There are four _universities_ in Switzerland, located respectively

at Basel, Bern, Zurich, and Geneva. The one at Basel was founded in

1460, and in the early Reformation times was one of the most famous

institutions in Europe; attracting Erasmus, of Rotterdam, from his

professorship at Cambridge, and the German Œcolampadius, one of the

most learned men of his country, and to whose patient teaching and

moderate temper was due no little of the taking root of the Reformed

doctrines in Switzerland.[74] Each university contains the four

faculties of law, theology, medicine, arts and philosophy, and will

compare favorably in teaching-power, apart from the mere accessories

of endowments and splendid buildings, with any universities to be

found in Europe. The tuition depends on the number and character of

the faculties attended, varying from 2½ to 10 francs per week, and 100

to 200 francs per annum. The degree conferred is equivalent to that

of “Doctor” in the German, and “Bachelor” in the French universities.

The matriculation of these universities by the last report was 2371,

including 107 female students, and employing 200 teachers. In addition

to these universities, of the same rank with them is the Polytechnic

at Zurich, founded in 1854. This is, in fact, the only educational

institution which is directly and exclusively under the control of

the Confederation. The federal authorities do not interfere with the

methods of instruction and matters of detail in the different schools

that may be assisted by the Confederation. The total annual expenditure

of the Polytechnic is about 500,000 francs, and is defrayed by the

government. Extensive improvements and additions are in course of

construction, under a federal appropriation of 1,000,000 francs for

that purpose.

The Polytechnic comprises seven distinct schools, with courses varying

from two and a half to three and a half years, viz.:

1. Architectural.

2. Civil engineering.

3. Mechanical engineering.

4. Chemical technology (including pharmacy).

5. Agriculture and farming.

6. Normal school.

7. Philosophical and political science.

There are two hundred distinct courses of lectures given during the

year, by forty-five professors and thirteen assistants, in the German,

French, and Italian languages. The average number of students is from

seven to eight hundred, and they represent almost every nation.

The female students number from fifty to sixty. The charge for a

complete course in any one of the polytechnical schools varies from

400 to 500 francs. Between all Swiss schools, from the primary to the

university, there is an “organic connection;” the university, in the

natural continuation and correspondence, crowning the work begun in the

primary school. The Swiss method of teaching is never mechanical; it

is gradual, natural, and rational. It is patient, avoids over-hurry;

content to advance slowly, with a firm securing of the ground passed

over. The fundamental maxim is from the intuition to the notion,

from the concrete to the abstract, founding habits alike of accurate

apprehension and clear expression. The system is not wooden, but

appreciates that variety in mental food is as important as in bodily

nourishment for healthy growth; that children at school are often

tired and listless, because they are wearied and bored. From this the

Swiss school finds relief in drill, gymnastics, singing, and drawing.

Especially do music and drawing play a leading part in the programme.

It is natural for children to imitate; thus they acquire language,

and thus, with proper direction and encouragement, they find pleasure

in attempting to sing the melodies they hear, and to draw the simple

objects around them. By drawing, the eye is trained as well as the

hand; the attention to the exact shape of the whole and the proportion

of the parts which is requisite for the taking of an adequate sketch

is converted into a habit, and becomes productive both of instruction

and amusement. The Swiss system seeks to adapt the methods to the

mental process; every effort is made to interest the pupil and to make

learning palatable, and, like Lucretius, “to smear the rim of the

educational cup with honey.” It is a common practice in schools of the

United States to give children the rule for doing a sum, and then test

them by seeing if, by that rule, they can do so many given sums right.

The notion of a Swiss teacher is, that the school-hour for arithmetic

is to be employed in ascertaining that the children understand the rule

and the processes to which it is applied. The former practice places

the abstract before the concrete, the latter works in the opposite

way. The Swiss instruction aims to render the pupil capable of solving

independently and with certainty the calculations which are likely to

come up before him in ordinary life. In a word, the Swiss possess and

follow a carefully-matured science of pedagogy. If a school is fate to

a Swiss child, the vision comes to him in the likeness of a fairy; it

is made, by public and private acts, a centre of happy thoughts and

pleasant times; it shares the joy of home and the reward of church. The

children have tasks to do at home nearly equal to the tasks at school.

The hours of study, school-work, drill, and home-work are frequently

from ten to twelve a day. Indeed, you may say, these Swiss children

must tug at learning in a way that would create a rebellion with the

young American. In spite of these long hours and manifold duties, the

attention is never unduly strained, and, at intervals, never exceeding

two hours, the class disperses for a few moments to the corridors or

play-grounds for recreation and a romp. No people can boast of so many

schools in proportion to population, or of a system of education at

once so enlarged and simplified, so instructive and attractive, so

scientific and practical. Healthy, for it takes care of the body as

well as the mind; practical, for it teaches drawing, which is the key

of all industrial and mechanical professions; moral and patriotic,

because it is founded on love of country. In many countries it is a

political or governing class which establishes popular schools for the

benefit of the masses. In Switzerland it is the people, the Communes,

which establish and sustain the schools for their own benefit. The

same general equality of conditions prevails as in the United States,

and these schools are freely used by all classes. This is as it should

be in a free commonwealth, where character and ability are the only

rank, and men are thrown together in later life according to the groups

they form at school. Every child of superior merit, however humble and

poor, has an equal chance to mount the highest round of the educational

ladder. This building of human minds means business in Switzerland.

Everywhere you find a school,--a primary school, a supplementary

school, a secondary school, a day school, evening school, school for

the blind, school for the deaf, industrial school, commercial school,

linguistic school, intermediate school, gymnasium or high-school,

university, polytechnical school, schools of every sort and size, class

and grade, with the happy motto carved over many a door: “Dedicated to

the Children.” It is a business, standing far ahead of petty politics

and hunting after place, or the worship of Mammon; a business that,

when nobly done, brings bountiful return in love of order, law, right,

and truth.

The Swiss cantonal constitutions declare that the happiness of the

people is to be found in good morals and good instruction; and that,

in a free country, every citizen should have placed within his reach

an education fitting him for his rights and duties. Every Canton

has in its constitution some expression embodying the idea that the

business of a public teacher is to make his boys good citizens and

good Christians. In some Cantons the distinct announcement is made

that the true end of public instruction is to combine democracy with

religion. In that of Zurich it is announced: “The people’s school

shall train the children of all classes, on a plan agreed upon, to be

intelligent men, useful citizens, and moral, religious beings.” In

Luzern it is laid down that “the schools shall afford to every boy and

girl capable of receiving an education the means of developing their

mental and physical faculties, of training them for life in the family,

in the Commune, in the church, and in the state, and of putting them

in the way of getting their future bread.” In Vaud it is declared

that “teaching in the public schools shall be in accordance with

the principles of Christianity and democracy.” In fact, the organic

law of each and every Canton demands a system of public education,

sound, solid, moral, and democratic. They all bespeak the early and

imperishable impress of that great Swiss educational reformer who, more

than a century ago, uttered the memorable invocation: “Patron saint of

this country, announce it in thunder tones through hill and valley that

true popular freedom can only be made possible through the education

of man!” Since the two zealous Irish monks, Columban and Gall, went to

the continent, A.D. 585, and the latter founded the famous monastery of

St. Gallen, the descendants of the Helvetii have powerfully contributed

to European civilization and progress; learning and science finding a

home not only at St. Gallen, but at Basel, Zurich, Geneva, and Bern.

In the age of the Carlovingians, more than a thousand years ago, the

Abbey of St. Gallen was the most erudite spot in Europe. It had the

original manuscript of Quintilian, from which the first edition was

published. The art of printing, when in its infancy everywhere else,

had already been carried to a high degree of perfection at Basel; and

the crusaders, who conquered Constantinople, met there A.D. 1202.

Geneva was early distinguished in the annals of literature and science

as well as for progress in the arts. Learned men, some of the exiles of

Queen Mary’s reign, among whom was Whittingham, who married Calvin’s

sister, devoted “the space of two years and more, day and night,” to a

careful revision of the text of the English Bible, and the preparation

of a marginal commentary upon it. The result of these labors was the

publication, in 1560, of the celebrated Geneva Bible. The cost of this

was defrayed by the English congregation at Geneva. Queen Elizabeth,

to whom it was dedicated, granted a patent to John Bodley, the father

of the founder of the Bodleian Library, for the exclusive right of

printing it in English for the space of seven years. Its advantages

were so many and great that it at once secured and--even after the

appearance of King James’s Bible--continued to retain a firm hold upon

the bulk of the English nation. While Switzerland can hardly be said to

possess a truly national literature, it has always maintained a very

good literature in German and in French; but these literatures are not

the expression of a common national life. The Swiss have displayed

remarkable powers in science, in political philosophy, in history,

and in letters. Among the distinguished workers in these intellectual

fields may be mentioned Lavater, whose eloquence, daring, and

imagination as a physiognomist procured European celebrity; Pestalozzi,

the originator of a system of education to which he devoted a life of

splendid sacrifice; De Saussure, the indefatigable philosopher, the

inventor of a thermometer for ascertaining the temperature of water at

all depths, and the electrometer for showing the electrical condition

of the atmosphere; Bonnet, the psychologist; Gesner, the poet, whose

“Death of Abel” has been translated into many languages; Müller, a

historian remarkable for his patience in research, picturesque writing,

and disgust for traditionary tales, and who is reported to have read

more books than any man in Europe, in proof of which they point to his

fifty folio volumes of excerpts in the town library of Schaffhausen;

Zwingli, the Canon of Zurich and the co-laborer of Calvin, a man of

extensive learning, uncommon sagacity, and heroic courage; Mallet,

the illustrious student of antiquities of Northern Europe; Constant,

philosopher of the source, forms, and history of religion; Sismondi,

a writer of history, literature, and political economy; Necker,

brilliant in politics and finance, and his celebrated daughter, Madame

de Staël; Rousseau, who fired all Europe with his zeal for the rights

of the poor and the free development of individual character, and who

wielded the most fertile and fascinating pen that ever was pointed in

the cause of infidelity; D’Aubigné, the well-known historian of the

Reformation; Agassiz, the greatest naturalist of his age, and Guyot,

his compatriot and fellow-worker, to whom we owe the inception of

that system of meteorological observations called the Signal Service;

Haller, Horner, Dumont, and many others who won an honorable place in

learning and literature. The remarkable resources of its modern schools

and universities, and the zeal of the rising generation for learning,

promise well for the intellectual future of Switzerland. To be quick

in thought and quick in action; to have practical, scientific, and

technical knowledge; to be capable of appreciating new facts, and of

taking large views; to be patient and painstaking; to have the power of

working mentally for distant objects; to have an instinct of submission

to law, both to the laws of society, which aim at justice to all and

at order, and to the laws of nature, submission to which enables a man

to use effectually his own powers and to turn to account the powers of

nature; to raise life into a higher stage; to give to every one free

opportunities for participation in the knowledge and moral training,

combined with freedom and political equality, which will elevate the

idea of humanity,--these are the moral and intellectual qualities

with which the Swiss school system would fain endow the whole people.

Just as their old agrarian system made land, so their new educational

system is making intellectual training common to all. The powers it

confers are now, in a sense, common pastures, upon which all may keep

flocks and herds; common forests, from which all may get fuel and

building-materials; and common garden ground, by the cultivation of

which all may supply their wants. The quaint words of John Knox contain

a sentiment still potent in Switzerland, “That no father, of what

estate or condition that ever he may be, can use his children at his

own fantasie, especially in their youthhood; but all must be compelled

to bring up their youth in learning and virtue.”

CHAPTER XIV.

TECHNICAL AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.

“The noble craftsman we promote,

Disown the knave and fool;

Each honest man shall have his vote,

Each child shall have his school.”

A French writer has compared a well-arranged plan of public instruction

“to a railway system, with its main line, stations, junctions, and

branch lines. Just as passengers on a railway get out at the different

stations, so the children who, from pecuniary necessity or social

position, are compelled to earn their livelihood leave school at

any point of this course; all, according to the amount of knowledge

they have acquired, are able to take their place in the social

stratification.”

As it is the duty and interest of railway managers to give facilities

for all classes of passengers, so it is the duty and interest of the

state to provide for all who travel the road of learning, leaving to

the operation of natural laws, in both cases, the fixing of proportions

of way and through fares.

Education as the acquiring of information is one thing: it is quite

another thing to develop the human forces by a thoughtfully-planned

course of training, mentally, physically, and morally fitting one

for “complete living.” Educational methods in every age have been

the outgrowth of the social conditions of the time, and are, as a

rule, found to be in accordance with the beliefs and principles by

which nations are controlled. A new definition of culture is being

constructed, one which shall embrace the industries and the mechanical

arts. Industrial processes and occupations are claiming recognition

in school and college courses, both for the sake of the encouragement

and assistance they may render to the industrial classes, and because

the familiarity with them is felt to be required by the wants and

demands of the age. It is not a rebellion against the old methods as

bad in themselves. It does not necessarily interfere with or involve

any loss to the traditional studies of the school-room. It is not an

attempt to substitute the labors of the workshop for the legitimate

intellectual training of the school, inasmuch as the shop-practice, if

properly arranged, would be in the nature of change and rest, and even

of recreation to the pupil, bringing him back fresher and brighter to

his studies. The alternation is stimulating. Change of occupation is

proverbially almost as refreshing as rest. The pupils pass from the

shop to the class-room, and conversely, with a new zeal and zest for

their tasks in either department. It means the addition of practice

to theory, experiment to knowledge, the correct eye and skilful hand

to the developed brain; that the youth sent forth from school shall

be fitted not only for professions and clerkships, but for the heat

and task of active life, and for the skilled labor which is so sorely

needed. There exist much general misapprehension and no little grave

misrepresentation as to industrial schools and manual training, and an

attempt in some quarters to confound them with the stupefying effect

of long-continued toil. It is not contemplated to swing too far the

pendulum of school reform, or to present a panacea. It is proposed to

supplement the older scholastic culture with that which will make it

take a firmer hold upon men’s minds, and will bring the school into

closer harmony with the time-spirit. Let there be no interference, much

less any extinction of the classical system. We have come to regard

that as a sacred thing and unassailable. Let it remain impregnable

to all the attacks of iconoclasts and reformers. The Latin and Greek

languages and the science of mathematics come recommended to us by

all experience, signed and countersigned, as it were, by the testimony

of ages as the basis of every system of liberal culture. They furnish

a grateful vicissitude of genial and severe studies; while the one

awakens the sensibilities, refines the taste, enlarges the conception,

enriches the memory, and invigorates the power of moral judgment; the

other, by a course of mental gymnastics as rigid as it is perfect,

develops to the utmost the great faculties of attention, analysis, and

generalization. No scholar can doubt that they must always form an

indispensable element in any scheme of liberal instruction, by which

all the powers and emotions of our moral and intellectual nature may

be so touched, quickened, directed, exercised, and informed, as to

attain their largest measure of capacity. But, side by side with the

higher institutions of learning, there should be established schools

where the sciences in their relations to the arts and industries shall

be specific branches of instruction and training; the addition of a

sufficient amount of work in the handling of tools and the manipulation

of materials to a good sound education in languages, mathematics,

history, and science. Young people should be prepared to take a

broad and intelligent part in the life of an age which is eminently

scientific and practical; an age which has to do with a world of

fierce competition, in which trade is not despised, while science of

every kind is a means of making a livelihood; an age which demands an

education that seeks to arm a man as well as to adorn him, _armer_ and

_orner_. There is no warrant for applying the term educational to any

sort of knowledge which does not increase the power of its possessor,

and so make him the more able to satisfy his needs and desires without

disorder and waste. The measure of this ability is the measure of a

country’s economic progress. Industrial training has an economical and

moral as well as an educational value. As Professor Huxley puts it, we

cannot continue in this age “of full modern artillery to turn out our

boys to do battle in it, equipped only with the sword and shield of an

ancient gladiator.”

With many education is looked upon merely as a mental training

whose sole object is to place the mind in a state fit to receive

future impressions. This may be all very well for those who are

never to feel the keen struggle for existence; but for a vast and

constantly-increasing majority who are doomed to a bread-winning life,

the main purpose of education should be to make the youthful mind

“a supple, effective, strong, and available instrument for whatever

purpose it may be applied to.” Less than three per cent. of the boys

of this country can hope to make a living by the practice of the

professions. Less than twenty per cent. of the boys enter high schools,

and less than half of those who enter complete the course. The first

duty of man is to work, and the first object of education should be

to fit him for that work; to make him not the slave but the master

of what it has imparted, the manipulator and not the mere receptacle

of its power. Every year adds to the necessity of supplementing the

muscular power of the laborer and artisan with that mental energy which

only comes of education. Men in the busy corners of the globe are

multiplying day by day, and multiplying more rapidly than the means

of supporting life. Unskilled labor, or, as technically defined, the

“labor of quantity,” is being ousted by the iron sinews and fiery pulse

of the steam-engine and the machine. Man, as the mere owner of muscle,

is being edged out by these most powerful competitors. Merely as an

agent of physical force, as the possessor of the power of labor, the

steam-engine is a competitor which drives him easily out of the market,

and more and more unskilled labor is passing away by the development of

the forces which mechanical science has discovered. As the world goes

on, we must expect mechanical force to be more varied, more powerful,

and cheaper, and the competition of the human limbs to become more

helpless. But there is one region where the machine can never follow

the human being, and that is in the exercise of thought. In skill, in

the cultivation of the mind, in the power of applying the powers of

thought to the laws of nature, in all that we call skilled labor of

the highest kind, in that man must always have a monopoly and need

fear no encroachment. Science teaching, as applied to that instruction

which familiarizes the student with the universe in which he lives,

and makes him in the presence of the great laws and forces of nature

not a stranger, but a child at home, must be recognized as one of the

great moulding influences of the time; it is at the foundation of

material progress; it is the basis on which much of the manufacturing

industry and commerce rests; many of the deep social ameliorations of

the day are due to its influence; and popular education must be brought

into closer relations with it. The industrial world has been made by

scientific discovery, and its prosperity must largely depend on the

spirit of scientific knowledge among the masses of its workers. It

is only by the practical application of such knowledge to industrial

processes that a country can hope to hold its own in the struggle

of national competition. The genius of invention has succeeded in

producing by machinery cheap and serviceable imitations of almost every

necessary of life, hitherto the exclusive product of skilled labor. The

artisan is daily becoming more and more the servant of automatic tools.

Every industry is tending to centralization in a few hands, and from

human to mechanical hands. If the workshop is to compete successfully

with the factory, it must do so by superior taste and finish in that

higher sphere of methodical, technical, rational labor whither the

finest inventions cannot follow in the domain of thought. It is here,

and only here, the laborer can hope to hold his own against the great

power he has himself brought forth. It is here the means of increased

subsistence must be found. One of the most anxious subjects of public

care is to discover methods by which the masses of the people shall be

able to maintain themselves in a prosperous, decent, and comfortable

condition. In bare, unskilled labor the satisfaction for this want is

not to be found. The Swiss have foreseen that the industrial victory

must be won on the intellectual field, the association of manual work

with technical training and scientific research; and the necessity

for that delicacy of touch and accuracy of eye, that have made their

mechanics in many departments the best in the world, to be further

educated and prepared for supremacy in a field of wider range and more

varied scope. In this way art may regain an influence over manufacture,

which, though not lost, is certainly jeopardized by the introduction

of machinery. The whole tendency of modern trade has been in the

direction of wholesale transactions, which, while favoring the hundred

and the gross, have neglected the piece or the example. We miss in the

manufactures which we turn out the individual touch of the workman, and

we have gained a dead level of uninteresting achievement at the expense

of intelligence, originality, and variety. The demand for old designs

in furniture, or silver or iron work, pushed to undue excess, perhaps,

by the caprice of fashion, is after all a healthy protest against the

monotonous and mindless excellence of the machine-made article. There

is a difference between learning a trade and learning the principles

of a trade. The object is not always to teach the “technic” of an

industry, because that can be done only in the workshop, but it may

be to teach the science and art upon which all technics are really

based. Manual training is of course training to manual labor, which has

been called the “study of the external world.” While in all technical

education the sciences and arts must be illustrated by practical

examples, the main object is to so instruct masters and workmen

that they can pursue their craft with dignity and intelligence,

without professing to teach the craft itself. The need for technical

instruction arises from the fact that ordinary educational systems are

not fitted to promote the rapid development of trade, manufactures, and

commerce. The education of the industrial classes should bear on their

occupations in life. The life of a laborer is spent in dealing with

things which he has to convert into utilities. In this conversion he

must take the properties inherent to each kind of matter and convert

them into utilities by an intelligent application of forces, which

he may guide but cannot alter. No man can create new properties in

matter or subject it to the action of new forces. When working-men get

a higher life, a life of intelligence and knowledge, they then can

develop improvements in their industries by an economical application

of force, and a wise use of properties in material. Not mere handicraft

skill, with ten fingers disassociated from the head and the heart,

can sustain mechanical industry. Machinery, when rightly understood

and applied, will prove the greatest means of intellectual elevation,

for its very purpose is to substitute the thought of the brain for

the toil of the hand and the sweat of the brow. How excellent the

old Greek poet is when natural forces are made substitutes for human

labor: “Woman!” he exclaims, “you have hitherto had to grind corn, let

your arms rest for the future! It is no longer for you that the birds

announce by their songs the dawn of the morning. Ceres has ordered the

water nymphs to move the mill-stones and perform your labor.” Technical

education is to train the pupils to handiness; to supplement mental

activity with physical dexterity. The object of teaching girls to sew

is not necessarily to train professional dress-makers, but to make

them careful and tidy in their homes. Workshop instruction is not to

make boys carpenters and cabinet-makers, but to enable them to learn

any trade more easily and make them generally handy. It is no small

part of the value of such training that the workman may be fitted to

render his home more commodious, to arrange a shelf or cupboard, to

repair a broken piece of furniture, or possibly to decorate his humble

home. But whether or not, in after years, the student sees proper to

become or by necessity is driven to a professional use of his technical

knowledge, this is not involved in the idea and system of its pursuit.

Its purpose is that, when he leaves school, he shall carry with him

an education serviceable for any occupation of life; to develop a

dexterity of hand which will prove valuable under any circumstances,

and at the same time furnish him with a means of healthy enjoyment. It

is a simple recognition of the fact that a large number of the children

must be destined to make their living by industrial labor. There is

certainly something in the operation of learning a trade that is akin

to capitalizing. The youth works in the training-school, and he defers

to the future the final results of the process. He lays up wealth, as

it were, by doing that which avails only to give him a larger income

hereafter. It is much as if he put money into the banks. It has always

appeared as though a purely scholastic education makes children averse

to manual labor; that it results too much in every boy and girl leaving

school desirous of engaging in work which is neither manual nor, what

is mistermed, menial. It brings too often to expectant parents the

disappointment experienced by Sir Francis Pedant, in Fielding’s comedy;

that gentleman, it will be remembered, was very angry when he found

that, instead of instilling into his boy at Oxford, as per contract,

“a tolerable knowledge of stock jobbery,” his tutor had fraudulently

crammed him with the works of all the logicians and metaphysicians from

“the great Aristotle down to the learned modern Burgersdicius.” “Have I

been at all this expense,” exclaimed Sir Avarice, piteously, “to breed

a philosopher?”

As a fundamental rule, it may be accepted that the knowledge which is

best for use is also best for discipline, since any other supposition,

as Herbert Spencer has shown, would “be utterly contrary to the

beautiful economy of nature, if one kind of culture were needed for

the gaining of information, and another kind were needed as a mental

gymnastic.” The best end of any education is to equip boys and girls

to earn their own living when they grow up, and to perform efficiently

the duties to which they may be called when they reach the estate of

manhood and womanhood; giving them that most valuable of all gifts

on earth--personal independence--the capacity to stand on their own

feet and look the world in the face, to take care of themselves, and

those who belong to them. The question of technical and industrial

education has received much intelligent consideration and very

extensive application in Switzerland. Since 1884 the Confederation, to

encourage the existing technical schools as well as the establishment

of new ones, has been granting annual subsidies, which are becoming

more and more liberal. The Polytechnic at Zurich, to which reference

has been made in the previous chapter, is now well known as a model

school of practical life, with mechanics, physics, and arts under a

thoroughly scientific curriculum. Trade and industrial schools, as

distinguished from polytechnical,--genuine establishments for teaching

homely trades,--have been made a prominent as well as a compulsory

feature in many of the Swiss educational systems. In some form these

are to be found in every Canton, furnishing instruction in one or more

branches of handiwork,--the boys preparing to become skilled workmen

and competent foremen; and many a girl, though an indifferent scholar,

by being taught cutting, needle-work, cooking, nursing, and methodical

habits--accomplishments that bear so closely upon the happiness and the

very existence of home--will enable her to be a useful wife and good

mother. Trade-schools in Switzerland are of ancient origin, having an

intimate connection with the great impulse which the watch industry of

French Switzerland received in the latter half of the last century. In

the year 1770 a journeyman watchmaker, named Louis Faigare, applied to

Professor Saussure for some information connected with his trade, which

the then means of ordinary public instruction did not afford to his

class. The professor accommodated him, and from this resulted a series

of lectures, or rather _conversaziones_, held in the great scientist’s

drawing-room. The audience increasing to such proportions, it was

found advisable to secure suitable quarters, and a club was formally

organized under the title of _Société des Arts de Genève_. This club,

so modest in its inception, has survived all the mighty political

tempests of a troubled age,--the violent annexation of the Genevese

republic to France and its restoration to the Helvetic union,--and

to-day enjoys a high rank among learned societies, and numbers in its

list of members some of the most eminent names of modern science. This

is the parent of the celebrated Horological School in Geneva, with

its branches at Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel, Biel, Fleurier, and St.

Imier. Pupils are received in these schools when they have passed their

fourteenth year, and the course is from three to four and one-half

years. For the artistic education, there is a special school devoted

entirely to the art of decorating watches, which has become a very

important branch of the industry.

There is also in Geneva a school of industrial art, the organization

and work of which are substantially the same as the one at Munich,

and the two are considered the best in Europe. This school is under

the direction and administration of the Council of State of the

Canton, which delegates one of its members to act as president of the

commission which administers its affairs. Two classes of students are

admitted, viz., regular scholars, who attend regularly and continuously

either a general course of art study or some particular branch, such

as carving, bronze founding, goldsmith’s work, etc.; and special

students, apprentices, workmen, and others who arrange to receive

instruction at stated hours. The pupils produce work which has a

commercial value, and objects made in the school are kept for sale, a

part of the money thus received being paid to the student executing the

work. The courses of study embrace modelling and carving in plaster,

stone, and wood; _repoussé_ work in metals; painting in water-color, in

enamel, and on china; casting and chasing of bronze and the precious

metals; work in wrought iron and engraving, besides the regular work of

drawing-schools in general, such as drawing from the cast, from plants

and flowers, and from the living model. The school occupies a very

fine and spacious building, erected a few years ago at a cost of about

$160,000, and is furnished with very admirable and adequate appliances,

not only for study but for the execution of art-work on a considerable

scale. The pupils are of both sexes, and there is no distinction of

or separation between them in the organization of the classes. The

discipline of the school is very strict, the time of each pupil coming

in and going out being carefully noted, and the utmost regularity of

attendance, during the hours covered by his course, being required of

each pupil. All the regular pupils are also required to attend the

evening schools of the city. Encouragement and recognition of ability

and application are made in the form of prizes, which are awarded by

means of competition or _concours_ held at different times, and on such

subjects as are announced from time to time. The methods of study and

discipline are all sensible and practical.

More humble in their first stages, but scarcely inferior as to

practical results, are the Swiss straw-platting schools. These have

succeeded, in a few years, in developing a veritable new industry,

commanding markets in the utmost corners of the earth. Some of the

poorest portions of the sub-Alpine districts have become well-to-do

and flourishing, and at least one little hamlet, not to be found in

the guide-books a few years ago, is now from this trade a thrifty

town of some ten thousand inhabitants. The higher instruction in this

particular industry extends to the cultivation and acclimatization

of various kinds of foreign grasses, furnishing from the coarsest to

the finest qualities of straw. In the mountain districts there are

schools for teaching the manufacture of children’s toys, for which the

Swiss pine is admirably adapted. Then, in those sections where osiers

(a species of willow) can be cultivated, establishments for learning

basket-making have been started. In Zurich there is a “Dressmakers’

Institute,” from which annually “graduate” thirty to forty _Couturières

Parisiennes_. At Winterthur there is a shoemakers’ school, with a

peripatetic staff of professors who give lessons wherever a class may

be formed. This school also issues publications relating to its aims,

one of the latest being quite an exhaustive and scientific treatise on

the structure of the human foot, and giving the technical side of the

new government regulations concerning the manufacture of army boots and

shoes.

Other handicrafts have followed the example set by the shoemakers. The

joiners, cabinet-makers, silk-weavers, jewellers, and even to umbrellas

and parasols, each have their cheap and, in many cases, free-training

schools. The knit goods of Switzerland, so largely imported to the

United States, do not owe their introduction to cheap Swiss labor, but

simply to their superior quality, the result of the excellent training

all girls obtain at school; knitting being regarded as an indispensable

acquirement. Drawing, industrial as distinguished from artistic, is

taught in all Swiss schools; not as an accomplishment, but as of

paramount utility. It is considered that “drawing” lies at the bottom

of all industrial training, enabling one to delineate with precision

that which he wishes to express better than he can do it with the

language of the pen. In his “Proposed Hints for an Academy,” Benjamin

Franklin classed “drawing” with the three “R’s” as subjects necessary

for all. It ranks with them because it is the language of form in every

branch of industry from the most simple to the complex. It makes the

workman more exact, more efficient, and more careful; it is always

convenient and often very useful. A trade which, either by law or

immemorial usage, is assumed to require a more exacting apprenticeship

is wood-carving; a Swiss product that enjoys world-wide reputation,

and has long been a source of considerable revenue to the country.

The schools for wood-carving have a fully organized faculty, and the

word faculty is used advisedly, for the classes have an almost amusing

resemblance to an academic course. There are lectures with manipulatory

demonstrations in the use of the plane, saw, lathe, and all needed

tools, and also on the distinctive characteristics of various woods.

A school for ornamental work and design in wood-carving at Brienz is

supported by the Canton; and at Interlaken the wood-workers enjoy,

free of charge, the services of a “Master Modeller,” furnished by the

Canton. There are separate schools for the study of wood-engraving,

sculpture, and art cabinet-making. The agricultural and forestry

departments of the Polytechnic, in its “technology,” as signifying

science applied to industrial arts, has advanced these interests to

positions that otherwise could never have been attained. Switzerland

in physical respects is not a bountiful motherland, neither the

climate nor soil is good for agriculture, yet it is surprising what

good results are obtained through the general diffusion among the

agricultural class of much technical information, susceptible of easy

apprehension and ready application. Swiss agriculture, to make any

return, cannot be a mechanical routine, but must be intelligent if not

scientific.

What is known as practical farming would not return the seed and labor

involved. As an intelligently and scientifically-directed industry,

it has assumed a prosperous and profitable condition. The agricultural

course in the Polytechnic is thorough and comprehensive. It covers

the mechanical and chemical composition of the soil; the scientific

basis as to the rotation of crops; the periods of growth at which

plants take their nitrogen; how draining improves land; and many other

similar matters varied in their application, but ruled by fixed laws,

and which must be learned outside the daily experience and observation

of farm-life. In the single crop of grass, which is of such great

value in its relation to the extensive Swiss dairy interest, in its

cultivation, grazing, and harvesting, the suggestions and counsel

emanating from the agricultural department of the Polytechnic have

been of incalculable value. The amount of this crop, from a cold and

barren soil, and the uses to which it is turned would seem incredible

to the American farmer. The Swiss farmer, to accomplish so much,

must know something of the chemical analysis of the grass, both in

the natural and dried state; the feeding value of like weight in the

different varieties, in an equally moist or dry condition; the final

stage of growth which they ought to be allowed to attain; suitability

for permanent or other pastures; the adaptability of grasses for

certain soil; their duration, ability to resist drouth, and strength

to over-power weeds. Then come questions of hay-making, ensilage,

the management of old and new grass-lands; on these and many others

the peasant is enlightened and constantly advised, not only by the

Polytechnic but from cantonal agricultural schools at Rütte (Bern),

Strickhof (Zurich), Sursee (Luzern), and at Brugg (Aargau). There is

an institution for experimental vine growing at Lausanne; a school of

gardening at Geneva; and dairy schools at Sornthal (St. Gallen), and

Trayveaux (Freiburg). From time to time lectures and short courses of

instruction are given in different parts of the country on horticulture

and vineculture, fodder-growing, cattle-breeding, by which some

knowledge of the theory and technical details of agricultural science

is given, with the view of awakening a spirit of enterprise in the more

remote districts of the country. Forest culture and forest preservation

may be considered a necessity in Switzerland, for its influence in

checking the sudden and disastrous floods so common in the mountain

streams, and in the protection and maintenance of the steep hill-sides

which constitute so large a portion of the agricultural area of the

country. While riparian trees are gross water-users, and usually

deciduous, such as the sycamores, alders, willows, cottonwoods, etc.,

upon the mountains the trees are of a different class, and their effect

is without known exception beneficial to irrigators and water-users in

the valleys below. The denudation of mountain districts is followed

by increased torrent or flood action and diminished regular flow in

springs and streams, often by the entire desiccation of these. There

is a department in the Polytechnic devoted to forestry, from which is

supplied a large body of thoroughly educated foresters, who find ready

employment under the federal and cantonal forest departments.[75] The

course of study is of the most advanced character, and requires three

years for its completion. There are, besides, many local and primary

forest schools, having spring and autumn terms of three to four weeks

each, and they are assisted by federal subsidy. By a federal law of

1885, there was added to the forest department of the Polytechnic, a

school for forest experiment connected with meteorological stations,

thereby supplementing this already excellent school with the means of

accurate, scientific, and regular meteorological observations, in their

close and important alliance with matters of forest culture.

It is under the supervision of these educated foresters and trained

wood-rangers that, on the mountain-side, apparently but a forbidding

rock, by constant, careful, and scientific attention, are found

oak-, beech-, birch-, and pine-trees in large quantities and of good

dimensions. Each tree is carefully looked after and preserved, and

trained so that they shall not interfere with each other; each has its

fair share of space and light. In this work nature and man’s labor and

thought give to the forest an abundance of moisture, and between the

frequent storms and showers, abundant floods of sunlight and warmth.

It is this intelligent care and attention that enables a tree to take

root and grow to its normal size on what is apparently little more

than towering and weird piles of sheer rocks. The vast treeless West

and the reckless wasteful deforesting of American woodlands will soon

render forest culture and protection a necessity in the United States.

Never was a country so lavishly supplied with forest flora of all the

qualities in all gradations. No country ever used its wood materials

so lavishly; squandering a wealth of timbers before its true value was

known. It is time to husband the remnant with more intelligence and

to stop its wasteful destruction. Why should sylviculture not present

an inviting field for business enterprise, or be quite as fascinating

to watch the development of a collection of trees as that of a herd

or flock? Our landholders, who are accustomed to garner crops in a

hundred days from planting, have a natural shrinking from a seed which

may not mature a crop in a hundred years. But it can be shown that

growing wood on waste-lands enhances the value of the remainder of

the farm by more than the planting and care have cost; and that the

first instalment of a forest-crop is not so remote as is generally

believed. The best varieties of wood can be grown as easily as the

poorest, and the demand for certain forest products is rapidly becoming

more urgent. The tree-growth enriches rather than impoverishes the

ground. Forestry not only beautifies the farm, but between woodland

and plough-land is established that balance which must be preserved

to insure the most equitable distribution of moisture and climatic

conditions most favorable to the productiveness of the soil and the

better health of the people. Almost every Commune in Switzerland has

its _realschule_, where children from the primary school have the

opportunity of a higher education, specially adapted to fit them for

commercial and industrial life. These schools take the place of the old

and now practically extinct system of apprenticeship. The handiwork

and technical schools embrace instruction in drawing, modelling,

practical reckoning, elements of geometry (especially surface and

body measurements), book-keeping in French and German, physics,

chemistry, and technological branches, ceramics, and _aquarelle_.

The schools for girls include singing, drawing, fancy or handiwork,

letter-writing, book-keeping, casting accounts, sewing by hand and

machine, dress-making (pressing, cutting, and trimming), besides a

knowledge of different kinds of wares, how to tend plants and flowers,

and even the art of treating the sick and wounded. From these schools

all have access to the Polytechnic, where each professor is an

acknowledged authority in the branch of service with which he deals. In

all the higher schools and universities every encouragement is given to

students to qualify themselves for technical pursuits. The secret of

Switzerland’s material success lies in the liberality of its conception

of public education. Its primary schools are graded with good secondary

schools for scientific education, and these lead to remarkable

technical institutions with great completeness of organization. If

any country appears by nature unfit for manufactures it is surely

Switzerland. Cut off from the rest of Europe by frowning mountains,

having no sea-coast and removed therefore from all the fruits of

maritime enterprise, having no coal or other sources of mineral wealth,

Switzerland might have degenerated into a brave semi-civilized nation

like Montenegro. Instead of this it proudly competes with all Europe

and America in industries for which it has to purchase from them the

raw materials and even the coal, the source of power necessary to

convert them into utilities. Other countries have become sensible of

the superiority which skilled education can confer, and they have not

been slow to take advantage of it. The United States are justly proud

of their common-school systems as they exist in the several States.

They have done a great deal for public education, and are progressing

by their own force and by the general sympathy of the community. Mr.

Edward Atkinson, in summing up the elements that have contributed to

the vast gain in the conditions of material welfare in the United

States, names seven, and assigns the third position in importance to

the “systems of common schools which are now extending throughout the

land.” The tendency to be guarded against is that in education as

applied to the whole mass of the people, what is desirable and charming

and decorative be not put before what is absolutely useful; not to take

the garnish first and leave the solid meat to take care of itself.

When it comes to deal with the large masses of the community who must

work, and to whom it is, so to speak, a matter of life and death, the

question to be considered is whether they shall work well prepared

with the utmost assistance which the accumulated knowledge and skill

of the community can give them, or whether each man shall be left to

fight his own way and learn his own industry for himself. The country

wants more handicraftsmen, the school produces too many scriveners.

The country is crying out for skilled laborers, and the school sends it

clerks or would-be gentlemen of leisure. The farmers and working men

want wives who can make a home neat and happy, and who understand the

wise economy of limited resources, and the school sends them women fit

only to be governesses. The system of education in the United States

sends too many boys into trading, teaching, the professions, or “living

by their wits.” They imbibe a spirit that shuns what are termed the

“humble callings,” and crowd, at starvation wages, the occupations of

the counter and desk. They grow up to feel and believe that the bread

which has been gained by the sweat of the brow is less honorably earned

than that which is the product of mechanical quill-driving. Therefore

the United States have a plethora of men who, as described by President

Garfield, are “learned so-called, who know the whole gamut of classical

learning, who have sounded the depths of mathematical and speculative

philosophy, and yet who could not harness a horse or make out a bill

of sale, if their lives depended upon it.” There is need of a public

education that, while it gives to the mind fleet and safe modes of

reasoning, shall at the same time, in a corresponding degree, develop a

clear sight, a firm arm, and a training suitable for the various trades

and occupations which are essential elements of a prosperous national

life. The utility of such acquirements is not their chief virtue;

it is their permanence in the mental armory, for eyes and hands not

only respond to cultivation as readily as brains, but the trained eye

and skilled hand do not slough off their acquirements like the weary

brain. All through the United States scientifically and technically

trained foreigners, fresh from their “_realschulen_,” are pushing out

classically-educated young men from their desks and stools and taking

the places of profit which belong to them by national inheritance.

American spirit, capacity, and energy are unrivalled, and require only

an equal training and opportunity to insure an earnest of unbounded

success in establishing and maintaining the future eminence of the

country in the world’s great field of human art and human industry.

The question of manual and industrial instruction is not confined in

its interest only to those connected with the organization of schools

and systems of education, as bearing entirely on the development

and activity of the whole circle of intellectual faculties, but it

relates to a deep and far-reaching political problem that thoughtful

statesmen contemplate with serious concern. Might not the spirit of

cheerful domestic industry, which the extension of educated handiwork

is calculated to promote, do much to correct the evils of intemperance,

violence, and social discontent which are assuming such alarming

symptoms? The moral influence it exerts might produce a revolution for

the better and a well-ordered commonwealth of labor. The habits of

order, exactness, and perseverance fostered by manual training have an

incalculable moral value. The ranks of the unemployed and misery and

crime are largely recruited from the ranks of youth who are without any

adequate training to earn an honest livelihood. With a more general

dissemination of the rudiments of useful trades and employments there

would be secured a larger share to productive labor,--for it would put

brains into it and make it alike more honorable and profitable. It

would tend to remove whatever disadvantage has heretofore attached to

industrial occupations on grounds of dignity and the niceties of the

social scale. When young America is trained for mechanical pursuits

under the same roof and amid the same surroundings as he is trained for

preaching and pleading, when he is made to feel at school that the same

distinction is to be earned by skilful doing as by skilful dosing, the

necessity for all the more or less sincere, but very wordy, extolling

of the dignity of labor, which employs so much of our energy at

present, will be removed. And when the mechanic has acquired industrial

skill, not at the expense of his mental training, but along with it

and as a necessary part of it, the crafts themselves will assume the

old dignity and importance which once they had, but which they have

lost in these days of false and foolish artificial standards by which

men measure each other. The units or grains of society are continually

moving to and fro between the scum and the dregs, from capital to labor

and labor to capital, from wealth to poverty and poverty to wealth. But

rich and poor, professional and artisan alike, have a common interest

in strengthening the bulwarks against the dangers that menace honest

society,--against nihilism, socialism, communism, and all kinds of

vagabondage. Educated industry is the talisman. The strength of the

republican pyramid is in its base, and it is in the lower social layer

that the true character of a country’s need in common-school education

must be looked for. A Nihilist lecturer recently stated that there are

four hundred schools in Europe whose sole work is to teach the use

of explosives. If the Old World is thus diligently sowing the seeds

of discontent and rebellion, scattering some of them on our own too

prolific soil, teaching that to brute-force alone can humanity look for

the redress of its wrongs, how much more necessary it becomes to show

the world that not in killing each other, but in helping each other

to live, is the only possible solution of social difficulties. Unless

the school can teach respect for labor, it will never be learned, and

unless it is learned, and learned practically, the upheavals which of

late years have disturbed society will grow in frequency and violence.

Pericles, the great Athenian, describing the glory of the community of

which he was so illustrious a member, said, “We, of Athens, are lovers

of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes; we cultivate the mind

without loss of manliness.” But Athenian society rested on slavery,

and the drudgery was performed by those who had no share in the good

things which the citizens could enjoy. Our object should be to bring

Periclean ideas of beauty, simplicity, and cultivation of mind within

reach of those who do the hard work of the world. It can be done,

and should be done, in a way to advance the skill and develop to the

highest form of practical energy the skill of our handicraftsman and

the manliness of his life; giving him an education that will enlarge

his mind, improve his morals, instruct his industry, and thereby

advance the power, the prosperity, and the peace of the State. The

future will, practically speaking, belong to the technically educated,

for no amount of natural “smartness” can compete with education in

particularities. Raw material, forming a capital advantage, has been

gradually equalized in price and made available to all by improvements

in locomotion; and henceforth industry must be sustained, not by a

competition of local and popularly designated “natural advantages,” but

by the inexorable competition of intellect in all of its manifold and

overpowering evolution. If a country would not be left behind in the

race, if it desires to find any satisfactory solution for the deepest

and most inscrutable problem of the time, if it wishes a complex and

high civilization, to be maintained secure from all the dangers which

the presence of unprosperous and unfed millions must bring upon a

country, it should do its utmost to give a healthy and wide development

to the industrial education of the masses; such systematic instruction

as shall enable them to carry to the factory, to the laboratory,

to the quarry, to the mine, to the farm, that scientific knowledge

which is required to deduce practice from theory, to give dignity as

well as efficiency to labor, and to connect abstract principles with

the industrial pursuits of life; in a word, to provide an education

which will develop for each man and woman the faculties that nature

has given in such a manner that they may be as active and profitable

and prosperous members of the community as possible; an education

beautiful by its adaptment, subservient by its use, and salutary by

its application; an education that teaches in what way to utilize

those sources of happiness which nature supplies, and how to use all

the faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others; an

education that heeds the advice of Professor James Blake: “Let us

head-train the hand-worker and hand-train the head-worker. For manual

and head-training together form the only education. Apart from the

practical advantages, it has an ethical value in enabling men and women

to use all their faculties, for no man can distort himself by exclusive

attention to one order of faculties, and especially by neglecting to

keep good balance between the two fundamental co-ordinates of his

being, body and mind, without finding the distortion repeating itself

in moral obtuseness and disorder.”

CHAPTER XV.

INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE.

It is a popular mistake that Switzerland, industrially, occupies

a stagnant condition in the scale of nations, and exists for

picturesqueness alone. It is equally a mistake to think that its main

staples are wood-carving and hotel-keeping. The circumstances which

so long prohibited any advance in commerce and agriculture are to be

found in the peculiarities of the physical character of the country

and the absence of capital. Switzerland had no sources of mineral nor,

under the conditions of former times, of agricultural wealth. It could

not maintain a large population on its own resources; nor could it

have cities, the inhabitants of which, either like those of Flanders,

by the easy terms upon which they might get the raw materials, could

have manufactured for others; or like those of Venice, Genoa, and of

the cities of Holland, might have become common carriers. They could

have had no commerce, except with their surplus cheese. The amount

of this that could be spared was so small, and the transportation so

difficult, that but little could be made of it, and the whole of this

little was wanted for the necessaries of life,--such as the useful

metals, etc.,--which the Swiss were obliged to procure from abroad.

There was no margin for saving, and so there could be no accumulations

of capital. For long ages the most assiduous industry could supply

the Swiss with only the necessaries of life, and barely with them,

even when aided by the surplus cheese. Agriculturists in a rude way,

they lived on the land which supported them and their families,

and feeling no further pressing need, their untrained intelligence

could form no conception of the advantages of the social union and

commercial interdependence of a more civilized state of society. This

condition no longer exists. By the aid of new means of transportation

and communication, and by the substitution of machinery for manual

labor, the motive power for which nature furnishes in abundance, the

people are becoming prosperous and capital is accumulating. For many

ages the poorest country in Europe, it is rapidly progressing towards

becoming, in proportion to the amount of its population, one of the

richest. The position taken to-day by Switzerland in the trade and

commerce of the world is remarkable, when the various natural obstacles

are considered,--such as absence of raw material for its industries,

great distance from the sea-coast, with costly and difficult means of

transportation, and restrictive customs established by neighboring

countries. It does not possess a single coal-mine, canal, or navigable

stream. It is practically dependent for all its metals on foreign

supply. Asphalt is the only raw mineral product the export of which

exceeds the import, and this is found only in the Canton of Neuchâtel,

where the output is very large and of a superior quality. Inland,

without ships or seaport, and therefore deprived of the advantages

of direct exportation and importation, its commerce must be effected

through the four conterminous countries of France, Germany, Austria,

and Italy. Therefore, while every mart in the world is familiar with

its manufactures, it is almost ignored in the commercial statistics

of nations. The high protective policy so universally adopted by the

neighboring countries, where for a long time the best markets for

Swiss goods were found, has forced the Swiss manufacturers to extend

their trade to transmarine markets, involving not only a vast amount

of competition, but far more risk and uncertainty attending sales

than in doing business in markets nearer home. Then four-fifths of

the Swiss exports to countries other than the contiguous ones consist

of silk goods, embroideries, and watches, which may be classed, in

a general sense, as luxuries; and, in seeking a foreign market,

encounter the highest duty. On the other hand, its importations are

cotton, machinery, cereals, food-supply, and raw materials for its

manufacturers,--that will not admit of a corresponding heavy import

duty. The remedy heretofore partially found in special commercial

treaties has become almost futile by the rapid blocking of the

provisions of the “most favored nation” clauses. These have practically

lost their purpose and force by each party to the treaty persisting

in the enlargement and accentuation of its own customs provisions. In

an address recently delivered by the President of the Confederation,

at a national agricultural exposition, referring to the depression

of that industry, he said: “The political existence of Switzerland

is at present not threatened or endangered from any quarter, but it

is different with its economical existence, which causes us from day

to day increased solicitude on account of the increase of unjust

burdens imposed at all our neighboring frontiers. The first to feel

this condition were our manufacturers, who demanded a tariff of

retaliation, and now the farmers complain that they are suffering from

a denial of the same protection. Indeed, we are to-day the witnesses

of an eager race in the parliaments of many countries to raise the

duties on importations from their neighboring states until the wall

is so high that nothing can pass. Is this to be the grand coronation

of the labor and civilization of the nineteenth century,--the century

of steam, electricity, the piercing of the St. Gothard, the Suez and

Panama canals? No! Such a condition cannot endure. Let me express the

hope that the time will come when, from the excess of the evil, good

will result; that the people will realize that such a condition leads

to general poverty, while liberty of exchange is the surest foundation

of general prosperity.”

With these great natural and artificial obstacles to contend with,

Switzerland is nevertheless a commercial and manufacturing state. Its

industries are prosperous and show a constantly-increasing vitality

and importance, and its citizens are growing rich and famous in the

commerce of Europe. Its silks, ribbons, embroideries, braided straws,

watches, and cheese go to every quarter of the globe. There is no

state in Europe in which there is so great a general trade per head of

population. The commerce of Italy, with a population nearly ten times

greater, is only about double that of Switzerland; and the difference

between Austrian and Swiss commerce is even still more remarkable. The

silk industry is the oldest in Switzerland, being already established

at Zurich and Basel in the latter half of the thirteenth century.

Ticino is the only Canton where there are filatures for reeling the

cocoon into silk. Italy, China, and Japan are the great sources

of supply of raw materials to the silk manufacturers,--the former

supplying nearly four-fifths of all the organzines; of the raw silk,

the supply comes largely from Yokohama. Cotton began to be manufactured

in Switzerland in the fifteenth century, and power-loom weaving was

introduced in 1830. Twisting, spinning and white-goods weaving, and

cotton printing are of very considerable importance. Embroidered goods

have attained a great development, and furnish a heavy export trade

from eastern Switzerland, especially in the Cantons of St. Gallen and

Appenzell. Little of this beautiful work is now done by hand, machinery

having reached marvellous perfection. Aniline colors, the wonderful

dyes which the skill of modern chemists has evolved from bituminous

tar, and the manufacture of flavoring extracts, from the products of

coal-tar and petroleum, constitute a thriving export business at Basel.

Watchmaking is essentially a Swiss industry, and has been the most

important industry in Geneva since 1587, and by a combination with

jewellers, making a union between mechanical industry and art, has

given Geneva a world-wide reputation.[76] Watchmaking is done entirely

by piece-work, and sixty master workmen are required to make a single

watch. The work is divided among so many different persons, each one

of whom makes a specialty of one particular piece, and spends his

life making duplicates of this. The work is performed in the people’s

houses, the fronts of which present an uninterrupted row of windows

arranged without intermediate spaces, as the object is to admit all the

light possible. Every member of the family assists in some way. When

the house is put to rights, the wife drags a table to the window, gets

out her magnifying-glass, and goes to work on a watch-spring.[77] If

there be a son or daughter, each produces his quota. These different

parts, when gathered up by the watch merchant, are found to fit each

its special place with mathematical niceness.

The Swiss federal custom-house returns classify all imports and exports

under three chief heads, viz., “live-stock,” “_ad valorem_ goods,” and

“goods taxed per quintal.” No returns are published of the value of

either the imports or exports, but only the quantities are given. The

principal imports are grain and flour, cattle for slaughter, sugar,

coffee, fruit, poultry, eggs, and wine; all being articles of food.

Of textile stuffs, silk, cotton, and woollen. Other articles include

chemicals for industrial purposes, leather and leather goods, hosiery

and ready-made clothes, iron and iron ware, live animals, coal and

coke, other metals and hardware, including machinery, wood, furniture,

petroleum, gold and silver bullion for coinage. Cattle, horses, wheat,

and flour are imported from Austria-Hungary; raw cotton from the

United States and Egypt; manufactured cotton goods from England; wool

chiefly from Germany; coal from the Rhine districts of Germany. The

principal exports are: textile products, watches and jewelry, cheese

and condensed milk, wine and beer, machinery, cattle, hides and skins,

dye-stuffs, furniture and wood carvings. The Swiss tradesmen are shrewd

in their bargains, honest in their reckonings, contented with small

gains and small savings. They are the Scotch of continental Europe.

In Switzerland we find the primitive husbandry of the mountain

flourishing side by side with modern industrial commercial enterprise.

Of much Swiss agriculture it is still true, “_pater ipse colendi

haud facilem esse viam voluit_.” The minute division of the land

and the cheapness of labor do not justify the general use of modern

labor-saving agricultural implements. For cutting, threshing, and

winnowing purposes the scythe, flail, and winnowing-basket are used.

The scythe is apparently an exact counterpart of that which is seen in

the hands of “Time” in the school primer. The plough would adorn an

archæological collection; requiring four horses and three men to work

it, and cutting only one furrow. Instead of the harrow or cultivator,

a number of women and children, armed with clubs, go over the ground

after it is ploughed, and pulverize the surface. Swiss soil is but

little desecrated by the “devil-driven machinery of modern times;” and

the Swiss farmer has been equally faithful in regarding the first and

disregarding the second advice given in the distich of Pope,--

“Be not the first by whom the new are tried,

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”[78]

The peasant farmer must needs apply a high order of management and

economy. This economy must be discerning, and he cannot take readily to

new ideas that do not assure him a better result for his hard-earned

money. This close farming yields very fair results to the small owners,

who, with their sons and daughters, have an interest in the soil and

a taste for the business. However, each change in the way of modern

improvement in its turn is fighting for establishment. The old methods

have prescription, tradition, custom to support them; the new, utility

and necessity. In the early stage, what was needed for each Swiss

peasant farmer was a little bit of land, a cow or two, a spade, a

manure basket, and a wife to carry it. This was the caterpillar stage.

They are very gradually passing into the butterfly stage. They are

beginning to evolve the capacity for collecting and turning to account

capital, the distilled essence of all property without which the land

cannot be made much of now. Life to-day does not require the tough

hide, the strong sinews, the gross stomach, the adstriction to a single

spot of the old life; on the contrary, a vastly enlarged mobility, both

of body and mind, a readiness for turning anything to account, and for

entering on any opening have become necessary. If what is wanted and

needed cannot be found at home, be willing and disposed to go seek it

elsewhere.

Owing to great difference in elevation of the surface, there is much

diversity in the production of Switzerland. In the valleys the summer

heat is tropical, while the surrounding heights are robed in perpetual

snow. “From the lowest level on the southern slope of the Alps, say

about six hundred and fifty feet, where the lemon, the almond, and

the fig ripen in the open air, and thence ascend to an elevation of

nine thousand five hundred feet, where every vestige even of the most

primitive artificial cultivation ceases, we might trace nearly every

species of vegetable growth known in Europe.”[79]

Cereals are grown up to three thousand six hundred feet; rye

succeeds up to five thousand nine hundred feet in the Grisons, and

to six thousand five hundred feet on the sunny slopes of Monte Rosa

and Pontresina. Irrespective of exceptional cases we may say that

cultivation ceases at three thousand nine hundred and fifty feet,

and above this height all forms of vegetation are small and poor,

consisting of low scrubs, stunted firs, and mournful larches. As a

general rule, vegetation reaches a higher point in eastern and southern

Switzerland than in the northwest. It is therefore not the absolute

height which determines the boundary of the growth of plants so much as

the disposition and form of the mountains and valleys. Another point

affecting materially the whole phytological covering of a country

is the nature of the geological formation on which the plants grow.

One-half of the country lies above the region of agriculture. The total

area of land under cultivation in Switzerland is, in figures, 5,378,122

acres; of which, 1,715,781 acres, or 31.9 per cent., are meadow land,

and 1,962,656 acres, or 36.5 per cent., are pasturage. The arable land

covers an area of 1,533,093 acres, or 28.5 per cent., of the whole;

vineyards 87,714 acres, or 1.6 per cent.; while the ground devoted

entirely to gardening purposes may be estimated at about 78,870 acres,

or 1.5 per cent. The area of cultivated land is steadily diminishing,

as the meadows prove more remunerative. Good arable land, being so

limited, commands a very high price, from $300 per acre to $1500

and $2000 per acre for choice vineyard lands. About one-half of the

arable land is sown in grain; the remainder being used for potatoes,

turnips, green maize, clover, vetch, etc. Both the federal and cantonal

governments have shown an active interest in fostering and promoting

the agricultural prosperity of the country; and an agricultural bureau

is attached to one of the federal departments at Bern. The cultivation

of the grape is closely identified with Swiss agricultural interests,

and with few exceptions the hill-sides on the Lake of Geneva have been

since the earliest periods of history planted with the generous vine.

There exist records to prove that some of these vineyards have been

bearing uninterruptedly for five hundred years. The reader will readily

suppose that the materials have been often renewed. One above another

these vineyards extend along the lake to the height of two thousand

feet. They are formed with persevering industry upon these precipitous

slopes by means of parallel walls, whose narrow intervals are filled

with earth that has been carried up by the peasants in baskets upon

their backs from below; and in the same way they must every season be

abundantly covered with manure. These successive terraces are reached

by steps frequently cut with infinite labor in the hard rock, and

with every economy of the land. Every inch of the ground is valuable,

because only on the side of certain hills will these vines come to

perfection. These lands, after being purchased at so high a rate, need

constant attention; for the soil is washed away from these steeps

beneath the stone walls, and must be replaced every spring; every clod

of earth is a great treasure, and they carefully collect the earth

which has been thrown out of a ditch to fill up their vineyard patches.

A square foot of land is reckoned to produce two bottles of wine

annually. Every portion of a vine is used; the stems and leaves serving

as food for the cattle; the husks, after being pressed and wedged into

round moulds, then dried, are used for fuel, burning something as

peat does. In many houses of this section the cellars are enormously

large, with a capacity as high as a million bottles each; and they are

often used as the common sitting- and reception-room.[80] Vineyards

also flourish on the slopes surrounding the lakes of Neuchâtel, Biel,

and Zurich; in the valleys of the larger rivers and certain plains of

northern Switzerland they are found to a small extent. Still, the wine

produced is not sufficient for the demand, and over 15,000,000 gallons

are annually imported; in this consumption the great number of tourists

who come every season must be taken into account.

Growing grass and fodder, cattle-breeding, and cheese-making are the

most important branches of Swiss agriculture. For ages the forest

Cantons had little tillable land reclaimed, and from difficulty of

communication with the outside world the people were thrown almost

entirely upon their own scanty local resources. With hardly any

means of getting supplies from without, with very little land for

cultivating cereals, and in the days before maize and potatoes, their

chief reliance was upon their cows. It is very much so even at this

day, but in those days the reliance was all but unqualified. Their

cows supplied them not only with a great part of their food, but

also, through the surplus cheese, with tools, and everything else

they were incapable of producing themselves, from the singularly

limited resources of their secluded valleys. The Switzer was then the

parasite of the cow. There were no ways in which money could be made;

there were no manufactures and no travellers; and so there were no

inn-keepers to supply travellers, nor shop-keepers to supply the wants

of operatives, manufacturers, and travellers; and there were none who

had been educated up to the point that would enable them to go abroad

to make money with which they might return to their old home. If the

general population had not had the means of keeping cows, they would

not have had the means for livelihood. The problem therefore for them

to solve was,--how was every family to be enabled to keep cows? The

solution was found in the _Allmends_,--lands held and used in common.

The natural summer pastures were common, and every burgher had the

right to keep as many cows upon them in the summer as he had himself

kept during the previous winter with the hay he had made from his

labor-created and labor-maintained patch of cultivated ground, or, as

it was called, prairies; or, if as yet he had no prairies, with the

dried leaves and coarse stuff he had been able to collect from the

common forest. This system was both necessary and fair. It originated

in the nature of the country, and its then economical condition, and

in turn it created the Swiss life and character. Every one knows La

Fontaine’s story of Perrette going to the market to buy eggs; the

eggs are hatched into chickens, the chickens produce a pig and then a

calf, and the calf becomes a cow. This dream of Perrette’s is daily

realized by the Swiss peasant farmer. He picks up grass and manure

along the road; he raises rabbits, and with the money they bring he

buys first a goat, then a pig, next a calf, by which he gets a cow

producing calves in her turn. Milk is the great thing desired by the

pastoral people, and not to possess a milk-giving animal is esteemed

such a misfortune that, as a little solace to the poor, cream is in

certain places regularly distributed to them on the third Sunday in

August. Switzerland varies, through a decennial period, from thirty

to thirty-five head of horned cattle to every hundred inhabitants,

yet it actually imports butter and cattle. It consumes more animal

food than the contiguous countries, viz., twenty-two kilos. of meat,

twelve kilos. of cheese, five of butter, and one hundred and eighty-two

of milk per head per annum. To the Swiss may be applied the words

of Cæsar as to the ancient Britons: “_Lacte et carne vivunt_.” The

country is well adapted for the keeping and breeding of cattle, being

favored with good grass, water, and air. Large sums are expended by the

various cantonal governments upon schemes for the improvement of the

breed of cattle and for the facilitation of their transport from the

place of production to the market. The cattle for milking, draught,

and fattening are not kept and treated separately with a single object

only being kept in view; the Swiss cow is expected to unite all these

qualities at one time within herself. It is believed that a cow is

positively benefited by being put to the plough, especially if the

work be done in the morning; and few bullocks, but many cows, are

frequently seen serving various draught purposes, not with the yoke,

but with harness similar to that used for the horse. A cow which, at

the time of calving, fails to give eighteen litres (litre = .88 quart)

of milk is not considered of any value. A fair average for the Swiss

cow is ten quarts of milk per day the milking year through, and five

thousand three hundred and fifteen pounds of milk per cow is an annual

average yield for the milking season of nine months. In England the

famous short-horned cows furnish only an average of four thousand

six hundred and eighty-eight pounds, and the highest average of milk

received at the best dairies of the State of New York reaches a little

over four thousand pounds, making a difference in favor of Swiss cows

of over thirteen hundred pounds. The federal government makes an annual

appropriation for the improvement of cattle, and in the distribution

of the subsidy confines itself to those Cantons where cattle-breeding

receives local assistance and encouragement. All subsidies are made

subject to various conditions to secure the fullest benefit therefrom.

These require an annual examination of all breeding-bulls to be held

at a district show; prize bulls must be used in the Canton for at

least one year after the awarding of the prize; breeding-bulls must be

registered, and none unregistered may be so used; prize cows must also

remain a certain time in the Commune, and must not leave the Canton

before calving. The Swiss have superior breeds of cattle for yield of

milk, aptitude for fattening, and capability of working, as well as

handsome in appearance. From reports made by United States consuls,

the two best-known and highly-prized breeds of cattle appear to be the

parti-colored and the brown; the difference prevailing in each being,

mainly, in point of size and greater or less degree of fineness. The

parti-colored breed is seen at its best in the valleys of the Simme,

Saane, and Kander, in the Gruyère and Bulle districts, and generally

over the western and northern parts of Switzerland. They are large, and

among the heaviest cattle in Europe; their ground color is white, and

it is marked with dun, reddish-yellow, or black; the milk from these

cows is admirably adapted for making cheese and butter. Some of the

most famous cheeses known to the market are from the milk of these

“fleck” or spotted cows. They fatten kindly, and, owing to strength and

size, are well suited for draught purposes. The brown race consists of

a heavy Schwyz breed, the medium-size breed from Unterwalden and part

of the eastern Cantons, and the smaller mountain breed. It has been

called the “turf-breed,” and is considered to be more ancient than the

parti-colored. It is mostly found in Schwyz, Zug, Luzern, and Zurich.

The brown Schwyz is a beautifully-formed cow of mouse color, running

into brown; large, straight back, usually with white streak; short,

light horns, two-thirds white with tips black; nose tipped dark gray,

with light borders; udder large, white, and smooth; usual weight about

twelve hundred to thirteen hundred pounds, those kept in the higher

Alps weigh about nine hundred pounds. There is a breed in the Valais

known as the Hérens, which is considered by many to be a separate

and primitive race. These animals, having short, stout bodies, are

admirably suited to the steepest and most inaccessible pasturage; they

are readily fattened, the quality of their meat is greatly prized by

butchers, and they are renowned for their enormous powers of draught.

In 1880 a great impulse was given to the careful breeding of cattle

by the establishment of four herd-books. It is alleged that the great

number of good cows of pure blood help to make the Swiss herd-book a

failure. It began life with as many “pure bloods” as most herd-books

contain after twenty years’ existence. At the international show of

Paris, in 1878, every Swiss cow exhibited bore away a prize. They have

competed also with exhibits from Holland, England, and Denmark, and

other famous cattle and milk-producing districts of Europe. Good Swiss

cows sell from 500 to 1200 francs each. These fine milk-, butter-,

and cheese-producing animals are fed only on grass and hay the year

through; occasionally a little dry bran may be added. From May to

September the cows in the neighborhood of the mountains are herded on

the upper Alps, and this rich, nutritious, short Alpine grass sustains

for nearly four months multitudes of as beautiful cattle as are to

be found in the world. All the mountain pasturages go by the name of

Alp,[81] and comprise “voralpen,” used in the spring; “mittelalpen,”

middle or intermediate pasture, remaining free of snow from the

first of June to the end of September, and “hochalpen,” sometimes

nine thousand feet high, for sheep and goats. Except when on these

Alpine pastures, the cows have only house-feeding, and, there being

no grazing-fields aside from the Alps, the cows of the plains are

stall-fed through the entire year. In the summer the fresh-cut grass is

fed to them. It is economy to cut the grass and carry it in as against

permitting the meadows to be trampled, grass wasted, and the animals

worried with flies. The cattle-stables are long, low, rectangular

attachments to the barns. They are always built of stone, with walls

about two feet thick. The stalls are usually ceiled over head, and

often plastered throughout; the floors stone or cement, and bedded

with poor hay, straw, or saw-dust, and a tight-fitting; oak door is at

the end of the rectangle. These barns are very warm, but thoroughly

ventilated, and the stalls are clean and nice beyond comparison. The

cows are marched out to exercise, air, and water daily; they are

curried and cared for the same as fine horses; their coats are brushed

until they shine, and the animals are evidently vain of their beauty.

In this, as in other cases, man’s regard for the lower animals appears

to be rewarded by an increase in their intelligence. The universal

reasons given for thus penning up these cows are: “It saves feed,”

“the cows give more milk for the warmth,” “there are no flies to worry

them,” and “more manure is obtained.” The peasant, pointing to the

manure heap, will say, “Out there is where the per cents. are made.”

As grass and hay are almost exclusively fed, it is requisite that

these be of the best quality and of sufficient quantity. There is a

great variety and succession of green crops for feeding in the house,

almost the year round, carefully cultivated. A moist climate, frequent

appliance of liquid manure,[82] and the practice of growing fruit-trees

in the meadows prevent drought in Switzerland. Then much moisture

comes from the incessant filtration of the melting glaciers which

are constantly dissolving under the heat of the sun. The conditions

of moisture and sunshine give to the country its abundance of grass,

causing it to grow anywhere. You see it rapidly establishing itself

on the tops of roadside walls. On a heap of stones lichens and moss

soon appear, and, by their decay, in time fill the interstices, then a

mantle of turf creeps over it. In excavations on hill-sides, where the

mountain torrent brings down successive avalanches of rocky detritus,

each successive layer in turn and in time becomes consolidated with

mould and then covered with turf. Indeed, a greater part of the valleys

consists of nothing but a film of soil superimposed on fragments of

rock. There are two or three grass crops in Switzerland yearly,--the

first in the beginning of May, the second at the end of July, and often

another early in October. The mountains intercept winds and clouds,

making the amount of precipitation large. The clouds are generally

intercepted by the mountains at an elevation of five thousand feet,

and then descend in rain; higher up the precipitation is in the form

of snow. There is great difference in annual waterfalls, the greatest

being as we approach the Alps, whether from the north or south. The

annual rainfall is thirty-five inches at Basel, sixty-four and a half

inches at Interlaken, sixty-nine at Schwyz, rising to eighty-eight on

the Grimsel and one hundred and two on the St. Bernard, and falling

at Lugano to sixty-three. The percentage of snow in the total annual

rainfall varies from sixty-three on the St. Bernard to six at Geneva.

The importance of this precipitation may be understood when it is

recalled that a precipitation of twenty-eight inches is considered

essential to agricultural security. The meadows are aided in no less

degree than the climate by constant fertilizing and extraordinary care

in the way of watering, draining, etc. A Swiss acre of good grass-land

is worth, in the richer and more populous Cantons, from 1500 to 2000

francs. Milk, and what is made from it, constitute the most important

resource of the peasant’s income. The manufacture of cheese is one

of the most ancient industries of the country, instruments for this

purpose having been found in different parts among the ruins of the

“Lake-dwellers,” whose date is anterior to all historical records.

On wedding occasions it was formerly the custom to present the

bride and bridegroom with a large cheese, the joint contribution of

their relatives; and this cheese was handed down, generation after

generation, as a family register, on which were inscribed births,

deaths, and marriages. Cheeses bearing date of 1660 are still to be

seen. In some parts of the country cheese forms the staple food of

the people, and the laborers are often paid with it. There are no

fewer than five thousand five hundred cheese-making factories, and

nearly 13,000 tons are exported annually, the value of which is over

$7,000,000.

In 1887 there were exported to the United States 4,262,000 pounds, at

an invoice valuation of $658,000. During the Alpine pasture season the

cheese is made in the little stone huts or _sennes_ of the herdsmen,

and brought down in the autumn; the herdsman will descend from the

pastures with a cheese weighing from one hundred and fifty to one

hundred and seventy-five pounds on his shoulders. The larger the cheese

the better its quality. Each cow is supposed to yield a hundred-weight

of cheese during the summer months. The average of fat contained in the

milk of the best Swiss cows is three and three-tenths per cent., though

in a few cases it may show four to four and a half per cent. of fat or

oil. The several varieties of cheese are classified: either according

to consistency of material, as _dur_, _ferme_, and _mou_ (hard, firm,

and soft); or according to the proportion of fatty matter, as _gras_,

_migras_, or _maigre_ (rich, medium, or thin); or according to the

coagulation, whether by rennet (_à pressure_) or by sour milk (_à lait

aigre_). The better kinds of Swiss cheese are as much the products of

skill and high art as the Swiss watch and Swiss embroidery. The best

and most abundant, retaining nearly all the elements of the milk, with

its nutritive value, is the _Emmenthal_, known as the _Schweizerkäse_,

and is made in the valley of the Emme, Canton of Bern. This is a round

cheese eighty to one hundred centimetres in diameter, ten to fifteen

centimetres thick, and weighing from fifty to one hundred kilos. or

more. Next in importance is the _Gruyère_, called after the village

of that name in Freiburg, around which it is asserted grow succulent

herbs of aromatic juices, that perfume the milk of which this cheese

is made, that is so well known and highly appreciated throughout the

world. Another celebrated cheese is the _Schabzieger_, or green cheese,

known as the Sago or Sapsago. Its manufacture dates back to the tenth

century, and it is still largely produced in the Canton of Glarus. The

peculiarity of this cheese is due partly to the method of coagulation,

and partly to treatment with the _Schabziegerklee_, a plant grown for

the purpose in Schwyz. The analysis of the _Emmenthal_ and _Gruyère_

cheeses is given: the former, water, 34.92; fatty matter, 31.26;

caseine, 29.88; salts, 3.94: the latter, water, 34.57; fatty matter,

29.12; caseine, 32.51; and salts, 3.80. There is at Cham the largest

and most successful milk-condensing factory in the world, with branch

establishments in England, Germany, and Orange County, New York. It

uses the milk of not less than six to seven thousand cows, and its

product is known far and wide. At Romanshorn, also, the Swiss Alpine

Milk Exporting Company does an immense export business of pure milk

produced from healthy, grass-fed cows. These companies claim to have

satisfactorily solved the problem of condensing and preserving milk

without altering its original composition, either by the addition of

sugar or other preservative substances. Switzerland is veritably the

land “flowing with milk and honey, and cattle upon a thousand hills.”

Great attention is paid to apiaries; the honey is famed for its aroma

and delicacy; though some tourists are disposed to doubt if that which

is on every breakfast-table is all the product of the little busy

hymenopteran.

The first railway on Swiss soil was a short piece from St. Louis to

Basel, opened in 1844; but the first purely Swiss line was that from

Zurich to Baden, opened in 1847; yet Switzerland has to-day more

railways in proportion to area than any other country of Europe. Its

railroad mileage per ten thousand population, stands third in Europe,

being exceeded only by Sweden and Denmark; and in outlay for the same

per capita, it comes second, England being first. By a federal law of

1872, the right to grant concessions to railroads was vested solely

in the Confederation, but the co-operation of the Cantons was to be

sought in the preliminary negotiations. The revised Constitution of

1874 expressly sanctioned the condition into which railroad affairs

had been brought by previous legislation; for the 23d article repeats

the constitutional provisions of 1848 regarding public works, and

another article is added; the 26th declaring that “legislation on the

construction and management of railroads belongs to the Confederation.”

All railroad companies, whether confined to a single Canton or running

within the limits of more than one, and of whatever length, from trunk

lines down to the shortest funicular, desiring a concession, must first

apply to the Federal Council, submitting the necessary documents and

information. These are at once transmitted by the Federal Council to

the cantonal government or governments through which the projected

railway proposes to run, and negotiations take place between cantonal

authorities and representatives of the railway as to the concessions

asked for, under the presidency of a delegation of the Federal Council,

including the chief of that particular department. After the Federal

Council has settled the terms of the concession, it sends a message,

with the text of the proposed conditions, to the Federal Assembly for

their consideration. The ultimate decision rests with the Federal

Assembly, and they may grant a concession even if the Canton opposes

it. The purchase of the Swiss railways by the Confederation has

been much discussed of late years, but so far without any result.

The Confederation has left the development of railroads to private

enterprises, and never exercised its right of subsidies to railways

except in the case of the St. Gothard Company, which pierced the Alps

with a tunnel of incalculable value to the whole of Switzerland. By

this tunnel Switzerland overcame the isolation resulting from an

altitude above the sea; linking north and south, central Europe and

Italy, in new bonds of amity, and opening through the very heart of

the Alps a new highway for the nations. It is one of the greatest

triumphs of modern engineering, one of the grandest monuments of human

skill. It is the longest tunnel in the world, being fifteen kilometres

long, or nearly nine and a half miles; one and a half miles longer

than the Mont Cenis tunnel. In addition to the great tunnel there

are fifty-two smaller tunnels approaching it, making a total length

of tunnels in getting through the Alps fifteen miles. The St. Gothard

railway proper extends from Immensee, in Switzerland, to Chiasso, in

Italy, a distance of one hundred and thirteen miles, and there are in

all not less than fifty-six tunnels, comprising more than one-fifth

of the whole line, or twenty-three miles of tunnelling. The width of

the great tunnel is twenty-six feet and the height nineteen feet. It

requires, at express-train speed, sixteen minutes to pass through it.

It is about one thousand feet below Andermatt, and five thousand to

six thousand five hundred feet below the peaks of the St. Gothard. The

preliminary works were begun at Göschenen, on the north side, June the

4th, and at Airolo, on the south side, July the 2d, 1872. Louis Favre,

of Geneva, was the contractor.[83] On February 28, 1880, a perforation

from the south side penetrated the last partition between north and

south sections, and the workmen on either side exchanged greetings. On

the 22d of May, 1882, the first train passed over the line, and every

town from Luzern to Milan celebrated the completion with banquets and

excursions; and its business, passenger and traffic, at once assumed

immense proportions. The construction cost 56,000,000 francs; which was

partly paid by subventions from Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, the

conditions and respective amounts of which were the subject of a treaty

between these governments. It penetrates the mountain like a corkscrew,

making four complete loops within a distance of twenty miles, in order

to attain the requisite elevation, when it emerges into daylight only

to enter again the main tunnel. The waters of the Reuss and the Ticino

supplied the necessary motive power for working the screws attached

to the machinery for compressing the air. The borers applied to the

rock the piston of a cylinder made to rotate with great rapidity by

the pressure of air, reduced to one-twentieth of its ordinary volume;

then, when they had made the holes sufficiently deep, they withdrew the

machines and charged the mines with dynamite. After the explosion, the

_débris_ was cleared away and the borers returned to their place. This

work was carried on day and night for nearly ten consecutive years.

The official report shows that three hundred and ten of the workmen

were killed by accidents during the building of the tunnel, and eight

hundred and seventy-seven were wounded or received minor injuries. The

work was done by Italians; no others would accept so much toil and

danger for so little pay. There were used in its construction 2,000,000

pounds of dynamite and 700,000 kilos. of illuminating oil. The problem

of keeping the temperature and atmosphere of the tunnel within a limit

involving perfect safety to persons passing through it, proved one

of the most difficult encountered. It was satisfactorily solved by

the establishment of immense steam-pumping machines, which constantly

throw in an ample supply of fresh air, and maintain a temperature never

rising above 20° Celsius or 68° Fahrenheit. There is at present being

projected, by the Italian and Swiss governments, the Simplon tunnel, to

pierce the Alps about midway between Mont Cenis and St. Gothard, which

will be one kilometre longer than the St. Gothard,--that is, sixteen

kilometres, or about ten miles in length.

In practical engineering the Swiss may challenge rivalry with any

other nation. The suspension bridge at Freiburg, constructed in 1834,

at that time had the largest single curve of any bridge in the world,

being nine hundred feet in length, and one hundred and eighty high.

One of the most daring feats of modern engineering is the cog-wheel

railway up to Pilatus-culm, on the Lake of Luzern, six thousand seven

hundred and twenty-four feet high. The road-bed is of solid masonry

faced with granite blocks. Streams and gorges are traversed by means

of stone bridges. There are seven tunnels from thirty to three hundred

feet in length. The rack-rail, midway between and somewhat higher than

the tracks, is of wrought steel, and has a double row of vertical cogs

milled out of solid steel bars. The locomotive and car containing

thirty-two seats form one train, with two movable axles and four

cog-wheels gripping the cogs, and which, on downward trips, can be

controlled by vigorous automatic brakes. The speed of the locomotive

is two hundred feet per minute. The road has an average gradient of

about one foot in every two. Another piece of skilful engineering and

of much scientific interest is the new electric mountain railway up the

Burgenstock, also on the Lake of Luzern, it being the first application

of this powerful agent to a mountain railway. The primary source of

the motive power is three miles away, where an immense water-wheel of

one hundred and fifty horse-power has been erected. This works two

dynamoes, each of thirty horse-power. The electricity thus generated is

transmitted for three miles across the valley, by means of insulated

copper wires, to another pair of dynamoes, the negatives of the first,

placed in a station at the head of the railway. Here the electric

force is converted into mechanical power by the ordinary connection

of leather belts, gearing the dynamoes, to two large driving-wheels

of nine feet diameter. Then by shafting and cogs the power is carried

on to an immense wheel of sixteen feet diameter, and around this

passes a wire rope with each end connected to the cars. One man only

is required to control the motion of the cars. The whole apparatus

for this purpose is arranged compactly before him, and no scientific

knowledge is required to manage it. Switzerland has developed the use

of electricity to a greater extent, probably, than any other country;

the mountain streams furnishing a power ready to hand, and the Swiss

in every possible way are utilizing it for electrical purposes. There

is a railway to the summit of the Jungfrau being projected that will

surpass all existing works of the kind. It will be built entirely in

the rim of the mountain, in order that it may be completely safe from

storms, avalanches, and landslips. The tunnel will be on the western

slope, which is very steep but the shortest route. It will start from

Stegmalten, two miles from Lauterbrunnen, a point two thousand eight

hundred feet above the sea, running a southeasterly direction, under

the Mönch and the Silver Horn, to the summit. The road is estimated

to be twenty-one thousand four hundred and fifty feet in length, and

will run as close beneath the surface of the mountain as possible.

The engineers supervising the construction are Herr Köchlin, who was

one of M. Eiffel’s principal assistants in building the lofty tower

in Paris, and Colonel Locher, of Luzern, the constructor of the Mount

Pilatus Railway. The cost is put at 56,000,000 francs, and it is to

be completed within five years. The magnitude of this work is shown

in the statement that the quantity of rock necessary to be removed is

thirteen times that taken from the St. Gothard tunnel. At Winterthur

and Schaffhausen, locomotives, other engines and heavy machinery of

superior character, are being made, with occasional shipments even to

the United States. The recent movement of Switzerland, following the

example of other civilized nations, in adopting a patent law, will give

a new impulse to the natural mechanical genius of its citizens, and

the resultant establishment of other prosperous manufacturing plants.

This patent law, which went into effect November, 1888, protects only

material objects and not _processes_. This feature is said to be due

to the efforts of the manufacturers of aniline colors and chemicals,

whose interest would be injuriously affected by a law as comprehensive

as that of the United States, which protects “useful arts” and

“compositions of matter” as well as tools and machines.

If a country’s roads be the “measure of its civilization,” Switzerland

would be easily first. Many of the roads, specially in the Alpine

districts, represent an immense cost and the boldest engineering. There

is not in the country a road for the use of which toll is charged;

for, to their apprehension, a toll would be a contradiction of the

very purpose for which the road was made. There is a road-master

(_wegmeister_) for every Commune, but he is appointed and paid by the

Canton. Though there is so much rainfall, the soil being permeable

and favorable to the percolation of the water, the roads, even after

a heavy rain, rapidly become dry and clean; everywhere you find them

as skilfully constructed and vigilantly repaired as the drives through

a park; the cost of their construction and maintenance is defrayed by

cantonal and communal taxation. The importance of the mountain roads

is recognized by a provision in the constitution, by which the Cantons

of Uri, Grisons, Ticino, and Valais receive an annual indemnity on

account of their international Alpine roads; to Uri 80,000 francs; to

Grisons 200,000 francs; to Ticino 200,000 francs; to Valais 50,000

francs, with an additional indemnity of 40,000 francs to the Cantons

of Uri and Ticino for clearing the snow from St. Gothard road, so long

as that road shall not be replaced by a railroad.[84] These sums are

to be withheld by the federal government if the roads are not kept in

suitable condition.

The “_fremden-industrie_,” or exploitation of foreigners, is not the

least profitable industry of the country. There are over 400 mountain

resorts, and, in fact, for months the entire country is one great

consolidated hotel company.[85] Palatial hostleries with metropolitan

_menus_ and _salles à manger_, bengal lights and brass bands, reached

by cable roads, are perched on crags where only the eagle used to build

his eyrie or the chamois seek refuge. In July and August a quarter of a

million tourists fill this little mountain country through its length

and breadth with their joyfulness and jargon. This annual irruption

constitutes a perennial well-spring of good fortune to many branches of

industry and to a large number of Swiss people.

CHAPTER XVI.

PEASANT HOME AND LIFE.

“Mid the murmurings of his fountains,

And the echoes of his mountains,

Where the lordly eagle soars,

Where the headlong torrent roars,

He is, as he was meant to be,

Poor and virtuous, calm and free.”

The industry, thrift, helpfulness, and simple contentment of the Swiss

peasants, next to the natural scenery, attract our attention. One

must respect their laborious industry, frugality, and perseverance,

and regret that so much toil, with such close and unfailing economy,

should have such meagre results. Dwelling among the crags and clouds,

their flats mostly water and their slopes mostly ice, they get out of

their little holdings every farthing that they will yield, and squander

nothing. There is a kind of manliness in their never-ending struggle

against the niggardliness and severity of nature; out-braving and

beating its hard opposition. Sharp-pressing need spurs them to wring

a difficult and scant subsistence from the mountain-steeps. Secluded

and poor, yet brave and cheerful, they recall the lines from the

description of the old Corycian peasant:

“And wisely deem’d the wealth of monarchs less

Than little of his own, because his own did please.”

Every little scrap of ground is turned to the best account. If a few

square yards can anywhere be made or reclaimed the requisite labor is

not grudged. Many of these sturdy people compel an incredibly little

spot of ground to yield them enough, and some to spare. This surprising

product from a soil, much of it very poor, is due to the perfection

of spade-work; each field, or rather patch, has the perfection of

shape given to it to facilitate cultivation and drainage. This small

cultivator, only with spade in hand, can fertilize the waste and

perform prodigies which nothing but his love of the land could enable

him to accomplish. These peasants have a proverb that “if the plough

has a ploughshare of iron, the spade has a point of gold.” In the

mountainous districts the land is reclaimed by this _petite culture_.

In fact, the man makes the very soil. He builds terraces along steep

inclines, lining them with blocks of stone, and then packs the earth to

them, transforming the mountain and the rock into a little patch where

he plants a vine or raises a little oats or maize. Up the heights of

rocks which even goats cannot climb, on the very brow of the abyss, the

peasant goes, clinging to the precipice with iron crampers on his feet

in search of grass. He hangs on the sides of the rocks which imprison

the valley and mows down a few tufts of grass from craggy shelves. The

hay thus gathered is called _wildheu_, and the reaper _wildheuer_. This

peasant mountain-mower is essentially _sui generis_. He is accustomed

to all the perils of the mountain, and the day before the mowing season

begins--a day fixed by communal decree--he bids farewell, perhaps for

the last time, to his wife and children. His scythe on his shoulder,

armed with his iron-shod stick, provided with his clamp-irons, a cloth

or a net rolled up in his bag, he sets out at midnight, in order that

the dawn may find him at his work. During the two months of hay-harvest

he only goes down to the village three or four times to renew his

supply of food or linen. By this hard and perilous occupation an Alpine

mower makes from three to five francs a day, his food not included;

and many times under some projecting rock he must seek a bed and pass

the night. Once dried, this wild hay is carefully gathered into a

cloth or net and carried down to the first little plain, where it can

be made into a stack, which is loaded with large stones to prevent it

being blown away. In winter, when everything is covered with snow, the

mower climbs again the perpendicular sides of the mountain, carrying

his little wooden sledge on his shoulders. He loads it with hay,

seats himself on the front, and shoots down with the swiftness of an

arrow. At times, the snow softened by the warm wind which blows upon

the heights, is detached in an avalanche behind him, and swallows him

up before he reaches the valley. This aromatic hay, composed of the

nourishing flora of the high Alps, of delicate and succulent plants,

of the wild chrysanthemum, the dwarf carline thistle, the red-flowered

veronica, the Alpine milfoil with its black calyx, the clover with its

great tufts, and the meum, an umbelliferous plant, gives a delicious

milk, and is greatly sought after for the fattening of cattle. In these

steep solitudes where the grass is found, the life of man is so exposed

and accidents are so frequent that the law forbids there should be

more than one mower in a family. With him it is a fight for life, not

infrequently conducted to the death. At all times great charges of

wrath hang over him,--a beetling crag, a stream of stones, a cataract

of ice, a moving field of snow, the flash that rends his roof, the wind

that strips his trees, the flood that drowns his land, against each of

these messengers of ill he must hold a separate watch, and must learn

to brave each danger when it comes, alike by flush of noon and in the

dead of night. The little valley below lies at the mercy of these ice-

and storm-engendering heights. Year by year the peasants fight against

its being extorted from their dominion. Yet this feeble community in

the valley, by their stout hearts and virtuous lives, continue to make

it smile on the frowning mountains:

“Durum! sed levius fit patientia

Quicquid corrigere est nefas.”

It is a strange and savage reverence which the peasants feel for the

mountains. They seem to grow like each other in spirits, even as a man

and wife who live in peace grow like each other year by year. With no

people is the love of home and the native soil so strongly developed.

To return to his village in the midst of his beloved mountains is the

constant dream of his life, and to realize it he will endure every

privation and bind himself to the hardest and most painful toil.

One hope possesses him,--to see again the snows, the glaciers, the

lakes, the great oaks, and the familiar pines of his country. It is a

sentiment so human--of home, of kindred, of the accustomed locality, of

country--that has fostered itself on him and binds him to the spot with

a chain he has no power to break. The Almighty himself has implanted

in the human breast that passionate love of country which rivets with

irresistible attraction the Esquimau to his eternal snows, the Arab to

his sandy desert, and the Swiss to his rugged mountains:

“Cling to thy home: if there the meanest shed

Yield thee a hearth and shelter for thy head,

And some poor plot, with vegetables stored,

Be all that Heaven allots thee for thy board,

Unsavory bread and herbs that scatter’d grow

Wild on the river-bank or mountain brow,

Yet e’en this cheerless mansion shall provide

More heart’s repose than all the world beside.”

There is a quietness and a sombre severity in the lives of these

peasants. In spite of occasional merry-making, pleasure-seeking is

rare. They have no great sensibility or expression of joy, but a

composed satisfaction, a kind of phlegmatic good humor, marks the

boundary of their happiness. Many visitors to the country are disposed

to complain of the plainness of their demeanor; that their speech is

rough and their style hard. The simple abruptness of the peasant’s

greeting is not without its charms. How far one feels from the

obsequious manners of the city, from profuse and insincere compliments!

Is there not to some extent in all this a philosophical basis? In

general, is it not true that the members of a republic, conscious of

their independence and self-importance, adhere less scrupulously to the

conventional regularity of forms? Again, the extreme politeness which

sometimes characterizes the subject of an arbitrary government may be

the result of that policy which introduces and encourages an exterior

air of civility as the mark of subordination and respect. The Swiss

peasants have neither the time, disposition, nor necessity to affect

these elegant improvements,--fopperies of a trifling and superficial

elegance which frequently serve merely to soften the deformities of

vice. They are delightfully natural human beings, human nature simple

and unabashed, and manifest a courteous consideration for each other’s

comforts and sensibilities. They have no occasion to assert offensively

that equality of right which nobody denies, and they respect each

other’s rights as they do their own. There are no castes to clash,

no lower class to assert itself in rudeness, and no higher class to

provoke rudeness by insolent assumption. They maintain old-fashioned

habits of courteous hospitality, and the workmen in the field will

shout out to the passer-by a kindly _guten tag_ or _guten abend_,

with the _a_ prolonged beyond the amen of a chant, and the children

invariably take off their caps or drop a courtesy. Even the pastoral

beggars present a species of attractive mendicity, as the little

children come out to meet you with offerings of Alpine roses, cherries

on their branches, and strawberries in the leaves, extending their

hands, with the common entreaty--_bitte, bitte_ (pray do).

We hear a great deal of the peasant’s chalet. Though very picturesque

in appearance, as they glisten in the sunbeams on the slopes or dot

the pastoral valleys, these chalets are by no means such charming

dwellings as often pictured. Owing to the original abundance of timber,

it was almost the only material employed in the building of these

houses. There are practically three styles: the so-called block-house,

in which the logs are laid one upon the other, notched at the ends

so as to fit into each other at the angles where they cross; the

post-built house, in which upright posts and a strong framework are

filled in with planks; and the _riegelhaus_, with brick or stone.

All soon become dark-brown of hue, and are quaint and distinctive in

form. They are covered with low flat roofs of shingles, weighted with

stones to prevent them from being carried away by the wind; the roofs

overhang the walls like the brim of a hat, widened to protect the

face from the rain, and are frequently shaped and sculptured by the

knife with curious and patient skill. There is a peculiarly sheltered

look in the broad projection of the thatched roofs, which, with the

thick covering of moss, and their visible beams, making all kinds of

triangles upon the ancient plaster of the walls, are very odd and

attractive things. The low panelled rooms are innocent of gilding and

of painting, but are cleanliness itself. Hollow niches over the doors

contain statues of the Virgin, heroes, or saints. The plain benches,

tables, cupboards, and chairs are made of the whitest wood, and are

so scoured, washed, and polished that to paint or varnish them would

be to defile them. Most articles of furniture are quaintly shaped and

ornamented, old looking, but rubbed bright and in good preservation,

from the nut-cracker, curiously carved, to the double-necked cruet,

pouring oil and vinegar out of the same bottle. They are heated with

porcelain stoves, cylindrical in shape, two and a half to three feet

in diameter, reaching from the floor almost to the ceiling, and bound

with bright brass rings to give them strength. These stoves are built

of white enamelled tile, which is two or three inches in thickness, and

the blocks of tile are put in layers, the inside of the stove being

lined with heavy fire-brick, leaving the flue not more than ten inches

in diameter. From this wall of fire-brick run a series of small valves

up and down and around, carrying the hot air to a number of caps at the

top and bottom of the stove, and thence into the room. Wood or turf is

used, and it is astonishing how little fuel is necessary. A fire is

started in the morning, the damper remains open until the gases have

all passed up the chimney, and only the smouldering ashes remain, then

the damper is closed, and no more fuel is needed for twelve hours; if,

before retiring, the process of the morning be repeated, it will remain

warm through the entire night. The stoves are not unsightly, but in

many instances ornamental, having a clean and well-polished surface,

with doors and caps of brass highly burnished. In the centre of the

stove is a receptacle for warming dishes or keeping a supply of hot

water. The stoves are placed close up in the corner, or form part of

the partition between rooms so as to be out of the way and heat two

rooms.

To some cottages there is an outside stair leading to the second

story, or even to the third, if there be one, for these houses are

frequently the property of several owners. The peasant who, in the

Valais, possesses the third part of a mule and the fourth part of a

cow, has often only the half or third of a house. “The Jura cottage

has no daintiness of garden nor wealth of farm about it,--it is indeed

little more than a delicately-built chalet, yet trim and domestic,

mildly intelligent of things other than pastoral, watch-making and the

like; though set in the midst of its meadows, the gentian at its door,

the lily of the valley wild in the copses hard by. My delight in these

cottages, and in the sense of human industry and enjoyment through the

whole scene, was at the root of all pleasure in its beauty.”[86]

Within and without these chalets are mural inscriptions and symbols:

“Quarter’d o’er with scutcheons of all hues,

And proverbs sage, which passing travellers

Linger to read, and ponder o’er their meaning.”

They are put upon the beam, upon panels, carved in the cornices

everywhere to catch the eye. They are most various in character,

friendly welcomes, praises of their native land, exhortations to unity,

to freedom, and to courage. On the great projecting beam supporting the

roof, called _sablière_, are often painted, amid ornaments and flowers,

the initials J.M.J. (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph), as well as the name of

the man for whom the house was made, and that of the master carpenter

who built it. Those of the Bernese Oberland have inscriptions reminding

man of his duty and the solemnity of life; of which the following are

samples:

“The friends from whom we needs must part

’Twill pleasure give to meet again.

’Gainst malice, lies, hypocrisy,

Closed may this house forever be.”

“My God, my strength, whom I will trust,

A buckler unto me;

The horn of my salvation

And my high tower is He.”

“On account of one day, be afraid of all days.”

Many of the inscriptions are from the Bible, and thus not only the

churches, but public buildings and private houses teach morality. In

the Grisons you see on many the arms of the three leagues engraved; one

will bear a cross, another a wild goat, a third a man on horseback, and

above them the lines carved,--

“These are the arms of the Grisons,

On the mountains their strongholds lie;

God will have the graciousness

To preserve their liberty.”

This inscription is on a church-bell, dating back four centuries:

“Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango” (“I call the living, I

mourn the dead, I break the lightning”).

The stone chalets in Ticino have their fronts painted pink, and

decorated in Italian fashion, with garlands of flowers and symbolical

vases, pouring out wine and milk. The finest of these houses are not

ducal palaces, the poorest are never hovels. A real Swiss cottage is as

much adapted to Swiss scenery as the Gothic is suited to the holy and

sublime feelings of devotion; there is a fitness in the subdued color

of the resin from the larch to an association which requires extreme

simplicity; the same cottage painted white would be found offensive

and obtruding. Near by is the barn, a wooden bridge thrown over the

entrance, with a long and gradual ascent, that conducts the wagons

loaded with hay to the loft. Some of these are as generous in size and

as well built and equipped as the best Pennsylvania barns. It may be

that the dwelling, barn, and dairy are all under one roof; but if so,

they are separated with a scrupulous regard to neatness. All wastes are

corded and covered up outside like so many piles of treasure, to renew

the soil when summer comes round. This _fumier_ is the special pride of

the peasant, and is frequently an imposing object, arranged in layers,

with the straw rolled and platted at the sides; it stands proudly by

the roadside and often the ornament of the front yard. Everything is

in its place; order reigns by virtue of some natural law. There is a

kind of Robinson Crusoe industry about their houses and their little

properties; they are perpetually building, repairing, altering, or

improving something. Thought and care are day by day bestowed on every

bit of ground to secure a sufficiency of the things that will be needed

in the long winter. Every plant is treated by itself as though it was

a child; every branch pruned, every bed watered, every gourd trained.

From hour to hour the changes in the heavens are observed and what

they import considered; for they may import a great deal; the time

allowed for bringing the little crops to maturity is so short that

the loss of sunshine for a few days may cause anxious thought. It is

a sight which awakens reflection and touches the heart. There is much

of healthy purity prevailing around these cottage homes. Every one,

according to his means, endeavors to make the homestead an ornament

to the grassy and elm-shadowed wayside. The green rock-strewn turf

comes up to the door, and the bench is along the wall outside. Flowers

surround and adorn the windows, the luscious clusters of the vine ripen

above the porch, and the little violet creeps over the stone steps or

hangs in a sunny niche, its flowers gleaming remotely. Nothing can be

more charming than the large carnations which often brighten the dark

larch or pine-wood chalets, with their glossy red blossoms hanging

from the windows and balconies. The pleasant vine-sheltered door seems

to hospitably invite the imagination of the passer-by into the sweet

domestic interior of this cottage life. And there is about the inner

life of these humble homes a something one may almost say of sanctity,

which is not so apparent, at all events on the surface of things, in

splendid mansions. Their splendor is transmuted money, there is no

poetry in it; if hearts are moved by it, it is not in that fashion or

to that issue that it touches them. Quite different with these quiet

and secluded homes. There every object has a pleasing history. There

industry has accumulated its fruits, frugality its comforts, and virtue

diffused its contentment. The care that is taken of it tells you how

hard it had been to come by. You read in it a little tale of the

labor, the self-denial expended on its acquisition; it is a revelation

of an inner life which you are the better for contemplating and for

sympathizing with. Shut off from the world, untainted by luxury,

unstained by avarice mid lonely toil, practising the simple forms of

life and faith, maintaining bravely and contentedly a hard struggle

in their Alpine glens, these peasants are on better terms with life

than many people who are regarded to have made a better bargain. “To

watch the corn grow or the blossoms set, to draw hard breath on the

ploughshare or spade,” have attractions for them, not accounted for in

the meagre train of advantages and comforts they bring, and must be

sought in the inspiration of the poet,--

“Happy the man whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound;

Content to breathe his native air

On his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

Whose flocks supply him with attire;

Whose trees in summer yield him shade,

In winter fire.”

Often the cottage is perched on a mountain crag, and the peasant must

be sleepless and prompt, for he lies down with danger at his door and

must rise to meet it when the moment comes. There is a continual menace

of desolation and ruin:

“No zephyr fondly soothes the mountain’s breast,

But meteors glare and stormy glooms invest.”

At dusk you see a cottage on a shelf of rock, a hut in which the

shepherd churns his milk, a bit of soil in which he grows his herbs,

a patch of grass on which his heifers browse, a simple cross at which

his children pray. At dead of night a tremor passes through the

mountain-side, a slip of earth takes place, or a “thunderbolt of snow”

which no one hears, rings up the heaven. At dawn there is a lonely

shelf of rock above, a desolate wreck of human hopes below, and

“The gentle herd returns at evening close,

Untended from the hills, and white with snows.”[87]

Some of the Alpine districts are entirely pastoral, where naught save

cow-herd’s horn and cattle-bell is heard. In the spring it is a pretty

sight to see the groups of cows with tinkling bells start for the

mountains. The bells are nearly globular, thin, and light, of different

sizes, from one foot to two inches in diameter; they are various in

pitch, all melting into one general musical effect, forming in right

harmonious proportion to produce the concord of sounds without any

clashing tones, just as the song of many birds does.

“The tintinnabulation that so musically swells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells.”

The cows are assembled in herds on the village green, and to the call

of the herdsmen they begin their march to the mountain pastures. Each

herd has its queen, who leads the procession. The choice of the queen

depends on her strength and beauty. Great care and expense are incurred

in the ambition to procure one peerless animal for this purpose, and

in order to develop a combative and fearless spirit they are said

to be fed on oats soaked in spirits. The queen wears a finer collar

and larger bell than the others. Proud of her superior strength, she

seems, with the calmness of a settled conviction, to be defying her

companions, and to be seeking--impatient for combat--some antagonist

worthy to measure strength with her. See

“How gracefully yon heifer bears her honors!

Ay! well she knows she’s leader of the herd,

And take it from her, she’d refuse to feed.”

At the end of the herd marches the bull, with his compact body, little

pointed horns, curly hair, and, if he is of a wicked temper, a plate of

iron over his eyes. Then comes the train of dairy-girls and cow-herds,

who tend the cows in the summer pasturages, with wagons loaded with the

implements of their calling, the milking-stool, peculiarly constructed

pails, and the wooden vessels in which milk is carried up and down the

precipices to the chalet.[88] When different droves meet, it is almost

sure to happen that the two queens defy each other to single combat.

The herdsmen themselves promote these struggles, and are very proud

of the victory of their own queen cow. The herds begin by browsing

on the grass at the foot of the mountain, and then gradually, as the

snow disappears and is replaced by a fresh carpet of verdure, they go

higher, mounting insensibly till in the month of August they reach

the summit of the Alp. Then in September they descend slowly and by

degrees, as they went up. On their way up the mountain, if the start be

made too early in the spring, the water may be found high, and the herd

stops at the edge of the torrent, afraid to cross. The chief herdsman

seeks the parsonage, knocks at the door, and explains to the curé the

critical situation of the herd, and begs his prayers and blessings.

“Il faut que vous nous disiez une messe

Pour que nous puissions passer.”

The shepherd leads a more solitary and perilous life in the mountains

than the herdsman, living on polenta and cheese, and for drink, water

or skimmed milk; and a little hay spread on a plank serves for a bed.

The highest and steepest parts of the Alps are apportioned to the

grazing of sheep and goats. Indeed, sometimes the sheep are carried up

one by one on men’s backs, and left there till the end of the summer,

when they are carried down, considerably fattened, in the same fashion.

Here the shepherd passes months, his only companions besides his flock

are the chamois,[89] who, in the moonlight, cross the snow-fields, the

glacier, or bound over the crevices and come to pasture on the grassy

slopes; and the snow-partridge, or white hen, and the _laemmergeier_,

or bearded vulture, a bird whose size surpasses that of the eagle,[90]

and who circles around these peaks as he watches for his prey, and, by

a sharp blow of his wing, to precipitate into the chasm any animal he

can take unawares and defenceless. Alas! for the poor shepherd belated

in a snow-storm, seeking vainly to recover the lost track; when the

wind seems like some cruel demon, buffeting, blinding, maddening, as

along ways rendered unfamiliar by the drifts he plunges, helpless,

hopeless; fainter and more faint, until at last there comes the awful

moment when he can fight no longer, and he sinks powerless down,

down into the soft and fatal depths; the drift sweeps over him,--he

is lost as surely as “some strong swimmer in his agony” who sinks in

mid-Atlantic among the boiling surge.