When the flock is taken to the Alps, the sheep, instead of being driven

before the shepherd, regularly follow him as he marches majestically

in front,--tall, thin, sunburnt, and dirty,--armed with his long

iron-pointed stick. Behind him the whole mountain is covered with

a moving mass of gray fleeces; other shepherds and Bergamese dogs,

with long woolly hair, the most vigilant of guardians, are scattered

at different points in this “living flood of white wool surging like

foaming waves.” The sheep do not disperse to feed until the chief

shepherd, turning his face round to them, either by a whistle or notes

from his pipe, seems to remind them that it is proper to do so. This

leader or captain literally marches abroad in the morning piping his

flocks forth to the pasture with some love sonnet, and his “fleecy

care” seem actually to be under the influence of his music. It is

by whistling that thousands of sheep are guided, the straying lambs

called back, and the dogs sent out and checked. In September, when the

shepherds bring down their flocks from the mountains, their wives and

children, who have remained in the plain making hay, the harvest, the

vintage, and gathering in of other fruits, go to meet them with songs

and waving flags. In the evening the whole village rejoices, dancing

goes on, and it is everybody’s festival:

“At night returning, every labor sped,

He sits him down, the monarch of a shed;

Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys

His children’s looks, that brighten at the blaze;

While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard,

Displays her cleanly platter on the board.”

The shepherds are happy men, content with their lot, loving their

free and nomad mountain life with its long lazy times of rest and its

moments of perilous activity. No simpler, honester, braver hearts are

to be found anywhere.

There is also the female swine-herd, who daily takes to pasture the

pigs and goats. She tends them all day on some stony, irreclaimed waste

land. In the evening when she returns with her four or five score, each

porker knows his own home in the village; some run on in advance of the

herd to get as soon as possible to the supper they know will be ready

for them; others do not separate themselves from the herd till they

arrive at the familiar door. Behind the swine follow the goats with

distended udders,--the poor man’s cow. They, too, disperse themselves

in the same fashion, from the desire to be promptly relieved of their

burden. Last of all come the deliberately-stepping, sober-minded cows.

The tinkling of their bells is heard over the whole of the little

village. In a few minutes the streets are cleared; every man, woman,

and child appear to have followed the animals into the houses to give

them their supper or to draw the milk from them, or, at all events,

to bed them for the night. Thus do these peasants from their earliest

years learn to treat their dumb associates kindly, almost as if they

were members of the family, to the support of which they so largely

contribute. They begin and end each day in company with them, and are

perfectly familiar with the ways and wants of the egotistic pig, of the

self-asserting, restless goat, and of the gentle, patient cow.

Sound travels far in these mountain solitudes, and the bells of the

flocks may be heard through them night and day. This concert of

cow-bells and of sheep-bells, suddenly heard in solitude and repeated

by the echoes, like a distant and mysterious choir, is one of the

features of Alpine life that most powerfully impress the feelings and

take hold of the imagination.

The mountains’ response to the “alphorn” is most singular and

beautiful. When the tune on the horn is ended, the Alps make, not

an echo, but a reproduction of it, in an improved and heightened

character; they take up, as it were, and chant the air again with

infinite sweetness and a dancing grace that is delightful. They seem to

constitute a natural instrument of music, of which the horn is but the

awakening breath. The writer, on behalf of the New England Conservatory

of Music, Boston, requested of the Swiss government samples of musical

instruments of Swiss origin. In answer an “alphorn,” of ancient form,

well constructed and of superior tone, was furnished, accompanied with

the statement that, after careful investigation, it was believed to be

the only musical instrument of “Swiss origin.” Distance softens the

tone of the “alphorn,” and assimilates it more nearly to the flute-like

sweetness of the echo which seems a sort of fairy answer coming out of

some magical hall in the rock. The tone is powerful, and the middle

notes extremely mellow.

The peasants call and answer their companions from peak to peak in

musical notes. The _Ranz des Vaches_, German _Kuhreihen_, are a

class of melodies prevailing and peculiar to the herdsmen. There is

no particular air of this name, but nearly every Canton has its own

herdsman’s song, each varying from the others in the notes as well as

in the words, and even in the dialect. There are as many songs and airs

which go by this name as there are valleys in Switzerland. A verse of

one, as rendered in the Canton of Appenzell, runs:

“The cow-herds of the Alps

Arise at an early hour.

CHORUS.

Ha, ah! ha, ah!

Come all of you,

Black and white,

Red and mottled,

Young and old;

Beneath this oak

I am about to milk you,

Beneath this poplar

I am about to press,

Liauba! Liauba! in order to milk.”

It is a song of melancholy, of the homesickness in which the absent

Swiss sees again, as in a musical vision, the chalet in which he was

born, the mountain where the herds shake their mellow bells as they

graze. It is, however, only in the refrain that is heard the melancholy

note, in this _Liauba! Liauba!_ thrown lingeringly to the winds,

and going from echo to echo, till it expires like a lament, and is

lost like a sigh in the infinite depths of the valley. The herds are

said to love and obey its strains. Without anything striking in the

composition, it has a powerful influence over the Swiss. Its effect on

Swiss soldiers absent in foreign service was so great, giving rise to

an irrepressible longing to return to their own country, that it was

forbidden to be played in the Swiss regiments in the French service,

on pain of death. All the music of the mountains is strange and wild,

having most probably received its inspiration from the grandeur of the

natural objects. Most of the sounds partake of the character of echoes,

being high-keyed but false notes, such as the rocks send back to the

valleys when the voice is raised above its natural key in order that it

may reach the caverns and savage recesses of inaccessible precipices.

The Swiss _yodel_, with its falsetto notes, is heard everywhere. Nor

must the sounds of the landscape be forgotten. With the bleating of

the flocks and the chimes of the cow-bells are mingled the murmuring of

the bees, the running streams, whispering pines, the melancholy voice

of the goat-herder, and the plaintive whistle of the mountain thrush.

Every member of a Swiss family produces his share. The whole family

take up their daily work before sunrise, suspend it only for their

meals, and end it only when the candles are put out at early bedtime.

The feeble efforts of old age and the petty industry of childhood

contribute to the sum of human toil. Children all work with their hands

for the common support, they help the elders in the common family

interests as soon as they can rock a cradle, drive a cow, or sweep a

floor; they thus acquire at home habits of application and industry

which stand them in good stead in after life. The little ones who are

taken by their parents to the field and are too young to work have

bells fastened to their belts, not for amusement, but, as the mothers

explain, “when we are in the fields and the children wander away,

thanks to the bells, we can always hear and find them, and, besides,

the sound of the bell drives away the serpents.”[91] Even the infant in

its baby-carriage passes the day amid the scenes of labor in which it

will soon be called to join. The women are not exempt from work, even

in the families of very substantial peasant proprietors. A stranger,

seeing the smart country girls at work about the cows’ food or in the

harvest field, perhaps barefooted, is apt to consider it as a proof

of extreme destitution. This is a mistake; it is merely the custom

of the country. A well-to-do peasant’s daughters, who are stylishly

dressed on Sundays, may be seen in the fields during the week. You see

the sturdy sunburnt creatures in petticoats, but otherwise manlike,

toiling side by side with their fathers and brothers in the rudest work

of the farm. They wear a broad-brimmed straw hat, and as the breeze

blows back its breadth of brim, the sunshine constantly adds depth to

the brown glow of their cheeks. In the absence of the men the women

do all the work,--mow the grass, cut the wood, look after the cattle,

make the cheese, bake the bread, and spin the wool. Whether they

are employed in spreading the litter on the floor of the stable, in

carrying the pails foaming with the freshly-drawn milk, or in turning

up with long wooden rakes the newly-mown hay, all their different

labors resemble festivals. From one hill to another, above the bed of

the mountain torrent, they reply to the songs of the young reapers by

chanting national airs, it may be _Rufst du, mein Vaterland_ (“callest

thou, my country”)! Their voices resemble modulated cries emitted by a

superabundance of life and joy; musicians note them down without being

able to imitate them; they are indigenous only on the waters or on

the green slopes of the Alps. The distinction between the sexes as to

labor in Switzerland has passed the temporary stage of evolution. Is

it not true everywhere that women are entering a new era of self-care;

that they are undertaking not only office-work, but professions, and

trades, and farm-work? and the change is going on with great speed.

The woman of fifty years ago would not only have refused to undertake

what the woman to-day achieves; she would have failed in it if she had.

The field of housework was in the last century vastly wider than it

is to-day; yet woman filled it. She spun and wove and knit as well as

sewed; and each household was a factory as well as a home. This sort

of work was differentiated by machinery and taken away from our houses

and wives. For a time woman was made more helpless and dependent than

ever before. But a readjustment appears to be going on. Woman has gone

out of the house and followed work. The sex is developing a robustness

and alertness and enterprise that we had attributed to man alone; it is

a revolutionary change in the mental adaptability, physical endurance,

and business capacity of woman.

The Swiss peasants may not shine by brilliant qualities or seductive

manners, but they are strongly framed, broad-chested, powerful, calm

in countenance, frank and open in expression, with bright eyes, and

largely sculptured features, but of rather heavy gait. The women are

active in figure, with expanded shoulders, supple arms, elastic limbs,

blue eyes, and healthy complexions. Light hair largely predominates,

ninety out of one hundred have hair of the different shades that make

auburn, from the very light-brown to the very fair, but few have red

hair, and scarcely any black. A mixture of manly beauty and feminine

modesty is harmoniously blended in their physiognomy; they appear

robust without coarseness; and their voices are soft and musical,

common to dwellers in cold countries. With these peasants where the

homespun is not unknown every one eats the bread of carefulness. They

are frugal and sparing in food; in the larder there is left little for

the mice at night. The diet of rye bread, milk, cheese, and potatoes

is at least wholesome, for they are all produced at home. They use

but little fresh meat, and mostly vegetables and bread. Of the latter

they are the champion consumers, it being estimated that the yearly

bread consumption is as high as three hundred and six pounds _per

capita_. Meeting children on the country road or village street, you

are sure to find almost every one of them munching bread, and it will

be entirely guiltless of sugar or jam. With the poorer classes meagre

cheese is the staple food. This is made of skimmed milk, and if not

positively bad, this negation of badness is its only virtue. Also dried

or mummy beef is much used. In the high mountain valleys the air is

so dry that for nine months out of the twelve meat has no tendency to

decomposition; availing themselves of this favorable condition, they

kill in the autumn the beef, pork, and game they will require for the

ensuing year. It is slightly salted and hung up to dry; in three or

four months’ time it is not only dried, but also cooked, at least the

air has given it all the cooking it will ever receive. It has become as

dry and hard as a board, and internally of the color of an old mahogany

table; externally there is nothing to suggest the idea of meat, and it

is undistinguishable from fragments of the mummies of the sacred bulls

taken from the catacombs at Memphis. Strange as it may appear, when

cut across the grain in shavings no thicker than writing-paper, it is

found not badly flavored, nor unusually repugnant to the process of

digestion. What is lacking in quality of the peasant’s food is made up

in quantity or rather the frequency with which it is partaken of. There

is early breakfast, lunch at nine A.M., called from its hour _s’nüni_,

dinner at twelve, lunch again at four P.M., called _s’vierli_, and

supper. It is astonishing to see how much solid flesh, good blood, and

healthy color can be produced by such inferior and limited diet.

The language of the peasants is characterized by rough gutturals

and the force with which dentals and hissing sounds are pronounced,

a sing-song accent, with numerous diminutions, contractions, and

omissions of the final syllable. There is much of what is designated

under the general name of _patois_,--a mixture of Celtic, Latin, and

Italian words; a Babylonish dialect,--a parti-colored dress of patched

and piebald languages. This corrupt dialect is very sonorous and very

harmonious, but is the relic of an almost extinguished antiquity. In

the Engadine, and the remote valleys of the Swiss Alps adjoining Italy

and the Tyrol, the peasants use the Romansch and Ladin; the latter is

more musical, and to give an idea of it the following verse from a

popular song is transcribed:

“Montagnas, ste bain!

Tu gad e valleda,

Tu fraischa contreda,

Squir eir in mi adsinga,

Montagnas, ste bain!”

“Ye mountains, adieu!

Thou vale with green bowers,

Fresh meadows and flowers,

When from you I must sever,

Ye mountains, adieu!”

The peasants still observe many manners and customs of the olden times:

some the imprints of the early influences of the Burgundians, others of

the Alemanni and the Ostrogoths. The separation by the mountain ranges

of populations near and akin to each other, which led to the formation

of so many dialects, also favored the growth and long continuance of

local customs and traditions, giving to many localities a strongly

marked individuality.

In one part of the Canton of Ticino a very quaint marriage ceremony

prevails. The bridegroom dresses in his “Sunday best,” and, accompanied

by as many relatives and friends as he can muster for the fête, goes

to claim his bride. Finding the door locked, he demands admittance;

the inmates ask him his business, and in reply he solicits the hand of

the maiden of his choice. If his answer be deemed satisfactory, he is

successively introduced to a number of matrons and old maids, some,

perhaps, deformed and badly goitered. Then he is presented to some big

dolls, all of whom he scornfully rejects amid general merriment. The

bewildered bridegroom, with his impetuosity and temper sorely tried,

is then informed that his lady love is absent, and he is invited in

to see for himself. He rushes in, searches from room to room until he

finds her ready to go forth in the bridal-dress to the church. These

obstacles thrown across the path of accepted suitors, in order to

test their fidelity or to restrain their ardor, are of very ancient

origin. Who has not read of the self-imposed task of Penelope or of

Atlanta, in classic fable; or the story of Brunhilde, in the Norse

mythology, when Gunther’s courage and skill were tested not in vain? In

other remote places the peasants still observe the old German idea of

regulating matrimonial affairs by the Sundays of the month, each Sunday

having a distinct part and significance assigned to it and designated

in turn,--Review Sunday, Decision Sunday, Contract Sunday, Possession

Sunday. On the first the girls appear in dress-parade for the benefit

of the young men with hymeneal hearts. Then they separate, each one

to ponder for a week over the image which caught his or her fancy.

On the following Sunday the enamored swains are permitted to bow to

the objects of their choice; if the bow is returned with a pleasant

smile, he feels encouraged; if his salute is returned coldly, he is

correspondingly discouraged. The third Sunday he is interviewed by

the parents of the young lady, and, if character and conditions are

satisfactorily established, the marriage is arranged to be celebrated

on Possession Sunday. In Uri a citizen was not allowed to marry a

stranger without paying to the village a fine of 300 francs. In many

places the local spirit is strong as to social relations, and the

youth in one Commune who would court a girl of another district meets

a rude reception from her fellow-villagers. During the fourteenth

century the attendants at a wedding were limited to a very few guests.

In Zurich the most distinguished personage dared not invite more than

twenty mothers of families to the wedding feast, nor have more than

two hautboys, two violins, and two singers. The bridegroom paid for

the wedding dinner, the cost of which was fixed so much _per capita_

for every invited male, married female, and maiden; the allowance for

the first was double that of the second, and four times that of the

third. In other Cantons the wedding was a grand occasion, an imposing

and public affair in which the whole village was expected to take

part. In the house of the newly-married pair there were open tables,

and drinking, dancing, and feasting went on all night. But these

Pantagruel repasts are now no longer in fashion anywhere. The day fixed

for the wedding, among the peasants, is always Sunday. In the morning,

before going to church, the invited guests meet at the bride’s house

to partake of wine, soup, and fritters. After the marriage ceremony,

the party go in procession to the bridegroom’s house, where dinner is

served; the priest delivers a long discourse, and other orators hold

forth. In the evening there is dancing, and at the stroke of midnight

the guests form a ring round the wedded pair and take off their

crowns, and, after a few words of encouragement, they are left alone.

In some places a man was not permitted to marry unless he had certain

possessions, and could show himself able to defend his homestead from

fire and robbers; he must have arms and uniform, hatchet, bucket, and

ladder. Custom, at least, was law to a woman. She must have acquired

a sufficient stock of linen and have learned many domestic arts; thus

Swiss women became famous for their linen, and a girl would begin

laying up her stock of household and domestic articles _pour mon cher

petit ménage_ long before she met her partner for life. The custom

of Saturday-night visits among the young peasant people, whose daily

labors keep them away during the week, still prevails. On Saturday

night the young Swiss comes under the window of the fair lady to whom

he intends paying his addresses, or with whom he only wishes to become

acquainted. Being visiting-night, and expecting company, she is at the

window, neatly dressed, and admits or rejects the petition, for which

her suitor is not at any trouble of improvisation, for it is according

to a received form, learned by heart, and generally in verse; and the

answer is in verse also. The young man, permission obtained, climbs

up to the window, and there he sits on the sill and is offered some

refreshments. According as his views are more or less serious, and he

proves more or less acceptable, he is allowed to come into the room or

suffered to remain outside.

The last solemnities, those of death and burial, have among the

peasants of the Latin Cantons something violent and passionate in their

character. For several Sundays after the funeral the women, dressed in

mourning with a head-band across the forehead, meet in the cemetery

around the grave, and, in a mournful and harrowing concert, renew their

tears and lamentations. The nearest relations carry the coffin; little

children follow, dressed as angels, all in white, with crowns on their

heads; then come the _white penitents_, dressed in their death-shirt,

or the robe of the brotherhood. White is the mourning color, and

persons with whom you meet with a broad white band on their dress have

lost a member of their family.

The picturesque costumes of the Swiss peasantry, which formerly were

the pride and distinguishing marks of the several Cantons, have almost

disappeared; their use being confined to holidays, festivals, or as

advertisements at public resorts. The Bernese have their snow-white

shift-sleeves rolled up to the shoulder exposing to view a sinewy

sunburnt arm, the dark-red stays laced with black in front, silk

aprons, silver chains, and buckles, colored skirts just short enough to

show a home-made white stocking, a heavy gaiter shoe, a beehive-shaped

hat, and long yellow hair in a single plait hanging down nearly to the

heels, along a back made very straight by the habit of carrying pails

of milk and water on the head. In French Switzerland long tresses,

trimmed with black ribbon, descend on each side of the neck, a narrow

dark bodice restrains the waist, the bosom is covered by a chemise

plaited in a thousand folds and whiter than snow, a short and ample

under-petticoat leaves the leg exposed above the ankle, and red garters

full in sight. These costumes really have nothing to recommend them

except their peculiarity; there is something very irresponsive in them,

adding nothing to the beauty of person or grace of bearing, but simply

tending to make the wearers, like Lord Dundreary’s girls, “look more

or less alike, generally more alike;” none of them are pretty except

on paper, yet even the ugliest of them all, worn by the homeliest

women, help to make up the sum of national peculiarities and add to the

picturesqueness. The men affect immensely broad pants, a large round

coat high in the collar, short in the waist, with two little ludicrous

tails in the very small of the back, and a soft beaver hat pushed

sideways on the head; the complete appearance is sometimes suggested

of a walking porpoise. The present ordinary male and female dress is

somewhat sombre, little use of bright color is made, and regard is had

for that which will wear best and require least washing; the material

is either undyed homespun woollen cloth or coarse blue frieze, and the

garments are clumsily made, stiff and heavy.

Human character appears to consist of two opposite varieties: one

that makes a fetich of the past, and shrinks from changes as from a

rude immorality; the other, that dashes forward impatiently after

progression and development. In most states these temperaments are

brought together in the diversity of persons, and the reforming and

conserving influences work out in harmony the course of society.

But in Switzerland can be found peasant communities where nothing

but conservatives are generated. Time seems to have slumbered among

them for centuries; their character has continued ancient in modern

times.[92] They have always been and will ever be peasants. They are

religious, unaffected, industrious people; shepherds, agriculturists,

artisans, soldiers, patriots, and, above all, freemen, full of song,

labor, and fight. They wish to be ruled by habits rather than laws,

with traditional customs as a legislative code. What matters if the

storm rages, and if it snows, if the wind blusters in the pine forest,

if a man shut up in his cottage has but black bread and cheese, under

his smoky light and beside his fire of turf? Another kingdom opens to

reward him, the kingdom of inward contentment; his wife loves him and

is faithful; his children round his hearth spell out the old family

Bible; he is the master in his home, the owner and protector; and if so

be that he needs assistance, he knows that at the first appeal he will

see his neighbors stand faithfully and bravely by his side,--

“And each shall care for other,

And each to each shall bend,

To the poor a noble brother,

To the good an equal friend.”

Quite a different world from the every-day world of railways and

electricity; this carefully got-up world, gloved and starched, that

scorns the unbought charm and the sublime simplicity, the severe and

contented virtue, of the children of nature. The peasant in rags,

coming out of his larch forest, brings with him a breath of wild

nature; and the young girl, mounted on her donkey, fresh and rosy as

the rhododendrons, is as simple and natural as they. This blue-bloused

son of the soil, trained to the habits of order by centuries of

freedom, understands his rights and has been taught at school his

civic duties, and knows something of the laws and the constitution

of his country. Inquire of him, and you will probably learn that he

is a Deputy and a Communal Councillor, and may one day be President

of the Confederation. There is much of all that constitutes both the

good man and the good citizen distributed throughout the peasants. In

their great cathedral of nature, the harsh clamor and ceaseless unrest

of the outer world find but little place and less concern. Rejecting

those factitious wants which luxury creates, the expense and way of

living are proportioned to their small means, and every one, sooner

or later, is sure of something which he enjoys in quiet and security.

The very spirit of picturesqueness hovers over their mountain homes,

and lingers in their peaceful vales whispering of a past fraught with

quaint traditions and glorious memories; and of a present, full of

self-supporting energy, reciprocal dispositions to neighborly help,

a spontaneous tendency to order, forethought, plodding industry,

sobriety, and contentment.

“And e’en those hills that round his mansion rise

Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies.

Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,

And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;

And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,

Clings close and closer to the mother’s breast,

So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind’s roar,

But bind him to his native mountains more.”

CHAPTER XVII.

NATURAL BEAUTIES AND ATTRACTIONS.

“A wilderness of sweets: for nature here

Wanton’d as in her prime, and play’d at will,

Her virgin fancies pouring forth more sweet,

While above rule of art, enormous bliss.”

No spot in Europe can compare with Switzerland in loveliness and rural

charms; in variety, boldness, and sublimity of scenery; in tonic,

steel-strong air, a fine intoxicant of mental and physical joy and

power. It is a land of valleys, exquisite in their loveliness, enriched

by numberless streams, lakes, mountains, peak, and pass:

“Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.”

Nowhere else, in one quarter of the globe, has nature laid her hand

on the face of the earth with the same majesty; no other division

of it presents the same contrasts in a panorama so astonishing; no

other exhibits so surprising a diversity of landscapes, caverns and

waterfalls, fields of ice and cascades, green and broad mountain-sides,

pastoral abodes and smiling vales, winding and rocky paths, aerial

bridges and infernal glens, eternal snows and luxuriant pastures,

forests of dark larches and congress of hoary mountains, austere

loveliness and lofty nobleness:

“Ever charming, ever new,

When will the landscape tire the view?

The mountain’s fall, the river’s flow,

The wooded valleys, warm and low;

The windy summits wild and high,

Roughly rushing on the sky;

Town and village, tower and farm,

Each give to each a double charm.”

If the Neapolitan be moved to call the environments of his capital

“_un pezzo del cielo caduto in terra_” (“a bit of heaven fallen upon

the earth”), the Swiss may more modestly claim that they have that

piece of the Garden of Eden only which the angels of the legend lost

on their way. It is impossible to convey a vivid, and at the same time

an accurate, impression of grand scenery by the use of words. Written

accounts, when they come near their climax, fall as much below the

intention as words are less substantial than things.

The _mountains_ come first in the glory and charm of Switzerland’s

natural beauties and attractions. They encompass us on every hand; fill

our eyes when we are walking and haunt our dreams during sleep,--so

beautiful, so majestic, and yet so lovely. Grandeur of bulk and mass

is conjoined with splendor and fulness of detail; form and shape are

crowned with soaring peak and matchless line; and the summits mingle

with that sky which seems to be the only fitting background for the

eternal hills. On the face of a topographical map Switzerland appears

to consist chiefly of mountains lying near together, or piled one upon

another, as if the story of the Titans was realized, and with narrow

valleys between them. Of the western, central, and eastern Alps,

constituting the whole Alpine system, a part of the first, the whole

of the second, and none of the third division belong to Switzerland.

The entire giant fabric, rising concentrically and almost abruptly from

the surrounding plains, offers its grandest development in Switzerland

and Savoy. There are points of view in Switzerland whence the array

of Alpine peaks, semicircular in form, presented at once to the eye,

extends for more than one hundred and twenty miles, and comprises

from two hundred to three hundred distinct summits, capped with snow

or bristling with bare rocks. The Swiss Alps are divided into several

sections,--the Pennine Alps, the Helvetian Alps, the Rhetian Alps, and

the Bernese Alps; all radiate from a central group, the St. Gothard

being the key of the entire system, and all converge upon it. The

Pennine are the loftiest, including Mont Blanc,--

“the monarch of mountains:

They crown’d him long ago,

On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,

With a diadem of snow.”

It is true that Mont Blanc is in Upper Savoy, just across the Swiss

frontier, but it is a part of the same wonderful formation, and few

people think of it without passing it incontinently to the credit of

Switzerland.

Then come the Finsteraarhorn and Monte Rosa, being, next after Mont

Blanc, the two highest mountains in Europe. The most important ranges

are the Alps, which run along the Italian frontier, the Bernese

Oberland, and the Juras, which separate Switzerland on the west from

France. Of the Bernese Alps the Finsteraarhorn, Jungfrau, Eiger, and

Schreckhorn are the most conspicuous. As to height, the Alps are

divided into the High Alps, rising from eight thousand to fifteen

thousand feet above the level of the sea, and covered with perpetual

snow and ice; the Middle Alps, beginning at about five thousand five

hundred feet above the sea and rising to the point of perpetual

congelation; and the Low Alps, commencing with an elevation of about

two thousand feet. The actual height of the Swiss mountain fluctuates

as much as twenty-five feet, owing to the varying thickness of the

stratum of snow that covers the summit. Some present pure white peaks;

some are black and riven under the frown of imperious cumuli; some

have cornices, bosses, and amphitheatres; others have blue rifts,

snow precipices, and glaciers issuing from their hollows,--“a chaos

of metamorphic confusion, paradoxical conglomerates, strata twisted,

pitched vertically or upside-down, levels changed by upheavals or

depression.”

“As Atlas fix’d, each hoary pile appears

The gather’d winter of a thousand years.”

A mountain guide will enumerate for you the names of the celebrated

summits, as a cicerone points out the most illustrious figures in a

museum of sculpture. Each of these mountains has its biography,--its

history,--which the guide will be sure to relate. One takes life, it

is a sanguinary homicidal Alp; another, on the contrary, is humane,

hospitable, it offers safe sheltering-places to strayed travellers.

The Matterhorn is a great storm-breeder.[93] The Schreckhorn is a peak

of terror, the grimmest fiend of the Oberland; the Finsteraarhorn is a

black peak of the Aar; Diablerets (Devil’s Strokes) is a name given to

another in consequence of its terrible landslips, which have caused a

popular superstition that, like Avernus, it is the portal of hell, and

haunted by evil spirits. Differing in form, altitude, and color, each

of them has its physiognomy and its character, and even “its soul,” as

Michelet says.

“Veil’d from eternity, the Jungfrau soars,”

not a single massive pyramid, but a series of crests rising

terrace-fashion above each other, with a zone of névés and glaciers.

The pure, unsullied snow which always covers this mountain, it is

supposed, gave occasion to its name, which signifies “the virgin.” It

is a prime favorite with the Swiss,--the great Diana of the Oberland

range. There is some spell, some mysterious potency in it. A sight

never to be forgotten, is to behold the marble dome of this stately

temple of nature, kindling in the fire of the setting sun, or silvering

in the light of a full moon, with the gold-fringed clouds playing

wantonly about,--

“To bathe the virgin’s marble brow,

Or crown her head with evening gold.”

On the Wengern Mountain, in full view of the Jungfrau, in 1816, Byron

composed three of his noblest poems,--“The Prisoner of Chillon,” the

third canto of “Childe Harold,” and “Manfred,” in the latter of which

he describes the Jungfrau as

“This most steep, fantastic pinnacle,

The fretwork of some earthquake,--where the clouds

Pause to repose themselves in passing by.”

All the Alps have, more or less, naked excrescences, which rise above

the crest of the range, and which, in the language of the country, are

not inaptly termed “dents,” from some fancied and plausible resemblance

to human teeth.

Professor Tyndall, writing of the wondrous scene presented by the

Swiss mountains, says: “I asked myself, how was this colossal work

performed? Who chiselled these mighty and picturesque masses out of

a mere protuberance of the earth? And the answer was at hand. Ever

young, ever mighty, with the vigor of a thousand years still within

him, the real sculptor was even then climbing up the eastern sky. It

was he who raised aloft the waters which cut out the ravines; it was he

who planted the glaciers on the mountain slopes, thus giving gravity

a plough to open up the valleys; and it is he who, acting through

the ages, will finally lay low these mighty mountains, rolling them

gradually seaward, sowing the seeds of continents to be, so that the

people of another earth may see mould spread and corn wave over the

hidden rocks which at this moment bear the weight of the Jungfrau.”

Mountains at once excite and satisfy an ideal in the soul, which holds

kin with the divine in nature. They ennoble life by their majesty

and fortify it by their stately beauty. The human mind thirsts after

immensity and immutability, and duration without bounds; but it needs

some tangible object from which to take its flight, something present

to lead to futurity, something bounded from whence to rise to the

infinite. “Earth has built the great watch-towers of the mountains,

and they lift their heads far up into the sky and gaze ever upward

and around to see if the judge of the world comes not.”[94] Their

cloud-capped summits are awful in their mysterious shrouds of darkness,

and their sudden thunder crashing amid overhanging precipices is often

terrible in its shock. With many their gloomy sublimity, hard, jagged,

and torn, produces an uncomfortable feeling: Goethe wrote, “Switzerland

with its mountains at first made so great an impression upon me that

it disturbed and confused me, only after repeated visits did I feel

at my ease among them.” There is something inexpressibly interesting

in their society, their age, their duration without change, and their

majestic repose; their fixed, frozen, changeless glory. The sun rolls

his purple tides of light through the air that surrounds their summits,

but his beams wake no seed-time and ripen no harvest. The moon and

the stars rise and move, and decline along the horizon, century after

century, but the sweet vicissitudes of the season and of time move

not the sympathies of these pale, stern peaks, over which broods

one eternal winter. Upon them the vivifying and ordering syllables

of creation seem never to have passed; a realm of chaos reserved to

the primeval empire of the _formless_ and the _void_; where there is

brilliance without warmth, summer without foliage, and days but no

duties. Beneath the overwhelming radiance of a world of light, whose

reflection makes every valley beneath them rejoice, these giants flaunt

their crowns of snow everlastingly in the very face of the sun. They

are so sharply defined and distinct that they seem to be within arm’s

reach; apparent nearness, yet a sense of untraversable remoteness,

like heaven itself, at once the most distant from us and the nearest.

Their angle of elevation, seen from a distance, is very small indeed.

Faithfully represented in a drawing, the effect would be insignificant;

but their aerial perspective amply restores the proportions lost in the

mathematical perspective. “Mountains are the beginning and end of all

natural scenery,” and there is no Landseer for Alpine pictures. They

are too vast and too simple; and the scene, though its objects are so

few, is too expanded for the canvas.

The _Glaciers_ of the Alps, frozen streams of ice, are remarkable

phenomena of nature, and possess the greatest interest for geologists.

The name _Glacier_ is French; the German word is _Gletscher_, and the

Italian _Ghiacciaio_. Ruskin calls them “silent and solemn causeways,

broad enough for the march of an army in a line of battle, and quiet

as a street of tombs in a buried city;” Longfellow describes them as

“resembling a vast gauntlet, of which the gorge represents the wrist,

while the lower glacier, cleft by its fissures into fingers, like

ridges, is typified by the hand.” With the exception of the Engadine,

where the limits do not begin below ten thousand and seventy feet, in

the other parts of Switzerland the limit of the glaciers and of the

eternal snow is met with at eight thousand seven hundred and forty to

nine thousand one hundred and eighty feet. The average height of the

snow-line fluctuates according to north or south aspect, and greater or

less exposure to the south wind, but in exceptionally warm summers, the

snow completely melts away on summits having an altitude of over eleven

thousand feet. The common expression, the “line of perpetual snow,”

is misleading; it is only correctly used to indicate the altitude

above which the mountains always appear white, because at that height

it is merely the surface which at times thus gets partially melted.

These masses of ice or glaciers are called streams, because, though

imperceptibly, they really move along; they are continually descending

towards the valley from the mountain-tops:

“The glacier’s cold and restless mass

Moves onward day by day.”

Their immobility is only apparent, they move and advance without

ceasing. Careful investigation has ascertained the rate of motion of

a glacier to be as much as two feet in twenty-four hours; but it is a

curious fact that the whole stream does not move at the same rate; the

centre moves quicker than the sides and drags them after it. Agassiz,

the Swiss naturalist, began in 1842 a series of careful observations

on the Aar glacier, taking up his abode in a little hut constructed on

purpose, and called the “_Hôtel des Neuchâtelois_.” Men mocked at him

when he set up his stakes on the glacier to discover the rate of the

invisible motion, but he persisted in his minute, painstaking labors,

futile and inconsequential as they seemed to the unscientific mind,

till he plucked out from every glacier in Switzerland the heart of its

mysterious movement. He held that the differences in speed between

different and sundry parts of the same glacier were the results of

unequal density and of unequal declivity. Savants differ as to the

causes which set the glacier in motion. Schaelzer holds that its

expansion arises from thaw; Professor Hugi is of the same opinion, that

the glacier, like an enormous sponge filled with aqueous particles,

expands and grows larger when it freezes. Of all the theories that of

De Saussure is the most generally accepted. He attributes the forward

movement of a glacier to gravitation,--that is to say, to the pressure

of the superior masses on the inferior. Certain naturalists affirm that

the glaciers add to their power by their own cold, and that in time,

without the intervention of some new natural phenomenon, they will

eventually extend themselves downward into the valleys that lie on the

next level beneath, overcoming vegetation and destroying life. There

must be a limit somewhere to the increase of the ice, and it is almost

certain that these limits have been attained during the centuries that

the present physical formation of Switzerland is known to have existed.

As a whole, the contest between heat and cold ought to be set down as

producing equal effects.

The constant heavy pressure on the glacial ice, and the tension

resulting from obstacles in the channel followed by it, cause splits

of large masses to occur, and force them so far to separate that

there is no chance of regelation. These splits are the _crevasses_

met with in many glaciers, and one of the most dangerous features

to climbers, especially when they are concealed by a treacherous

coating of snow. The transverse crevasses are so close together and

form such a bewildering labyrinth that it requires a good pilot and

experienced guide to steer clear of their difficulties. In proportion

as the glacier develops, these crevasses or fissures enlarge. Some

of them form into deep valleys, abysses, and unfathomable gulfs. If

one falls into a crevasse, it is alleged he hears everything that

is said above him, but cannot make himself heard. The ice of these

fissures has tints of extraordinary fineness and delicacy; it is of

a pale and tender blue, but if you detach a piece to examine it in

full light, its beautiful ideal blue color disappears, and you have

nothing in your hand but a pale, colorless block. The crevasses, at

times all lined with the purest, smoothest snow, open up like great

alcoves, hung in clouds of ice with delicate ornaments thrown on them

by the wind. They modify and change every spring, when the winter’s

accumulation of snow melts under the action of the heat, and the frost

of the nights incorporates it with the glacier. The guides, therefore,

before conducting parties at the beginning of the season, sound the

old crevasses, and study the new features of the glacier, its curves,

its bridges of snow suspended in the air, its abysses covered with a

frail surface, its fantastic architecture of staircases and terraces

of ice. The glacier ice, made of annual beds disposed in vertical bands

of white and blue, does not resemble ordinary ice, which is homogeneous

throughout; it is granular, traversed by a multitude of small canals,

by a net-work of veins in which a bluish water circulates, and which

penetrates the whole thickness of the ice. The water that escapes

from a glacier is either black, like ink, or green, like absinthe, or

white, like milk; it is always troubled, and charged with mud or earth

full of fertilizing matter. So, while the glaciers make the higher

valleys into a land of desolation and misery, lower down on the slopes

that drink life from its flood, it is a garden, an orchard, a rich

vine country, smiling hill-sides, shaded with trees and crowned with

flowers. While a glacier is a stream of ice, it is not formed of frozen

water, but of frozen snow. The snow of the mountain-top is a fine dry

powder, which is formed into a granular mass by the action of the sun

shining on it in the middle of the day; what is thus partially melted

quickly freezes again each evening into globular forms, consequently

a glacier is not slipping like ordinary ice. This process has gone on

for unknown ages. Geologists think that the glaciers of the present day

are “mere pigmies as compared to the giants of the glacial epoch;” and

that their action has had much to do with the architecture of the Alps;

that the ice exerts a crushing force on every point of its bed which

bears its weight, and the glaciers would naturally scoop out and carve

the mountains and valleys into the slopes which we now see; and that

the plains of Italy and Switzerland are covered with _débris_ of the

Alps. These geologists are pretty well agreed that the Lake of Geneva

was excavated by a glacier. Whatever may be thought of the erosive

theory, there is no doubt that these dreary wastes of ice are of great

use in the economy of nature. They are the locked-up reservoirs, the

sealed fountains which immediately fertilize the plains of Lombardy,

the valley of the Rhone, and of Southern Germany, and from which the

vast rivers traversing the great continents of our globe are sustained.

The summer heat, which dries up sources of water, first opens out their

bountiful supplies. When the rivers of the plain begin to shrink and

dwindle within their parched beds, the torrents of the Alps, fed by the

melting snow and glaciers, rush down from the mountains and supply the

deficiency. Professor Hugi’s hypothesis, that the glacier is alive,

is often suggested by the singular noises produced by the forcing of

air and water through passages in the body of the glacier. In the eyes

of the credulous mountaineers who live in the silence which broods

over the sombre cliffs, the glacier is a place of grief and exile,

of penance and punishment, of expiation and tears, such a place as

described by Dante in his “Inferno,” where

“... various tongues,

Horrible languages, outcries of woe,

Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse,

With hands together smote, that swelled the sounds,

Made a tumult that forever whirls

Round through that air, with solid darkness stained,

Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies.”

The peasants tell old stories of ice-gods ruling and thundering with

strange sounds, and the “lamentations and loud moans” of prisoners

in these frozen caves. The legends people the glaciers only with

gloomy, unhappy beings, trembling with fear, weighed down by some

malediction. Professor Helm has made a careful survey of the Alpine

glaciers, and reckons them at eleven hundred and fifty-five, of which

Swiss territory includes four hundred and seventy-one. He estimates

the total superficial area of these glaciers between three thousand

and four thousand square kilometres; the area of the Swiss glaciers

is put down as eighteen hundred and thirty-nine square kilometres.

They begin in the Canton of Glarus, extend to the Grisons, thence to

the Canton of Uri, and finally down to Bern. Of these Swiss glaciers,

one hundred and thirty-eight are of the first rank,--that is, over

four and three-quarters of a mile long. Eight glaciers unite at the

foot of Monte Rosa, seven at the foot of the Matterhorn, and five at

the foot of the Finsteraarhorn. The _Mer de Glace_, which surrounds

the Bernina, is more than sixteen leagues in circumference. Its

tempestuous waves, with azure reflections like lava, pile themselves

in the defiles, precipitate themselves into the gorges, or run by a

rapid descent into the depths of the valleys; sometimes they leap up

between two points of rocks, dart into space, and remain suspended

above the abyss till the day when their frozen sheet is broken up and

hurled into its depths. There are few grander sights than the Bernina,

with its boldly contoured granitic rocks and its glaciers creeping low

down into the valleys. The Canton of Grisons, of which the Engadine

forms a part, counts more than one hundred and fifty glaciers. The

great ice-fields of the Bernese Oberland consist of one hundred and

eight to one hundred and twenty square miles in extent, and are the

most extensive in Europe. The boundaries are the Valais, the Grimsel,

the valley of the Aar, and the Gemmi, and spread over more than two

hundred and thirty thousand acres. The longest glacier is the _Gross

Aletsch_ of the Bernese Oberland; it is fifteen miles long, and has a

basin forty-nine and eight-tenths square miles, and a maximum breadth

of nineteen hundred and sixty-eight yards. The Rhone glacier is admired

for its natural beauties, more especially on account of its terminal

face, furrowed by huge crevasses. The lowest point to which a Swiss

glacier is known to have descended is three thousand two hundred and

twenty-five feet, attained by the Lower Grindelwald glacier in 1818.

As to the thickness of the glaciers there exist no reliable data. In

the series of investigations and measurements made by Professor Agassiz

on the Aar glacier, fifty years ago, he excavated to a depth of two

hundred and sixty metres (over eight hundred and thirty feet), and

did not get to the bottom. He estimated the depth of the Aar glacier,

at a point below the junction of the Finsteraarhorn and Lauter-Aar

glaciers, at four hundred and sixty metres, or about fifteen hundred

and ten feet. In viewing these glaciers no one, however sceptical,

however unimaginative, can doubt the honesty of the great fiery Swiss

naturalist’s belief in the historical reality of a glacial epoch, that

this part of Switzerland is the natural result of the terrific orgy and

dynamic force of profound glaciation, and that

“Yon towers of ice

Since the creation’s dawn have known no thaw.”

The upper part of the glacier is known as the _Névé_ or _Firn_, and

it is the lower part alone which is designated among the Swiss as the

glacier. The névés are those fields of dazzling snow which extend above

the zone of the glaciers, and their incessant transformation produces

the glaciers. This snow of the névés does not resemble that lower down;

it is harder, colder, and has the appearance of needles of pounded

ice or little crystallized stars, and the alternations from frost

to thaw give to this snow the brilliance of metal and a consistency

approaching that of ice. The name _Moraine_ is given to those piles

of stones, pebbles, blocks of rock, _débris_ of all sorts that the

glacier brings down with it in its course, and which it gets rid of as

soon as possible. “The glacier is always cleansing itself,” and if it

expands, it breaks up and disperses its moraine; it pushes it, throwing

out and piling on the sides even the largest blocks of stone. If, on

the contrary, it contracts, part of this chaos of _débris_, left in

its place, becomes covered by degrees with a carpet of turf. When two

glaciers descend by opposite valleys, abutting on the same bed, and

meet, their moraines mingle with one another, and are sometimes piled

up till they attain a width of almost a thousand feet and a height of

about seventy. The _Moulins_ form conduits for the surface-water, to

carry it to the under-ground streams flowing beneath the glacier.

Enormous masses of snow accumulate in some angle or on some ledge of

the mountains until they either fall by their own weight or are broken

off by oscillations of the air, or the warm ground thaws the lower

stratum, and then the mass begins to slide, gaining in bulk and speed

in its course. This is the terrible _avalanche_, and dwellings and

even entire villages are buried from thirty to fifty feet deep. It

sometimes descends with a force which causes it to rebound up the side

of the opposite mountain. The avalanche produces a prodigious roar, not

a reverberation of sound, but a prolongation of sound more metallic

and musical than thunder, and may be heard at a great distance. An

avalanche may be set in motion by a very trifling disturbance of the

air: the flight of a bird, the cracking of a whip, the conversation of

persons going along, sometimes suffices to shake and loosen it from the

vertical face of the cliffs to which it is clinging:

“Ye toppling crags of ice,

Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down

In mountainous o’erwhelming.”

The cutting away of trees, at one time a common cause of avalanches, is

forbidden by a federal law:

“Altdorf long ago had been

Submerged beneath the avalanches’ weight,

Did not the forest there above the town

Stand like a bulwark to arrest their fall.”

There is a distinction between summer and winter avalanches. The

former are solid avalanches formed of old snow that has acquired

almost the solidity of ice. The warmth of spring softens it, loosens

it from the rocks, and it slides down into the valleys; these are

called “melting avalanches,” and they regularly follow certain tracks

which are embanked like the course of a river with wood or bundles

of branches. The most dreaded and terrible avalanches--those of dry

powdery snow--occur only in winter, when sudden squalls and hurricanes

of snow throw the whole atmosphere into chaos. They come down in sudden

whirlwinds, with the violence of a waterspout, and in a few minutes

work great destruction.

The most memorable avalanche in Switzerland occurred in 1806, when

one of the strata of Mount Rossberg, composed of limestone and flint

pebbles, nearly three miles long, one thousand feet broad, and one

hundred feet thick, precipitated from a height of three thousand feet

and annihilated the three prosperous villages of Goldau, Busingen,

and Lowerz, and killed four hundred persons. Enormous blocks, some of

them still covered with trees, shot through the air as if sent from a

projectile or tossed about like grains of dust. In 1501 a company of

soldiers were swallowed up by an avalanche near the St. Bernard. At

Fontana, in the Canton of Ticino, in 1879, the church and town-hall

were destroyed and many lives lost. On this occasion, within a space

of five minutes, no less than three hundred and fifty thousand cubic

metres of earth and rock came down from a height of four thousand three

hundred feet. In the same year an avalanche came rushing down the

westerly slope of the Jungfrau into Lauterbrunnen valley, a distance

of about seven thousand feet. Its peculiar feature was that, not only

along its course, but even on the opposite side of the valley, twelve

hundred feet away, the atmospheric pressure, which its rapid movement

generated, was so great as to level entire forests. In the Rhone

valley, in 1720, a single avalanche destroyed one hundred and twenty

houses at Ober-Gestalen, killing eighty-eight persons and four hundred

head of cattle. The victims were buried in a trench in the churchyard,

where an inscription, still existing, records the event in these words:

“God! what a grief, eight and eighty in one grave!” In the Grisons, the

whole village of Selva was buried, nothing remained visible but the

top of the church-steeple, and Val Vergasca was covered for several

months by an avalanche one thousand feet in length and fifty in depth.

The extraordinary power of the wind, which at times accompanies an

avalanche, is well known and dreaded. A case is recorded in which a

woman, walking to church, was lifted up into the air and carried to

the top of a lofty pine, in which position she remained lodged until

discovered and rescued by the returning congregation. The avalanche

exhibits a striking picture of ruin which nature inflicts upon her own

creations; she buildeth up and taketh down; she lifts the mountains

by her subterranean energies, and then blasts them by her lightnings,

frosts, thaws, and avalanches:

“As where, by age, or rains, or tempests torn,

A rock from some high precipice is borne;

Trees, herds, and swains involving in the sweep,

The mass flies furious from the aerial steep,

Leaps down the mountain’s side, with many a bound,

In fiery whirls, and smokes along the ground.”[95]

Every movement that is grand or beautiful in the course of rushing

waters seems to be the mission of mountain streams to illustrate. The

fierce rivers rush over rocks with such aimless force that the violence

of the torrent creates a back sweep of the overdriven, mad waves; here

and there in the bed of these rivers are seen blocks of stone, many of

them as large as a good-sized house, heaped up most strangely, jammed

in by their angles, in equilibrium on a point, or forming perilous

bridges over which you may with proper precaution pick your way to the

other side. The quarry from which the materials of this bridge came is

just above your head, and the miners are still at work,--air, water,

frost, weight, and time. Other blocks are only waiting for the last

moment of the great lever of nature to take the horrid leap, and bury

under some hundred feet of new chaotic ruins the trees and the verdant

lawn below. All round is the sound of water, the beat of the waves on

the shore, the onward flowing of the river, the rush of the torrent,

the splash of the waterfall, or the bubbling of some little stream;

everywhere the music of a hurrying stream accompanies you. Every valley

has its roar and rush of water and cataracts leaping to join the chorus

of torrents below, making one appreciate Wordsworth’s line,--

“The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep.”

There is something which fascinates more in the free life, the young

energy, the sparkling transparency, and merry music of the smaller

streams. The upper Swiss valleys are sweet with perpetual streamlets,

that seem always to have “chosen the steepest places to come down for

the sake of the leaps, scattering their handfuls of crystals this way

and that, as the wind takes them, with all the grace, but with none

of the formalism of fountains, until at last they find their way down

to the turf, and lose themselves in that, silently; with quiet depth

of clear water furrowing among the grass-blades and looking only like

their shadows, but presently emerging again in little startled gushes

and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered suddenly that the day

was too short for them to get down the hill.” On summer days even the

glaciers are furrowed with thousands of threads of water; innumerable

little rills, which run and sparkle over its sides like streams of

quicksilver, and which disappear suddenly in the moulins, at the bottom

of which invisible canals join the extremity of the glacier. At night

all these brooklets are silent, and stopped; the cold congeals and

imprisons them in a thin coating of ice, which evaporates again the

next day. Of these mountain streams our own poet Bryant writes,--

“Thy springs are in the cloud; thy stream

Begins to move and murmur first

Where ice-peaks feed the noonday beam,

Or rain-storms on the glacier burst.”

It is easy to have cascades in Switzerland, with its vast bodies

of snow at an elevation which does not preclude melting in summer,

and from which the water has to find its way down rocky precipices,

sometimes thousands of feet. The most noted of these cascades are the

_Giessbach_ and the _Staubbach_. The first consists of a succession of

seven cascades, embowered in foliage, leaping from a height of eleven

hundred feet, and finally losing themselves in the waters of the Lake

of Brienz; the soft winds swing the spray as light as a mist of the

sunrise or the gentle sway of a bridal veil, while the rainbow hues

rest like kisses on its silver threads. The Falls of Staubbach, or

_Fall of Dust_, is well named; it is so ethereal, or dust-like, that it

appears at times about to sail away like a cloud on the wings of the

wind; it apparently creeps down from its lofty rock, a thousand feet

on high, and seems to throw itself timidly into the abyss, and to win

slowly against the mass of air. This retarded appearance in the fall

is caused by its being broken into mist soon after it leaves the shelf

over which it is precipitated. In its centre the fall is purely vapor;

but the rock advancing somewhat towards the base, it collects again

into water as it strikes it and forms a stream at the bottom. It has

been compared by poets to “the tail of the white horse on which death

was mounted,” and called a “sky-born waterfall,” and Goethe describes

it,--

“Streams from the high,

Steep, rocky wall,

The purest fount;

In clouds of spray,

Like silver dust,

It veils the rock

In rainbow hues

And, dancing down,

With music soft,

Is lost in air.”

Wherever the sun can get at the naked rock of the mountain, from July

to September, and find an open fissure, there vegetation climbs, and

clinging, establishes itself, and flourishes, and blooms. Charming

colonies of little flowers seem to have emigrated from the valleys,

and come to hide themselves in the cold deserts, where the brevity of

their life appears to enhance the beauty of their color. To better

resist the hoar-frost, they grow in thick tufts closely pressed

against each other. The rocks are velvet with lichens and mosses, that

anchor their roots into a mass of granite, grappling with a substance

which, when struck with steel, tears up its tempered grain and dashes

out the spark. There are familiar pinks, blue-bells, a species of

forget-me-not, a small star-shaped flower of a deep metallic blue

shading upon green, that flashes through the grass with a moist,

lustrous softness,--it is the smaller gentian, so dear to the poet’s

heart and verse. Then great rose-colored beds of rhododendrons; azaleas

of vivid carmine; golden arnicas, with their stately bearing, like rays

of sunshine turned into flowers; in every direction, orchids, diffusing

a strong odor of vanilla; and the narcissi, which are visible a great

distance, and their odor wafted by the wind, is no less penetrating

than that of an orange grove; the Alpine rose, of which Ruskin says,

“when the traveller finds himself physically exhausted by the pomp of

landscape, let him sink down on his knees and concentrate his attention

on the petals of a rock-rose.” Against the cliffs are rich clumps of

the peerless, delicately-cut _Edelweiss_; called by the botanists

“_Gnaphalium alpinum_.” It is a peculiar plant of delicate construction

that grows under the snow; containing very little sap, so that it can

be preserved a long time; the blossom is surrounded by white velvety

leaves, and even the stem has a down upon it. The possession of one

is proof of unusual daring, and to gather it, the hunter, tempted by

its beauty and by his love (for it is immensely valued by the Swiss

maidens) climbs the most inaccessible cliffs on which it grows, and

is sometimes found dead at the foot with the flower in his hand. No

art can simulate its beautiful, ermine-like bloom, and experiments

have been made to cultivate it in other places, but it changes its

character and becomes transformed into a new species; in its Alpine

home alone will it flourish, and there must it be sought, and adorn

the hat as the badge of triumph for the Alpine climber. The mountain

is really a botanical garden; the Swiss flora is the largest on the

European continent, in proportion to the area it covers. The varied

local influences and conditions resulting from such a broken surface,

and differences of altitude concur in producing the graduation and

unbounded variety of botanical specimens.

Trees are also present in great abundance and variety, increasing the

enchantment of the view with their leafy clothing, which, by partly

concealing, adds charm of mystery to the prospect. There are specimens

of noble chestnuts and walnuts, grand old oaks, larches, and gigantic

pines. The walnut-trees disappear at a height of twenty-five hundred

feet; chestnuts and beeches cover the slopes a little higher; to these

succeed the firs, which seem to have sown themselves in a luxuriant

way, some standing alone in green gracefulness, others growing in

pretty little miniature groves; then the knotted oaks, holding by

their strong roots to the precipitous sides; and the burly pines that

flourish at far greater altitudes than either, seeming to require

scarcely any earth, but grasping with their strong, rough roots the

frozen rock, out of which, somehow, they contrive to draw moisture.

Some of the ancient pines on the Jungfrau are supposed to have stood

the blasts of winter for a thousand years; they are affirmed to be as

high as one hundred and sixty feet, and to measure twenty-four feet in

circumference. It is their peculiar conical form which enables them to

bow to, and thus resist the force of, the storm. The pine is the king

of the mountains; he strikes his club-foot deep into the cleft of the

rocks, or grasps its span with conscious power; there he lifts his

haughty front, like the warrior monarch that he is,--no flinching about

the pine, let the time be ever so stormy. His throne is the crag and

his crown is a good way up in the heavens, and as for the clouds, he

tears them asunder sometimes and uses them for robes. Then the stern,

deep, awfully deep roar that he makes in a storm. When he has aroused

his energies to meet the storm, the battle-cry he sends down the wind

is heard above all the roar and artillery of thunder, and when the

tempest leaves him, how quietly he settles to his repose,--the scented

breeze of a soft evening breathes upon him and the grim warrior king

wakes his murmuring lute, and through his dusky boughs float sweet and

soothing sounds. Higher still than the pine are the larches, a wood

highly valued; and at last comes the creeping pine, struggling against

the wind and cold: it is the highest climber among Alpine trees, and is

the immediate neighbor of the glacier.

The perils of wandering in the high Alps remain terribly real, and are

only to be met by knowledge, courage, caution, skill, and strength;

for rashness, ignorance, carelessness, the mountains still leave no

margin, and to these three-fourths of the catastrophes which shock us

are to be traced. Mountaineering without guides is not a thing to be

encouraged. The mountaineer’s instinct on rock and ice is an art quite

as subtle and complex as the art of the seaman or the horseman. The

senses all awake, the eye clear, the heart strong, the limbs steady

yet flexible, with power of recovery in store and ready for instant

action should the footing give way, such is the discipline which these

terrible ascents impose. The mountain guides are not ignorant, they

are licensed only after severe examination. They are obliged to take

courses of study; they are taught topography, and how to read a map and

find their way by it; to use the compass and the other instruments that

are indispensable in journeys of exploration; they are also taught how

to bind up wounds, so as to be able to do what is necessary at once in

case of accident; in a word, they are brave, modest, affable, sunburnt,

and scarred men, who have planted a flag on every summit, and who have

lent to the stern and awful mountains the romance of mountaineering.

It is understood that a true Swiss guide is literally “faithful unto

death;” that he does not hesitate to risk his own life for the sake of

his charge, and that instances are known in which it has not only been

risked but actually sacrificed. Many accidents in mountain-climbing

have resulted from an insane effort to dispense with the services of

accredited guides, or disregarding their directions. In the short space

of not quite a month, in 1887, eighteen tourists lost their lives; one

accident on the Jungfrau involving the loss of six. The fate of blind

guides and those they lead is set forth in unmistakable terms by the

Scriptures. Choose for your guides the hardy men who have learned their

business thoroughly, who have been chamois hunters from their youth,

who have lived on the mountains from their birth, and to whom the snows

and rocks and the clouds speak a language which they can understand,

and then accident is almost impossible. Roping is the common and safest

precaution, especially for ice traversing. A slip-knot is passed over

each climber’s head and shoulders and drawn tight under the arms. It

cannot be particularly pleasant, for at times the one in front makes a

spring, forgetting others are tied behind him, and takes them unawares,

nearly pulling them off their feet; then, on the other hand, oblivious

of the person behind you, suddenly you are checked in the middle of

your jump, perhaps, over a crevasse, or when standing in a little niche

on a steep wall of ice a thousand feet high. The graceful alpenstock,

so often seen in the hands of Swiss tourists inscribed with its roll

of triumph, must be taken _cum grano salis_. Many of them have never

done service beyond mountain hotel parlors, broad piazzas, and great

dining-rooms. They can be bought with “records” complete and shining,

and therefore are not as closely related to mountain-climbing as one

might suspect them to be. It is refreshing to see young lads stalking

about with these alpenstocks and ice-axes, like conquerors amid a

subject race. What lofty scorn they have for every man who has not

ascended the highest peak, and yet they never dared to try it! They

call themselves mountaineers, and at evening and in bad weather stalk

and lounge about the hotel, moody, terrible, and statuesque; they

speak to none but to other young braves, with whom they perpetually

mutter dark things about horrid places and cutting the record. No;

good mountaineering is the education of a lifetime begun in childhood,

and these pretentious youths are no more mountaineers than their boots

are. Under proper precautions, and with an experienced guide, it is

glorious and healthful exercise, and for purposes of science has been

of incalculable value.

In the later Middle Ages invalids came to _Baden_, in the Canton

of Aargau, for the sake of the mineral waters; and the springs

of _Pfäffers_ were known in 1242, and the waters considered very

efficacious, particularly in the case of persons “who had been

tortured.” These places are still visited, but the air-cure of the

mountain has almost superseded them. Jean Jacques Rousseau expressed

surprise that “bathing in the salubrious and beneficial mountain air

had not yet become one of the great resources of medical science or of

moral education.” There would be no occasion to-day for at least one

part of his surprise. The Swiss mountains have developed well-defined

and well-known health phases. They have become mediciners, and the

snow-clad peaks and the upper snow-clad valleys are being looked to

by physicians for the relief of certain ailments not easily remedied

by other means. Davos Platz and St. Moritz, in the Engadine, are

among the most familiar regions famed for the climatic treatment

of disease,--possessing remarkable health-giving properties in

lung trouble. It is the exquisite purity of the air, exercise, and

especial modes of life which the mountains impose that serve as the

chief medicine, and give these heights their beneficial virtues. The

rarefaction has its own and special effect. The breathing becomes

quicker, deeper, and fuller. One breathes fifteen to twenty-five per

cent. less air to produce a given weight of carbonic acid. The action

of the air on the blood in the lungs seems to be facilitated with

decreasing density; one, however, must ascend over two thousand feet

before the lighter air-pressure begins to make itself appreciable,

but for every one thousand feet additional the difference in the

rarefaction becomes of a very marked character. Here the law of “use

and disuse of organs” is illustrated in typical fashion,--parts of

the lungs but little used in ordinary life are brought freely into

use,--one is forced to breathe deeply, thus the vital capacity is

enlarged, and, by favoring exercise of little-used parts banishes the

tendency to disease from one of the seats of life. This so-called

diaphanous rarefied air is not air, it is a celestial ether; and so

with the sun, though it is hot, what you feel is not heat, it is a

permeating, invigorating, life-creating warmth. This warmth, then,

which the sun imparts to this ether pervades your lungs, your heart,

and reaches to your very bones. This virginally pure air makes you

conscious of a lighter and of a quicker life, an unknown facility

in breathing, and a lightness of body. Its electric freshness is a

brilliant vitality,--it is rest, inspiration, resolve. Then you are

surrounded with pine forests, and the bright sun is constantly raising

into the air from their trunks, branches, and leaves myriad molecules

of their resinous exudations. On ascending a mountain the mean annual

temperature decreases on an average of one degree Fahrenheit for every

three hundred and forty-nine feet. The value of fresh air and exercise

is a sentiment possibly as old as humanity itself. It is the same

spirit which animated Hippocrates and Galen when those classic worthies

discoursed upon the art of nature-cure. We really travel in circles in

the case of disease-cure, as in most other things. None the less may we

be thankful that, in our circular search after knowledge, we have come

upon the beaten track of ancient days, and have enlarged the wisdom

which of old showed forth the benefits of a cloudless sky and a pure

ether.

There are walks and excursions in the mountains for all, for the

invalid as for the cragsman; roads that are marvels of audacity,

crossing tremendous gorges, clinging in dizzy places along the

precipices at the foot of which is heard the boiling torrent, then

sweeping around sudden corners and angles; roads will wind among the

hills which rise steep and lofty from the scanty level place that

lies between them, whilst the hills seem continually to thrust their

great bulk before the wayfarer, as if grimly resolute to forbid his

passage, or close abruptly behind him when he still dares to proceed.

There are broad avenues overarched with spreading elms and maples,

with vistas reminding one of the nave and aisles of a large cathedral.

The mountain-paths are so pretty and charming; they wander about so

capriciously and fancifully; they run so merrily over the moss in the

woods, and beside the murmuring brooks; they climb so cheerfully up the

slopes and hill-sides; they lead you through so much of freshness, and

perfume, and varied scenery, that the pleasures of sight soon make you

oblivious of bodily fatigue. The cemeteries placed among these wooded

rocks and pastoral hills recall the wish of Ossian, “Oh, lay me, ye

that see the light, near some rock of my hills; let the thick hazels be

around, let the rustling oak be near; green be the place of my rest,

and let the distant torrent be heard.”

Switzerland is rich in aquatic landscapes; no country except Norway

and Sweden has such a number of inland lakes. The Lakes of Geneva,

Luzern, Zurich, Thun, Neuchâtel, Bienne, and Zug are all historic, and

have been the subject of numerous pen-pictures. The Lake of Geneva

is the largest of Western Europe, being fifty-seven miles long, and

its greatest width nine miles; it has its storms, its waves, and its

surge; now placid as a mirror, now furious as the Atlantic; at times

a deep-blue sea curling before the gentle waves, then a turbid ocean

dark with the mud and sand from its lowest depths; the peasants on

its banks still laugh at the idea of there being sufficient cordage

in the world to reach to the bottom of the _Genfer-See_. It is eleven

hundred and fifty-four feet above the sea, and having the same depth,

its bottom coincides with the sea-level; the water is of such exceeding

purity that when analyzed only 0.157 in 1000 contain foreign elements.

The lake lies nearly in the form of a crescent stretching from the

southwest towards the northeast. Mountains rise on every side, groups

of the Alps of Savoy, Valais, and Jura. The northern or the Swiss

shore is chiefly what is known as a _côte_, or a declivity that admits

of cultivation, with spots of verdant pasture scattered at its feet

and sometimes on its breast, with a cheery range of garden, chalet,

wood, and spire; villas, hamlets, and villages seem to touch each

other down by the banks, and to form but one town, whilst higher up,

they peep out from among the vineyards or nestle under the shade of

walnut-trees. At the foot of the lake is the white city of Geneva, of

which Bancroft wrote, “Had their cause been lost, Alexander Hamilton

would have retired with his bride to Geneva, where nature and society

were in their greatest perfection.” The city is divided into two parts

by the Rhone as it glides out of the basin of the lake on its course

towards the Mediterranean. The Arve pours its turbid stream into the

Rhone soon after that river issues from the lake. The contrast between

the two rivers is very striking, the one being as pure and limpid as

the other is foul and muddy. The Rhone seems to scorn the alliance and

keeps as long as possible unmingled with his dirty spouse; two miles

below the place of their junction a difference and opposition between

this ill-assorted couple is still observable; these, however, gradually

abate by long habit, till at last, yielding to necessity, and to the

unrelenting law which joined them together, they mix in perfect union

and flow in a common stream to the end of their course.[96] At the

head of the lake begins the valley of the Rhone, where George Eliot

said, “that the very sunshine seemed dreary mid the desolation of ruin

and of waste in this long, marshy, squalid valley; and yet, on either

side of the weary valley are noble ranges of granite mountains, and

hill resorts of charm and health.” At the upper part of the lake are

Montreux, Territet, and Vevay, sheltered from the north wind by the

western spurs of the Alps, and celebrated for their beauty, and beloved

of travellers; places of cure and convalescence for invalids, where

the temperature even in winter is of extreme mildness, having a mean

during the year of 48° Fahrenheit at seven o’clock in the morning,

57° at one o’clock in the afternoon, and 50° at nine o’clock in the

evening; with a barometer register of 28¾ inches at the level of the

lake. Standing at almost any point on the Lake of Geneva, to the one

side towers Dent-du-Midi, calm, proud, and dazzling, like a queen

of brightness; on the other side is seen the Jura through her misty

shroud extending in mellow lines, and a cloudless sky vying in depths

of color with the azure waters. So graceful the outlines, so varied

the details, so imposing the framework in which this lake is set, well

might Voltaire exclaim, “_Mon lac est le premier_,” (my lake is the

first). For richness combined with grandeur, for softness around and

impressiveness above, for a correspondence of contours on which the eye

reposes with unwearied admiration, from the smiling aspect of fertility

and cultivation at its lower extremity to the sublimity of a savage

nature at its upper, no lake is superior to that of Geneva. Numberless

almost are the distinguished men and women who have lived, labored, and

died upon the shores of this fair lake; every spot has a tale to tell

of genius, or records some history. In the calm retirement of Lausanne,

Gibbon contemplated the decay of empires; Rousseau and Byron found

inspiration on these shores; there is

“Clarens, sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep love!

Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought;

Thy trees take root in love.”

Here is Chillon, with its great white wall sinking into the deep

calm of the water, while its very stones echo memorable events,

from the era of barbarism in 830, when Count Wala, who had held

command of Charlemagne’s forces, was incarcerated within the tower of

this desolate rock during the reign of Louis le Débonnaire, to the

imprisonment of the Salvation Army captain.[97]

“Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls;

A thousand feet in depth below,

Its massy waters meet and flow;

Below the surface of the lake

The dark vault lies”

where Bonnivard, the prior of St. Victor and the great asserter of the

independence of Geneva, was found when the castle was wrested from the

Duke of Savoy by the Bernese.

Along the shores of Lake Geneva the Romans had many stations and posts,

vestiges of which are still visible.[98] The confusion and the mixture

of interests that succeeded the fall of the Empire gave rise in the

Middle Ages to various baronial castles, ecclesiastical towns, and

towers of defence, the ruins of which still stand on the margin of the

lake or on the eminences a little inland,--

“Chiefless castles breathing stern farewells

From gray but leafy walls, where ruin greenly dwells.”

The Lake of Luzern, _Vierwaldstätter-See_, is hardly a single sheet

of water, but is composed of a group of seven basins, some joined to

each other by narrow straits, others intersecting each other at right

angles, giving extreme variety to its breadth; its extreme length

in a diverging line is twenty-four miles; its widest part, taking

in the two arms of Küssnacht and Alpnach (southwest to northeast),

is twelve miles, but the average breadth is much less. There are

repeated eclipses of the landscapes caused by abrupt turnings, bold

promontories, and the amphitheatrical closing in of the mountain

strips, and again opening up to view. It is scarcely possible to

imagine any combination of beautiful water and bold mountains more

striking, more effective, and more lovely than the scenes that meet

the view in traversing this lake. A dozen different mountains advance

into the lake and check themselves suddenly in the depths of the gloomy

waters. Bare, steep, turret-like rocks hanging amid the clouds; rich,

lawn-like grass in the intervening glades, sparkling with cottages and

gardens, succeed and blend with each other in infinite alternation.

_Pilatus_ and the _Rigi_ guard the approach to the lake. The former is

full of mysterious legendary pools associated with the haunting spirit

of Pontius Pilate. No less than thirty-five writers have treated of its

supernatural apparitions, but a very natural supposition traces the

name to a corruption of _pilea_ or _pileatus_,--from the cap of clouds

always on its summit. The Rigi, the most frequented belvedere in the

world, stands between the lakes of Luzern and Zug. It is its situation,

rather than its elevation, which renders it famous. Its summit is

little less than six thousand feet above the level of the sea, but

it stands in the midst of most lovely scenery, and from its top is

presented an extensive panoramic view scarcely equalled anywhere in

the Alps. The sunrise from the Rigi is a spectacle that every tourist

contemplates with eager pleasure. Brilliant in dazzling whiteness stand

the mountains under the first light of the morning; it begins to kindle

on their tops its glowing beacon; suddenly the sunbeams strike their

crowns and convert them into a boss of gold; first the tallest presents

a gilded summit while the others wait in silence, then they, in the

order of their height, come afterwards, relaxing, as the sunbeams

strike each in succession, into a blush and smile. The splendor of the

whole spectacle, when the sun streams all the magic of his beams to

cast upon the land an enchantment greater than its own, is such as to

overwhelm the soul with admiration and astonishment. All who sleep at

the _Culm_, or topmost point, may expect to be awakened by the sound

of a wooden horn, about sunrise, when every one gets up with the hope

of a splendid prospect--a hope often disappointed:

“Nine weary, up-hill miles we sped,

The setting sun to see;

Sulky and grim he went to bed,

Sulky and grim went we.

“Seven sleepless hours we tossed, and then,

The rising sun to see,

Sulky and grim we rose again,

Sulky and grim rose he.”

The Lake of Zug, or Zuger-See, is set like a fine pearl in a necklace

of woods and gardens, fertile fields and hills, over which white houses

are scattered like tents. Its banks are graceful, and in its waters

are reflected rich and varied vegetation; near by are wide marshes

dotted with pools, in the midst of which great water-lilies shine, and

a few islets covered with vegetation, looking like baskets of flowers

floating in the water.

The Lake of Thun is the golden gate-way to the Bernese Oberland, and

its wealth and variety of scenery is the pride of that Canton.

The Lake of Zurich, while not pretending to vie with the others in

stern and rugged magnificence, is unsurpassed in pastoral beauty; on

either side rise gently-sloping hills of fruitful vineyards, at the

foot of which, lining the shores, are prosperous villages. Here have

been discovered the earliest traces of human activity, back in the age

of Stone and Lake-Dwellers. Excavations from the old basin of the lake

have hinted that it has tales to tell and secrets to reveal which for

ages on ages may have been safely hidden beneath its deep waters.

The Swiss lakes differ in color; some appear to be green as malachite,

and others blue. The water appears commonly of a bluish-green, shading

into blue, with a slightly milky hue in the summer, especially when

fed by the glacier streams, which bring down a quantity of finely

triturated rock. Whenever a lake has high mountains rising from its

edge, the hue is a purple-blue. The transparency of the lake waters is

quite surprising; in many of them minute objects can be seen at a depth

of fifty feet, and even lower down, as clearly as if viewed through

a glass. There is a quiet luxury of excitement, without exercise, in

voyaging in the well-appointed steamers on calm Swiss lakes, which

present a shifting panorama of hill and river scenery.[99]

There is much difference of opinion as to when the natural beauties and

attractions of Switzerland appear to the best advantage. The larger

number of strangers see the country only in its summer charms; it

is a season when the mountains assume a greater brilliance of color

and grandeur of form, the lower atmosphere being cleared of its dark

mists as the clouds lift and give an ever-increasing flood of light.

This greater altitude of the clouds brings the mountains into fuller

sunshine, with their coloring more intense, their forms more massive,

and the blue of the sky behind them deeper and clearer.

Those who see the sun rise each morning in glory over the Alps, and

glowing all day, set in a flood of crimson over the pines, only to

return in the splendor of the after-glow on the glacier and snow, claim

that autumn is a better time for realizing this sum of marvellous

beauty; that it is the season of crimson and gold, when the landscapes

take on incomparable magnificence, when the transformation of the woods

is fairy-like, when the oaks are surrounded with a golden aureola, the

beeches are dyed in vivid red and yellow, and all the wooded hills,

orchards, hedges, and bushes form, as it were, a marvellous symphony

of color, of warmer shades, and tints of an infinite tenderness. Then

comes the advocate of winter, who says, “You should see the loads

of snow, falling almost perpendicularly in thick, heavy flakes, or

whirled about by the wild wind; on the calming of the snow-storm, you

should see the heavy brown clouds in the south assume a tinge more

and more golden and bright, till the first patch of blue sky bursts

forth amidst the gigantic masses, and at last permits the winter sun,

far down in the south, to gladden the earth with a brief sight of the

source of light and life;” and that the trees are more beautiful in

the hoar-frost than in summer or autumn glory; the pines, with their

branches bent, “stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their

bosoms,” and the taller trees seem to beckon with their long, white

arms, like ghosts.

The snow, which long after it has fallen lies as pure and stainless

as the raiment of angels, is the crowning glory of a Swiss winter. It

has an intensity of whiteness which gives a new force to “whiter than

snow.” St. Matthew describes the Lord’s transfiguration raiment as

“white as the light,” but St. Mark as “exceeding white as snow.” This

Alpine snow is light materialized, and snow etherealized--solidified

light. With the snow nature transfigures all the landscape; at one

sweep of her broad brush all the clumsy touches with which man has

marred the beauty of the world are effaced, the hills are rounded to a

riper beauty, the fields lie smooth and white and fair, an unwritten

page waiting as for the bold outlines of some new design.[100] The

mountain air appears to give additional brilliancy even to the rainbow,

as it rests on the turbid blackness of the clouds; it looks so near,

and every band of color so broad and distinct, filling the very air

with the haze of its colors; seeing a rainbow following an Alpine

thunder-storm, one can well conceive how, before it was known what

produced the storm and the rainbow, the one was taken for the wrath and

the other for the smile of God.

“All things are good, as their Creator made them, but everything

degenerates in the hands of man; improving, man makes a general

confusion of elements, climates, and seasons; he defaces, he confounds

everything, as if he delighted in nothing but monsters and deformity;”

these are the first words of the “Æmilius,” and the key-note of the

author’s philosophy. Conceding that man’s work does not deserve this

unqualified condemnation, and is in many respects most admirable, one

must regret to see the work of nature in Switzerland so ruthlessly

spoiled and disfigured; to see the telegraph-pole and the factory

chimney rear themselves against the horizon of every landscape;

mountain fastnesses and remote valleys consecrated to the charms of

nature alone, resounding with the whistle of the locomotive and the

stroke of the hammer; the iconoclastic hand of material enterprise,

divested of all sentiment, reaching out into every nook and corner

where the Divine Artist has surpassed himself in his handiwork, to

discover and develop new commercial opportunities. One now goes by

steam in place of _diligence_, and the lovers of the characteristic

may well regret that the _couleur locale_, so dear to strangers, is

fast disappearing. No more the post-carriage takes you in its moving

house, with the sound of jingling bells, the cracking of the driver’s

whip, and the notes of the horn waking up the echoes of the woods. No

longer the white oxen tug up the steep mountain; no longer the chat

with the village gossips at each post-station; the mid-day halt, where

one dives into castle, church, or old courtyard; the chaffering for

some local trifle; the antique furniture of the salon; the early walk

before the coach was ready,--it is all, all, almost gone. In things

spiritual and things temporal alike, our modern mania is to carry with

us our own life, instead of accepting that which we find on the spot.

Alpine touring has become a highly-organized institution, brought

to perfection by everything that administrative genius, capital,

and science can give. All the inscriptions on the votive offerings

discovered around the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Penninus on the

Great St. Bernard, and which come down to the latest periods of the

Roman Empire, are filled with warm expression of gratitude for having

escaped the extraordinary perils of the passage. Even in the days of

Pliny, several hundred years after the first passage of the Alps by the

Roman troops, and even after the establishment of a station at Sion,

in the Valais, it was spoken of as a “most hidden part of the earth,

in the region of perpetual night, amid forests forever inaccessible

to human approach.” The courage, skill, and ingenuity of man have

overcome all these formidable dangers. Though the mountains are still

lofty and precipitous, safe and convenient passes have been found

practicable, and paths have been contrived, upon these giddy heights,

over which the maiden threads without a thought of danger. The rushing

torrents are loud and furious in the descent to the valley; but they

have been bridged over by stone and timber, or perhaps by the fallen

pine, and the peasant boy sings cheerily, as he strides across the

foaming stream. Steam and electricity make the railway train emulate

the agility of the chamois, and carry the public across precipices to

a height of seven thousand feet. There is scarcely a point of view

that attracts tourists, a summit that climbers make fashionable, but

at once the mountain is rent and insulted; it is stripped of its

beautiful forests, iron rails are screwed to its wounded and bleeding

side, and you are carried up like a bundle of luggage, with no

roadside halts under the trees, no flowers gathered by the wayside,

no rustic inns hidden under the firs, but all along station-masters,

ticket-collectors, and stations; or _chaises-à-porteur_, and long

lines of mules file up the Alps, carrying Saratoga trunks and cases of

Clicquot to the level of the eternal snows. Mountain summits are no

longer reserved for those who arrogantly pride themselves on superior

soundness of wind and limb, but are equally accessible to the blind,

halt, and lame. The circular-tour ticket has brought these summits

within reach of everybody’s purse and everybody’s legs. Greed of gain

and competition are rapidly producing the effect of false mountains,

sham mountains, built by contractors and shareholders; a mountain at

a fair that the people ascend a franc for the round trip; where the

tourist is nothing but a number, and is always dining between two

trains, at the buffet of an international railway station. There is a

tendency all the world over to the loss of the true sense of natural

beauty; and forest solitudes and quiet valleys must retreat before

the spirit of Mammon, and succumb to factories and foundries. Yet

are not the natural beauties of a country an inestimable treasure to

it, and, from a business view, is it wise, lightly to give away what

money cannot buy, nor modern art create? With commercial and economic

disadvantages difficult to overcome, it would appear the wiser policy

for Switzerland to check the rapid transformation of the beautiful and

the venerable into cheap and tasteless novelties, with their cast-iron

uninterestingness. Nature has done all for Switzerland, from its pure

and radiant air to its mountains, lakes, and wild flowers, which spring

up as though Aphrodite were still there, “to sow them with her odorous

feet.” This marvellous and rare beauty of nature is too often taken as

a matter of course, and “holy men, in recommending of the love of God

to us, refer but seldom to those things in which it is most abundantly

and immediately shown; though they insist much on His giving of bread

and raiment and health, they require us not to thank Him for that

glory of His works which He has permitted us alone to perceive; they

tell us often to meditate in the closet, but they send us not, like

Isaac, into the fields at even.”

Fortunately, the grandeur of Alpine scenery cannot be altogether

destroyed, though seriously injured, by the spade, the pickaxe, and

the blasting-powder. There is a poetry of science, even of practical

science, and the invaluable and ubiquitous engineer cannot after all

do much to the everlasting hills, except here and there a simple climb

may be made simpler still, and an opening effected through what looks

like one of the permanent barriers of the world. The physical geography

of Switzerland is still a stupendous unit. Man may enormously modify

its surface, but its original conditions remain dominant, forcing a

stern recognition of their supremacy; mountain-ranges may be passed or

surmounted; they have never yet been lowered or removed; Switzerland

will ever be mastered by its sublime physical features. While much of

the simplicity which was formerly the attraction of the country has

passed away, never to be restored, still it presents an unrivalled

scene, in picturesque combination, with advantages of atmospheric

relief, and aided by the contributing glories of a luminous and

sensitive sky. There is beauty of every sort; beauties to enrapture

every sense; beauties to satisfy every taste; forms the grandest and

loveliest; colors the most gorgeous and the most delicate; harmonies

the most soothing and the most stirring; the sunny glories of the

day; the pale grace of moonlight; the silent pinnacles of aged snows;

tropical luxuriance; the serenity of peerless sunsets; the sublimity of

unchallenged storms; pomp of summits and world of clouds; witchery of

water, sky, and mountain; a very cluster of delights and grandeurs, to

enchant the vision and animate the spirit,--warming commonplace persons

into something approaching to poetic fervor, and persons of genius to

pour forth their inspirations in verse or lofty prose. You may have

read the most vivid and accurate description, yet the reality will

burst upon you like a revelation; a few cherished hallucinations may be

uncovered to the raw air of truth, but you will look again and again,

day after day, and a perennial glory will surround the kaleidoscopic

panorama, “ever charming, ever new,” photographing it in the mind

forever. Scarcely a day, or an hour of the day, when there is not

being produced, scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after

glory, and working still upon an inexhaustible source of constant and

perfect beauty. It is indeed a beautiful land, meriting the words of

the Psalmist, “a fair place, the joy of the whole earth.” It is a place

where all save the spirit of man seems divine; so fascinating, that,

like Virgil, who on his death-bed longed to view once more the nymphs

of Bacchus as they danced on the banks of the river of Peloponnesus,

one who has visited Switzerland sighs again for its glorious sun,

its delicious air with the shivering freshness of the glacier, its

magnificent scenery, its gorgeous mountains, its valleys of idyllic

beauty, its beautiful roads shaded by hedges, its streams bordered with

hazel copses, its forests carpeted with moss, its corners of shade and

solitude with freshness and luxurious ease, its happy and tranquil

retreats, and its asylums for modest pleasure or for calm repose:

“Who first beholds those everlasting clouds,

Those mighty hills, so shadowy, so sublime,

As rather to belong to heaven than earth,

But instantly receives into his soul

A sense, a feeling, that he loses not;

A something that informs him ’tis an hour

Whence he may date henceforward and forever?”

CHAPTER XVIII.

WILLIAM TELL.

“Almighty powers! That was a shot indeed;

It will be talked of to the end of time.”

Trite and worn out as the subject may appear, it is impossible by any

amount of familiarity to divest the historical legend of William Tell

of its undying charm; and he who has visited the scene, so far from his

interest in it being exhausted, has only been made more enthusiastic

in its favor. It is a perfectly simple and natural story, when read in

the light of the times, the circumstances that led up to it, and the

impulses which sustained it throughout.

Nearly in the centre of Switzerland, around the Lake of Luzern, were

the Forest Cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden; defended on the

north by the stormy waves of the lake, on the south by inaccessible

peaks and glaciers, on the side of Germany by precipices and unbroken

forests, and the Rigi in the midst. This district was inhabited by a

shepherd race; the elevated and barren site of their habitations had

secured them from the cruel caprices of the petty tyrants who ruled

over the lower valleys, and they governed themselves under the forms of

a republic. Rudolph of Hapsburg, the father of the founder of the House

of Austria, a distinguished soldier and leader of the Zurich troops,

the son of an Alsatian landgrave, had his castle near the confluence

of the Reuss and Aar, and in 1257 was voluntarily chosen by the people

as their governor. Sixteen years later he ascended the imperial throne

of the Roman Empire of Germany; for eighteen years he kept the throne,

and, remembering that he was by birth a native of Switzerland, he

protected his countrymen from oppression, and was esteemed for his

humanity, prudence, and valor. He gave firm assurance that he would

treat them as worthy sons of the Empire, with inalienable independence;

and to that assurance he remained true till his death, which happened

in 1291. His son, Albert, who had been made Duke of Austria, ascended

the throne. He was grasping and eager to make territorial acquisitions.

He desired to be first Duke of Helvetia, and proposed to these Forest

Cantons that they should sever their relationship, as a province of

the German Empire, and become a member of his Dukedom. Though Emperor

of Germany, he was Duke of Austria, and his ambition was to aggrandize

the Austrian House. The peasants rejected his proposition. Jealous

of this remnant of independence, which the snows and rocks had left

to the peasants of upper Helvetia, he undertook to subjugate them.

Failing to seduce them by diplomacy or pretended kindness, he sent

_landvogts_, or governors, to reside in their midst; these governors

bore the title of Imperial Bailiffs. Instead of sending, as was usual,

some noblemen for imperial governors, whose functions were only those

of high judges in capital crimes, he sent two dependants of his family,

men whose dispositions were as hostile and cruel as their orders.

Their mission was to goad and persecute the people into some act of

rebellion, that might be used as a pretext for reducing them to the

level of common slavery. There were two of these bailiffs, Berenger

and Gessler, the former stationed at Sarnen, the latter at Altdorf;

they were unbounded in their tyrannies, using their powers wantonly,

with all the stings of insolent authority. Gessler was the most cruel;

he pillaged private property, imprisoned husbands, carried off the

wives, and dishonored the daughters. It was now the beginning of the

fourteenth century, and the country was in a degraded and miserable

condition. The land groaned under violence; the despotism was distant

and delegated; the sovereign too far removed to hear the universal

lamentation. It became intolerable. A few brave hearts reasoned,

that God had never granted power to any emperor, king, or bailiff to

commit such injustice; and that death was preferable to a continued

submission under so ignominious a yoke. The wife of Werner Stauffacher,

of Schwyz, being brutally treated by one of the bailiffs’ officers, in

the absence of her husband, on his return reporting the affair to him,

exclaimed, “Shall we mothers nurse beggars at our bosoms, and bring up

maid-servants for foreigners? What are the men of the mountains good

for? Let there be an end of this!”[101] Stauffacher sought the counsel

of Walter Fürst, of Uri, and Arnold Melchthal, of Unterwalden; and

these three, from the result of that counsel, became famous as

“The Patriot Three that met of yore,

Beneath the midnight sky,

And leagued their hearts on the Rütli shore

In the name of liberty.”

Being well acquainted with the most injured, the most intrepid, and

the most implacable of their countrymen, they determined to see them,

and ascertain whether they would be willing to risk their lives in

defence of their liberties. If the blood of the martyrs is the seed of

the church, no less true is it in all history, that the insolence of

tyranny is the cradle of liberty. Rütli, so called from the uprooting

and clearing of the trees (German, _ausgereutet_), a secluded field

below Seelisberg, in the Canton of Uri, on a steep, small promontory

standing out from the mountain and surrounded on three sides by the

waters of the lake, was the spot chosen for their council chamber.[102]

On the night of the 7th of November, 1307, descending from their

mountains, or crossing the lake in small fishing-boats, came the

patriot three, each, as he had agreed to do, bringing ten true and

brave herdsmen, stout of heart and strong of limb. They silently

gathered at the lonely spot, as they had concerted. The love of native

soil, the feeling of freedom and security under the protection of the

laws of the country, the feeling of being ill treated and subjugated

by a foreign debauchee, a determination to throw off so obnoxious

a yoke--all these great and good qualities were shared by these

untutored, but heroic, noble-minded peasants. A handful of patriots,

meeting at midnight, and attesting the justice of their cause to the

Almighty Disposer of events, the God of equity and mercy, the protector

of the helpless; calm and united, proceeding to the delivery of their

country; retaining all the serene forbearance of the most elevated

reason, amid the energies and the fury of vindictive right. They could

bear to die, but not to be subdued:

“They linked their hands,--they pledged their stainless faith

In the dread presence of attesting Heaven,

They knelt, and rose in strength.”

They met to interchange oaths, and not to utter exciting speeches;

“words could not weigh in the balance with that decisive night,

brooding under cover of its darkness the resurrection of a nation, with

those mountains, stars, rocks, and waves, and with the sword ready to

be drawn in the most sacred of causes.” They were summoned, and were

bidden in a few brief sentences, uttered in a low tone, to choose;

and they chose wisely and greatly; they chose liberty, born of the

heavens, breathing of all their odors, and radiant with all their

hues. With hands uplifted to the starry firmament, Fürst, Stauffacher,

and Melchthal, with subdued and slow accent, their comrades repeating

after them, proclaimed, “We swear in the presence of God, before whom

kings and people are equal, to live or die for our fellow-countrymen;

to undertake and sustain all in common; neither to suffer injustice,

nor to commit injury; to respect the rights and property of the Count

of Hapsburg; to do no violence to the imperial bailiffs, but to put an

end to their tyranny.” One of the men who at that momentous assembly

engaged each other by the pledge of “All for each and each for all,”

was William Tell, a fisher of the lake and a hunter of chamois, of

Bürglen, a half-hour from Altdorf in Uri, and a son-in-law of Walter

Fürst. In the mean time, Gessler thought he perceived that the people

walked abroad with more confidence, and carried in their looks a

haughtier expression; when satisfied that the spirit of resistance was

ripe, with a view to confirm his suspicions, he determined to put down

by force the first symptoms of disaffection, and invented a crime to

trap the most daring and dangerous. His hat, surmounted by the Austrian

crown, was placed on the top of a pole, erected in the market-place of

Altdorf, and all who passed by were ordered to uncover their heads, and

bow submissively before this symbol of the imperial sovereignty:

“It is the lord governor’s good will and pleasure

The cap shall have like honor as himself;

And all shall reverence it with bended knee

And heads uncovered....

His life and goods are forfeit to the crown

That shall refuse obedience to the order.”

Guards were posted round the pole, and ordered to arrest all who

refused thus to pay homage. It happened that William Tell was passing,

and failed to pay the required homage. He was instantly seized and

taken before the bailiff. The bailiff first tried to extract from

Tell whether his conduct had been premeditated, and if so, who were

his friends and abettors; but he remained stubbornly silent. Gessler,

incensed at his contumacy, determined to punish him, and, the offence

being one unknown to the land and of his own invention, he was likewise

compelled to invent a punishment. Tell had only one child, a boy, who

was with him at the time, and, as all peasants were accustomed to the

cross-bow, Gessler condemned him to shoot from off his son’s head an

apple, saying, “Know, audacious bowman, that thy own art shall serve to

punish thee.” The lad was blindfolded, the apple placed on his head,

and Tell led away to his position:

“And let him take his distance,

Just eighty paces, as the custom is,

Not an inch more or less.”

To one side stood the cruel Gessler to watch the dreadful archery. Tell

looked well to his aim, and let the arrow fly:

“See Roman fire in Hampden’s bosom swell,

And fate and freedom in the shaft of Tell.”

The twang of the bow was heard, and the eager crowd for the moment held

their breath; then a joyful shout proclaimed that the child was safe,

and the apple was pinned by the unerring arrow. Gessler observing that

Tell had a second arrow, inquired why it was. “It was the custom of the

archers,” he answered. Being further pressed, with the promise that

he might speak freely without fear of losing his life, and excited by

those generous emotions of resentment which a brave and simple race

have seldom the discretion to repress, he replied, “That was reserved

for you, had the first arrow hit my son.”

“If that my hand had struck my darling child,

This second arrow I had aimed at you,

And be assured, I should not then have missed.”

The tyrant, exasperated by the candid reply of Tell, said to him, “I

have promised thee life, but thou shalt spend it in a dungeon.” He

was pinioned by the guards, and thrown into Gessler’s boat, and they

started for the castle of Küssnacht at the other end of the lake. Soon

a dangerous surge came on, such as at certain seasons occurs suddenly,

produced by contrary winds. The boat was in imminent peril from this

tempest. Tell being a skilful boatman, and familiar with the sunken

rocks and dangerous reefs of the long narrow lake, was unbound, placed

at the helm, and ordered to land the boat. He at once steered straight

to a flat piece of rock beneath the sharp sides of the Achsenberg. No

sooner had the boat touched than Tell seized his bow, sprang on to

the narrow ledge, and, at the same time, with his foot pushed back

the frail craft into the angry waters. Quickly finding his way up the

rock, and knowing where his enemy must land, he hastened there, and

as Gessler approached, shot him through the heart. “A wife, Lucretia,

liberated Rome; a father, William Tell, disenthralled Helvetia.”

No one can go to that rock-framed, mountain-embosomed, “that

sacred lake withdrawn among the hills,” and so well known as the

Vierwaldstättersee, or Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, and specially

that part famed as the theatre of Tell’s exploits, and called the

Urnersee (or Uri Lake), and examine the historic spot and see the

numerous evidences, many of them contemporaneous, without being

convinced that William Tell was as much an historical personage as

Julius Cæsar, Napoleon Bonaparte, or George Washington; and that he

lived, acted, and died, as the legend relates. One visiting these

various places, must feel the force of what Latrobe wrote: “There

is something in the grandeur and magnificence of the scene which

surrounds you, which gently but irresistibly opens the heart to a

belief in the truth of the page upon which the events which have

hallowed them are recorded. Whatever a man may think, however he may

be inclined to question the strength of the evidence upon which the

relations of these facts rest while in his closet, I should think there

are but few sufficiently insensible and dogmatical to stand firm and

bar their hearts against the credibility which steals over them while

contemplating the spots themselves.”

At a bend of the lake, a short distance from Brunnen, there rises from

the water a slender rock pillar, some eighty feet in height. This is

the _Mythenstein_, a noble monument, fashioned in the morning of the

world by Nature herself, for the bard who was to hymn the rise of

Helvetian freedom and the praise of its hero. The rock bears in golden

letters the simple inscription:

“Dem Sänger Tell’s

Friedrich Schiller

Die Urkantone

1859.”

(“To the bard of Tell, Friedrich Schiller, the original

Cantons, 1859.”)[103]

A little farther on, opposite Brunnen, at the foot of the rocky

ramparts of Seelisberg, lies a long meadow, Rütli-platte, where, the

peasant tradition says, the spirits of the Patriot Three sleep in the

rocky caverns, ready to awaken in their country’s hour of danger:

“When the battle-horn is blown

Till Schreckhorn’s peaks reply,

When the Jungfrau’s cliffs send back the tone,

Through their eagles’ lonely sky;

When Uri’s beechen woods wave red

In the burning hamlet’s light,

Then from the cavern of the dead

Shall the sleepers wake in might!

They shall wake beside their forest sea,

In the ancient garb they wore,

When they link’d the hands that made us free

On the Rütli’s moonlight shore.”

We now reach on the eastern bank, projecting into the lake, the

platform of rock, Tellsplatte, with its little chapel marking the

spot where Tell leaped ashore and escaped from Gessler’s boat. After

the expulsion of the bailiffs and the demolition of their castles, it

became customary among the Swiss to make pilgrimages to this place;

and in 1388, only a little more than thirty years after the death

of Tell, the Canton of Uri erected this chapel in the presence of a

hundred and fourteen persons who had been acquainted with Tell. Müller

the historian suggests as a reason why there were only a hundred and

fourteen persons who had known Tell to gather together, not much more

than thirty years after his death at the erection of the chapel, was,

that Tell did not often leave Bürglen, and the deed, according to the

ethics of that period, was not likely to attract inquisitive wonderers

to him. It was Tell’s deed alone; the people had no part in Gessler’s

death, the hour which they had agreed upon for their deliverance had

not come. All the old chronicles agree as to the erection of the

chapel and the persons present. The chapel was restored in 1883,

the old frescoes being carefully removed, and now preserved in the

Council House of Altdorf. The restored chapel has four large frescoes

of artistic merit. On the back wall above the altar, to the left is

the “Leap from the boat;” to the right the “Death of the tyrant;” on

the north wall the “Apple scene;” on the southern wall the “Oath of

Rütli;” this last fresco is very frequent in Switzerland, representing

the Patriot Three (_Les Trois Suisses_, or _Die Drei Schweizer_); one

holding a short-handled flag with a cross upon it; the central one

leaning on a spear; and a third sustaining a tall standard which rests

on the ground; all wearing their swords. On Sunday following Easter,

annually, a procession of boats, appropriately decorated, proceeds

slowly to this chapel, consecrated by art, religion, and patriotism to

the great deeds or yet greater thoughts of its olden time hero, and a

solemn memorial service is held. Near by at Küssnacht there is another

chapel marking the place where Gessler was shot, and over the door is

an illustrated painting with the date 18th of November, 1307, and under

it the inscription,--

“Here the proud tyrant Gessler fell,

And liberty was won by Tell;

How long ’twill last, you ask, and tremble:

Long as the Swiss their sires resemble.”

At the upper end of the lake, retired a short distance, is Altdorf, the

capital of Uri. Here in the public square are two fountains. The pillar

in the centre of one of them is surmounted by a figure of Tell holding

his boy under one arm and pressing his bow to his bosom with the other;

it marks the spot where Tell stood when he launched the fearful arrow.

The other fountain is placed on the supposed site of the lime-tree by

which the boy stood awaiting his father’s unerring aim. A figure of

Gessler indicates where the pole bearing the hat and crown was erected;

close to the second fountain is an ancient square tower, on the outside

of which are painted the scenes of Tell’s history. Near by Altdorf runs

the small stream of Schächen, where Tell met his death in 1354: seeing

a child fall into the swollen stream as he passed that way, he plunged

in to rescue it, and, being old and feeble, lost his life. The museum

at Zurich contains the cross-bow of Tell; the little hamlet of Bürglen,

his birthplace, has many reminiscences to show; old houses in Altdorf,

Arth, and Schaffhausen are frescoed with representations of facts in

his history. In Schaffhausen is a fountain having an old stone figure

of Tell with the bow and arrow, on the base of which is the date 1682.

But we are told that history records six other apple-shooting feats,

performed by different individuals before and after the time of Tell.

It is difficult to see how this decides whether Tell was a real

character or not. Such skill in marksmanship was not rare in the days

of archery. A similar, indeed identical, feat is mentioned of the

Scandinavian hero Egill, who was commanded by King Nidhung to shoot

an apple from the head of his son. Egill, like Tell, took two arrows,

and, on being asked why, replied, as Tell did to Gessler, “To shoot

thee, tyrant, if I failed in my task.” Similar stories are recorded of

Eindridi, of Norway; of Hemingr, challenged to the display of skill by

King Harald, son of Sigurd, in 1066; of Toki, or Palnatoke, the Danish

hero, in 1514; and of William of Cloudesley, who, to show the king his

skill in shooting, bound his eldest son to a stake, put an apple on his

head, and at a distance of three hundred feet cleft the apple in two.

This is described by Percy in his “Reliques:”

“I have a son is seven years old,

He is to me full dear;

I will hym tye to a stake

And lay an apple upon his head,

And go sixscore paces hym fro,

And I myself with a broad arrow

Will cleve the apple in two.”

In modern times the same skill is seen with the gun instead of with the

cross-bow. Snuffing a candle, cutting a string, barking a squirrel,

breaking glass balls thrown in the air, are all, perhaps, more

difficult than for a firm hand and a steady eye to pick off an apple

from the head of a boy. The same thing was done in the seventh century

that is recorded of Tell in the fourteenth century, _ergo_ William Tell

is a myth,--this is the question reduced to a logical form. Any one may

see that such an inference is absurd. Yet this is the greatest fact

that has been adduced to prove that Tell’s heroism is a mere figment

of the past. To believe in one tradition and repudiate the other is

not less arbitrary than unphilosophic. Voltaire, whose function it was

to deny, even sneered at the existence of the men of Rütli simply on

account of “the difficulty in pronouncing their names.” The story of

Tell is told in the chronicle of Klingenberg, that covers the close

of the fourteenth century; then again in 1470, in the “Ballad of

Tell,” one of the chief treasures in the archives of Sarnen; in the

“Chronicles of Russ,” 1482; and by Schilling, of Luzern, in 1510, who

had before him a “Tell-song;” and the chronicle of Eglof, town clerk

of Luzern, in the first half of the fifteenth century. The first to

clothe these traditions in the dress of historical narration of great

substantial clearness was the celebrated Swiss chronicler, Ægidius

Tschudi, of Glarus, in 1570. All the early Swiss and German historians,

Stettler, Huldrich, and Müller, sanction it. Then it furnished Florian

with the subject of a novel in French, 1788; Lemierre with his tragedy

of _Guillaume Tell_, 1766; Schiller with a tragedy in German, _Wilhelm

Tell_, 1804; Knowles with a tragedy in English, _William Tell_, 1840.

In 1829, Rossini, the most famous composer of the land beyond the

mountains, wove the magic of his music round Schiller’s greatest drama

with the Italian opera of _Guglielmo Tell_, the delight of the musical

world.[104] Smollett, in his sublime “Ode to Independence,” thus

alludes to Tell:

“Who with the generous rustics sate

On Uri’s rock, in close divan,

And wing’d that arrow, sure as fate,

Which ascertain’d the sacred rights of man.”

Goethe writes: “I picture Tell as an heroic man, possessed of native

strength, but contented with himself, and in a state of childish

unconsciousness. He traverses the Canton as a carrier, and is

everywhere known and beloved, everywhere ready with his assistance. He

peacefully follows his calling, providing for his wife and child.” Sir

James Mackintosh, one of the most impartial of historians, visited the

region associated with the name and deeds of Tell; he examined history,

and became perfectly convinced of the existence of the mountain hero,

and of the truth of the part he played in Switzerland when

“Few were the numbers she could boast,

But every freeman was a host,

And felt as though himself were he

On whose sole arm hung victory.”

Thus a seemingly unimportant event in the remote Alps became the

key-note of European thought, literature, art, and language; for it

inspired not only statesmen, historians, orators, and poets, but

painters, sculptors, and composers. It influenced and exercised pen,

pencil, and chisel, and expanded the vocabulary; for who has not seen,

heard, read _Wilhelm Tell_ in his own or some other language?