at its west end, and the town is grouped around this outlet. But
mountains here there are none--nothing but rich glades and gently
swelling hills, covered with the most bounteous harvest, through which
the high road runs north-easterly some sixty miles to Basle on the
Rhine in the north-east corner of Switzerland, with Germany (Baden) on
the east and France on the north. A single ridge, indeed, on this route
presents a ragged cliff or two and some heights dignified with the title
of mountains, which seem a joke to one who has just spent two days among
the Alps.
Grass is the chief staple of this fertile region, but Wheat is
abundantly grown and is just beginning to ripen, promising a noble
yield. Potatoes also are extensively planted, and I never saw a more
vigorous growth. Rye, Oats and Barley do well, but are little
cultivated. Of Indian Corn there is none, and the Vine, which had given
out on the Italian side some twenty miles below the foot of St. Gothard,
does not come in again till we are close to the Rhine. But in its stead
they have the Apple in profusion--I think more Apple trees between
Lucerne and the Rhine, than I had seen in all Europe before--and they
seem very thrifty, though this year's yield of fruit will be light.
There are some other trees planted, and many small, thrifty forests,
such as I had hardly seen before on the Continent. These increase as we
approach the Rhine. There is hardly a fence throughout, and generous
crops of Wheat, Potatoes, Rye, Grass, Oats, &c., are growing close up to
the beaten road on either side. I don't exactly see how Cattle are
driven through such a country, having passed no drove since crossing
Mount St. Gothard.
The dwellings are generally large, low structures, with sloping,
overhanging roofs, indicating thrift and comfort. Sometimes the first
story, or at least the basement, is of hewn-stone, but the greater part
of the structure is nearly always of wood. The barns are spacious, and
built much like the houses. I have passed through no other part of
Europe evincing such general thrift and comfort as this quarter of
Switzerland, and Basle, already a well built city, is rapidly improving.
When the Railroad line from Paris to Strasburg is completed, the French
capital will be but little more than twenty-four hours from Basle, while
the Baden line, down the German side of the Rhine, already connects this
city easily with all Germany, and is certain of rapid and indefinite
extension. Basle, though quite a town in Caesar's day, is renewing her
youth.
THE SWISS.
I am leaving Switzerland, after four days only of observation therein;
but during those days I have traversed the country from its southern to
its north-eastern extremity, passing through six of the Cantons and
along the skirts of another, resting respectively at Airolo, Lucerne,
and Basle, and meeting many hundreds of the people on the way, beside
seeing thousands in the towns and at work in their fields. This is
naturally a very poor country, with for the most part a sterile soil--or
rather, naked, precipitous rocks, irreclaimably devoid of soil--where,
if anywhere, the poor peasantry would be justified in asking charity of
the strangers who come to gaze at and enjoy their stupendous but most
inhospitable mountains--and yet I have not seen one beggar to a hundred
hearty workers, while in fertile, bounteous, sunny Italy, the
preponderance was clearly the other way. And, though very palpably a
stranger, and specially exposed by my ignorance of the languages spoken
here to imposition, no one has attempted to cheat me from the moment of
my entering the Republic till this, while in Italy every day and almost
every hour was marked by its peculiar extortions. Every where I have
found kindness and truth written on the faces and evinced in the acts of
this people, while in Italy rapacity and knavery are the order of the
day. How does a monarchist explain this broad discrepancy? Mountains
alone will not do, for the Italians of the Apennines and the Abruzzi are
notoriously very much like those of the Campagna and of the Val d'Arno;
nor will the zealot's ready suggestion of diverse Faiths suffice, for my
route has lain almost exclusively through the _Catholic_ portion of this
country. Ticino, Uri, Lucerne, etc., are intensely, unanimously
Catholic; the very roadsides are dotted with little shrines, enriched
with the rudest possible pictures of the Virgin and Child, the
Crucifixion, &c., and I think I did not pass a Protestant church or
village till I was within thirty miles of this place. Nearly all the
Swiss I have seen are Catholics, and a more upright, kindly, truly
religious people I have rarely or never met. What, then, can have
rendered them so palpably and greatly superior to their Italian
neighbors, whose ancestors were the masters of theirs, but the
prevalence here of Republican Freedom and there of Imperial Despotism?
Switzerland, shut out from equal competition with other nations by her
inland, elevated, scarcely accessible position, has naturalized
Manufactures on her soil, and they are steadily extending. She sends
Millions' worth of Watches, Silks, &c., annually even to distant
America; while Italy, with nearly all her population within a day's ride
of the Adriatic or the Mediterranean, with the rich, barbaric East at
her doors for a market, does not fabricate even the rags which partially
cover her beggars, but depends on England and France for most of the
little clothing she has. Italy is naturally a land of abundance and
luxury, with a soil and climate scarcely equalled on earth; yet a large
share of her population actually lack the necessaries, not to speak of
the comforts, of life, and those who sow and reap her bountiful harvests
are often without bread: Switzerland has, for the most part, an Arctic
climate and scarcely any soil at all; and yet her people are all
decently clad and adequately though frugally fed, and I have not seen
one person who seemed to have been demoralized by want or to suffer from
hunger since I crossed her border. Her hotels are far superior to their
more frequented namesakes of Italy; even at the isolated hamlet of
Airolo, where no grain will grow, I found everything essential to
cleanliness and comfort, while the "Switzer Hoff" at Lucerne and "Les
Trois Rois" at Basle are two of the very best houses I have found in
Europe. What Royalist can satisfactorily explain these contrasts?
Switzerland, though a small country, and not half of this habitable,
speaks three different languages. I found at Airolo regular files of
Swiss journals printed respectively in French, Italian, and German: the
last entirely baffled me; the two former I read after a fashion, making
out some of their contents' purport and drift. Those in French, printed
at Geneva, Lausanne, &c., were executed far more neatly than the others.
All were of small size, and in good part devoted to spirited political
discussion. Switzerland, though profoundly Republican, is almost equally
divided into parties known respectively as "Radical" and "Conservative:"
the Protestant Cantons being preponderantly Radical, the Catholic
generally Conservative. Of the precise questions in dispute I know
little and shall say nothing; but I do trust that the controversy will
not enfeeble nor paralyze the Republic, now seriously menaced by the
Allied Despots, who seem to have almost forgotten that there ever was
such a man as WILLIAM TELL. Let us drink, in the crystal current leaping
brightly down from the eternal glaciers, to his glorious, inspiring
memory, and to Switzerland a loving and hopeful Adieu!
XXXIII.
GERMANY.
COLOGNE, Tuesday, July 15, 1851.
After spending Sunday very agreeably at Basle (where American
Protestants traveling may like to know that Divine worship is regularly
conducted each Sabbath by an English clergyman, at the excellent Hotel
of the Three Kings), I set my face again northward at 7 1/2 A. M.
on Monday, crossing the Rhine (which is here about the size of the
Hudson at Albany) directly into Baden, and so leaving the soil of
glorious Switzerland, the mountain home of Liberty amid surrounding
despotisms. The nine first miles from Basle (to Efringen) are traversed
by Omnibus, and thence a very good Railroad runs nearly parallel with
the Rhine by Freiburg, Kehl (opposite Strasburg), Baden (at some
distance), Rastatt, Carlsruhe, and Heidelberg, to Mannheim, distant from
Basle 167 1/2 miles by Railroad, and I presume considerably further by
River, as the Rhine (unlike the Railroad as far as Heidelberg) is not
very direct in its course. There is a French Railroad completed on the
other (west) side of the river from Basle to Strasburg, and nearly
completed from Strasburg to Paris, which affords a far more direct and
expeditious route than that I have chosen, as I wished to see something
of Germany. It is also cheaper, I believe, to take the French Railroad
to Strasburg, and the river thence by steamboats which ply regularly as
high as Strasburg, and might keep on to Basle, I presume, if not impeded
by bridges, as the river is amply large enough.
The Baden Railroad runs through a country descending, indeed, toward the
Rhine and with the Rhine, but as nearly level as a country well can be,
and affording the fewest possible obstacles to its construction. It is
faithfully built, but instead of the numerous common roads which cross
it being carried over or under its track, as the English Railroads are,
they are closed on each side by a swing-bar, at which a guard is
stationed--a plan which saves expense at the outset, but involves a
heavy permanent charge. I should deem the English plan preferable to
this, though men are had much cheaper for such service in Germany than
in America, or even Great Britain. The pace is slower than with us. We
were about nine hours of fair daylight traversing 160 miles of level or
descending grade, with a light passenger train. The management, however,
was careful and unexceptionable.
This Railroad runs for most of the distance much nearer to the range of
gentle hills which bound the broad and fertile Rhine valley on the east
than to the river itself. The valley is nearly bare of trees for the
most part, and has scarcely any fences save the very slight board fence
on either side of the Railroad. In some places, natural woods of
considerable extent are permitted, but not many fruit nor shade-trees,
whether in rows or scattered. The hills in sight, however, are very
considerably wooded, and wood is apparently the common fuel. The valley
is generally but not entirely irrigated, though all of it easily might
be, the arrangements for irrigation appearing much more modern and
unsystematic here than in Lombardy. The land is cultivated in strips as
in France--first Wheat (the great staple), then Rye, then Potatoes, then
Clover, then Beets, or Hemp, or Flax, and so on. For a small part of the
way, Grass seems to preponderate, but generally Wheat and Rye cover more
than half the ground, while Potatoes have a very large breadth of it.
Rye is now being harvested, and is quite heavy: in fact, all the crops
promise abundant harvests. The Vine appears at intervals, but is not
general through this region: Indian Corn is also rare, and appears in
small patches. In some places many acres of Wheat are seen in one piece,
but usually a breadth of four to twenty rods is given to one crop, and
then another succeeds and so on. I presume this implies a diversity of
owners, or at least of tenants.
The cultivation, though not always judicious, is generally thorough,
there being no lack of hands nor of good will. The day being fine and
the season a hurrying one, the vast plain was everywhere dotted with
laborers, of whom fully half were Women, reaping Rye, binding it, raking
and pitching Hay, hoeing Potatoes, transplanting Cabbages, Beets, &c.
They seemed to work quite as heartily and efficiently as the men. But
the most characteristically European spectacle I saw was a woman
unloading a great hay-wagon of huge cordwood at a Railroad station, and
pitching over the heavy sticks with decided resolution and efficiency.
It may interest the American pioneers in the Great Pantalette (or is it
Pantaloon?) Movement to know that she was attired in appropriate
costume--short frock, biped continuations and a mannish oil-skin
hat.--And this reminds me that, coming away from Rome, I met, at the
half-way house to Civita Vecchia, a French marching regiment on its way
from Corsica to the Eternal City, to which regiment two women were
attached as sutlers, &c., who also wore the same costume, except that
their hats were of wool instead of oil-skin. Thus attired, they had
marched twenty-five miles that hot day, and were to march as many the
next, as they had doubtless done on many former days. It certainly
cannot be pretended that these women adopted that dress from a love of
novelty, or a desire to lead a new fashion, or from any other reason
than a sense of its convenience, founded on experience. I trust,
therefore, that their unconscious testimony in behalf of the Great
Movement may not be deemed irrelevant nor unentitled to consideration.
Their social rank is certainly not the highest, but I consider them more
likely to render a correct judgment on the merit of the Bloomer
controversy than the Lady Patronesses of Almack's.
THE RHINE.
After spending the night at Mannheim, I took a steamboat at 5 1/2 this
morning for this place, 165 miles down the Rhine, embracing all the
navigable part of the river of which the scenery is esteemed attractive.
As far down as Mayence or Mentz (55 miles), the low banks and broad
intervale continue, and there is little worthy of notice. From Mentz to
Coblentz (54 miles), there is some magnificent scenery, though I think
its natural beauties do not surpass those of the Hudson from New-York to
Newburgh. Certainly there are no five miles equal in rugged grandeur to
those beginning just below and ending above West Point. But the Rhine is
here somewhat larger than the Hudson; the hills on either side, though
seldom absolutely precipitous, are from one to five hundred feet high,
and are often crowned with the ruins of ancient castles, which have a
very picturesque appearance; while the little villages at their foot and
the cultivation (mainly of the Vine) which is laboriously prosecuted up
their rocky and almost naked sides, contribute to heighten the general
effect. These sterile rocks impart a warmth to the soil and a sweetness
to the grape which are otherwise found only under a more southerly sun,
and, combined with the cheapness of labor, appear to justify the
toilsome process of terracing up the steep hill-sides, and even carrying
up earth in baskets to little southward-looking nooks and crevices where
it may be retained and planted on. Yet I liked better than the vine-clad
heights those less abrupt declivities where a more varied culture is
attempted, and where the Vine is intermingled with strips of now
ripened Rye, ripening Wheat, blossoming Potatoes, &c., &c., together
imparting a variegated richness and beauty to the landscape which are
rarely equaled. But the Rhine has been nearly written out, and I will
pass it lightly over. Its towers are not very imposing in appearance,
though Coblentz makes a fair show. Opposite is Ehrenbreitstein, no
longer the ruin described (if I rightly remember) in Childe Harold, but
a magnificent fortress, apparently in the best condition, and said to
have cost Five Millions of dollars. The "blue Moselle" enters the Rhine
from the west just below Coblentz. This city (Cologne) is the largest, I
believe, in Rhenish Prussia, and, next to Rotterdam at its mouth, the
largest on the Rhine, having a flourishing trade and 90,000 inhabitants.
(Coblentz has 26,000, Mayence 36,000, Mannheim 23,000 and Strasburg
60,000.)
There are some bold hights dignified as mountains below Coblentz, but
the finest of the scenery is above. The hills disappear some miles above
this city, and henceforward to the sea all is flat and tame as a marsh.
On the whole, the Rhine has hardly fulfilled my expectations. Had I
visited it on my way _to_ the Alps, instead of just _from_ them, it
would doubtless have impressed me more profoundly; but I am sure the St.
Mary's of Lake Superior is better worth seeing; so I think, is the
Delaware section of the Erie Railroad. It is possible the weather may
have unfitted me for appreciating this famous river, for a more cloudy,
misty, chilly, rainy, execrable, English day I have seldom encountered.
To travelers blessed with golden sunshine, the Rhine may wear a grander,
nobler aspect, and to such I leave it.
THE GERMANS.
I have been but two days wholly among the Germans, but I had previously
met many of them in England, Italy and Switzerland. They are seen to
the best advantage at home. Their uniform courtesy (save in the
detestable habit of smoking where others cannot help being annoyed by
their fumes), indicates not merely good nature but genuine kindness of
heart. I have not seen a German quarreling or scolding anywhere in
Europe. The deference of members of the same family to each other's
happiness in cars, hotels and steamboats has that quiet, unconscious
manner which distinguishes a habit from a holiday ornament. The entire
absence of pretense, of stateliness, of a desire to be thought a
personage and not a mere person, is scarcely more universal in
Switzerland than here. But in fact I have found Aristocracy a chronic
disease nowhere but in Great Britain. In France, there is absolutely
nothing of it; there are monarchists in that country--monarchists from
tradition, from conviction, from policy, or from class interest--but of
Aristocracy scarcely a trace is left. Your Paris boot-black will make
you a low bow in acknowledgment of a franc, but he has not a trace of
the abjectness of a London waiter, and would evidently decline the honor
of being kicked by a Duke. In Italy, there is little manhood but no
class-worship; her millions of beggars will not abase themselves one
whit lower before a Prince than before anyone else from whom they hope
to worm a copper. The Swiss are freemen, and wear the fact unconsciously
but palpably on their brows and beaming from their eyes. The Germans
submit passively to arbitrary power which they see not how successfully
to resist, but they render to rank or dignity no more homage than is
necessary--their souls are still free, and their manners evince a
simplicity and frankness which might shame or at least instruct America.
On the Rhine, the steamboats are so small and shabby, without
state-rooms, berth-rooms, or even an upper deck--that the passengers are
necessarily at all times under each other's observation, and, as the
fare is high, and twice as much in the main as in the forward cabin, it
may be fairly presumed that among those who pay the higher charge are
none of the poorest class--no mere laborers for wages. Yet in this main
cabin well-dressed young ladies would take out their home-prepared
dinner and eat it at their own good time without seeking the company and
countenance of others, or troubling themselves to see who was observing.
A Lowell factory-girl would consider this entirely out of character, and
a New-York milliner would be shocked at the idea of it.
The Germans are a patient, long-suffering race. Of their Forty Millions
outside of Austria, probably less than an eighth at all approve or even
acquiesce in the despotic policy in which their rulers are leagued, and
which has rendered Germany for the present a mere outpost of Russia--an
unfinished Poland. These people are intelligent as well as brave--they
see and feel, yet endure and forbear. Perhaps their course is wiser than
that which hot impatience would prompt--nay, I believe it is. If they
can patiently suffer on without losing heart until France shall have
extricated herself from the toils of her treacherous misrulers, they may
then resume their rights almost without a blow. And whenever a new 1848
shall dawn upon them, they will have learned to improve its
opportunities and avoid its weaknesses and blunders. Heaven speed its
auspicious coming!
XXXIV.
BELGIUM.
PARIS, Saturday, July 19, 1851.
From Cologne westward by Railroad to the Western frontier (near
Verviers) of Rhenish Prussia, and thus of Germany, is 65 miles. For most
of the way the country is flat and fertile, and in good part devoted to
Grazing, though considerable Wheat is grown. The farming is not
remarkably good, and the general aspect befits a region which for two
thousand years has been too often the arena of fierce and bloody
conflict between the armies of great nations. Cologne itself, though a
place of no natural strength, has been fortified to an extent and at an
evident cost beyond all American conception. All over this part of
Europe, and to a less degree throughout Italy, the amount of expenditure
on walls and forts, bastions, ditches, batteries, &c. is incalculably
great. I cannot doubt that any nation, by wisely expending half so much
in systematic efforts to educate, employ steadily and reward amply its
poorer classes, would have been strengthened and ensured against
invasion far more than it could be by walls like precipices and a belt
of fortresses as impregnable as Gibraltar. But this wisdom is slowly
learned by rulers, and is not yet very widely appreciated. Whenever it
shall be, "Othello's occupation" will be gone, not for Othello only, but
for all who would live by the sword.
For some miles before it reaches the frontier, and for a much larger
distance after entering Belgium, the Railroad passes through a
decidedly broken, hilly, up-and-down country, most unlike the popular
conception of Flanders or Belgium. Precipices of naked rock are not
unfrequent and the region is wisely given up mainly to Wood and Grass,
the former engrossing most of the hill-sides and the latter flourishing
in the valleys. This Railroad has more tunnels in the course of fifty
miles than I ever before met with--I think not less than a dozen--while
the grading and bridging must have been very expensive. Such a country
is of course prolific in running streams, on which many small and some
larger manufacturing towns and villages are located. At length, it
ascends a considerable inclined plane at Liege, once a very popular,
powerful and still a handsome and important manufacturing town with
60,000 inhabitants; and here the beautiful and magnificently fertile
table lands of Belgium spread out like a vast prairie before the
traveler. In fact, the peasant cultivators are so commonly located in
villages, leaving long stretches of the rarely fenced though well
cultivated plain without a habitation, that the resemblance to level
prairies which have been planted and sown is more striking than would be
imagined. But the growing crops are too cleanly and carefully weeded and
too uniformly good to protract the illusion. Sometimes hundreds of acres
are unbrokenly covered with Wheat, which has the largest area of any one
staple; but more commonly a breadth of this is succeeded by one of Rye,
that by one of Potatoes, then Wheat again, then Clover, then Rye, then
Wheat, then Potatoes, then Clover or other grass, and so on. I never
before saw so extensive and uniformly thrifty a growth of Potatoes,
while acres upon acres of Beets, also in regular rows and kept carefully
free from weeds, present at this season a beautiful appearance. I
apprehend that not half so much attention has been given in our country
to the growth of this and the kindred roots as would have been richly
rewarded. Of course, it is idle to sow Beets on any but rich land, with
a generous depth of soil and the most thorough cultivation, but with
such cultivation the red lands of New-Jersey and the intervales of our
rivers might be profitably and extensively devoted to the Beet culture
and to that of the larger Turnips. I have seen nothing in Europe that
made a better appearance or promised a more bountiful return than the
large tracts of Belgium and the neighboring district of France sown to
Beets.