller does; at least he thinks so, and that often amounts to the
same thing. But in this as in every other road up hill in life, before a
man gets half way up, he wishes he had taken the other. So it matters
little, if he only reaches the top at last. The steamboat on the
Zurigsee, leaves at eight in the morning, and at least a hundred
passengers crowded the little thing, when with a lovely breeze and a
fine clear day we were off for the Rigi.
The glory of the Rigi is at sunset and sunrise, and then there is none
unless the sky is clear. Nor are you sure of a clear sky up there, if it
were ever so bright when you left the base. The group of mountains known
by the name of Rigi, of which the highest peak is alone the object of
interest to the traveller, stand so isolated by the lakes of Zug and
Lucerne from the rest of the ridges and ranges, that the view from the
summit, especially at the close of the day and at sunrise, is
unequalled. It stands up there alone, as an observatory from which to
see the others. An hour on the boat brought us to the village of Horgen,
where we were carried by stages across the country to Zug, on a lake of
the same name. At Horgen about sixty passengers were landed, and we
found that our tickets had been numbered as they were given to us on
board the boat, and we were to be seated in the coaches accordingly. My
number was forty-seven, very near the end of the list, but it turned up
a very good seat, on the shady side of the stage, a very important
matter in the middle of a hot day for a ride of three hours. Not a
winding but very much of a zig-zag road, led us over the hill country
that divides the lakes. Sometimes we had delightful views, deep ravines
through which the mountain streams were finding their way; on the crest,
the Rigi and Pilatus first meet the eye, and then rapidly we make our
way to the borders of the lake, on which stands the little town of Zug,
the capital of the Canton of that name, the least among the tribes.
After a hasty dinner at the tavern we embarked on another steamboat, and
still smaller than the one on the Zurich Lake. What a lovely sheet of
water is this Lake Zug! It lies eighteen hundred feet higher than the
sea; and all around it except at the head, the richly cultivated shores
are sloping away from the water's edge. But just before us, as we are
going South, the noble Rigi rises from the shore of the Lake, and in the
clear water the whole of that vast mountain clothed with verdure to the
very summit is reflected so perfectly, that instead of looking up to
study the ridges and precipices and forests and flocks on its rugged
sides, it is pleasanter to study it as it lies there in the depths of
this pellucid sea. We reached the South end, or head of the lake about
three in the afternoon, and here we arranged to ascend the mountain.
The ascent from Arth is made by many, but it is far better to push on
through the village to Goldau, and there look at the evidences of the
awful work of ruin and death that was wrought in 1806 by the slide of a
large part of the Rossberg mountain; burying 450 human beings in one
living grave. There is the fresh white side of the mountain, as if the
half of it had fallen away yesterday. It is 5000 feet high; and lies in
great strata of pudding stone, which is very liable to be split asunder
by the water that filters between the layers. You can see the ranges in
the strata as the sun falls on this bare side, and it seems as if what
was left lying there, might one of these days come down to find the half
that left it fifty years ago. Then a portion three miles long and a
thousand feet broad and at least a hundred feet thick broke away from
the rest, after a long succession of heavy rains; and came down into the
valley, teeming with a population of happy peasantry, and overwhelmed
them with the most awful deluge of modern times. So sudden was the rush
of rocks and earth, that a party of travellers going up the Rigi, where
I ascended, were met by the torrent; seven had passed on 200 yards ahead
of the other four and were caught by the descending avalanche, and never
seen again. The valley is now covered with vast rocks and masses of the
conglomerate, which then came down, and with so much force that some of
them now lie scattered some distance up the hill on the other side of
the vale! Fifty years have not restored the valley to its former
fertility and beauty. One of its lakes was nearly filled up, and now
little pools are seen where once was the bed of a handsome sheet of
water. The stories told of individual cases of suffering, of whole
families perishing, and what is on some accounts more distressing, of
some being taken and others left, are so many that I will not attempt to
repeat them now. I walked into the beautiful little church at Goldau, a
gem, and on each side of the front door is a black slab with a record of
names of some of those who perished in that dreadful day. This is a
Roman Catholic Canton, as I had evidence presently.
A new scene opens on the eye of the traveller when for the first time he
arrives at the foot of a mountain with a large party, and prepares to
ascend. We led off on foot from Arth to Goldau, supposing that the fifty
or more from the boat would strike up the hill immediately. But they
followed us: some with guides, some without: some carrying their own
packs, others with a servant to help them: some were ladies ready to
foot it to the summit: some were to be carried in a chair on a bier by
four bearers: the lame and the lazy are expected to ride on horses. I
was in the former class to-day, recovered from my Utleberg tramp, and
was glad to have good company to keep me in countenance, for I was a
little ashamed of myself in taking a horse when so many, and some of
them ladies, were going up on foot.
The path for a mile is gently ascending, and then takes a shaded gorge
in the hills, and on this account is greatly to be preferred to those
paths which lead from Arth and Weggis, around the mountain, exposing the
pilgrim all the way, to the rays of the sun. Now we are mounting
steadily: turning frequently in the saddle to look at the constantly
enlarging and ennobling view. Now and then a little cascade diversifies
the hour: or we stop to refresh ourselves from the many rills that are
gurgling by the path. The noise of running streams and waterfalls is
constantly heard, and on the stillness of the air the tintinabula or
tinkling of the bells on the necks of the dun-colored cows, that are
feeding in numerous herds all up the sides of the mountain, comes gently
to the ear as soft music.
All along up the mountain are small sheds, called chapels or stations,
with some rude image of the Saviour in it, and pilgrims, to whom
indulgences were promised by the Pope in the seventeenth century, are
going from one to the other stopping at each and saying their prayers. I
dismounted and entered one; where the most hideous sight met my eye
which I have yet seen in the miserable Romish worship. A full life size
figure of Christ sinking to the earth beneath the weight of the cross is
carved in wood; the countenance indicating agony, but such a horrid face
to personate the Saviour! and a wig on his head of long dirty hair
hanging over his shoulders! It was sickening, and I was glad to hasten
away from it, as rapidly as possible.
These praying stations, thirteen in number, lead on to a neat church
called "Mary of the Snow," and around it are lodging-houses for pilgrims
who are very numerous in the month of August. A small convent is here,
where four or five monks of the Capuchin order reside; they do service
in the church, and among the mountains where their priestly aid is
required. These lodging-houses are sometimes resorted to by invalids for
the benefit of the mountain air, and the whey of goat's milk, which can
be had in great abundance here. Beggars beset your path from the valley
to the mountain top: old men and old women, young men and young women,
and little children trained to toddle into the road and put out their
hand before they can speak so as to be understood. Many of these are not
in want; but every bit of money that can be extracted from travellers is
clear gain.
The steepest of the ascent is over, long before you reach the summit,
and the last mile of winding way is a very easy and pleasant ride. The
change of atmosphere is great; and an overcoat is needed at once, if you
are warm with walking. Fortunately you have had no chance to get the
view for some time, till it bursts upon you all at once as you plant
your feet on the mountain top, on a piece of table-land, of half an
acre, that forms a magnificent platform from which to behold this scene.
More than two hundred people are there before us: most of them parties
travelling for pleasure from all parts of the civilized world, with
guides, couriers and servants, a singular group to find yourself among
so suddenly and so far above the level of "the world and the rest of
mankind." One large hotel, and one small one are to shelter this company
for the night, and we are so fortunate as to find that we are to have a
small room with three beds, just under the roof, with holes about the
size of a hat to admit light and air! That is better than none, and some
of these people will have none. Still the two hotels on the summit, and
one half an hour down, the Rigi Staffel, afford abundant accommodations
to company, unless as in the present instance, the weather has been bad
for a week, and hundreds have been waiting for a fair day, and the
promise of a good night above. The Album of the house in which visitors
register their names records the disappointment of many who have climbed
up to see nothing but that mysterious mist which so often shrouds the
mountain tops. Probably the greater part of visitors are thus mocked,
for it is cloudy up here more than half the time. One party thus groans:
"Seven weary up-hill leagues we sped,
The setting sun to see;
Sullen and grim he went to bed,
Sullen and grim went we.
Nine sleepless hours of night we passed
The rising sun to see,
Sullen and grim he rose again,
Sullen and grim rose we."
Not such was our fate. The sun was half an hour high when we reached the
highest peak; and the first Alpine panorama was around us. Other views
had been partial: this was a great circle of the heavens and the earth,
three hundred miles in circumference! A few clouds in the western sky
were gorgeously crimson in the declining sun, but the atmosphere was
clear enough to reveal every mountain, every lake, every village, city,
forest and plain, with the cottages innumerable, dotting the valleys. At
our feet the Lakes of Lucerne and Zug are apparently underneath the
mountain, and they stretch themselves so curiously among the hills, that
we can scarcely determine to what sheets of water they belong, or
whether they are new lakes and not those seen before. And away at a
distance are other waters, some of them very small, but giving beauty
and variety to the plains below. The villages lying close by have their
historic interest. All this region is William Tell's. His name is
associated with many a spot on which the eye is resting. A neat little
chapel is built to mark the place where he shot his oppressor Gessler.
Here at the right is the Lake and town of Zug, and just behind it, rises
the spire of the church of Cappel, where Zwingle fell on the field of
battle. But turning from the views at the West and North, and looking to
the South and East, and such a prospect of Alps on Alps is seen as no
one had believed could be piled into sight from a single point. The
Bernese Alps clothed in perpetual robes of snow; those of Unterwalden
and Uri, with the dull blue glaciers in the midst of them; sending up
the peaks of Jungfrau, the Titlis, Rothstock and Bristenstock, are
directly in front, and on to the Eastward, is the broad white head of
the Dodi, the Sentis and the Glarish; but these are a few only of the
many named and unnamed that are now reflecting the sunset from their
white crowns, or retiring into the shades of evening as the sun goes
down. We look to the South East into an opening called the Muotta Thal,
where Suwarrow and Massena with their hostile armies fought bloody
battles in the midst of fearful crags and precipices, and we wonder that
this land of mountains and ice has been selected as the scene for so
much warfare and blood. The sun was now sinking to the edge of the
horizon. A lady standing near me said, "It is fit to light such a scene
as this!" There was a fitness between the sun and the scene that was
truly striking and glorious. The hum of the hundred voices was hushed.
It was also fit that we should be still while the sun took his last look
of our world that night.
It is for a wonder to me that Switzerland has produced so few poets, but
not strange that some of the noblest strains of English poetry have been
penned under the inspiration of these Alpine views. They awaken a train
of emotions so profoundly new, and at the same time so elevating and
sublime, that the heart wishes to utter itself in the passionate
language of poetry rather than in the duller words of prose. "These are
thy works," O God: before the mountains were built, and before the
hills, thou wert here. Thou didst "prepare the heavens, the earth, the
fields, and the highest part of the dust of the world." Thou hast
weighed the Alps in a balance, and held these mountains in the hollow of
thy hand. They shall flow down at thy presence, when thou comest to
shake terribly the earth. They stand now, because thou, Lord, dost hold
them up, for giants as they are, and touching thy heavens, they still
lean on thee.
During this half hour of observation on the summit of the Rigi, we had
been wrapped in our cloaks to protect us from the cold. As soon as the
sun was gone, we were glad to go into the house, where a table for a
hundred guests was spread, with a hot supper sufficient for half the
number; and before ten o'clock we were sound asleep. Those who could not
find beds spent the night in the dining hall, entertaining themselves
and disturbing the rest, but we were so far above them that we heard
nothing till the blast of a wooden horn rung through the halls,
informing us that the sun would be up before us if we did not hasten to
meet him. We hurried on our clothes, wrapped up warmly, and in a few
moments stood with our faces to the East, intently watching, like
worshippers of the Sun, the first signs of his coming. One single peak
was precisely between us and the sun, and as the earliest tints of the
morning began to redden it, the appearance was not unlike that of a
kindling fire in the summit. The blaze gathered around it, and seemed to
shoot away into the regions of ice and snow; and then far into the
clouds above, the bright hues of day were cast, and the crowd stood
still, anxious to enjoy the first view of the emerging sun. The horn was
blown again by the trumpeter, a miserable mode of announcing that the
King was coming, as if he needed a herald as he rode up the East in his
chariot of gold and fire. There was just haze enough in the atmosphere
to dim the sun of his dazzling brightness, and we could look steadily on
his face as he rose behind the mountain, and seemed to pause on the
summit, and calmly to look down on the world he had left in darkness a
few hours before. Then peak after peak, and mountain ridges, and domes
and minarets, fields of fresh snow, and forests of living green, began
to catch the morning tints: gorges in the hill sides would lie there in
deep shadow, and bosoms of virgin snow, bared to the rising sun, would
blush when he looked in upon them, while villages and hamlets in the
vale below are still wrapped in the shades of the gray dawn, and have
not thought of waking yet to begin another day. We spent an hour or two
in the enjoyment of this magnificent prospect, which we are told is one
of the most delightful we are to have in Switzerland; and when the sun
was fairly up to the dwellers in the vale as well as to us on the
mountain top, we turned our backs upon him, took a cup of coffee in the
Rigi Culm, and bade farewell to the most splendid of all the prospects
we had ever seen, or expect to see on earth. I am greatly moved in the
presence of Niagara; and there have formed impressions of the active
power and glory of the great Creator, such as are conveyed by no other
of the works of God. But now I am looking on the silent evidence of his
creating might in a new and wonderful form; and it seems to me but a
short step from those shining glaciers and snow-crowned palaces to the
central throne of Him who sitteth in the circle of the heavens. "O Lord
God of Hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? The heavens are
thine: the earth also is thine; as for the world and the fulness
thereof, thou hast founded them: the north and the south thou hast
created them; Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name. Thou hast a
mighty arm; strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand."
As we had ascended the Rigi from Goldau, on the eastern side, we now
went down on the western to Weggis. We were in no haste: the day was
before us, and we had nothing to do but to walk till we were tired,
choose a shady spot commanding a fine view of the lake of Lucerne and
the surrounding hills, and then rest and enjoy the scene. The bells from
the herds of cattle far below us, and sometimes above us, and the
strains of music from the villages in the vales, would come floating to
us on the morning air, while nature with all her voices was making one
rich psalm. The descent is far less fatiguing than climbing up, but when
continued for two or three hours it becomes exceedingly exhausting. We
provided ourselves with pike staffs having a Chamois horn for a head,
and with these we resisted the too constant downward tendency, using
them as a drag to a wheel, and making the greatest effort to hold back.
On this path to or from the Rigi is a boarding and bathing house, over a
spring of very clear cold water to which invalids resort; and as walking
on the mountain side for an hour or so after bathing is part of the
discipline, I have no doubt that the establishment works many wonderful
cures. A chapel of the Holy Virgin is close by, where prayers are daily
said for the shepherds on the precipices, whose lives are in constant
danger while they pursue the duties to which they are trained. Half an
hour below the chapel, the path leads through a mighty archway formed by
two huge masses of rock supporting a third between them. Some great
convulsion of nature has thrown them into this remarkable position, and
they show in their make the nature of all the upper strata of these hill
sides, which are in constant danger of sliding down when the water works
its way under them, and separates them from the lower. Here we sat down
and refreshed ourselves: a cool breeze rushing through the passage, and
making a delightful resting place for weary travellers.
I said it was easier far to go down than up. So it is, but one who
carries much weight, or who has not considerable powers of endurance
should be cautious of making the experiment. A very heavy gentleman who
came to the foot of the mountain with us yesterday, and rode up, with
his son, a fine lad of fourteen, running along by the side of the horse,
attempted to come down on foot. We overtook him; and just then he lay
down on the grass by the side of a beautiful spring of water: he was
exhausted, and had sent his son down for help. Presently the faithful
and noble boy came running up the mountain with a bottle of wine and a
loaf of bread, and soon four stout men with a chair, whom the lad had
outstripped, came on, and the heavy gentleman was carried by hand the
rest of the way. I met them afterwards at the foot of the hill, and
congratulated the father on his safe arrival; and more on being the
father of such a boy.
CHAPTER IV.
LUCERNE AND THE LAND OF TELL.
The Lake--Avalanches--Pontius Pilate--Lucerne--Dance of
Death--Fishing--Storm on the Lake--Ramble among the Peasantry--Two
Dwarfs--On the Lake--Rifle Shooting--Chapel of William Tell--Scenes
in his Life--Altorf--Hay-Making--a Great Day.
In the Hotel de la _Concorde_, the "house of peace," I found a pleasant
chamber on the edge of the Lake of Lucerne; and so near that in its
lucid waters I can from my window see the large fish chasing and
devouring the little ones, just as big fish on land are doing
everywhere. In front, the lofty Pilatus rises in heavy grandeur, and the
Buochsherhorn and Stauzerhorn are in full view, with other peaks all
white with snow, while it is oppressively hot below. I spent the day
here at the foot of the mountain.
There is no life in this little settlement except when the boat arrives
with travellers for the Rigi: the mountain comes down so suddenly to the
shore that there is hardly room for dwellings, and a few inhabitants
only are scattered along on the water's edge. But it is on the shore of
the most enchanting lake in Europe, and at a point where some of the
finest views of this lake are to be had. We sat on the bank to see the
sun set, a sight of which one never tires; hundreds of travellers have
passed up or down the Rigi to-day, and of that whole number we are the
only two who have cared to rest here to study and admire the scenery,
and at the same time refresh ourselves for future pilgrimages.
There was a crash among the mountains just now: at first we thought it
the noise of a steamboat on the lake, but the roar became quickly
greater, and we knew that it was an avalanche of ice or of rocks that
had come down the side of old Pilatus. It was the first that we had
heard, and were very willing that the quiet of our evening should be
thus disturbed. Then as if nothing were to be wanting to make the
enjoyment of this scene perfect, the clouds marshaled themselves about
the Buochsherhorn and played off their lightnings around his head; while
torrents of rain came down on the lake below us, and the snow fell in
sheets on the loftier mountains in the South. This lake is subject to
sudden visitations of storms, and is therefore dangerous for skiffs
unless under the guidance of the native boatmen, who know the signs of
the weather, and put in for shore when they apprehend the approach of a
gale. The hoary mountain _Pilatus_ is said to have derived its name from
Pontius Pilate, who was driven away from Rome, became a wretched
wanderer here in this wild land, and finally in the horrors of a guilty
conscience plunged from one of the crags of this mountain into the lake
and perished. From its peculiar position and great height, 7,000 feet
above the sea, and the foremost in the Alpine chain at the North, the
clouds delight to gather about it, and so many are the storms which come
down from this point, the superstitious dwellers on the shores for a
long time supposed that poor Pilate was at the bottom of them all, and
the lake would never be safe till his troubled spirit was put to rest.
From the summit of the Rigi, the seven towers of Lucerne had caught my
eye, but they and the city they overlook and defend, appeared more
beautiful and exceedingly picturesque as I approached them by water from
Weggis. The old wall, of which the gates and towers are still remaining,
surrounds the land side of the town, which stands on a side hill rising
gradually from the water; and all outside of the wall the hill is dotted
with handsome dwellings embosomed in orchards and rich meadow lands; a
picture of quiet beauty and a spot for classic repose that a weary man
might almost be pardoned for coveting. The town itself has no
pretensions to taste in its architecture, but for beauty of situation on
the most attractive of all the Swiss lakes, it is without a rival. The
hotels are on the borders of the lake at the very landing, and the lofty
Pilatus on the right, the Rigi on the left, and the far loftier and more
majestic heights of the Alps in the cantons of Schwytz and Uri are lying
in full view of the _Swan_ Hotel, where I lodged, a capital house, which
I cordially commend.
We have been exploring the town to find what of interest may be in it,
though it is scarcely worth while for any man to look down for a moment
while he is in Switzerland, unless he is on the top of a hill. But
Lucerne has one peculiar feature of interest, in its covered bridges
adorned with curious paintings. In Berlin a gallery for the fine arts
was opened over a stable, and some poet ridiculed the idea by suggesting
the inscription "Musis et mulis," to the Muses and mules; but the
Lucerne people had the singular fancy of making their bridges over the
River Reuss, which divides their town in two, the repository of
paintings, some of them possessed of no artistic merit, and all of them
more or less injured now by the weather. The bridges are roofed, and
under the roof, about ten feet apart, these pictures in triangular
frames are fastened up, so that the foot passenger, (no carriages are
allowed,) may study them as he walks along. One series illustrates
scenes in Swiss history--another on the reverse of the same canvass, the
exploits of the patron saints of the town. These are on the
Kapell-Bridge which starts near the Swan Hotel, and runs across the very
rapid river Reuss, which here emerges from the lake. The Mill-bridge,
lower down the river, has a very rude imitation of the paintings of the
"Dance of Death," a series of pictures that are so often attempted, we
may be sure they once had power on the minds of men. The originals are
destroyed with the exception of the few fragments at Basle. The doggerel
verse into which the German text is translated, is about equal in
artistic excellence to the painting. The most remarkable bridge which
Lucerne once boasted was across the end of the lake, but it has now been
removed, the waters crowded back by the hand of art, and the large
hotels now stand on the site of the old Hof-Bruche.
In the arsenal is a sacred deposit of old armor, and relics of more than
doubtful authenticity, including the sword of William Tell, and the
battle-axe which it is said the Reformer Zwingle carried in his hand on
the field where he fell. A stranger may look at these and a hundred
other curiosities, with some interest, if he has not been already
surfeited, as I am, with the same sort of thing.
[Illustration: THE MONUMENT AT LUCERNE.]
They have one lion here that _is_ a lion--one of the noblest monuments
and magnificent designs that I have seen in Europe. We passed through
the Weggis Gate, and by a shaded pleasant walk in the private grounds of
General Pfyffer, came to a lonely, lovely dell. On one side of it a huge
precipice presents a bare rock face from which the water trickles into a
little lake at the base. This rock is fringed on the sides and over the
brow with shrubbery and trees, a graceful drapery, and in the solid side
of the rock the figure of a dying lion is carved out of the same stone.
A broken spear sticks in his side, and the blood oozes from the wound.
The agony of death is in his face, but his paw rests on a shield with
the arms of France, which even in death he is determined to defend. This
monument was designed by the great Thorwalsden, but was executed by
Ahorn, a sculptor of Constance, to commemorate the bravery of the Swiss
guards who were slain at Paris while defending the Bourbons in the
Revolution of 1792. This lion is nearly thirty feet long, and in just
proportions, making an impressive monument better than the deed
deserves. A representative of the Swiss guard wearing his uniform, is
present to expound the design to those who are not quick at finding
"sermons in stones."
A cool delightful walk of fifteen minutes from this sequestered spot
brought us into the grounds of a little convent, pleasingly situated on
the sloping banks, and among cultivated fields, now fragrant with
new-mown hay. An aged priest came by, and taking off his hat politely
saluted us as we passed. We paused at the door of the chapel; a single
lamp was burning before the altar, and one lonely nun was on her knees
performing her evening devotions. It was not in our hearts to disturb
the calm current of her thoughts, as she was gazing on the picture of
her Saviour, and we did not enter. So sweetly and gracefully did the
villas lie among the green fields and fruit trees, with the lake in
front of them and the snowy Alps on the other side of it, full in view,
but far enough to be in another clime, that I felt very much like
setting up a little convent there on a new plan, and sending over the
sea, for the community to people it.
_Aug. 24._--We had a storm on the Lake this evening. For two or three
days the weather had been very hot, so much so that I was not disposed
to go tramping, even for the sake of climbing up a hill into a colder
atmosphere. We had been lying off, too lazy to write, or to read. So we
went a fishing after dinner. The Apostles went fishing. They fished all
night, and caught nothing: we fished all the afternoon and had the same
success.
Just before nightfall, the wind began to blow all of a sudden as if it
had broken out in a new place. It blew all ways at once. The little
skiffs that were out on the Lake pulled in for shore with all haste; and
in less time than I have taken to tell of it, the scene of calm beauty
which the Lake had presented, was changed to that of an angry
tempest-tossed sea. The whole valley was filled with black, fierce
clouds. Rigi was clothed with thunder. Pilatus was totally obscured. The
storm was coming from his quarter, confirming the superstition of the
natives, that his troubled spirit stirs the tempest. Through a single
break in the clouds I could see the sunshine playing among the valleys
away to the south, while darkness and gloom were all around us. The
contrast was striking and peculiar to this region, where the sudden
elevation of the mountains makes the transitions from one temperature to
another rapid. On the bosom of the Lake the reflections of the clouds
were exceedingly curious, giving almost as many colors as the rainbow
that now began to appear on the Rigi. It was a beautiful bow. No rain
had yet fallen here; but there on the side of that noble mountain on
whose summit I had spent the night, the blessed bow was resting; so
pure, so glorious, so full of sweet suggestions of God's promise, that I
looked on it as on the face of a friend in a strange land. It is just
such a bow as they have in America. The same sun and the same showers
make it, and the same God hangs it out there, the sign of his
faithfulness, the token of his love. Who can be afraid of a storm when
the rainbow appears? But it faded, as all bright things fade, and the
dark clouds grew darker, and a heavy clap of thunder in the west shook
the Alps, and another: not preceded by a streak of chain lightning
leaping like a red serpent in the clouds, but by a broad lurid sheet of
fire, filling the atmosphere, and then suddenly vanishing into darkness.
The rain now came down in sheets; the wind blew with increasing power,
and for a few moments it did indeed appear as if the prince of the
powers of the air had been suffered to reign, and he was doing his worst
while he was left unchained. The ignorance of the people could readily
be imposed upon, when such scenes as this are frequent; and I am told,
in former times so strictly was the ascent of Mount Pilatus forbidden,
lest a storm should be provoked by the intrusion, that a Naturalist,
Gessner, had to obtain a special license to pursue his investigations
there.
The storm was of short duration. The hundreds, induced by the clear
bright morning to go to the summit of Rigi for a sunset and a sunrise,
found it was not the entertainment to which they were invited. In full
view from my window, though five hours distant, I can see where the
clouds cap his head, the rain is pouring there in torrents, the western
and eastern sky is enveloped in mists that obscure all view of the sun,
and more than half of the time, there is as little to be seen from the
summit of Rigi, as in a cellar. The sun is shining brightly now on the
lake near me, and a great fleece, as if a thousand flocks had yielded
theirs for a robe, is thrown over the crown of the mountain, making a
veil that no glass can see through.
The next morning we set off for a walk into the country. The landlord of
the Swan assured us it would be a pleasant day, and as this prediction
was made at the risk of losing two guests in consequence, we were bound
to respect his judgment. We resolved to make an expedition into the
country behind Lucerne, cross some of the spurs of the mountains, come
around by the foot of old Pilatus, and so return to our lodgings. The
whole walk would be only about twelve or fifteen miles, and if we should
lose our way and make it a little longer, why so much the better.
It was just eight in the morning as we left and wandered slowly through
the streets with our Alpen-stocks or pike staffs in hand. We paused at a
church door or two, and looked in, where a few were paying their silent
devotions before the altar, with a single burning lamp, and passing out
of the gate underneath one of the seven old feudal towers, we took the
bank of the river Reuss, and walked by a pleasant path, expecting every
moment to find a bridge, as our road was to lead us off to the west, and
we must cross the stream to reach it. I asked a little girl, tending two
babies in a cottage door, if there was any bridge in that direction, and
her ready answer "Nein," or _no_, sent us about in a hurry. Here was the
first mile thrown away, and retracing our steps, we crossed at the
bridge near the wall, and taking the high road toward Berne, were soon
in the midst of rural Swiss valley scenery. A path for a mile or more on
the bank of the river, shaded by a row of fine trees, led along by the
side of the carriage road, but we kept the track, having little desire
to miss it again. Three miles of easy walking brought us past the
village of Lindau to a bridge over a deep and frightful gorge, through
which a mountain stream is rushing, fifty or sixty feet below the
bridge. Here it is compressed in one place to a passage it has worn for
itself through the solid rock, and not more than three feet wide, but
the bed of the ravine gives evidence that the torrent when swollen with
melting snows in early summer, or by heavy rains, may be terrible, so
that this massive bridge, though very short, is required to resist its
force. The sides of this ravine were so precipitous that we did not
attempt the descent: but finding a path up the mountain, and learning
from a peasant whom we met that it would take us over into a vale, we
struck into it, and climbed. The roots of trees in some places made a
flight of steps up which we walked, and all the way it was so steep that
to get on required resolution and wind. But the ascent though sharp was
very short, and in a few minutes we reached a well made winding way,
that led us into a lovely vale. Thirsty if not weary, we called at the
door of a little dwelling and asked for milk. The farmer and his wife
were sitting on wooden benches by a table, taking their meal; what meal
it was we could not determine, as it was ten o'clock in the morning; too
late for breakfast, too early for dinner. They had an earthen pot of
weak coffee or something of the same color, and pieces of brown bread
which they dipped in and ate, taking a drink of the fluid now and then,
and apparently enjoying their frugal meal. The old woman gave me a "Yah"
in answer to my request for milk, and taking a glass tumbler from a
closet, she wiped the dust out of it with her fingers, and going into a
dark room, the dairy likely, she brought me a draught of as sweet milk
as ever wet the lips of man or boy. The cottage was not clean, I am
sorry to say it. I looked up a flight of stairs, and the appearance of
things there did not suggest to me the idea of taking lodgings, but
giving the woman a bit of silver for which she thanked me in German, we
walked on, refreshed with the milk and the moment's rest while getting
it.
A little farther on, and a fine mansion with castellated towers, stood
on the rising hill commanding a wide prospect of mountain scenery, but
the road did not lead us near to it. Perhaps the proprietor of the
valley has his home up there, and the tenants below may not be thriving:
certainly it looks as if wealth, state, comfort, and elegance were in
those old halls and having had milk in the cottage, I presume we might
have wine in the mansion.
We soon lost sight of every sign of a dwelling, and walked on through a
pine forest, the saddest of all forests to tread in: the sighing of the
air through the tree tops making a music "mournful to the soul." A water
course, in hollowed logs carried through the woods, led on to a mill by
the way-side, into which we entered to see a novel operation, and as
queer a little miller as any body ever saw. The water turned an overshot
wheel outside of the mill, and this turned two large wooden cog wheels,
which raised two beams and let them fall, up and down, upon pine bark,
which was thus pounded up fine enough to be used for tanning. But the
miller who fed the mill with the bark was a man dwarf about three feet
high, well enough proportioned, a stout healthy fellow, forty years old.
He looked up and laughed us a good morning, and went on with his work,
which made such a noise that it was useless to converse. And just as we
left the mill we met a woman not more than three feet long, so nearly
the same age and size, we could not but think they might be another
remarkable pair of twins, who would have made the fortune of any body
bringing them to America for exhibition.
We were now in a manufacturing valley. The fine water power was improved
to drive looms in a mill where twenty girls were weaving, and when we
passed, which was at eleven o'clock, they all quit for dinner, and
trooped by us in rows of six abreast: hearty looking girls with no hats
on, their hair braided, and hanging in two strips half way to their
feet. They seemed to be very happy among themselves, and modest and well
behaved as we walked along with them for a while. Other establishments
for working iron were in the same neighborhood, and a village called
_Kriens_, had some beautiful houses in it--one of them with twelve
windows in a row in front, and three stories high, a fine mansion; and
all of them were surrounded with flower gardens, tended with care, and
glowing with splendid dahlias, and other flowers. The best houses I have
yet seen in Switzerland are covered instead of clapboards, with small,
round-end shingles, put on so neatly as to look like scollop shell work.
So we walked from one to another hamlet, studying life in these secluded
places, where the habits of the people are quite as unsophisticated as
if they had never been a mile from home--the children did not know of
such a place as Lucerne, though not five miles off--but there was peace,
order, thrift, and contentment--the mountains rise suddenly from behind
their dwellings, and shelter them from the winds, and God watches them
in the winter when the deep snow fills this vale, and they are as
contented as if they knew that people live on the other side of the
hills. Some of the cottages were beautifully covered with grape vines,
trained between the windows, and giving them an appearance of luxurious
growth, that might be adopted in our country far more than it is. The
vine thus cultivated occupies no space that could otherwise be used, and
is an ornament and protection, while it yields delicious and abundant
fruit.
Our walk this morning of five hours brought us through this valley and
back to Lucerne by one o'clock, and if there had been any good reason
for it, we could have done a dozen miles more toward night. We had been
brought more immediately into contact with the country people, and saw
more of their way of life, than we would in a month of travel on the
thoroughfares. None of the places we visited are even named in the guide
books, and we thus had the pleasure of breaking out of the beaten path,
and finding one that was new and interesting.
_Lake of the Four Forest Cantons._
Lake Lucerne is called the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, a longer but
a very appropriate name, as its shores are washed by four and only four
of the Cantons of Switzerland--Lucerne, Uri, Unterwalden, and Schwytz.
Above all the lakes of the country, and perhaps of the world, it is
distinguished for the majesty of its scenery and the grandeur of its
historical associations.
Speaking of the classic history of the lake and mountains around it, Sir
James McIntosh says:
"It is upon this that the superiority of the lake of Lucerne to all
other lakes, or as far as I know, to all other scenes upon earth,
depends. The vast mountains rising on every side, and closing at the
end, with their rich clothing of wood, the soft spots of verdant
pasture scattered at their feet, and sometimes on their breast, and
the expanse of water unbroken by islands, and almost undisturbed by
any signs of living men, make an impression which it would be
foolish to attempt to convey by words. The only memorials which
would not disgrace such a scene as those of past ages renowned for
heroism and virtue, and no part of the world is more full of such
venerable ones."
The shores of this lake are the scenes of William Tell's illustrious
deeds, and the theatre also of modern deeds of valor not surpassed by
those of ancient times. It was the contemplation of the moral as well as
the physical sublime in this region, that led the same elegant author to
write:
"The combination of whatever is grandest in nature, with whatever is
pure and sublime in human conduct, affected me more powerfully in
the passage of this lake, than any scene which I had ever seen.
Perhaps neither Greece nor Rome would have had such power over me.
They are dead. The present inhabitants are a new race who regard
with little or no feeling the memorials of former ages. This is
perhaps the only place in our globe where deeds of pure virtue,
ancient enough to be venerable, are consecrated by the religion of
the people, and continue to command interest and reverence. No local
superstition so beautiful and so moral anywhere exists. The
inhabitants of Thermopylae or Marathon know no more of those famous
spots than that they are so many square feet of earth. England is
too extensive a country to make Runnymede an object of national
affection. In countries of industry and wealth the stream of events
sweeps away these old remembrances. The solitude of the Alps is a
sanctuary destined for the monuments of ancient virtue; Grutli and
Tell's chapel are as much reverenced by the Alpine peasants as Mecca
by a devout Musselman; and the deputies of the three ancient cantons
met, so late as 1715, to renew their allegiance and their oaths of
eternal union."
Filled with such emotions as these and fresh from the perusal of these
fine passages I left Lucerne on a lovely morning in August, the
atmosphere pleasantly cooled by the previous storms, and now a glorious
cloudless sky hanging over this mountain sea. On a little island, and
strange to say the only island in the lake, a monument of wood once
stood to the memory of William Tell, but it was struck by lightning and
has disappeared. Near it the bay of Kussnacht sets up, where is a chapel
to mark the spot on which the arrow from Tell's unerring bow drank the
heart's blood of his enemy and tyrant Gessler; and a ruined castle said
to have been the prison to which Tell was destined when he made his
memorable escape of which we shall soon speak. But the boat put up into
another bay on the other side under old Pilatus and landed passengers
who were taken into the small boats which ply continually among these
bays, and distribute the passengers at the several points from which
they would make their excursions into the country. Pilatus rises in
gloomy grandeur from the very shores of the water, and its bifurcated
peak soon is lost sight of, while but one presents itself. Rugged,
barren and uninviting as it is, there are those who yet make the ascent,
and from this landing, though the ascent is far more difficult, and the
view from the summit far less satisfactory than the Rigi.
We now returned to Kussnacht bay; and if the great shooting match which
occurred last Monday had been coming off to-day, we would go ashore to
see it. Once a year the marksmen of the canton assemble for a trial of
their skill with the rifle, and there is also an annual festival, when
the best from all the cantons assemble for the federal shooting match.
With music and banners and processions, with garlands and arches of
victory and feasting and drinking, they keep up this custom from
generation to generation; and the riflemen of the Swiss and Tyrol
mountains, like their ancestors of the bow, have no rival. The military
displays were very miserable. Having just come from France, Prussia, and
Austria, where the army was evidently the pet of governments, and the
curse of the people, I was pleased to see that the Swiss had no need of
armies, and the military procession was sorry enough. But the music was
stirring, and the Swiss feel it a part and parcel of their patrimonial
inheritance, to be roused by its strains to noble deeds, or melted to
tenderness by its subduing power. The lake had assumed to the eye, when
looking down upon it from one slope of the Rigi, the form of an X, and
now the two promontories that divide it come within a mile of each
other, and are called the Noses, which we pass, and enter the bay of
Brochs, where the Horn of that name and Stawzer rear their lofty heads.
We touched at Bechenried, and then swept the width of the lake again to
_Gersau_, a little cluster of houses at the foot of a gently-receding
hill, one of the most remarkable spots of land in the whole world, in
the fact that for four hundred years the people of this village, shut
out from the rest of mankind by these mighty ramparts of mountains, and
having but three miles long and two wide of territory, maintained an
independent democratic government of their own. The French invasion of
1798 destroyed their freedom by uniting them to the Canton Schwytz. The
mountain-side is covered with orchards, in the midst of which neat
cottages nestle sweetly. All the land they have has been washed down
from the mountains, and it would not be strange if trees and cottages
and people should one day be washed into the lake together. Such a
calamity would carry off the old gallows, still standing, but which the
government had no occasion to use during its independent existence. Here
the scenery of the lake becomes in the highest degree sublime. We stop
for a moment at Brunnen, where goods are deposited that are to go over
the Alps by St. Gothard into Italy, and on one of the warehouses you see
three men painted in bold colors, and their names affixed, the heroes
who with Tell achieved the deliverance of Switzerland in 1315. On this
spot the alliance was formed between the three cantons of Uri,
Unterwalden and Schwytz. Now the vast mountains rise more
perpendicularly from the lake: a solitary rock stands a few feet from
the shore on the promontory opposite, and passing it we seem to be
issuing into a new lake altogether. Away on the ledges, or table land on
the heights, stands a little church, and a few dwellings are scattered
around, but we lose sight of them, and are now in the midst of a
solitude of water, mountain, snow and sky, the grandeur and sublimity of
which it is equally impossible for me to exaggerate or describe. No
road, not even a footpath can be made along the base of these rocky
mountains that literally stand in the water, and thence rear their heads
so far into the upper air that the fields of snow lie there in full
view, forever whitening in the sun. A little recession from the shore
gives lodgment for soil enough to make a secluded bosom in the hills;
and this _oasis_ is a sacred spot in Swiss history, for here in the dead
of night, the three confederates met to form their plans to deliver
their country from the Austrian yoke. This is Grutli, and every American
who passes the spot will feel a sympathetic thrill of joy to look on the
birth-place of a country's freedom. Nearly opposite to Grutli, the
steamboat slackens its speed, and moves slowly and solemnly by a small
chapel, with an open front, and filled with rude paintings of scenes in
Swiss history. This chapel is to commemorate the spot where Tell leaped
ashore from the boat in which the tyrant Gessler was conveying him from
Altorf to his dungeon in Kussnacht. A storm came up with such fury that
Gessler, being frightened, and his oarsmen failing, ordered the chains
to be taken off from Tell, that he might guide the skiff ashore. He ran
it to this rock, leaped ashore, and made his escape. Before the despot
reached his castle, Tell had waylaid him and sent an arrow to his heart.
This chapel was "built in 1388, by the Canton of Uri, only thirty-one
years after Tell's death, and in the presence of one hundred and
fourteen persons who had known the hero. Once a year, mass is said, and
a sermon preached in the chapel to the inhabitants of these borders, who
repair hither in boats, forming an aquatic procession."
We were at the head of the lake in a few minutes. I was willing that it
should be extended for hours, but the little village of Fluellen was
reached, and here we go ashore. The village stands in a marsh, which is
formed at the entrance of the river Reuss into the lake, and in
consequence the people are subject to goitre and cretinism, those
terrible diseases so peculiar to this country. It is not desirable to
stay here any longer than is necessary to get away; and there is nothing
to attract the stranger. We took the first carriage we found, and rode
on to _Altorf_. At the hotel two young women came out to receive us, as
men waiters would do in another country. It was a novelty to be thus
received, and giving a hand to each of the damsels I was assisted from
the carriage and escorted into the house. One of them, a fine-looking
girl of eighteen, in a picturesque and becoming dress, white spencer and
short sleeves with a dark skirt and bracelets, insisted on taking my
knapsack, which I declined giving up, and leaning on my Alpen stock, I
had so much of an argument with her that the travellers formed a circle
about us and looked on. While dinner was preparing I walked out to the
open square in which that scene was enacted which has been more famous
than any other in Swiss history. Here by this fountain was the tree to
which the son of William Tell was bound, with the apple on his head, and
at the other fountain the father stood, to obey the infamous order of
the tyrant to shoot with his cross-bow the apple from the head of his
lovely boy. A statue of the father surmounts the fountain. The old
village has all the signs of decay, and I found it difficult to believe
that here the crowd had gathered five hundred years ago to behold that
dreadful spectacle--here stood the monster who had given the cruel
order, here fell the arrows from beneath the garment of Tell, which he
declared he designed for the tyrant if his arrow had slain his son. I
walked out of the village into the narrow meadow under the brow of
overhanging mountains, and admired the industry that has terraced the
slopes and wrung all the support it would yield from the soil. A row of
targets was here, with evidences that the people having long since laid
aside the cross bow, are now experts with the rifle: and as this village
is the capital of the canton of Uri, it is the rallying place for those
trials of skill in which they take so much delight. The tree on which
Gessler's hat was hung, with the command that the people should bow down
to it, stood here till 1567, when it was removed and a stone erected in
its place.
The valley of Schachen, which we enter on leaving Altorf, delighted me
with the beauty of its meadows, in which the Swiss peasants were making
hay under a burning sun, while the mountains rising from the edge of the
fields were white with snow. The men and women at noon when we passed
were resting from their toil, and lying around on the mown grass, the
very picture of slow and easy hay-makers. We crossed a rapid stream
foaming in its downward course, in which William Tell was drowned while
nobly striving to save the life of a child; and a little further on we
passed the village in which he was born. Thus in a single day which is
not yet half gone, we have seen the various spots in Switzerland made
classic by the deeds of William Tell and his compatriots, and the places
where that illustrious though rustic hero was born, where he performed
his great exploits, and where he perished in the midst of one not less
noble than any other that sheds honor on his name. It was a great day to
have passed through all these scenes, and I can say, without affectation
that my solitary walk in that ruined town of Altorf moved me more than
the contemplation of any battle field in Europe.
CHAPTER V.
PASS OF SAINT GOTHARD.
The Priest's Leap--The Devil's Bridge--Night on the
Mountains--Storm--Hospenthal--the Glaciers--a Lady in Distress--the
Furca Pass--Glacier of the Rhone--Heinrich and Nature--Heinrich asks
after God--Scene in the Hospice.
We are now on the great road that leads over the Alps into Italy by the
famous Pass of St. Gothard. The diligence to Milan went off this morning
at nine o'clock, and had we come on in the earliest boat from Lucerne,
we might have been taken on as far as we liked by that lumbering
conveyance. A party of students, seven from Germany, and two from Oxford
joined us, and we resolved to hire a carriage to Amsteg, two hours
onward, and there to begin the ascent and pedestrianism together. The
ride to Amsteg was lively, but when we were set down at that village,
with a walk of five hours before us, all the way up the mountains, I
confess to a slight sinking at the heart; and my courage oozed out
gradually at the end of my toes. At the inn of Altorf, a young German
student attracted me by the gracefulness of his manner, the delicacy of
his features, and the pleasant expression with which he conversed. He
attached himself to our party, and we walked on together, pilgrims to
see Switzerland, and rejoicing in the power to take leave of all modes
of travelling, but that first and best, which nature had provided. The
river Reuss comes dashing along down with the fury of a young torrent,
pouring over rocks, and whirling around precipices with a madness that
brooks no control. The Bristenock mountain towers aloft into the regions
of snow and ice, and nature begins to grow wild and dreary. The soft
meadows on which the maids of Uri were making hay have disappeared, and
the green pastures with frequent herds are now the only hope of the
shepherd. The road is no longer a straight path, but in its toilsome way
upward, it crosses again and again this foaming river, and bridges of
solid masonry, built to resist the flood when it bears the ruins of
avalanches on its bosom, and spreads them in the spring on the plains
below.
We crossed the third bridge and came to a gorge of frightful depth
through which the river rages furiously, in a maddened torrent too
fearful to look on without awe. It is called Pfaffensprung, or the
Priest's Leap, from a story--which no one will believe who stands
here--that a monk once leaped across the chasm with a maiden in his
arms. I have no doubt a monk would do his best under the circumstances,
but I doubt the possibility of his clearing thirty feet at a bound over
such an abyss as this, even for the sake of the prize he is said to have
carried off. We had been beset by beggars under all sorts of guises, and
here a miserable old woman--alas that a woman could come to
this--appeared with a huge stone in her hands, which she hurled into the
deeps, for us to see it leap from rock to rock and finally sink into the
raging waters far below. A few cents she expected for this service, and
she received them with gratitude; when an old man, perhaps her husband,
came on with another rock which he was willing to drop for a similar
consideration. As I turned away from the scene, a carriage came up in
which an English gentleman was riding, with two servants on the box. I
walked by the side of his carriage and fell into conversation, when he
very politely invited me to ride with him. I declined of course, and
told him that I was making a pedestrian tour, and designed to walk to
Andermatt, three hours and a half farther up the mountain. "I spend the
night there also," he said, "and I will esteem it an honor, Sir, if you
will take a seat in my carriage." Such an invitation, under the
circumstances, was not to be refused, and I took a seat by the
gentleman's side. How wonderfully the scenery improved, certainly how
much my appreciation of it increased, when I fell back on the cushions!
My companion was an accomplished member of the London bar. He knew
public men whom I had met, and was well acquainted with all subjects of
international interest, so that in fifteen minutes we were comparing
minds on those questions in which England and America are so much
concerned. We stopped at the little village of Wasen for refreshments. I
insisted on paying the reckoning, when he stopped me with this remark,
"Sir, you are my guest to-day: when I meet you in America I shall be
happy to be yours."
We rode on and upward, the road now assuming the character of a mighty
structure of mason work through a savage defile, only wide enough for
the carriage-path, and the torrent of the Reuss, which no longer flows,
but tumbles headlong from one cliff to another, while for three or four
miles the lofty precipices hang fearfully on high. In the spring, the
rage of this mountain river, swollen by melting snows, and bringing down
ice and rocks in its thundering fall, would tear away the foundations of
any common pathway, and this must be built to defy the fiercest storm.
Twenty-five or thirty thousand persons cross the Alps by this route
every year; and to secure this travel, which would otherwise be carried
off to the other passes, the cantons of Uri and Tessin built a road
which has twice been swept away by the avalanches, but one would think
that the present might stand while the mountains stand. So rapid is the
ascent, that the road is made often to double on itself, so that we are
going directly backward on the route; a foot passenger may clamber
across the doublets and save his time, but the carriage must keep the
zig-zag way, patiently toiling up a smoother and more beautiful highway
than can be found in the most level region of the United States of
America! Not a pebble in the path: the wheels meet no other obstruction
than gravitation, which is sufficient to be overcome only by the
strongest of horse power. Yet through this very defile, long before any
road like this had been built, three armies, the French and the Russians
and the Austrians, have pursued each other, contesting every inch of
this ground, and each one of these rugged heights, and disputing the
possession of dizzy cliffs where the hunter was afraid to tread. Never
did the feeling of Nature's awful wildness so take possession of my
soul, as when night was shutting in upon me in this dreary pass.
Sometimes the road is hewn out of the solid rock in the side of the
precipice, which hangs over it as a roof, and again it is borne over the
roaring stream, which in a gulf four hundred feet below is boiling in
its obstructed course, and making for itself an opening, it leaps away
over the rocks, and rushes down while we are toiling up. In the day-time
it would be gloomy here; it will be terrible indeed if the darkness
overtakes us before we reach our resting-place for the night.
More than five hundred years ago an old Abbot of Einsiedeln built a
bridge over an awful chasm here, but such is the fury of the descending
stream, the horrid ruggedness of the surrounding scenery, the smoothness
and solidity of the impending rocks, the roar and rage of the waters as
they are tossed about and beaten into spray, and so unlikely does it
appear that human power could ever have reared a bridge over such a
cataract, that it has been called from time immemorial the Devil's
Bridge, and so it will be called probably till the end of time. It was
just nightfall when we reached it. It was very cold, so far up had we
ascended. We had left the carriage and were walking to quicken the
blood, when the roar of the waters rose suddenly upon us, the spray
swept over us, and we were in the midst of a scene of such awful
grandeur, and with terror mingled, as might well make the nerves of a
strong man tremble. The river Reuss, at this stage of its course, makes
a sweeping leap, a tremendous plunge at the very moment it bends nearly
in a semi-circle, while the rocks, as if by some superhuman energy, have
been hurled into the torrent's path, so as to break its fall, but not to
withstand its power. Two bridges are here--for when the old road was
swept away, the bridge defied the storm, and this one, more solid and of
far greater span, has been thrown high above the other which is left as
an architectural curiosity in the depths below. And long before that was
built, another one was there, and when the French in 1799 pursued the
Austrians over it, and while the embattled hosts were making hell in a
furious fight upon and over this frightful gorge, the bridge was blown
up, and the struggling foes were whelmed together in the devouring
flood. A month afterwards, and the Russians met the French at the same
spot--no bridge was here, but the fierce Russians bound timbers together
with the scarfs of the officers, threw them over the chasm, crossed in
the midst of a murderous fire, and drove the enemy down the Pass into
the vales below.
[Illustration: THE DEVIL'S BRIDGE.]
It was dark before we were willing to quit this fearful place. The
strength of the present bridge is so obvious, and the parapet so high,
that the scene may be contemplated without fear; but the clouds had now
gathered, hoarse thunder muttered among the mountains, spiteful squalls
of rain, cold, gloomy, and piercing, were driving into our faces, and we
were anxious to find shelter for the night. We left the Bridge, but in
another moment plunged into utter darkness as we entered a tunnel called
the _Hole of Uri_, where the road is bored one hundred and eighty feet
through the solid rock, a hard but the only passage, as the stream
usurps the rest of the way, and the precipice admits no possible path
over its lofty head. This was made a hundred and fifty years ago, and
before that time the passage was made on a shelf supported by chains let
down from above. It was called the Gallery of Uri, and along it a single
traveller could creep, if he had the nerve, in the midst of the roar and
the spray of the torrent, and with an hungry gulph yawning wide below
him.--Emerging from this den, we entered a valley five thousand feet
above the sea; once doubtless a lake, whence the waters of the Reuss
have burst the barriers of these giant fortresses, and found their way
into more hospitable climes. No corn grows here, but the land flows with
milk and honey--by no means an indication of fertility, for the cows and
the goats find pasture at the foot of the glaciers, and the bees their
nests in the stunted trees and the holes of the rocks. We drove through
it till we came to Andermatt, where the numerous lights in the windows
guided us to a rustic tavern.
By this time it had commenced raining hard, and I began to be anxious
for my young friend Rankin, and a German student, Heinrich. But I could
do no more for them than to send a man to watch in the highway till they
should come up, and lead them into the house where I was resolved to
spend the night, whether we could find beds or not. These rural inns in
Switzerland are rude and often far from comfortable. But travellers here
must not stand upon trifles. The house was designed to lodge twenty
travellers, and thirty at least were here before us. A large supper
table was spread, and around it a company of gentlemen and ladies,
mostly German, were enjoying themselves right heartily, after the day's
fatigue was over. The London lawyer and myself had a separate table laid
for us--we soon gathered on it some of the good things of this life,
which by the way you can find almost every where, and had made some
progress in the discussion of the various subjects before us, when
Rankin and Heinrich arrived nearly exhausted with their toilsome walk.
They had a dreadful tale to tell of the storm they had met--which we
just escaped, and barely that. The lightning filled the gloomy gorge,
lighting up for an instant the mighty cliffs and hanging precipices,
while the thunder roared above the sound of the torrent, and the rain
drove into their faces, disputing with them the upward pass. But they
were young men, and strong. They told me that I never could have borne
the labor and the exposure of the walk. Two travellers and a guide had
given out, and taken lodgings in a hamlet we had passed, and the man
whom we had employed to bring on our light bags, had also halted for the
night, and would come up early in the morning.
After supper I led them to our chamber. Upon my arrival, the landlady
assured me that every bed in the house was full, but I insisted so
strenuously on having _three_, that the girls exchanged looks of
agreement, and one of them offered to show me a chamber, if it would be
acceptable. She led me up three pair of stairs, into a low garret
bed-room, with one window of boards which could be opened, and one small
one of glass that could not, and here were three beds kindly given up by
the young women. Into this chamber I now conducted my young friends.
Worn out with their hard day's work, but free from all anxious care,
they were asleep in five minutes, while I coaxed the candle to burn as
long as it would, fastened it up with a pin on the top of the
candlestick, and tried to write the records of the few past hours. It
was amusing to hear my companions, one on each side of me, talk in their
sleep; Heinrich in his native German, and Rankin in his English, showing
the restlessness of over-fatigue, while I sat wondering at myself, so
lately a poor invalid, now in this wild region, exposed to such nights
of discomfort, and days of toil. Yet was I grateful even there, not only
for a safe shelter and a much better bed than my Master had, but for the
strength to attempt such things, and for the luxury of health that lives
and flows in a genial current through every part of a renovated frame.
In the morning I met an American gentleman returning from the summit of
St. Gothard pass, and he advised me strenuously not to go further up,
unless I was going now into Italy. The most wonderful of the engineering
in the construction of the road, had already been seen, and there was
nothing else of interest above. The same savage scenery, in the midst of
which the Reuss leaps down 2,000 feet in the course of a two hours'
walk, is continued, and the dreariness of desolation reigns alone. A
house for the accommodation of travellers has been maintained for
hundreds of years, destroyed at times and then restored, and a few monks
have been supported here to extend what aid they may to those who
require their assistance. We resolved to pursue a route through the
_Furca_ pass, one of the most romantic and interesting of all the passes
in Switzerland. A long day's walk it would be over frozen mountains and
by the side of never melting glaciers, and no carriage way! Nothing but
a bridle and a foot path, and a rough one too, was now before us, and if
we left the present road, and struck off over the Furca, it would be
four or five days before we should reach the routes which are traversed
by wheels. Our baggage, though but a bag apiece and blankets, was too
heavy for us to carry if we walked, and I proposed to take a horse, put
on him our three bundles, and ride by turns. Heinrich had never heard of
the mode of travelling called "ride and tie," and he was greatly amused
when it was described to him. Accordingly we ordered a horse for the
day. The price is regulated by law, under the pretence of protecting the
traveller, but really for the purpose of extorting from him a sum twice
as large as he would have to pay if the business were open to
competition. The horse was brought to the door, and when we ordered the
bags of three to be strapped on, the landlord flew into a great rage,
and declared he would not be imposed upon. I smiled in his red face, and
asked, "If he knew how much baggage the law allowed each man to carry on
his horse." He said he did, and I then told him to weigh those, and he
might have for his own all over and above the legal allowance. He was
still dissatisfied, but when we bade him to take his old nag to the
stable, he suddenly cooled. Without further delay he made fast "the
traps," gave me a good stout fellow to conduct the party and bring back
the beast. An idle group of guides and tavern hangers, and quite a party
of Germans and English were looking on when I bestrode the animal, and
took my seat in the midst of the bundles rising before and behind, like
the humps of a camel. We are yet in the vale of the Urseren, not more
than a mile wide, and lofty mountains flanking its sides. The mountain
of St. Anne is clad with a glacier, from which the "thunderbolts of
snow" come down with terrific power in the spring, and yet there stands
a forest in the form of a triangle, pointing upward, and so placed that
the slides of snow as they come down are broken in pieces and guided
away from the village below. The great business of the people in this
vale is to keep cattle and to fleece the strangers who travel in throngs
over the pass of St. Gothard. Hundreds of horses are kept for hire, and
nothing is to be had by a "foreigner" unless he pays an exorbitant
price. Even the specimens of minerals are held so high, that no
reasonable man can afford to buy them. But we are now leaving Andermatt,
and on the side of the road not long after leaving the village we saw
two stone pillars, which need but a beam to be laid across them, and
they make a gallows, on which criminals were formerly hung, when this
little valley, like Gersau on the lake, was an independent state. The
pillars are still preserved with care, as a memorial of the former
sovereignty of the community.
We reached _Hospenthal_ in a few moments; a cluster of houses about a
church, and with a tower above the hamlet which is attributed to the
Lombards. I was struck with the exceeding loneliness and forsakenness of
this spot. It seemed that men had once been here, but had retired from
so wild and barren a land, to some more genial clime. Hospenthal has a
hotel or two, and it is a great halting place for travellers who are
about to take our route over the Furca to the Hospice of the Grimsel.
Here we quit the St. Gothard road, and winding off by a narrow path in
which we can go only in single file, we are soon out of the vale, and
slowly making our way up the mountain. The hill sides are dotted with
the huts of the poor peasants, who have hard work to hold fast to the
slopes with one hand, while they work for a miserable living with the
other. The morning sun was playing on the blue glacier of St. Anne, and
a beautiful waterfall wandered and tumbled down the mountain; yet this
was but one of many of the same kind that we are constantly meeting as
we go through these defiles of the high Alps. The vast masses of snow
and ice on the summits are sending down streams through the Summer, and
these sometimes leap from rock to rock, and again they clear hundreds of
feet at a single bound; slender, like a long white scarf on the green
hill, but very picturesque and beautiful. At the foot of this mountain
are the remains of an awful avalanche, which buried a little hamlet here
in a sudden grave, and a sad story of a maiden and a babe who perished,
was told me with much feeling by the guide as we passed over the spot.
The peasant men and women were bringing down bundles of hay on their
heads and shoulders from the scanty meadows which here and there in a
warm bosom of the hills may be found, and as they descended I recalled
the story of Orpheus, at whose music the trees are said to have followed
him, and I could readily understand that such a procession might be
taken or mistaken for the marching of a young forest. We are still
following up the river Reuss towards its source, and though it is
narrower, it is often fiercer and makes longer strides at a step than it
did last evening. We cross it now and then on occasional stones, or on
rude logs, and come to a spot where the bridge was swept away last night
by an avalanche of earth and ice, and well for us that it came in the
night before we were here to be caught. An old man with a pickaxe in his
hand had been working to repair the crossing, and had managed to get a
few stones arranged so that foot passengers could leap over, and the
horses after slight hesitation and careful sounding of the bottom, took
to the torrent and waded safely over. I held my feet high enough to
escape a wetting, but I heard a lady of another party complaining
bitterly that the water was so deep or her foot so far down, I could not
tell which, but it was evident that very much against her will she had
been drawn through the river.
At Realp, a little handful of houses, we found a small house of
refreshment, where two Capuchin friars reside to minister to travellers,
and this was the last sign of a human habitation we saw for some weary
hours. We are now so far up in the world, that the snow lay in banks by
the side of the path, while flowers, bright beautiful flowers were
blooming in the sun. It is difficult to reconcile this apparent
contradiction in nature. The fact is not surprising here, where we see
such vast accumulations of snow and remember that a short summer does
not suffice to melt it, but it is strange to read of flowery banks all
gay and smiling, within a few feet only of these heaps of snow. I
counted flowers of seven distinct colors, and gathered those that would
press well in my books, souvenirs of this remarkable region. On the
right the Galenstock Glacier now appears, and out of it vast rocks like
the battlements of some old castle shoot 1,000 feet into the air. I am
now among the ice palaces of the earth. The cold winds are sweeping down
upon me, and I hug my coat closer as the ice blast strikes a chill to my
heart.
We were just making the last sharp ascent before reaching the summit of
the Furca when I overtook a lady sitting disconsolately by the wayside.
She cried out as soon as I came up, "O Sir, my guide is such a
brute--the saddle turns under me and I cannot get him to fix it--my
husband has gone on before me--I cannot speak a word of German and the
dumb fool cannot speak a word of English. What shall I do?"
"Madam," said I, "my servant shall arrange your saddle, and I will
conduct you to the summit where the rest of your party will doubtless
wait." She overpowered me with her expressions of gratitude, and while
my servant was putting her saddle girths to rights, I gave her guide the
needful cautions, and we crossed a vast snow bank together, climbed the
steep pitch, and in ten minutes reached the inn at the top of the Furca.
Distant glaciers, snow clad summits, ridges, and ranges stood around me,
a world without inhabitants, desolate, cold and grand in its icy canopy
and hoary robes of snow.
The descent was too rapid and severe for riding, and giving the horse
into the charge of the servant we walked down, discoursing by the way of
things rarely talked of in the Alps. My young German friend had all the
enthusiasm of the French character joined to the mysticism of his own
nation. He is well read in English literature, and familiar with ancient
and modern authors, so that we had sources unfailing, to entertain us as
we wandered on; now sitting down to rest and now bracing ourselves for a
smart walk over a rugged pass. I became intensely interested in him,
though I had constant occasion to challenge his opinions, and especially
to contrast his philosophy with the revealed wisdom of God. We had
spoken of these things for an hour or more when I asked him if he had
ever read "the Pilgrim's Progress," and when I found he had not, I told
him the design of the allegory, and said "we are pilgrims over these
mountains, and have been cheering one another with pleasing discourse as
the travellers did on their way to the celestial city. They came at last
in sight of its gates of pearl."
"But what is that?"
We had suddenly turned the shoulder of a hill, and a glacier of such
splendor and extent burst upon our view as to fix us to the spot in
silent but excited admiration. It was the first we had seen near us.
Others had been lying away in the far heights, their surface smoothed by
the distance, and their color a dull blue; but now we were at the foot
of a mountain of ice! We could stand upon it, walk on its face, gaze on
its form and features, wonder, admire, look above it and adore! This is
the glacier of the Rhone! That great river springs from its bosom, first
with a strong bound as if suddenly summoned into being, works its way
through a mighty cavern of ice, and then winds along the base till it
emerges in a roaring, milky white stream and rushes down the valley
toward the sea. This glacier has been called a "magnificent sea of ice."
It is not so. That description conveys no idea of the stupendous scene.
You have stood in front of the _American_ fall of Niagara. Extend that
fall far up the rapids, receding as it rises a thousand feet or more
from where you stand to the crest: at each side of it let a tall
mountain rise as a giant frame work on which the tableau is to rest;
then suddenly congeal this cataract, with its curling waves, its clouds
of spray, its falling showers of jewelry, point its brow with pinnacles
of ice, and then, then let the bright sun pour on it his beams, giving
the brilliancy not of snow but of polished ice to the vast hill-side now
before you, and you will then have but a faint conception of the
grandeur of this glacier.
"It answers," said Heinrich, "to Burke's definition of the sublime--it
is vast, mysterious, terrible!"
I replied that "it was impossible for me to have the sensation of fear,
and scarcely of awe in looking upon the scene before us--it rather had
to me the image of the outer walls of heaven, as if there must be
infinite glory within and beyond when such majesty and beauty were
without. And then these flowers skirting the borders of this frozen
pile, and smiling as lovely as beneath the sunniest slope in Italy,
forbade the idea that this crystal mountain was of ice."
"But will it not vanish if we look away?" said Heinrich, as he gazed on
the frozen cataracts, and gave utterance to his admiration in the most
expressive words that German, French, English, Latin or Greek would
supply, for our discourse was in a mixture of them all.
Soon after passing the Glacier of the Rhone we met a peasant who assured
us that he had fallen into one of its crevices, seventy feet, and had
cut his way up with a hatchet, thus delivering himself from an icy
grave.
A little wayside inn gave us a brief respite from our toilsome journey.
We climbed the Grimsel, and reached the Dead Sea on its summit. It is
called the Lake of the Dead, because the bodies of those who perished in
making this journey were formerly cast into it for burial. Heinrich and
I left the path and climbed to a cliff where we looked down on the
pilgrim parties on horses and on foot, winding their way along its
borders. We sent our servant onward to engage beds for us at the hospice
of the Grimsel, and resolved to spend the rest of the day (the sun was
yet three hours high) in this wilderness of mountain scenery.
We could now look down into the valley, a little valley, but like an
immense cauldron, the sides of which are sterile naked rocks, eight
hundred feet high! On the west they stand like the walls and towers of a
fortified city, and in the bottom of the vale is a single house and a
small lake; but a flock of a hundred goats and a score of cows, with
tinkling bells, are picking a scanty subsistence among the stones. The
scene was wild, savage, grand indeed, and had there been no sun to light
it up with the lustre of heaven, it would have been dreary and dismal.
Heinrich had been very thoughtful for an hour. He had discovered that my
thoughts turned constantly to the God who made all these mountains,
while he was ever studying the mountains themselves.
"Here I will commune with nature."
I replied, "And I will go on a little further, and commune with God!"
"Stay," he cried, "I would go with you."
"But you cannot see Him," I said--"I see Him in the mountain and the
glacier and the flower: I hear Him in the torrent and the still small
voice of the rills and little waterfalls that are warbling ever in our
ears. I feel his presence and something of his power. I beg you to stay
and commune with nature, while I go and commune with God."
I left him and wandered off alone, and in an hour went down the
mountain, and to my chamber in the hospice. I was sitting on the
bedside, arranging the flowers I had gathered during the day, when
Heinrich entered, and giving me his hand said to me, "I wish you would
speak more to me of God!"
He sat down by my side, and I asked him if he believed the Bible to be
the Word of God.
He said he did, but he would examine it by the light of history and
reason, and reject what he did not find to be true.
"And do you believe that the soul of man will live hereafter?"
"I doubt," was his desponding answer.
I then addressed him tenderly, "My dear young friend, I have loved you
since the hour I met you at Altorf. And now tell me, with all your
studies have you yet learned how to die? You _doubt_, but are you so
well satisfied with your philosophy that you are able to look upon death
among the mountains, or by the lightning, without fear? My faith tells
me that when I die my life and joy will just begin, and go on in glory
forever. This is the source of all my hopes, and it gives me comfort now
when I think that I may never see my native land and those I love on
earth again. I _know_ that in another land we shall meet?"
"How do you know that you shall meet?"
"My faith, my heart, my Bible tells me so. I shall meet all the _good_
in heaven. I am sure of one child, an angel now."
"And where are your children?"
"Four in America, and one in heaven. I had a boy four years ago; earth
never had a fairer. His locks were of gold and hung in rich curls on a
neck and shoulders whiter than the snow: his brow was high and broad
like an infant cherub's; and his eye was blue as the evening sky. And he
was lovelier than he was fair. But in the budding of his beauty, he fell
sick and died."
"O no, not died!"
"Yes, he died here by my heart. And that child is the only one of mine
that I am sure of ever seeing again."
"I do not understand you."
"If my other children grow up to _doubt_ as _you_ doubt, they may wander
away on the mountains of error or the glaciers of vice, and fall into
some awful gulph and be lost forever. And if I do not live to see my
living children, I am as sure of meeting that one now in heaven, as if I
saw him here in the light of the setting sun.--Heinrich, have you a
mother, my dear friend?"
"Yes, yes," he cried, "and her faith is the same as yours."
I had seen his eyes filling, and had felt my own lips quivering as I
spoke, but now he burst into tears and fell on my breast. He kissed my
lips, and my cheeks, and my forehead, and the hot tears rained on my
face, and mingled with my own. "O teach me the way to feel and believe,"
he said at last, as he clung to me like a frightened child, and clasped
me convulsively to his heart. I held him long and tenderly, and felt for
him somewhat, I hope, as Jesus did for the young man who came to him
with a similar inquiry. _I loved him_, and longed to lead him to the
light of day.
CHAPTER VI.
GLACIERS OF THE AAR.
My new Friend--a Wonderful Youth--Hospice of the Grimsel--the Valley--a
comfortable Day--Glaciers of the Aar--a Gloomy Vale--Climbing a
Hill--View of the Glacier--Theory of its Formation--Caverns in the
Ice--Incidents of Men falling in--My Leap and Fall--an Artist
Lost--Return.
Heinrich proved to be a wonderful youth. He had a warm heart, and his
intellect was cultivated to a degree not parallelled in my acquaintance
among young men. He was just one and twenty years of age, and had not
completed the usual course of collegiate education. But there was no
author in the Latin or Greek languages, poet, philosopher or historian,
whose works I have ever heard of, which were not familiar to him, as the
English Classics are to well read men in England or America. He
discoursed readily of the style, the dialect, the shade of sentiment on
any disputed point; he cited passages and drew illustrations from the
pages of ancient literature which seemed to him like household words:
and one of our amusements when crossing the Alps was to discuss the
difference in Greek or Latin words which are usually regarded as
synonymes. But classical learning was the least and lowest attainment of
this accomplished youth. The whole range of Natural Sciences had been
pursued with a zeal that might be called a passion. Botany and
Mineralogy were child's play to him: and Chemistry had been a favorite
study evidently, for its principles often came up in our rambling
discourse, and he was master of it as if he had been a teacher of the
science for years. Geology was a hobby of his, and he thrust it upon me
often when I wished he would let me alone, or discourse of something
else. And yet when I have said all this I have not mentioned the
department in which he was most at home, where his soul revelled in
profound enjoyment, and in which he was resolved to spend his life.
_Metaphysics_ was his favorite pursuit. His analytical mind was always
on the track of investigation, challenging a reason for everything,
questioning the truth of every proposition, and never resting till his
reason had subjected it to the most exhausting process. Yet in the midst
of these studies including many departments to which I have not
referred, as the exact sciences, he had polished this fine intellect by
the widest course of polite literature, perusing in the German
translations, all the old masters of the English tongue, admiring
Shakespeare and Milton, quoting from them as a scholar would from
Sophocles or Homer, and surprising me by reference to English authors,
whose works I had not supposed were translated into the German language.
Of course the poets and philosophers of his father-land were his pride
and love. Often he would speak of them in terms of endearment, as if
they were his personal friends; though of all beings, present or past,
in heaven or out of it, I think he loved Plato most. This boy was just
out of his teens, a student still, and modest as he was learned; burning
to learn more; asking questions till it was tiresome to hear them; and
never dreaming that he knew more than others. He was the most learned
young man I ever saw. And few old men know half as much. He now joined
my party, leaving his own altogether, and resolved to follow me to the
ends of the earth.
We are now in the Vale of the Grimsel. In the bottom of the Valley, by
the side of a lake forever dark with the shadows of overhanging hills,
is the _Hospice_, a name that here combines the idea of hospital and
hotel--its design being to furnish lodging and entertainment to
travellers, whether they are able to pay for the hospitality or not.
Last winter the landlord of the Grimsel having insured his house, set
fire to it, to get the money, and now is in prison for twenty years as
the penalty of his crime. In years past there have been terrible
avalanches here, and once the house was crushed by the "thunderbolts of
snow." Often it is surrounded by snow drifts twenty or thirty feet high,
yet some one lodges here all winter to keep up a fire and furnish
shelter to the benighted traveller. It is strange that these lonely
paths should be traversed at all in the depth of winter. But there is no
other mode of communication between the valleys, than along these
defiles, and the traffic among the people of one canton with another is
carried on, and the intercourse of families is kept up at the risk of
life here as in other countries. If one has a good home, it were better
to stay in it than to cross the Grimsel in the winter.
A mixed multitude were under the roof of the Hospice. The building is
yet unfinished; and it must have required prodigious exertions to get it
so far under way, since the fire, as to make it habitable for travellers
this season. Every stick of timber must be brought up by hand from the
plain some miles below. The walls are of stone, about three feet thick,
and rough enough. No attempt to smooth a wall, or paint a board appears
on the edifice, and the rude bedsteads, benches and chairs suggest to
the luxurious traveller how few of the good things he has at home are
actually essential to his comfort. The house has about forty beds, but
these were far from being sufficient to give each weary pilgrim one.
Many were obliged to choose the softest boards in the dining room floor,
and sleep on them. Yet in that company of sixty who crowded around the
supper table were many of the learned, and titled, and beautiful, and
wealthy of many lands; meeting socially in a dreary valley, on a journey
of pleasure, and refreshing each other with the "feast of reason and the
flow of soul." Reserve was banished, and the hour freely given to good
cheer, in which all strove to forget the toils of the day, in the
pleasures of the evening, and the repose of a peaceful night.
Within an hour's walk from the door of the Hospice is the Glacier of the
Aar, the most interesting and instructive of all the Glaciers of
Switzerland. It has been more studied by men of science than any other.
Agassiz and Forbes had their huts on its bosom, and spent many long and
weary months in prying into the mysteries of these stupendous seas of
solid water. Not one of the whole company who staid at the Hospice last
night, turned aside for a day to study with us this wonderful scene. A
party of English people read the guide book on the route to Meyringen,
and congratulated themselves on having a "comfortable" day, as there was
very little to see! They were _doing_ Switzerland, and were evidently
pleased to find a day before them when they had nothing to do but to go
on, without being worried with fine views and climbing hills. One party
after another came down and took a wretched cup of coffee, and were off
on their pilgrimage, some on foot, some on mules, and one or two were
carried on chairs by porters.
We were left alone at the Hospice, and after breakfast set off to spend
the day on the Glaciers. There are two of them, the Obi and Unter, or
Upper and Lower; the latter being the most easily reached, and happily
the most interesting. It is eighteen miles long, and about three miles
wide. To circumnavigate it therefore, is not the journey of a day, but
it may be explored on foot, and Hugi, the naturalist, is said to have
rode over it on a horse. The morning was not promising. Heavy mists had
lodged in the vale of the Grimsel. But far above them in gloomy grandeur
rose the sterile ridges of rocks, towering aloft, and looking like the
battlements of giants' castles, inaccessible save to the chamois and his
pursuer, who often risked, and sometimes threw away his life in his
daring adventures to secure his prey. Even the chamois has now almost
entirety disappeared, and the eagles alone have their dwelling places in
these desolate abodes. Yet from the lofty heights some beautiful
cascades are pouring all the way down into the vale, foaming as they
fall; and sometimes caught by the intervening rocks, and sent out from
the side of the precipice they melt into spray, and again on a lower
ledge are gathered to pursue their downward course. Along the bottom of
this gloomy vale we walked for an hour, till we came in sight of a
mighty pile of earth, rocks, ice and snow. At first we thought we had
come to a vast heap of sand, or to the _debris_ brought down by an
avalanche of soil with stones intermingled, but from the base of it a
torrent was rushing, not of clear blue water, but of a dirty milky hue,
as are all the streams when they issue from the beds of these Glaciers.
The front of the mass was perhaps one hundred and fifty feet high, and
nearly perpendicular, and here it was half a mile in width. On nearer
approach, we could see the rocks of blue ice projecting through the
coating of earth, showing plainly that the body of the great pile before
us was the cold icebergs hid beneath a covering of earth that had been
washed down upon it, from the mountains above. Now and then large masses
of earth, or a huge boulder would be dislodged from the brow of the
pile, and thunder along down, as we sat watching for these miniature
avalanches. The sense of the terrible was strong upon us now. It was not
beautiful: it was grand and awful, as we changed our position lest the
falling rocks should overtake us in their course. But a few little birds
were flying about from stone to stone unconscious of danger, the
solitary inhabitants of this frozen world.
We now determined to ascend and look on its face. With incredible toil
we climbed the hill by the side of it. If there ever was a path, we
could not find it, but from rock to rock, often pulling ourselves up by
the stunted bushes, we worked our way. Onward and upward we mounted, and
at last were rewarded for the struggle by standing abreast of the
glacier, where we could walk around and upon it and contemplate its
stupendous proportions. From the bosom of it rises the Finster-Aarhorn,
a lone pyramid that seems now to touch the blue sky: so cold and stern
it stands there, its head forever covered with snow and its foot in this
everlasting ocean of ice. The Schreckhorn is the other peak that stands
yet farther off, but the clouds are now so dense around its summit, that
I cannot see its hoary head.
Here we are six thousand feet above the level of the sea, and for
three-quarters of the year the snow is falling on these mountains: not
an April snow that melts as it falls, but a dry powder, into which a man
without snow-shoes would sink out of sight, as in the water. On the
loftiest of these mountains, the surface of the snow melts a little
every day, and the deeper you descend into the snow, the melting is
going on also. But at night it freezes, as by day for a little while it
thaws, and this process is continued until the snow is gradually
converted into ice. The high valleys are filled with these ever
increasing deposits of snow, which are thus constantly undergoing this
change, and as the fresh deposit far exceeds what is carried off by
melting, the enormous mass is rather increased than diminished by the
lapse of time. It becomes a fixed fact; yet not fixed, for the most
remarkable, and to my mind, the sublimest fact in this relation, is that
these glaciers are actually moving steadily, year by year. The
projecting mass in the lowest valley, as where we were standing a few
hours ago, is melting away, and sending out the river that leaves its
bosom on its mission into a world far below. Underneath the glacier,
where it presses on the earth, which has a heart of fire, the work of
dissolution is rapidly going on, while the sun on the upper surface
melts the ice, and streams flow along and cut deep crevices into which
the uncautious traveller may fall never to rise again till the last day.
Some of these glaciers may be traversed underneath, by following the
streams. Hugi wandered a mile in this way underneath magnificent domes,
through which the sun-light was streaming, and among crystal columns
which had been left standing as if to support the superincumbent mass.
The water, as in rocky caverns, trickles through and freezes in
beautiful stalactytes, to adorn these palaces, unseen except by the eye
to which darkness and light are both alike. As this decay of the glacier
takes place, and it is always more rapid near the lower border of it
than above, the pressure of the upper masses brings the whole mountain
slowly along: with a steadiness of march that cannot be perceived by the
eye, but which is marked with precision, and chronicled from year to
year. The place where great rocks are reposing on the surface near the
edge of the mountain against which the glacier presses has been
carefully noted, and the next year and for many subsequent years, the
onward progress of the boulder has been noted. Blocks of granite have
been inserted in the bosom of the glacier, and their position defined by
their relation to the points of land in sight; and years afterwards they
are away on their journey, and by and by, they have disappeared
altogether as the glacier moves on and heaves and breaks and closes
again. More wonderful still, it is recorded that a "mass of granite of
twenty six thousand cubic feet, originally buried under the snow, was
raised to the surface and even elevated above it upon two pillars of
ice, so that a small army might have found shelter under it." The men of
science who have pursued investigations here under circumstances quite
as fearful and forbidding as the navigators around the north Pole, have
a rude hut in which they make themselves as comfortable as the nature of
the case will admit; but this house though founded on a rock is not
stationary. It moves on with the mighty field of ice, about three
hundred feet in a year, or nearly one foot every day: not so rapidly in
winter as in summer, for the rate of progress depends on the melting,
which is arrested for a brief period during the terrible winters of this
Alpine region. Other glaciers move with greater rapidity than this. The
Mere de Glace is believed to move at the rate of four or five hundred
feet every year, and it is said that the glacier is gradually wasting
out.
The surface of this frozen sea is exceedingly irregular, depending on
the nature of the ground below, and the progress of the ice. When a
stream has cut away a great seam, where the descent of the moving mass
will be swift when it does move, the shock will throw up the ice in
ridges, in pyramids, in various fantastic shapes, piling rocks on rocks
of ice, as if some great explosion underneath had upheaved the surface
and the fragments had come down in wild confusion, like the ruins of a
crystal city. Then the sun gradually melts those towers, and they assume
strange shapes of wild and dazzling beauty, unreal palaces, glittering
minarets, silvered domes and shining battlements; freaks of nature we
call them, but they are too beautiful for chance work, and we do not
know to what eyes these forms of glory may give pleasure, nor why it is
that God displays so much of his selectest skill and most stupendous
power, where few behold it of the race to which we belong. Doubtless our
own great Cataract leaped and thundered in the wilderness thousands of
years, with no human ear or eye to receive its majesty and beauty, but
it did not roar in vain. God has other and nobler worshippers than man,
and while we are groping like moles beneath the surface, and striving in
our blindness to discover the mysteries of God's works, there are minds
to which these wonders are revelations of their Maker's glory and
goodness, and they understand, admire and adore.
Here was a world of solid water, gradually enlarging and then melting
away, to send down rivers into the plains below, and this with the other
glaciers of the Alps, is thus supplying all the rivers in Europe which
might otherwise be dry. Yet as other rivers in other lands are
constantly supplied without this provision, we must suppose that some
other design in Providence is laid, which science may or may not
discover, but whether it does or not, we are certain that they are not
without a purpose corresponding with the magnitude of their proportions,
and the wisdom of Him who, though omnipotent, never wastes His strength
in works without design.
We confined our walks to the edges of this solid but still treacherous
sea. We had yesterday conversed with a man who had fallen into the
crevices of one of these glaciers, and we had a greater horror of
repeating the experiment. The case is on record of a shepherd who was
crossing this very glacier with his flock, when he fell into one of the
clefts, into which a torrent was pouring. This stream was his guide to
life and liberty again; for he followed its course under the archway it
had made, until it led him to the foot of the glacier into the open air.
But a Swiss clergyman, a spiritual shepherd, M. Mouron, was leaning on
the edge of a fissure to explore a remarkable formation over the brink,
when the staff on which he rested gave way, and he fell, only to be
drawn out again a mangled corpse. A man was let down by a rope, and
after two or three unsuccessful expeditions, found him at last, and was
drawn up with the body in his arms.
Coming down from the hill, we had hard work in crossing some dangerous
clefts in the rocks, and once I planted my Alpen-stock firmly, as I
thought, in the thin soil, and leaped; the spike failed; the foot of the
staff slipped on and left the steel in the ground, and I was sprawling
generally along down the hill: fortunately I recovered my foothold, and
came down standing! And this is a good place in which to say that shoes
with iron nails in the soles are not the best for walking over these
mountains: a good pair of boots with double soles have served me many
times, sticking fast in the face of a slippery rock, while travellers
shod with iron have been sliding down with no strength of sole to resist
the gravitation. But I met with no such misfortune in all my travels
over the most dangerous passes, and under circumstances of trial not
often exceeded by those who wander in these parts.
We had several sorts of weather in this expedition to the source of the
Aar. The misty morning was succeeded by a glowing sun at noon, followed
by clouds and rain. When this was coming, we thought it time to be
going, and gathering a few flowers, as usual, on the verge of the cold
beds of ice, we turned our weary steps towards the Hospice. It was our
good fortune just then to meet an Italian artist who had lost his way,
and we had the pleasure of guiding him to the Hospice. Wandering with
his knapsack and port folio, in search of the beautiful in nature, which
he sketched by the way, it was of no great consequence to him, in which
direction he travelled, but a storm was now at hand, it was rapidly
growing cold, and he was going every moment farther from any place of
shelter.
We were soon housed safely in the Hospice; and glad enough to stretch
ourselves on a bed after the walk of the morning. It was hard to keep
warm anywhere else but in bed. The house was yet so unfinished and open,
and the storm increasing every moment; a wretched old stove in one
corner of the eating-room, scarcely giving any heat with the few sticks
of fuel we were able to find. We wrapped blankets around us, and tried
to write, and when that proved to be more than we could accomplish under
the difficulties, I took my Bible and read to my German friend some of
the sublimest passages in the Psalms, where the Lord is revealed among
the mountains, and his majesty portrayed by the loftiest of his works.
He listened with interest, and when I laid aside the book, he asked for
it, and read it long and earnestly.
As the evening drew on, a few travellers began to drop in, and at seven
o'clock a company, much like the one of last night, but all with new
faces, sat down to supper.
CHAPTER VII.
MOUNTAINS, STREAMS AND FALLS.
Pedestrianism--Mountain Torrents--Fall of the Handek--The Guide and his
Little Ones--Falls of the Reichenbach--Perilous Point of View.
Not in the best of spirits, nor in as good condition as a pedestrian
could wish, I set off the next morning, with my young friends. We would
have felt better but for a foolish resolution to carry our own knapsacks
and overcoats and to make one day's journey without guide or mule.
Success is apt to make one proud; and we had improved so much in our
walking with each day's experience, that we actually began to think we
could do anything in that line. The storm of the night before had gone
by, and a clear cool day encouraged us. Alas, we knew not how soon, in
the midst of glaciers, and in sight of dazzling snow-drifts, the hot sun
would thaw our resolution, and compel us to call lustily for help, when
no Hercules would be at hand to lend us aid.
Not a wilder or more romantic path had we found than the one which led
us out of the vale of the Grimsel. The river Aar is by our side, leaping
from ledge to ledge in its rapid descent; dashing now against rocks and
foaming around them and onward, as if maddened by every obstacle and
brooking no delay. Water in motion is always beautiful. Here on our
right hand a streamlet is falling from the giddy height of a thousand
feet above us. At first it slips along on the edge of the rocks, as if
afraid to fall, and then with a graceful bound it clears the side of the
mountain, and comes down to a lower level, where it reposes for a moment
in a basin made without hands, and again it flows along down like a long
white robe suspended on the hill side, tastefully winding itself, as in
folds.
In full view, but far above us the snow lies fresh and white, for much
of it fell there yesterday: and among the clouds as they roll open and
let us see their beds, the blue glacier lies. Some of the views along
here are exceedingly grand, and in the midst of barrenness that can
hardly be excelled, the soul feels that enough is here to make a world,
though there is little vegetation, and not a human habitation. We
frequently cross the torrent by narrow bridges, and pause on each of
them to watch the angry waters whirling underneath. I was arrested on
one of them by the sight of a reservoir hollowed out of the solid rock
by the water; it would hold twenty barrels, and was full. The torrent
was now raving a few inches below, while the water within was as placid
in the sunshine as if it had never moved. The contrast was beautiful.
Let the mad world rush by, noisy, turbulent and thoughtless: it is
better to be calm and trusting: certainly it is better if our rest is on
a rock which cannot be moved.
The mountains rise suddenly from the edge of the torrent, and there is
barely room in some places for the path and the stream. There is great
danger too in travelling here in the winter when the avalanches come
rushing down the precipitous sides of these mountains. Their work of
destruction is lying all around us. They sweep across the path and for a
long distance have laid the rock perfectly bare, and polished it so
smoothly, that there is constant danger of sliding off into the gulf by
the side of the way. Grooves have been cut in the rock, that the feet of
the mules may have some support, but a prudent traveller will trust to
his own feet and his staff, and tread cautiously. We become so
accustomed to these dangerous places, that we pass them without emotion;
but there is never a season without its fatal accidents to travellers,
and none but fool-hardy persons will needlessly expose their lives. An
American family returned home a few days ago, having left the mangled
corpse of their son, a lad of twelve years, in some frightful gorge into
which he had fallen while riding on a mule in the midst of the Alps. We
frequently hear of painful facts like these, yet there is not a pass in
Switzerland which may not be safely made with prudence and coolness.
One of the finest cascades we had yet seen was on our right, after we
had made about five miles from the hospice. Its width of stream, volume
of water, and great height, entitle it to a name and a record which it
has not; and this has frequently appeared to me strange in this journey;
that _falls_ in Switzerland, of comparatively little beauty, have been
painted and praised the world over, while others of more romantic and
impressive features have no place in the hand-books, but are strictly
anonymous. The one we are now speaking of, attracted our attention as
decidedly more interesting than any we had seen among the mountains, and
in this opinion I presume others will agree. Its misfortune is that it
is within a mile of the Handek, which we are now approaching. A huge
log-hut received us, and we found refreshments such as might be expected
in a wilderness like this. Sour bread and sour wine, with strong cheese,
and a strange-looking pie, composed of materials into which it was not
prudent to inquire, gave us a lunch that might have been worse. We were
glad to get it, but even more pleased to find a place where we could lay
down our burdens, under which we had been groaning for an hour. This
pedestrianism in the Alps is very well to talk about, but it is not the
most agreeable mode of travelling to one who is accustomed only to a
sedentary life. We could find no mules here, however, but meeting a
sturdy fellow who was going up the pass, and who was a guide but not
just now engaged, we made a bargain with him to turn about and carry our
traps to Meyringen. He was on his way over the Grimsel into Canton
Vallais to buy eggs and butter, which he and his son, who was with him,
would bring back to sell in the lower valleys. This is the way in which
the traffic among the cantons is chiefly carried on. We are constantly
meeting the traders, men and women, with long baskets or wooden cans on
their backs, trudging over these mountains, exchanging the produce of
one part of the country for that of another. And this business is driven
in winter as well as summer, and many lose their lives in the snow, or
are overwhelmed by the avalanches. Our man now sent his boy on alone;
gave him a few directions as to what articles he should buy, and where
to wait his return, and then set off with us. I was astonished that a
father would trust a lad of such tender years (he was not more than
twelve), to go off on such an expedition alone, in such a region as
this; and after they had parted, I slipped some money into the little
fellow's hand, and said a cheering word or two, for I felt as if it were
cruel thus to leave him.
The river Aar has been rushing along by us, and now it has reached the
verge of a precipice more than a hundred feet high. At this point
another stream of only less volume forces its way across the path, and
dashes boldly into the Aar on the brink of the fall. Like two frantic
lovers they take the mad leap together into the fearful gulf. Standing
above the brow of the fall, and looking into the dark abyss, where the
vast column of water stands, silvered at the summit, spread and broken
into foam as it reaches the base, with clouds of spray rising from the
boiling depths below, we see a cataract that combines more of the
sublime with the very beautiful than any other in Switzerland. After we
had gazed upon it from the bridge at the brow, we went around and down
through the forest, and reached the ledge from which we could look up
and out upon the column of waters now pouring before us in exceeding
strength. A faint rainbow trembled midway, but the pine trees were too
thick to admit the sun's rays in full blaze upon the face of the fall.
But the surrounding scenery adds so much to the gloomy grandeur of the
scene, that I am quite willing to write this down as a _real_ cataract,
a wonderful leap and rush of waters, in the midst of a ravine of
terrific construction; filling the mind with the strongest sense of
wildness, horror, desolation and destruction, while the image of beauty
in the water and the bow, plays constantly over the face of all. We left
it with strong emotions of pleasurable excitement, and shall retain the
recollections of the falls of the Aar for many days.
The path by and by led under an extraordinary projection of rock,
shelving over, and making a pavilion. The descent became more rapid,
until we took to a long flight of stone steps in the path: and then on a
lower grade, we came upon meadow land, through which the grass had been
cut away for foot passengers to make a shorter course than that by which
the horses must find their way down. We entered a little cottage and
refreshed ourselves _again_, with coffee and milk, and had some pleasant
talk with the old lady and one or two of the neighbors who had dropped
down from some mountain home; for it is even pleasant, if no useful
knowledge is gathered, to learn the thoughts and feelings of these
secluded people, and to find that enjoyment, and contentment can exist
as truly and beautifully in the dreary heights of these Alpine
pasturages, as in the courts of kings: and a little more so.
For we were not very far above a lovely valley, one of the sweetest
spots that I carry in my memory. It is surprising how suddenly the line
of barrenness is passed, and the region of fruits and abundant
vegetation bursts upon you in this country. We had not been two hours
from dreary and inhospitable Guttanen, when we emerged from the narrow
defile into a vale, a plain, a basin of rare loveliness for situation
and embellishment. Level as a threshing floor, with a hundred Swiss
cottages scattered over it, and each of them surrounded with a garden
stored with fruits, apples, pears, and the like, while a stream flowing
through the midst of it divided the vale into two settlements, in one of
which a neat church sent up its graceful spire. We had been loitering
along down, and it was now drawing toward evening: the bell of the old
church was ringing for evening prayers, and the people, a few of them,
were gathering in their sanctuary as we passed. Four mountains, each of
them a distinct pyramid, rise on as many sides of this valley, and seem
at once to shut it from the world, and to stand around it as towers of
defence, as the mountains are round about Jerusalem. This is the Vale of
Upper Hasli; the river Aar flows through it; on the right as we are
going, is the village of Im-Hof, and on the left the settlement is
called Im-Grund. We passed a low house, like all the rest, and three
little children in a row, broke out with a song, a sweet Psalm tune,
such as our Sabbath school children would sing. We stopped to listen,
and the guide stood with us in front of the group, while they sang one
after another of their native melodies as birds of the forest would
warble an evening song. The youngest was not more than two years old;
and when we had given them some money for their music, I took the little
thing by the hand, and said, "Come away with me." The guide took it by
the other, and it trotted along between us with so much readiness, that
it occurred to me instantly that these might be the children of the man
who was with me. I said to him, "Are these yours?" "Yes Sir," said he,
and catching up the little thing in his arms, he kissed it fondly, and
carried it on with all the burdens already on his back. When he had put
it down and the children had returned, I asked him why it was that no
sign of recognition passed between him and his children when we first
came up to them as they stood by the side of the house. He told me that
he had taught them to receive him in this way when he came by with
strangers, whom he was guiding, and as they sang to receive what money
might be given them it was better that it should not be known there was
any relation between him and them. I had detected the connection by the
willingness of the babe to follow us, and the father was delighted to be
able to discover himself to his child, and to take it for a moment in
his arms. This incident reminded me of a striking scene in the well
known history of William Tell, where the tyrant Gessler confronts the
son with the father, and they both, without preconcert, but by a common
instinct of caution, deny one another, and persist in the denial till
the father is about to die.
Leaving the valley, we have a sharp hill to climb. A zig-zag path for
carriages has been made over it at great expense of money and labor; so
that this vale may be reached from the other side. The hill must at some
distant period in the past have resisted the progress of the Aar, and
this romantic valley was probably a beautiful lake in the midst of these
noble mountains. But the hill by some convulsion has been rent from the
top to the bottom, and the river finds its way through a fearful cavern;
one of the most awful gorges that can be found in Switzerland. After
crossing the hill we left the road, and following our guide for twenty
minutes came to the mouth of the cave, that leads down to the bed of the
river, where it is rushing through with frightful force in darkness but
not silence; for the roar of the waters is repeated among the rocks,
adding greatly to the terror of the scene. It is only half an hour's
walk from the Cave to Meyringen; but we made it more than an hour,
enjoying the fine views that opened upon us as we stood above the
village. It is but three miles across the plain, and as I look upon the
splendid cataract of the Reichenbach falling into it on one side, and
the Alpbach coming down on the other, and streaming cascades in great
numbers pouring into it down the precipitous sides of the mountains, the
first thought that strikes the mind is of the danger that the valley
would be filled with water one of these days and the people driven out.
Such a calamity has indeed occurred, and to guard against its return, a
stone dyke one thousand feet long and eight feet wide has been built,
that the swollen river may be conducted with safety out of the vale.
Long years ago the mountain torrent brought down a mass of earth with
it, so suddenly and so fearfully that in one brief hour, a large part of
the village was buried twenty feet deep, and the desolation thus wrought
still appears over the whole face of the plain. The Church has a black
line painted on it to mark the height to which it was filled with the
mud and water in this deluge of 1762. There is something very fearful in
the idea of dwelling in a region subject to such visitations. But there
is a fine race of men and women here. The men are spoken of as models
for strength and agility, and the matches and games in which they
annually contend with the champions of other cantons decide their claims
to the distinction. The women are good looking, and that is more than I
can say for most of the women I have met among the Alps; where the
hardy, exposed, and toilsome life they lead, in poverty and disease,
gives them such a look as I cannot bear to see in a female face. In fact
I could not tell a man from a woman but by their dress in many parts of
the mountains. Now we are down in the region of improved civilization,
and some taste in dress begins to appear among the women, who rig
themselves out in a holiday or Sunday suit of black velvet bodice, white
muslin sleeves, a yellow petticoat, and a black hat set jauntingly on
one side of the head, with their braided hair hanging down their backs.
An old woman on the hill at whose house I stopped for a drink, told me I
ought to stay there till next Sunday and see them all come out of
church; "a prettier sight I would never see in all my life."
Coming down from the Hospice of the Grimsel, I was filled with
admiration when I entered the valley in which the villages of Im-Hof and
Im-Grund lie, with their single church and hundred cottages. Naigle, my
guide, was one of the dwellers in this vale, and the meeting with his
children as he passed through had deeply interested me in the place and
the people. I wished to know more of their habits and especially I would
know the spirit and the power of the religion which these people
professed. They are so secluded from all the world, so girt with great
mountains and compelled to look upwards whenever they would see far,
that it seemed to me they must be a thoughtful religious people, even if
their way of religion was not the same as mine. It was a Protestant
Canton, and so far their faith was mine, but there is a wide difference
between the faith and practice of many churches that profess
Protestantism, as there is also in the churches under the dominion of
the Pope of Rome.
Naigle was a character. I was sure of it in five minutes after he was in
my service. Six feet high on a perpendicular, he was at least six feet
four, on a curve, for long service in carrying heavy burdens over the
mountains had made a bend in his back like a bow that is never unstrung.
I had asked him how many of those children he had, and he had told me
eight: and he did not improve in my good opinion when he offered as the
only objection to selling me the youngest, that he would be sent to
prison if he did. Yet Naigle loved his children I am sure, and would not
part with one of them unless for the sake of improving its prospects for
the future. His own were dark enough. One franc a day, less than twenty
cents of our money, is the price of a day's labor in the hardest work of
the year, though the very men who are glad to get this of their
neighbors, will not guide a stranger through their country, or carry his
bag, for less than five francs for eight or ten hours. The women will
work out doors all day for less than a man's wages, and perform the same
kind of labor. This Naigle was a hard-working man, it was very plain,
and there was a decided streak of good sense in him that assured me, he
could give me much valuable information, in spite of that miserable
mixture of German and French which was the only language he could speak.
Fortunately I had my young German friend with me, and we managed among
us to extract from Naigle all we desired. We had good rooms at
Meyringen, and Naigle was to stay over night there and return to his
family in the morning. I asked him where he would sleep; and he said "in
the stable," a lodgment I afterwards found to be common in this and
other European countries: not in rooms fitted up over the stalls, as in
America, but in bunks by the side of the horses: in the midst of foul
atmosphere which would be enough, I should suppose, to stifle any man in
the course of the night. Yet I have heard a German gentleman say that
there is no smell so pleasant to him as that of a stable, and I record
it as another evidence of the truth of the adage "there is no disputing
about _tastes_." Naigle came up to my room in the evening, sat down on a
trunk, and answered questions for an hour or two, but I can put all I
learned of him into a moderate compass, though it will want the
freshness and often the peculiar turn of thought with which he imparted
it.
Naigle told me first of his family which he had great difficulty in
supporting on the low wages he received, and the small profits he could
make on his trade with the neighboring valleys. At least half of the
year, he said, they do not have a particle of meat in the house: they
live chiefly on potatoes and beans, with bread and milk: few vegetables,
and these not the most nutritious. The snow comes on so early in autumn
and lies so late in the spring that the season for cultivation is very
short, though they try to make the most of it while it lasts, as they do
of the little land in their valley, and on the mountain sides. Yet
poverty often stares them in the face with a melancholy threat of
famine. No people on earth dwell in such glorious scenery and in such
destitution of the real comforts of life.
But what are the morals of such a people? Are the virtues of social life
held in honor among them, and are the children of these mountain homes
trained up in the way they should go? One of the severest replies I have
had was given to me by a Swiss guide, who had followed his business of
showing strangers through the country for thirty years: and when he told
me he had three sons grown up to manhood I asked him if they were guides
also? He said, "No, he never allowed them to travel about with
foreigners: the boys learned too many bad words and ways in that
business." Very likely intercourse with travellers is not happy on the
morals of any people, but it is little that the dwellers in these
valleys see of foreigners, who push through them without pausing even to
spend a night. Naigle gave me however to understand that the standard of
social morals was very low among them, and this was confirmed by all
that I learned from the various classes of men with whom I came in
contact during my journey in this country. It is true everywhere, that
virtue does not flourish in the extremes of poverty or wealth.
He was greatly interested in the little church, and was pleased to
answer all my inquiries. The pastor, he said, was a good man who was
kind to them in sickness, visiting them to give the consolations of the
gospel, and especially at such times did they prize his instructions and
prayers. This service was rendered freely to the poorest among them, on
whom the pastor calls as soon as he hears that they are in distress, and
he is always engaged in looking among his flock to find those who have
need of his peculiar care. The same good shepherd has charge of the
parish school, to which all the children are sent; and if the parents
are able to pay anything toward their children's education, they are
expected to do so, but if not they are not deprived of the privileges of
the school. Here they are taught to read, to write, and to keep
accounts; but more than all this, they are instructed in the catechism
of the church, and are examined often on it, and encouraged to become
acquainted with the doctrines and duties of religion. It was hard for me
to convey my idea to Naigle when I sought to learn of him, if the good
pastor required of the young people any proof of _regeneration_, or a
change of heart, before giving them the second sacrament. He said their
children are all baptized in infancy, and admitted to the Lord's Supper
when they are old enough, and good enough, and understand the doctrines
taught in the school.
"But what if one of those who has come to the holy sacrament falls into
some sin, as stealing, or profane swearing?"
"O, in that case he is not allowed to come to the sacrament, till he has
repented and reformed. The minister is very strict about that, and the
people who belong to the church, that is, those who wish to be
considered as good Christian people, never indulge in any of those
things which are forbidden by the Bible. There are many loose people in
the valley who have no care for God or man, but have no connection with
the church."
On the whole, I was led to infer from what Naigle said that the church
of the Upper Hasli valley is about in the same condition with hundreds
of others in this and other lands. There is in the midst of this
mountain scenery far removed from the intercourse of the world, where a
newspaper is rarely seen, and few books are ever read, a little people
among whom God has some friends, who in their way are striving to serve
him, and whose service it will be pleasure to accept. Many of them have
only a form of religion. The Romish religion that surrounds these lands,
and which is so admirably framed for an ignorant and sensual people,
pervades the minds of many who are Protestants in name, and who cannot
be taught, or rather will not learn, that salvation is only by faith in
the Saviour. That other gospel which gives heaven to him who does
penance for his great sins, and bows often to the picture of a handsome
woman, is _the_ religion for a people who cannot read, or who have no
books if they can. Ignorance and Romanism go hand in hand.
My estimate of the Swiss character has wofully depreciated since I have
travelled among these mountains. With a history such as Greece might be
proud of, and a race of heroes that Rome never excelled in the days when
women would be mothers only to have sons for warriors; the Swiss people
now are at a point of national and social depression painful to
contemplate. They are indebted largely to the defences of nature for the
comparative liberty they enjoy, and perhaps to the same seclusion is to
be referred their want of a thousand comforts of life, which an improved
state of society brings. All the romance of a Swiss cottage is taken out
of a traveller's mind, the moment he enters one of these cabins and
seeks refreshment or rest. The saddest marks of poverty meet him in the
door. The same roof is the shelter of the man, woman and beast. The same
room is often the bed chamber of all. Scanty food, and that miserably
prepared, is consumed without regard to those domestic arrangements
which make life at home a luxury. There is no _future_ to the mind of a
Swiss youth. He lives to live as his father lived--and that is the end
of life with him. Perhaps he may have a gun, and in that case, to be the
best shot in the valley may fill his ambition: or if he is strong in the
arms and legs he may aim at distinction in the games which once a year
are held at some hamlet in the Canton, where the wrestlers and runners
contend for victory, and others throw weights and leap bars as of old in
Greece, when kings were not ashamed to enter the lists. Many of the
youth of Switzerland are willing to sell themselves into the service of
foreign powers, as soldiers--Swiss soldiers--hired to be shot at, and
shoot any body a foreign despot may send them to slay: a service so
degrading, and at the same time so decidedly hazardous to life and limb,
with so poor a chance for pay, that none but a people far gone in social
degradation would be willing thus to make merchandise of their blood.
Yet they have fought battles bravely with none of the stimulus of
patriotism, and their blood has been as freely poured out for tyrants
who hired them, as if they were bleeding for their own and the land of
William Tell.
_Falls of the Reichenbach._
I had enjoyed all the pleasures of pedestrianism that I wished, and told
Naigle to get me a horse for to-morrow. He was willing to go on with us
for a day or two more, but I gave him a trifle for his wife, and to pay
him for his evening while I kept him talking when he would have been
sleeping; and after he had brought me a man who would go with his horse,
and carry me on over the Wengern Alp, I dismissed him. There is nothing
in Swiss travelling more annoying than the impositions practised upon
you by those who have horses or mules for hire. The price for a horse is
at the rate usually of about ten francs or two dollars a day; but if you
are not to return the next day to the place from which you started, (and
you rarely or never do,) you must pay the same price for the horse to
come back. The driver manages to find a traveller to come back with, and
so gets double pay both ways in nine trips out of ten. If the business
were left open to competition without the help of government, the price
would be reduced. Naigle brought me a man who would go with his horse as
far as I liked for ten francs a day, and nothing for return money, but
he desired me to set off in the morning on foot, and he would be a few
minutes off, out of the village, for if the landlords who keep horses to
let, knew that he was at the business on his own hook, they would molest
him. He served me well, and I paid him to his entire satisfaction.
Leaving Meyringen on a lovely morning, the last of August, crossing the
Aar by a bridge, I came at once to the Baths of Reichenbach, where there
is a good hotel, said to be better than those at Meyringen. The grounds
about are tastefully arranged, and an establishment fitted up for
invalids, with every convenience for warm and cold baths on a moderate
scale. If plenty of mountain water and mountain air will make sick
people well, here is a fine place for them to come and be cured. I
climbed the mountain in haste, to get the finer view of the Reichenbach
Fall, whose roar I had heard, and the spray of which was rising
continually before me. I could see the torrent as it took its first leap
out of the forest, but it plunged instantly out of sight into a deep
abyss, and I must ascend to its brow, and see the rush of waters as they
descend into the gorge. The path to those coming down is very difficult,
so steep, indeed, that it is safer and pleasanter to leave the horse and
come on foot. But we went up slowly till we reached a meadow of table
land, which we were permitted to cross on paying a small toll, to a
house which has been built at the point where the best view of the fall
from below can be had. It is almost a shame to board up such scenes as
these, and compel a man to look through a window at a scene where he
would have nothing around him but the mountain, flood and sky. The young
woman was very civil, and offered us woodwork for sale, and a view
through colored glass, and a subscription-book to record our donations
for the construction of the foot-path, and we finally had the privilege
of taking a look in silence. A narrow, but no mean stream, plunging TWO
THOUSAND feet makes a cataract before which the spectator stands with
awe. The leap is not made at once, yet the river rests but twice in all
that distance, and only for a moment then. The point of view where we
are now beholding it, is midway of the upper and grandest of these
successive falls. The fury of the descending torrent is terrible. The
spray rises in perpetual clouds from the dread abyss into which the
river leaps. It might be a bottomless abyss, so far as human penetration
can discover, for no arm can fathom it, no eye can pierce the dark
cavern where the waters boil and roar, and whence they issue only to
make another leap into the vale below. The bow of God is on the brow of
the cataract. I do so love to find it there, not more for its exceeding
beauty than the feeling of hope and safety it always inspires. We
counted all the colors as it waved and smiled so fondly in the spray, as
if it loved its birth-place.--Having had the finest opportunity of
seeing the fall from this point, we did not return across the field to
the horses, but took the foot-path straight up the mountain, over a
rough and toilsome way, led on by a little lad who seemed anxious to do
us the favor. He guided us by a walk of twenty minutes to the brink of
the precipice. The path was just wide enough for one person to pass
around the headland, holding by the bushes as we walked, and thus by
taking turns in the perilous excursion, we went to the brow of the
cataract, and looked down the front of the terrific fall. A single
misstep or the slipping of a foot, might plunge the curious gazer into
the gulph; yet so seductive and so flattering is such danger, we rarely
have the least sense of it till it is over. Not the water only, but the
whole prospect from this overhanging cliff, is in a high degree sublime.
The plains of Meyringen, the mountains beyond, from which cascades are
hanging like white lace veils on the green hill-sides, villages and
scattered cottages, the river Aar shooting swiftly across the valley,
are now in full view, and we turn away reluctantly from the sight to
resume the ascent.
CHAPTER VIII.
A GLACIER AND AVALANCHE.
Alpine Horn--Beggars--The Rosenlaui Glacier--Beautiful Views--Glorious
Mountain Scenes--Mrs. Kinney's "Alps"--A Lady and Babe--The Great
Scheidek--Grindelwald--Eagle and Bear--Battle with Bugs--Wengern
Alp--A real Avalanche--The Jungfrau.
A beautiful Chamois was standing on the ledge of rock that overhung the
path as I turned away from the Reichenbach Fall, and I was pleased to
see so fine a specimen of the animal whose home is the Alps and whose
pursuit has for ages been the delight of the mountaineer. He would have
sprung from crag to crag at my approach and soon disappeared, had he not
been held by a string in the hand of a boy who expected a few coppers
for showing the animal. This is but one of a hundred ways and means of
begging adopted by the Swiss peasantry. Of all ages from the infant to
extreme decrepitude, they plant themselves along the highways of travel,
and by every possible pretext seek to obtain the pence of the traveller.
Some are glad to have a poor cretin or a case of goitre in the family,
that they may have an additional plea to put in for charity. Others sing
or play on some wretched instrument, and the traveller would cheerfully
pay them something to be silent, that he may enjoy the beauties of the
world around him without the torment of their music. But the Alpine Horn
makes music to which the hills listen. A wooden tube nearly ten feet
long and three inches in diameter, curved at the mouth which is slightly
enlarged, is blown with great strength of lungs, and the blast at first
harsh and startling is caught by the mountain sides and returned in
softened strains, echoing again and again as if the spirits of the wood
were answering to the calls of the dwellers in the vales. The man who
was blowing, had but one hand, and after a single performance, or one
blast, he held out that hand for his pay, and then returned to his
instrument, making the hills to resound again with his wild notes.
The Rosenlaui valley into which we now enter is a green and sunny plain,
where the verdure is as rich and the fruits as fair as if there were no
oceans of never melting ice and hills of snow lying all around and above
it. On either side the bare mountains rise perpendicularly: the
Engel-Horner or Angel's Peaks sending their shining summits so far into
the heavens that the pagans would make them the thrones of gods, and the
Well-Horn, and Wetter-Horn, bleak and cold, but now resplendent in a
brilliant sun light. A small but very comfortable inn is fitted up in
this valley with conveniences for bathing, and a few invalids are always
here for the benefit of the air, scenery and the mountain baths. We
rested at the tavern, and then walked a mile out of the way to see the
Glacier of the Rosenlaui. After a short ascent we entered a fine forest,
and followed the gorge through which the glacier torrent is rushing: an
awful gorge a thousand feet deep it seemed to me, and if some mighty
shock has not rent these rocks, and opened the way for the waters that
are now roaring in those dark mysterious depths, they must have been a
thousand years in wearing out the channel for themselves. A slight
bridge is thrown across the ravine, and a terrible pleasure there is in
standing on it and listening to the mad leaps of rocks which the
peasants are prepared to launch into the abyss, for the amusement of
travellers. I shuddered at the thought of falling, and felt a glow of
pleasing relief when I was away from the tempting verge. I never could
explain to myself the source of that half formed desire which so many,
perhaps all have, of trying the leap when standing on the brow of a
cataract, the verge of a precipice, the summit of a lofty tower. It is
often a question whether persons who have thus perished, designed to
commit suicide or not. It is not unlikely that some are suddenly seized
with this undefined desire to make the trial: the mind is wrought into a
frenzy of excitement, dizziness ensues, and in a moment of fear, desire
and delirium the irresponsible victim leaps into the gulf. Many of the
fearful passes of the Alps have their local tragedies of this sort, and
I was not disposed to add another. We soon climbed to the foot of the
glacier. We have come to a mountain of emerald. The sun is shining on
it, at high noon. The melting waters have cut a glorious gateway of
solid crystal: we step within and beneath the arch. A ledge of ice
affords a standing place for the cool traveller who may plant his pike
staff firmly and look over into the depths where the torrent has wrought
its passage and from which the mists are curling upwards. The sunlight
streams through the blue domes of these caverns, long icicles sparkle in
the roof, and jewels, crowns and thrones of ice are all about me in this
crystal cave. Its outer surface is remarkable for the purity of the ice,
its perfect freedom from that deposit of earth and broken stone which
mars the beauty of most of the glaciers of Switzerland. Great white
wreaths are twisted on its brow, and on its bosom palaces and towers are
brilliant in the sunlight; and from the side of it the Well-horn and
Wetter-horn rise like giants from their bed, and stretch themselves away
into the clouds. No sight among the Alps had so charmed me with its
beauty and sublimity. These hills of pure ice, this great gateway only
less bright in the sun than the gates of pearl, cold indeed, but with
flowers and evergreens cheating the senses into the feeling that this is
not real, it must be a reproduction of fabled palaces and hills of
diamonds, and mountains of light. I am sure that I do not exaggerate:
the memory of it now that I recur to it after many days is of great
glory, such as the eye never can see out of Switzerland, and the forms
of beauty and the thoughts of majesty, awakened as I stood before and
beneath and upon this glacier, must remain among the latest images that
will fade from the soul.
Excited by what I had seen and mindless of the path by which I had
ascended, I threw myself back upon my Alpen-stock and slid down the face
of a long shelving rock, leaping when I could, and gliding when the way
was smooth, and reached the bridge and the ravine in safety, though the
guides insisted that the longest way around was the surest way down. We
are now at the foot of lofty mountains. The warm sun is loosening the
masses of snow and ice and we are constantly hearing the roar of the
avalanches. At first it startles us, as if behind the clear blue sky
above us there is a gathering storm: the sound comes rushing down and
multiplied by echoes themselves re-echoed from the surrounding hills,
the thunder is forgotten in the majesty of this music of the mountains.
We see nothing from which these voices came. There are valleys beyond
these peaks where perhaps the foot of man has never trod, and He who
directs the thunderbolt when it falls, is guiding these ice-falls into
the depths of some abyss where they may not crush even one of the least
of the creatures of his care. It is grand to hear them and feel that
they will not come nigh us. Our path is now so far from the base of this
precipitous mountain that if those snow caps fall, and we are constantly
wishing that they would, we should be in no peril, and so we ride on
with hearts full of worship, rejoicing in the thoughts of Him who built
these high places, and whose praise is uttered in the silence of all
these speechless peaks, and shouted in the avalanche in tones which seem
to be reverberated all around the world. One of our own poets, with a
soul in harmony with the greatness as well as the beauty of this
scenery, exclaims in view of these towering heights--
Eternal pyramids, built not with hands,
From linked foundations that deep-hidden lie,
Ye rise apart, and each a wonder stands!
Your marble peaks, that pierce the clouds so high,
Seem holding up the curtain of the sky.
And there, sublime and solemn, have ye stood
While crumbling Time, o'erawed, passed reverent by--
Since Nature's resurrection from the flood,
Since earth, new-born, again received God's plaudit, "Good!"
*
Vast as mysterious, beautiful as grand!
Forever looking into Heaven's clear face,
Types of sublimest Faith, unmoved ye stand,
While tortured torrents rave along your base:
Silent yourselves, while, loosed from its high place,
Headlong the avalanche loud thundering leaps!
Like a foul spirit, maddened by disgrace,
That in its fall the souls of thousands sweeps
Into perdition's gulf, down ruin's slippery steeps.
Dread monuments of your Creator's power!
When Egypt's pyramids shall mouldering fall,
In undiminished glory ye shall tower,
And still the reverent heart to worship call,
Yourselves a hymn of praise perpetual;
And if at last, when rent is Law's great chain,
Ye with material things must perish all,
Thoughts which ye have inspired, not born in vain,
In immaterial minds for aye shall live again.
My mind was full of such thoughts as these, so finely clothed in Mrs.
Kinney's words, when I met a party, of ladies and gentlemen, and one of
the ladies was borne along in a chair, with a babe in her arms! Here was
a contrast, and a suggestive sight. It was certainly the pursuit of
knowledge under difficulties, but I could readily understand that having
overcome every obstacle in her strong desire to see the Alps, and to see
them now, she was enjoying them perhaps more than any one of the group
around her. And I did not fail to admire the energy of soul that in its
love of nature, and its thirsting after these mighty manifestations of
power and beauty, was equal to all the difficulties that opposed her
way. Whether ladies may make these difficult passes, which must be made
to see the inner life and real character of Switzerland, is merely a
question of dollars and cents. The feeblest may be borne as tenderly as
this infant was on its mother's breast, and the most delicate will
gather health and strength from the bracing mountain air, and new life
will be inspired in the midst of these exciting scenes. To see
Switzerland on wheels is impracticable. Its brightest glories are hid
away in regions of perpetual ice and snow, where no traveller passes
except to _see_. The highways of trade are not here. This is a secret
place of the Most High, where from the foundation of the world, he has
wrapt himself in storms and clouds, and thundered among the hills, and
has been admired only by those who have come here expressly to behold
his works. The solitude of such scenery adds intensely to the sense of
the sublime. Mountains all around us and God! To be alone with him
anywhere is to be near him: in the midnight, or on the ocean or the
desert, it is a heart-luxury to feel that only God is near; that his
presence fills immensity, and his Spirit pervades all matter and all
space. But to stand in the midst of these great Alps, hoary patriarchs,
monuments compared with which the pyramids are children of a day, is to
stand in the high places of his dominions and to be raised by his own
hand into audience with him at whose presence these mountains shall one
day flow down like water and melt away. _Heinrich_, my young German
friend, was peopling them continually with the creatures of Grecian
mythology, and his classic history often led him to speak of the lofty
seats of divinities where ancient poets had planted the council halls of
the gods. I loved to believe that God had made these hills for himself,
and as the people who dwell among them have no heart to appreciate them,
pilgrims from all lands are flocking here, and offering the incense of
praise at the foot of these high altars. How they do lead the soul along
upward toward the great white throne! How like that throne is yonder
peak in snowy purity shining now in this bright sun. It is very
glorious, and no human footstep ever trod the summit. God sits there
alone. Let us admire and adore. He is fearful in praises, doing wonders!
Who is like unto him, a great God, and a great King!
But this is not getting on with the journey. You have the privilege of
skipping my _reflections_ as you read; but to travel without reflection,
common as it is, is not my way--and if you would feel the sights that
meet the eye in this world of wonders, you must indulge me in pausing
now and then, to muse. All this time we have been going steadily up the
Great Scheidek, and have now stopped at a small house, with the word
tavern painted on it in two or three different languages. An apology for
a dinner we got after waiting for it till an appetite for supper came.
The view from this height into the Grindelwald valley is enchanting. The
descent is so steep that we were willing to leave the mules and walk
down, holding back by the alpenstock, and resting often to enjoy the
sight, into the valley below. And now we have come to another glacier,
in the midst of a sunny slope, stretching down into the bosom of verdant
pasturage where herds are grazing and flowers are blossoming, and women
and children are laboring under a burning sun. It is hard to believe,
even as we stand at the foot of it, that this is everlasting ice: a
segment of the frozen zone let fall into the lap of summer, and sleeping
here age after age, perishing continually, but renewed day by day, so
that it seems unchanged. It is a wonderful growth and decay; and the
greater wonder to my mind, and one that does not diminish, is that so
much life and beauty can exist and flourish in the midst of this eternal
cold.--Yet there is a greater contrast even here. We are coming into the
valley, and there another, called the Upper Glacier lies, and yet that
is not to furnish the contrast of which I speak. It is in the wide and
wonderful difference between this people and their country! Degenerate,
ignorant, begging and demoralized, this people seem, and indeed are,
unworthy of such a land as this. They have a history, but Switzerland
was, and is not. The race has run down.--Disease and hardships have
reduced the stock, till now we rarely meet a fine-looking man, never a
fine-looking woman, as we cross the mountains and traverse the valleys
of this noble country.
The vale of Grindelwald, into which we have now descended, is one of the
most fertile, picturesque, and quiet in Switzerland. It is a place to
stay in. The hotels, of which there are two, are crowded to overflowing.
We sent our guide ahead to get room for us, but he failed. There was no
room for us at the inn. We paused first at the _Eagle_, a very
good-looking establishment, and the balcony running across the front of
it was filled with good-looking people--but there were as many there as
the house would hold, and we had to go on to the _Bear_. And the Bear
would not let us in. The very best the landlord could do, was to give us
a room with three beds in it, in a _cottage_ across the way, where we
would be quiet and comfortable. We went over. Up stairs, by as dark,
narrow, dirty, ricketty, dangerous and disagreeable a passage as I had
made among the mountains, we were led by a tall, skinny, slatternly
woman, with a tallow candle in her fingers, and shown into our treble
chamber. For the first time we were in such a house as the better class
of peasants occupy in Switzerland. It had been taken by the proprietor
of the hotel, as a sort of makeshift when his hotel was overflowing--the
lower part of it was his bake and wash house, and this room was reserved
for lodgings. I was worn out with the journey of the day, and glad
enough to stretch myself on any thing that ventured to call itself a
bed. The walls of the chamber around and above were rude boards, and the
bare floor had been trodden a hundred years without feeling. The
furniture was a mixture of the broken chairs of the hotel and the
superannuated relics of the cottage, an amusing study, which helped to
pass away half an hour, while our prison keeper, the ugly old woman, was
scaring up something for us to eat. Bread and milk, with some cheese so
strong that we begged her to take it off, made a frugal repast, but
sweet to a hungry man: this mountaineering does give a man an
appetite--and then he sleeps so well after eating. Alas! my dreams were
short; a band of bloodthirsty villains attacked me in the dead of night,
and for four hours I fought them tooth and nail. The battle made real
the
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