Transcriber's Notes:
When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has
been surrounded by _underscores_. Ditto marks have been replaced by the
text they represent. The oe ligature has been replaced by the letters oe.
Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. In particular,
punctuation has been normalized and duplicate words were removed. Other
corrections are listed below with the original text (top) and the
replacement text (bottom):
Contents: Gerni
Gemmi
Chapter I: herren
Herren
Schaffhaussen
Schaffhausen
Chapter II: intere t
interest
Chapter III: caries
carries
Chapter IV: withont
without
Chapter V: fouud
found
Chapter VI: Agazziz
Agassiz
eating-roon
eating-room
Chapter VII: cotages
cottages
Reichenback
Reichenbach
Alpback
Alpbach
white lace vails
white lace veils
Chapter VIII: replendent
resplendent
Grindenwald
Grindelwald
Chapter IX: visiters
visitors
puplis
pupils
Chapter X: businesss
business
Chapter XII: T56M[symbol]
The
Chapter XIII: benificent
beneficent
Grindewald
Grindelwald
Chapter XIV: fearfuly
fearfully
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: INTERLACHEN AND THE JUNGFRAU.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letters from Switzerland.
---------------------
BY
SAMUEL IRENÆUS PRIME,
AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN EUROPE AND THE EAST,"
&C., &C.
---------------------
NEW YORK:
SHELDON & COMPANY, 115 Nassau Street.
BOSTON: GOULD & LINCOLN.
1860.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
SHELDON & COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of
New-York.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I
BASLE AND THE RHINE.
The Three Kings--Cathedral--Council of Basle--Puritan rules--Dance of
Death--Seats in the Diligence--Supplement--The Rhine--An Alderman in
trouble--Dining in haste--English manners--Girls in holiday
dress--Falls of the Rhine--Niagara--Up the river--Old
nunneries--Gottlieben--Prisons of Huss and Jerome of Prague.
Pages 9-20
CHAPTER II
CONSTANCE AND ZURICH.
A decaying Town--the Kaufhaus--Famous Council--Dungeon of Huss--Scene of
Martyrdom--House of Huss--Lake Constance--the Ride to
Zurich--Villages--the Valley--Hotel Baur--a Swiss Cottage--the
Furnishing--Miles Coverdale--Zwingle--Lavater's Grave--the
Library--Sunset View from the Botanical Garden.
Pages 21-31
CHAPTER III.
THE MOUNTAIN TOPS.
Climbing the Utleberg--Fat woman on a donkey--First Alpine view--The
valley, lake and hills--Haunts of Lavater, Zimmerman, Klopstock,
Gessner--The work of Escher--Coming Down--Baur Hotel--Lake
Zurich--Lake Zug--Golda--Land-side--Ruin--Ascent of the Rigi--The
best route--Chapels by the way--Mary of the Snow--Convent and
monks--The Summit--The Company--Change of
Temperature--Sunset--Supper--Night--Sunrise--Glory of the
view--Getting down again--Fat man done up.
Pages 32-53
CHAPTER IV.
LUCERNE AND THE LAND OF TELL.
The Lake--Avalanches--Pontius Pilate--Lucerne--Dance of
Death--Fishing--Storm on the Lake--Ramble among the Peasantry--Two
Dwarfs--On the Lake--Rifle Shooting--Chapel of William Tell--Scenes
in his Life--Altorf--Hay-Making--a Great Day.
Pages 54-80
CHAPTER V.
PASS OF ST. GOTHARD
The Priest's Leap--The Devil's Bridge--Night on the
Mountains--Storm--Hospenthal--the Glaciers--a Lady in Distress--the
Furca Pass--Glacier of the Rhone--Heinrich and Nature--Heinrich asks
after God--Scene in the Hospice.
Pages 81-106
CHAPTER VI.
GLACIERS OF THE AAR.
My new Friend--a Wonderful Youth--Hospice of the Grimsel--the Valley--a
comfortable Day--Glaciers of the Aar--a Gloomy Vale--Climbing a
Hill--View of the Glacier--Theory of its Formation--Caverns in the
Ice--Incidents of Men falling in--My Leap and Fall--an Artist
Lost--Return.
Pages 107-121
CHAPTER VII.
MOUNTAINS, STREAMS AND FALLS.
Pedestrianism--Mountain Torrents--Fall of the Handek--The Guide and his
Little Ones--Falls of the Reichenbach--Perilous Point of View.
Pages 122-145
CHAPTER VIII.
A GLACIER AND AVALANCHE.
Alpine Horn--Beggars--The Rosenlaui Glacier--Beautiful Views--Glorious
Mountain Scenes--Mrs. Kinney's "Alps"--A Lady and Babe--The Great
Scheidek--Grindelwald--Eagle and Bear--Battle with Bugs--Wengern
Alp--A real Avalanche--The Jungfrau.
Pages 146-165
CHAPTER IX.
INTERLACHEN AND BERNE.
The Staubach Fall--Lauterbrunnen--Interlachen--Cretins and Goitre--Dr.
Guggenbuhl--Giesbach Fall--Berne--Inquisitive Lady--Swiss
Creed--Crossing the Gemmi--Leuchenbad Baths.
Pages 166-180
CHAPTER X.
MONKS OF ST. BERNARD.
The Char-a-banc--the Napoleon Pass--Travellers in
winter--Monks--Dogs--Dinner--Music--Dead House--Contributions--a
Monk's Kiss.
Pages 181-192
CHAPTER XI.
FIRST SIGHT OF MONT BLANC.
The Host of Martigny--Vale of the Drance--Mount Rosa--Tete Noire--Col de
Balm--The Monarch of the Alps.
Pages 193-204
CHAPTER XII.
GENEVA
A good House--Prisoner of Chillon--Calvin--Dr. Malan--Dr. Gaussen--Col.
Tronchin--the Cemetery.
Pages 205-213
CHAPTER XIII.
PICTURES IN SWITZERLAND.
Waterfalls--Constance--Zurich--William Tell--Glaciers--the Monarch.
Pages 214-246
CHAPTER XIV.
SAXON SWYTZ.
A Model Guide--the Bastei--Banditti of old--a Cataract to Order--Scaling a
Rampart--Konigstein--the Kuhstall--the Great Winterberg--Prebisch
Thor--Looking Back.
Pages 247-264
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SWITZERLAND.
---------------------
CHAPTER I.
BASLE AND THE RHINE.
The Three Kings--Cathedral--Council of Basle--Puritan rules--Dance of
Death--Seats in the Diligence--Supplement--The Rhine--An Alderman in
trouble--Dining in haste--English manners--Girls in holiday
dress--Falls of the Rhine--Niagara--Up the river--Old
nunneries--Gottlieben--Prisons of Huss and Jerome of Prague.
Switzerland, to be seen aright, must be entered from Germany. Many
travellers rush from Paris to Geneva, and beginning with Chamouni and
Mont Blanc come down from the greater to the less, tapering off with the
beautiful instead of rising to the sublime. One lovely summer day in the
early part of the month of August, we left Baden Baden, where we had
been resting after a tour in Belgium, Holland, Prussia, Saxony, Saxon
Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, and Bohemia, and came by the Duke of
Baden's railroad to Basle.
The hotel de _Trois Rois_, or, _Three Kings_, was reluctant to receive
us, so great was the rush of company. Large as some of our own first
class hotels, it was crowded to overflowing, but we found lodgings for
three at the top of the house. It stands on the very borders of the
river Rhine, which rushes by with a powerful current, and the verandah
in front overhanging the stream is a pleasant lounge after a weary day
of travel. Lodgings for three gentlemen, or in German, "fur drei
Herren," we had so often asked for, that we came to be called the "Drei
Herren," or "dry herring," as it sounded in our English ears.
The river forms a broad and noble stream along the sloping bank on which
the city stands; the Jura mountains rise on one side, and the hills of
the Black Forest on the other, while the intermediate region is richly
covered with vegetation, and the villas of a wealthy class of people who
have retired from the city, or who own the soil. Basle is a goodly town,
and if the people have some rigid notions of morality in the judgment of
travellers of easy virtue, it is refreshing to come into a city where
the shops are closed of a Sunday, and every one is required to be at
home by eleven o'clock at night. A city that bore so conspicuous a part
in the Reformation, and still cherishes the ashes of so many great and
good men, ought not to lose its veneration for the spirit and principles
of the past. In the _Cathedral_, now in process of renovation, we stood
over the dust of the learned Erasmus, read his epitaph in Latin, walked
among the beautiful cloisters which have been burial places for the wise
and good for more than _six_ hundred years! where the monuments stand of
Grynæus, and Meyer, and OEcolampadius, men who were mighty in the
Scriptures, in the days when such men were few. We walked through the
portal of St. Gallus, under the statues of Christ and Peter, and the
wise and foolish Virgins, and admired the pulpit of three pieces of
stone, carved with great skill and effect; and then we were led to the
chamber where the Council of Basle held its sessions, beginning in 1436,
and lasting eight years. It has undergone no alterations in the four
hundred years which have since elapsed. In the _Library_ are preserved
manuscripts of Luther, Melancthon, Erasmus and Zwingle, and a huge
volume in which illustrious visitors had inscribed their names for two
hundred years. The celebrated pictures of the _Dance of Death_ once
adorned the walls of the Dominican church in Basle, and a few of them
still preserved are now hung up in this collection, among others of
greater merit but less fame, by Holbein. A beautiful picture, which I
have seen attempted with far less success before, presents a Venus
sleeping by the side of a stream, and a skull lying near her, and
flowers blooming around, to illustrate the lines: _Mortis imago sopor:
velut amnis labitur ætas, vix forma reliquium pulvis et ossa manent._
"The image of death is sleep: like the river life glides away, and dust
and bones, the only relics of departed beauty, are left behind." In the
next room the same sentiment is more impressively taught from an
uncovered sarcophagus, in which a female mummy grins horribly at you, as
you look into the narrow house which she has slept in for two or three
thousand years.
The architecture of this old Swiss town is very curious, and many of the
most antique gateways and fortifications, towers and walls, remain to
this hour, showing the quaint but not bad devices in the way of
ornament, which were in use 450 years ago. In old times, too, they had
moral laws here quite as stringent as those imputed to our New England
ancestors. On the Sabbath, no one might go to church unless dressed in
black; the number of dishes and the quantity of wine for a dinner party
were regulated by law, as well as the style and quality of clothes. The
good people used to put religious mottoes over their doors, and one or
two public houses still have them:
"In God I build my hopes of grace,
The ancient Pig's my dwelling place."
And another still more earnest:
"Wake and repent your sins with grief,
I'm called the Golden Shin of Beef."
The gates of the town are closed on the Sabbath day during the hours of
service, and an outward respect paid to the day which is creditable to
the people. In the hotel, a small room has been fitted up neatly as a
chapel for an English service, a custom not unusual in Switzerland,
where English travellers are flocking constantly.
Basle is the great starting point for Swiss travelling for those who
enter the German frontier. We have now come to the end of railroads, and
must depend on horses or go afoot. The sooner one takes his place in the
_diligence_ after arriving, the more likely he is to have a good seat
when he wishes to depart, and though we were early for this, no less
than twelve had the start of us, and the coach carried only nine. "You
shall have a _supplement_," we were told, and at nine in the morning
with twenty-five travellers we were at the _Post Office_, to be
despatched with the mails and the females to Schaffhausen. This posting
is a Government concern, and the postmaster has charge of the horses as
well as the letters. There was no place but the middle of the street in
which to remain, till at the appointed hour the heavy diligence lumbered
up to the door: the nine predestinated thereunto took their seats; an
omnibus and one or two carriages by way of supplement, received the rest
of us, many grumbling grievously that they had not places in the coach,
and others preferring as we did, an easy carriage with a party of four.
The postillion dressed in a yellow jacket with a brass horn under his
arm, with which he amused himself and the country people as he passed,
mounted the box, and we soon crossed the Rhine, and followed its banks
upward for many a pleasant mile. The morning was fine after a rainy
night, clear, cool and bracing; the distant Alps were constantly in
sight on the right, and the winding, often rapid, always beautiful
river, with its vine-clad shores and smiling cottages was by our side.
We left the carriage at _Lauffenburg_, and walked to the banks of the
Rhine, where the river is choked into a narrow gorge, and dashes with
terrible force through a deep sunk channel, among opposing rocks, making
a fearful pass in which an English nobleman lost his life, attempting to
make the rapids in a little boat. Resuming our seats, we found one of
our fellow travellers belonging to the diligence, Alderman ---- of New
York left behind. The coach was out of call, and the best he could do
was to mount the edge of the postillion's single seat in front of our
carriage and ride on to the next post town. The Alderman was heavy, the
place was too strait for him, and I suggested that a _franc_ would buy
the whole seat. He tried the effect of it, the postillion took the
silver, dropped down upon the foot rest, and the Alderman had the seat
to himself. In an hour we stopped to dine. Perhaps we were here a few
moments sooner than mine host of the _Waldshut_ Hotel expected us, for
the dinner was not on the table, but it gave us a fine opportunity to
observe a specimen of manners sufficiently characteristic to be made a
matter of record. At the table there sat ten English, six German, and
seven American ladies and gentlemen. The dishes were slow in coming in;
the English gentlemen all having ladies under their care, left the
table, rushed into the kitchen, seized the best dishes of meats they
could find, brought them to their own places, and helping themselves and
their ladies, devoured them in the presence of the more barbarous
Germans and Americans, who looked on with amazement. I took the liberty
of remarking that it was an outrage, of which I had never before seen an
example in civilized life, and was happy to observe that the practice
was confined to a single nation out of the number represented here. An
English lady gave me an approving nod, but the men were too far gone in
beef and sour wine to pay any attention to lessons in good breeding. As
might be expected, the leader in this grab-game grumbled at his bill,
declared he was charged for more wine than he had drunk, and laid
himself out in abusing Swiss taverns in general, and this in particular,
till the postman's horn summoned him and the rest to their seats.
The scenery improves as we ascend the Rhine. The banks are steeper, the
hills are bolder; the water rushes more rapidly through winding
channels, and the people we meet bear more characteristic features of
another country. It is a Catholic holiday. We are meeting the peasantry
in great numbers, dressed in their best clothes, some of them gaily;
blooming lasses in snow white muslin and no bonnets, but sweet pretty
head-dresses and pink ribbons tied as pretty girls in all countries know
how to tie them; they are gathering at the churches, and as they wend
their way through green fields to the highway, they give a romantic air
to the rural picture we are looking on. Many of them are paired, and as
they saunter along hand in hand, and now and then with an arm thrown
lovingly round the waist, we know them as probably paired for life, and
send up a little prayer that they may jog along as pleasantly all the
way through.
"The finest Cataract in Europe" is at Schaffhausen. We arrived at
sunset, just in time to see the falls before the last rays had faded
into night. The Rhine is here 300 feet broad, and after foaming and
rushing furiously for a mile or two it takes a bold leap over a shelving
precipice sixty feet high, and plunges into a bay of waters below,
boiling like a mighty caldron and sending up perpetual clouds of spray.
In the midst of the cataract two columnar rocks rise perpendicularly,
dividing the fall into three unequal parts. One of these rocks is
clothed with shrubbery and the steep banks on either side are lined with
trees. A castellated mansion crowns the summit on one side, and several
buildings grace the other, so that nature and art have here combined to
make a picture of wild romantic beauty, in which there is enough of
grandeur to entitle it, at times, to be called sublime. Certainly we
should so pronounce it, if we had not seen the waterfalls of America.
The only place to see a fall to perfection is directly in front of it.
We are told to cross the river and go up the hill to a jutting crag and
there in the midst of the spray, contemplate the "hell of waters,"
roaring and tumbling madly on their way into the dreadful deeps below.
We went over, but nothing satisfies me but to see a waterfall from its
base. It was an easy matter to induce two stout oarsmen to put the nose
of their skiff into the teeth of the cataract, and drive her up as near
to the falling torrent as their strength would fetch her. I knew the
strong current would send the little shell down stream, like an arrow,
when they crossed the eddies and struck the channel; and so it proved.
We toiled on till the spray-like rain covered us, and there we looked up
at the white waves as they marched in fury down upon us, threatening to
overwhelm the frail bark tossing on the surface as a shell. When we had
studied the scene from various points of view, we returned to the shore
and met a party of English gentlemen and ladies at Castle _Worth_, which
commands a fine sight of the falls. "How does it compare with Niagara,"
one of them enquired of me. I replied, "We do not love to make
comparisons between these beautiful scenes and those we have left at
home. Nature there is more majestic in her works, and there is no sight
on earth where so much majesty crowned with beauty is revealed as in the
cataract of Niagara. You see that hill which bounds this valley on the
west and that higher one which shuts it in above where the Rhine comes
down: those hills are not so far asunder as the river of Niagara is at
the moment it falls! It is a lake broader than this beautiful vale and
the precipice to whose brow it comes is loftier than the turrets of that
castle, now fading from our view. It comes not creeping down the rocks
like _that_, but gathering itself up and with one mighty leap, clearing
the barrier, it pours its awful flood, as if an ocean had been spilled,
into the abyss below. In the moonlight and in the sunshine rainbows are
twined upon its brow, and garlands of diamonds hang from the summit to
the base, in beauty indescribable."
We climbed up to the hotel Weber, which stands on the brow of the hill,
and the good man of the house gave us a chamber in full view of the
falls, where we went to sleep with the roar of the tumult of many waters
in our ears, making music the last we heard at night, and the first in
the morning. Now the grandeur of the distant Alps began to appear. Long
ranges, peak towering above peak, are seen; the names of some of them
are familiar, as they stand there inviting us to come to their feet. Let
us go.
_Aug. 16._--Refreshed by a sweet sleep, and ready for another fine day,
we were taken after breakfast to the village of Schaffhausen, where a
small steamboat received us for _Constance_. The current of the Rhine
above the falls is not so swift as below, but the waters are the same
deep green, increased by the reflection of the beautiful sloping banks,
covered with luxuriant vineyards. The vines are trained on short upright
poles, not on arbors as with us, and at a distance they look not unlike
our corn fields. But the river is so narrow here that we seem to be in
the midst of them, and enjoy the labors of the dressers, as they work in
the sun. Now we are passing the old nunneries of Paradies, and
Katherinethal, and that ancient castle above the town of Stein is
Hohenlingen, once the abode of the masters of all this soil. Here is the
island of _Reichenau_, where the remains of an ancient monastery are
seen, and on the right as we are ascending is the castle of
_Gottlieben_, where John Huss and Jerome of Prague were confined in
gloomy dungeons from which they were dragged to trial and death.
And this brings us to Constance.