NATURAL BEAUTIES OF SWITZERLAND
Yes, it is not necessary to join a climbing party to enjoy the scenery
of Switzerland. No place in the world offers greater facilities to the
sedentary tourist. There are railways and diligence routes almost
everywhere; and in places, too, there are still retreats for the quiet
pedestrian who wishes neither to undertake sensational climbs nor to
be carried by railway, but loves quiet paths by hill and lake and
forest, taking Longfellow's advice:
I heard the distant waters dash,
I saw the current whirl and flash,
And richly, by the blue lake's silver beach,
The woods were bending with a silent reach.
Then o'er the vale, with gentle swell,
The music of the village bell
Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills....
If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills! No tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.
It has to be admitted sadly that these opportunities for quiet rambles
become rarer with each year as mountain railways are multiplied, and
roads supplant the old shepherd paths. But still they exist in some
districts of Switzerland, and the conveniences offered to the walker
by the public services of the country prove that the Swiss wisely
appreciate the value of the patronage of this class of tourist. The
roads and paths are wonderfully well sign-posted, and in places where
there is a great tangle of paths the device has been adopted of
putting vari-coloured marks to indicate different routes. Thus going
out from a centre, one walk will be marked by black marks on trees,
rocks, and fences, another by yellow, another by red, and so on. But
best of all are the few districts still left where there are mountain
paths with no trace at all of tourist traffic, along which you must
find your way by diligent inquiry, by frequent reference to the map,
and always with caution against being tangled up hopelessly in some
wild valley.
The Federal post office offers useful service to the walker. You may
send on your personal luggage by parcel post very cheaply, and thus
walk with very little impedimenta. The happy experience of one tourist
was that he walked right across Switzerland, never carried more than
seven pounds of luggage on his back, and never wanted a change of
clothes in the evening, so reliable was the parcel post system.
[Illustration: THE SCHIAHORN. "The chalets are like fairy houses or toys."]
Mendelssohn has sung the beauty of Swiss paths:
How beautiful are these paths! This Canton de Vaud is the most
beautiful of the countries that I know. If God should grant me
a long old age, this is where I should wish to spend it. What
excellent people! What bright expressions on their faces! What
charming views! When one returns from Italy one almost melts
into tears at the sight of this corner of the world, in which
so many good and honest people are still to be met. There are
no beggars here, no surly functionaries--nothing but smiling
countenances! I thank God for having let me see so many
beautiful sights.
He wrote of a time preceding the modern tourist rush to Switzerland.
But such delights can still be had, away from the more popular
resorts. In the Zermatt district the walking is particularly good, for
it has not yet been "developed" at the call of the crowding hordes of
tourists. The paths have not been broadened into roads and spoilt in
the process, and old-fashioned inns have not been replaced by palace
hotels. Summer, of course, is the chief walking season, but there are
many paths in some of the lower districts possible in the winter.
Certainly those who go to the winter resorts for the sports should
make a point of breaking away now and again from skating rink and
toboggan run for a quiet prowl along some solitary path, to enjoy in
solitude, or in the company of a dear friend, the calm joy of an
Alpine sunset such as Mr. Symonds describes:
While the west grows momentarily more pale the eastern heavens
flush with afterglow, suffuse their spaces with pink and
violet. Daffodil and tenderest emerald intermingle: and these
colours spread until the West again has rose and primrose and
sapphire wonderfully blent, and from the burning skies a light
is cast upon the valley--a phantom light, less real, more like
the hues of molten gems that were the stationary flames of
sunset. Venus and the moon, meanwhile, are silvery clear. Then
the whole illumination fades like magic.... There is hardly any
colour except the blue of sky and shadow. Everything is traced
in vanishing tints, passing from the almost amber of the
distant sunlight through glittering white into pale grey and
brighter blues and deep ethereal azure. The pines stand in
black platoons upon the hillsides, with a tinge of red or
orange on their sable. Some carry masses of snow. Others have
shaken their plumes free. The chalets are like fairy houses or
toys; waist-deep in stores of winter fuel, with their mellow
tones of madder and umber relieved against the white, with the
fantastic icicles and folds of snow depending from their eaves,
or curled like coverlids from roof and window-sill, they are
far more picturesque than in the summer. Colour, wherever it is
found, whether in these cottages or in a block of serpentine by
the roadside, or in the golden bulrush-blades by the lake
shore, takes more than double value. It is shed upon the pallid
landscape like a spiritual and transparent veil. Most beautiful
of all are the sweeping lines of pure untroubled snow, fold
over fold of undulating softness, billowing along the skirts of
the peaked hills. There is no conveying the charm of
immaterial, aerial, lucid beauty, the feeling of purity and
aloofness from sordid things, conveyed by the fine touch on all
our senses of light, colour, form, and air, and motion, and
rare tinkling sound. The enchantment is like a spirit mood of
Shelley's lyric verse.
[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN PATH, GRINDELWALD.]
To the tourist who contemplates a first visit to Switzerland, and can
give but little time to the country--making the visit, let us suppose,
as part of a European tour,--perhaps the best centre of interest is
Lucerne. There he may enjoy at the outset all the characteristic
charms of Swiss scenery--the beautiful lakes, the meadows, and
orchards stretching up from the blue waters to the hills, the great
mountains of Rigi, Pilatus (said by an ancient myth to have been the
refuge of the despairing Pontius Pilate), and the Stansenhorn. There,
too, may be found the delight of the Alpine pine forests and of the
Alpine flowers. There, too, are splendid survivals of the picturesque
life of medieval Switzerland. And, as the Swiss gate of the St.
Gothard Pass, Lucerne offers at once the opportunity to explore one of
the most wonderful paths of the world, and to pass quickly through to
the Italian lakes when the time that can be given to Switzerland has
been exhausted.
The St. Gothard Pass was a Middle Ages' track across the Alps. It was
not known to the Romans, who used the passes of the Valais and the
Rhaetian Alps. From the oldest document in which the Gothard is
mentioned, it seems that in the middle of the thirteenth century the
pass was already frequented by pilgrims. Following the pilgrims came
merchants from Lucerne, Zurich, and Basel, to trade with the rich
towns of fertile Lombardy. Originally the St. Gothard Pass was a
narrow mountain-path gradually widening into a mule-track. It was not
until the early part of the nineteenth century that the pass was made
accessible to carriages, and the highway constructed which still is a
fine example of a mountain road. Under the most favourable conditions
four days was the time required to pass from Lucerne to Milan, and
inclement weather would often force the traveller to take shelter for
days. Now the pass is traversed in a few hours by the St. Gothard
railway built jointly by Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. After
tedious conferences, a treaty was signed by these three countries in
1871, providing that subsidies to the work should be granted by the
contracting parties. The share of Germany and Switzerland was fixed at
L800,000 each, and that of Italy at L1,800,000. During the process of
construction, however, a material increase was necessary, so that
Germany in the end contributed L1,200,000 to the cost, Switzerland
L1,240,000, and Italy L2,320,000.
In September 1872 work was begun, and on February 29, 1880, after
nearly eight years of dangerous work, the piercing of the tunnel was
accomplished. The courageous chief engineer, Louis Favre, eight months
before the completion of the tunnel, fell a victim to its close, heavy
air, and died of heart failure whilst in the workings. The line was
opened in June 1882 and is still a great highway of railway traffic,
though the Simplon railway and the new Loetschberg railway have come
as rival trans-Alpine routes.
The oldest pass of the Alps is that which is now called the Great St.
Bernard, the _Summus Penninus_ of the Romans. Mr. Coolidge, in _Swiss
Travel and Swiss Guide-Books_, states that the first known guide-book
was written for the crowd of pilgrims crossing this pass, by the Abbot
of Thingoer in Iceland, about 1154. There was a shelter building on the
pass before the year 812. A century later the Little St. Bernard was
similarly provided. The Simplon was equipped with a shelter before
1235, the St. Gothard before 1331, and the Grimsel before 1479.
But before leaving Lucerne by the St. Gothard Pass, the traveller with
any claim to historic imagination will visit Schwyz, the cradle of
Swiss independence and the various shrines of the heroes of the Forest
Cantons. Zurich, too, is easily accessible from Lucerne; also the
battlefield of St. Jacob on the Birse, where, in the year 1444, 1500
valiant Swiss held their ground against a force of French more than
twenty times as great. When night fell, this band, defying death with
the cry, "Our souls to God, our bodies to the Armagnacs," was almost
annihilated. Along the St. Gothard Pass are the records of another
great military exploit, Suwarow's passage of the Alps. At the Devil's
Bridge, over the Reuss, a Russian cross records the desperate fight
between the French and Suwarow's army in 1799.
For the tourist who would mingle with his enjoyment of natural beauty
visits to famous literary centres, Geneva of course will be the Swiss
headquarters. From there stretch right and left the storied shores of
Lake Leman. He may visit in turn Ferney, Coppet, and Lausanne, where
the gloomy austerity of Genevan Calvinism seemed to take on something
of a comic spirit. There the use of tobacco and snuff was forbidden
under the Seventh Commandment! "Here," said a preacher, "we snuff only
the Word of God." Montreux can be visited, or can be made the
headquarters of a stay by the Lake of Leman if economy is a
consideration, for it has the reputation of being the cheapest Swiss
place to live in.
Near Montreux is the Castle of Chillon, which Byron made famous in his
"Prisoner of Chillon" with more regard for sentimentality than for
truth. His Prisoner of Chillon was in truth no stainless patriot
imprisoned by a tyrant's rage, but a rather rowdy layman prior,
Francois Bonivard. He conspired against the Duke of Savoy, entered
into a rather undignified kind of civil war, and was imprisoned in the
Castle of Chillon. For some time he was treated fairly well, but
afterwards thrust into a dungeon below the level of the lake where he
was kept four years. In 1536 he was released, and was appointed
Historian to the Genevan Republic. He did not get on well with Calvin
and was frequently before the Genevan Consistory on various charges of
moral wrongdoing. (That argues nothing serious against his character.)
He seems to have been an average human man. But Byron's poem thrust
him on to a pedestal which he did not deserve. The Castle of Chillon
did not end its history as a prison with Bonivard's release. It was
used as a jail in the days of the French Revolution, and its last
notable prisoners were some members of the Salvation Army, accused of
causing street disorders by their ministrations. It was a picturesque
incident this "persecution" by Calvin's Lake of Leman of a new form of
Protestantism. But the persecution was not savage. The Salvationists
(English lasses chiefly) were very well treated in Chillon.
To mingle a study of modern Swiss history with worship of the Alps,
Berne would be the best centre for the tourist. Berne dates its
foundation back to Berchtold V., who in the year 1191 erected a
stronghold on a rocky promontory on the Aare, which was to serve as a
rampart against the attacks of the Burgundian nobles. The town takes
its name from a bear which was killed whilst the building was in
course of construction. To safeguard the western part of the city,
Agrippa d'Aubigne, the Huguenot leader, commenced the erection of a
circle of ramparts, completed in 1646, parts of which still remain and
are known as the "greater" and "lesser" ramparts. In 1218, after the
Zaeringer dynasty had died out, Berne became independent, subject only
to the German Emperor, and remained faithful to the House of
Hohenstaufen. During the Interregnum, Berne was forced to place
herself under the protection of the Duke of Savoy, in order to be able
to resist her numerous enemies. In the Burgundian war of 1474-77,
Berne was victorious at Grandson, Morat, and Nancy, and obtained a
strong foothold in Vaud, which entered entirely into her possession in
1536, so that her dominion extended from the Lake of Geneva to the
Reuss, and from the source of the Aare up to its juncture with the
Rhine. The upheaval caused by the French Revolution brought about the
fall of the Bernese Republic. In 1798, after the battles of Neuenegg
and Grauholz, the French entered the town under General Schauenburg,
and Berne lost her independence.
Since the Constitution of 1848, Berne has been the capital of the new
Confederation, the seat of the Federal Council and of Parliament. It
is also the headquarters of many international organisations.
Switzerland excites no jealousy among the European Powers and is
usually chosen as the summoning nation for conferences in which
international agreements are discussed.
Berne has some fine old monuments; and its medieval fountains are
particularly interesting. The bear-pit, which has been kept up for
centuries in record of the city's ancient association with the bear,
is worth a visit. From the Bernese public gardens and from the Gurten
(2800 feet high--reached by a funicular railway) there are marvellous
views of the Alps. There "soul of man has fronting him earth's utmost
majesty."
Lucerne, Geneva, Berne--these are the three centres I would recommend
to the traveller with but a short time available for a Swiss tour
and seeking to get a general impression of the country: and of the
three Lucerne is the best centre. But with a month to spare all three
may be visited and a very good idea of Switzerland obtained. The best
time for such a sight-seeing trip is the late spring or the summer,
preferably the spring, for with the summer often come dust and flies.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF CHILLON.]