Switzerland.
It is almost impossible to describe the scenery of the Alps to one who had
never yet ascended mountains above the region of the clouds, without so
bewildering his imagination that his fancy will call forth and accept more
fictitious notions than true ones. The best description that I had ever
heard of the Alps, was the occasion of my most incorrect conceptions about
them. I think the speaker did not misstate or exaggerate anything in a
single word, but as he could in an hour's talk tell only one tenth of what
one ought to know, in order to form a correct notion of what the Alps look
like, my fanciful imagination promptly supplied the coloring of the other
nine tenths of the picture which he left untouched; and consequently when
I came to see the Alps, I found them entirely different from what I had
anticipated.
The ordinary school maps represent the Alps as extending along the borders
of Switzerland, as if they consisted of a single range, or possibly of
several parallel ranges, and Mount Blanc as its towering peak. With what
surprise a scholar who only saw these maps, will look about him, when he
reaches the summit of any high peak in Switzerland! On the Rigi, for
example, one sees an extent of territory almost 300 miles in circuit,
every part of which is studded with ice-capped peaks. These range not in
any one particular direction, nor do they number only several dozen, but
many hundreds of them stand around the beholder toward every point of the
compass and at variable distances, from the Pilatus near by to the most
distant part of the horizon--more than 50 miles away. The snow-clad crowns
of many of these rise high above the clouds, so that
"Through the parting clouds only
The earth can be seen,
Far down 'neath the vapour
The meadows of green."
Those forms of clouds called cumuli, (P.G. Gewitter Wolken), presenting
themselves the appearance of mountains covered with ice, often creep
around these peaks at less than half their height! At Zurich I first
beheld the strange sight of mountains and clouds piled upon each other so
that I could not well distinguish them. It was on a sunny afternoon that I
stood on the banks of the _Zuricher See_ (Lake Zurich) and, looking over
its calm waters, I beheld in the distant southeast a strange phenomenon.
There stood the high glittering banks of clouds, and over them I saw the
black sides of a towering peak whose top was covered with ice and snow. I
then visited the Rigi and looked at Alpine Switzerland from its giddy
heights. This, since the railroad has been completed to its top, is one
of the most famous mountains in Switzerland. Though it stands beneath the
line of perpectual snow, its top being covered with grass in summer, still
it commands a panoramic view of indescribable grandeur. Numerous hotels
stand around the top where thousands of tourists find shelter during the
summer nights, and among them is one of the finest hotels in the world.
When fall comes, all the landlords must take their families and move down
from the mountain, as it would be impossible to keep the track of the
railroad clear during the winter to bring up the necessary provisions for
them. The snow is often from 10 to 20 feet deep on these Alps.
All Swiss scenery, whether one is on the lakes, upon the mountains, or in
the valleys and ravines, is singularly charming, and bears no resemblance
to the scenery which one sees elsewhere; so that for this lack of having
something with which to compare it, no one can do it justice in any
description short of a volume. The reader will therefore pardon our haste
in this country. One who sees the rest of Europe and not Switzerland, will
not miss any particular links in the historic chain of social, religious
and political development of the human race, but he will not have seen the
sublime in nature. The Alps are the poetry of inorganic creation, and a
week or two spent on their lakes, in their valleys and gorges, amid the
high waterfalls or upon their snowfields and glaciers, teaches one to
associate new meanings to the words, grand, sublime, lofty, inspiring,
overawing, romantic, wild, precipitous and bewildering, &c. It took me two
days to ascend as high as the Rhone glacier, during which time I walked
over 30 miles up hill along old military roads which the Romans
constructed through Switzerland. I saw the snow and ice on the first day
already, and it seemed as if I was but a little below it, but in place of
reaching the snow line in the afternoon as I judged I might, I did not
reach it until the next afternoon at 5:00 o'clock. The valleys are narrow
and the mountains rise in some places almost perpendicularly at the sides,
so that the snow and ice which melts near the tops of the mountains, falls
down thousands of feet into the streams below. Water-falls that are from
several hundred to a thousand feet in height are numerous among the Alps.
The Giessbach Falls which I ascended on the 6th of September, descends in
a series of seven cascades 1,148 feet, and the Handeck Falls, which I
passed on the 5th, precipitates in an unbroken sheet from the height of
250 feet! Rainbows stand over all the falls of the Alps, whenever the sun
shines.
On the second day (Sept. 4th) of my ascend of the Alps, I could look
upwards and see the eternal snows, or look down into the valleys, and see
the people in the meadows and fields making hay or cutting grain!
Haymakers may drink the water that was an hour before part of the mass of
ice and snow which they see hanging near the top of the mountains several
thousand feet above their heads! Avalanches slide down into the valleys
every month of the year, and I passed through tunnels and bridges that are
purposely constructed that the snow may thus slide over the roads without
doing harm to any one. Where the mountains rise too precipitously, it is
in some places impossible to construct a road along the edge; in these
cases they pierce through the mountains for considerable distances. The
Axenstrasse, along Lake Luzerne, has many such tunnels, one of which is
about one eighth of a mile in length. In the Grimsel, the road avoids a
water-fall by passing through a tunnel under it.
The Rhone Glacier, the only ice-field that I crossed, is upwards of nine
miles in length and rises from 5,751 feet to 10,450 feet in height. About
the time of sunset on the 4th of September, I entered the cavern of ice
from which issues the stream that constitutes the source of the Rhone
River. "This is the Rhodanus of the ancients, which was said to issue
'from the gates of eternal night at the foot of the pillar of the sun.'"
I descended through the Grimsel pass (7,103 feet) and Haslithal along the
upper waters of the Aare down to Meiringen, in one day. Though there is
only a bridle-path through the almost unparalled wildnesses of this
valley, still there is a telegraphic wire running up to the hotel at the
upper end, near the Rhone Glacier! No language can describe the
picturesqueness of the bare rocky sides of this valley. I heard persons
who thought they were alone, utter a dozen exclamations of surprise while
making a single turn where a new view opened! The solitary tourist will
ejaculate his exclamations without number; and it is under such
circumstances that the unpoetical soul seeks some personification to whom
it may do homage. It would not require a worshipper of images to kneel
down, in the Grimsel or Ober Haslithal, before any emblem that embodied
any adequate representation of the crushingly sublime scenery that one
beholds there!
I met a lake whose depths seemed as boundless as the blue heavens above
me. The water of many of the Swiss lakes is as clear as crystal, so that
white objects at their bottoms may be discerned at great depths.
While sailing along the Lake of Geneva one day, I could as little see
substance in the water below me, when I looked upon it at a certain
distance from the steamer, as in the clear sky; both seemed alike blue and
boundless!
The weather and the temperature changes very suddenly among the high Alps.
The climate in the valleys of Switzerland is as warm as ours, in summer,
while some thousand feet higher lie the everlasting glaciers. From these,
avalanches of cold air precipitate into the valleys, so that the mercury
often falls from 20 to 30 degrees in ten minutes! One is in danger of
taking "a cold" every day in Switzerland.
Besides "The Alps" and the _lovely lakes_ among them, the tourist may also
see castles, museums, art galleries, pleasure gardens, &c., in
Switzerland, but I will only enumerate a few of the most striking objects
that I met and saw in this curious country, and then pass on to Italy.
One of the bridges of Lucerne is adorned with very curious paintings
representing the "Dance of Death." Scores of skeletons, some blowing the
bugle or playing with the triangles, others equipped with hoes and spades,
are jubilant over their work!
One of the finest organs in Europe is the far-famed one at Freiburg,
having 67 stops and 7,800 pipes, some of them 33 feet long. This
instrument has such a range of volume that it can simulate the roaring
thunder as well as the faintest echo. The portal of the same cathedral
which contains the famous organ is also adorned (?) with a curious
representation of the last judgment. St. Peter leads the blessed to the
door of Heaven, but half a dozen evil ones busy themselves in disposing of
the wicked. One of them that has a head like a hog, carries them from the
scales into a large caldron where they are boiled. Others with forks in
their hands pitch them into the mouth of the large dragon-devil who is
represented as glutting them, and whose capacious mouth admits of several
of them at a time! The time has almost arrived when one may no longer
describe what he sees in the churches of Europe! This reminds me of a
monster that stands upon a fountain in Bern, called the Kindlifresser,
(the Ogre), who is in the act of eating a child, while others doomed to
the same fate protrude from his girdle and pockets!
Berne is a great place for bears. Besides those connected with the curious
machinery of the clock on one of its clock-towers, among the dead bears,
they also keep a large den of living bears at the expense of the
government. The bear is the heraldic emblem of Switzerland, as is our
eagle of American freedom.
Of the fictitous hero, William Tell, and the nature and character of the
Swiss Republic, I can not say more in the compass of this book, than that
the former is a myth and that the latter was in a great measure the
outgrowth of poverty.
The reader may form an idea of the miserable dwellings of the peasantry on
the mountains, when he is told that many are hardly distinguishable from
the stables in which the cattle are sheltered.
When I came into view of Guttannen, the first village of any considerable
extent that I passed after seeing the Rhone Glacier and the wildnesses of
the Grimsel and Haslithal, where no houses except hotels, and in some
places not even trees or grass abound, I felt glad once more to see a
group of human habitations, and determined to count them, so that I might
record their number. I passed along the edge of the mountains where I
could easily overlook the village, but it was in many instances impossible
to determine by a survey of their external appearances, which were the
stables and which the houses or huts, so I counted them all, large and
small, and found their number between 60 and 90. I once intended to count
these buildings only with windows, as houses; but I soon discovered that
some huts had windows only on one or several sides, and looked like
stables on the other sides!
A question to dairy men: Do thunder and lightning affect fresh milk? A
lady keeping a cafe in Brienz, told me that if a thunder storm overtook
those which were bringing the fresh milk from the mountains, the milk
would suddenly turn sour, so that it could no longer be boiled for
drinking it sweet. She said, "_Es thut sie verbolera, so das sie gerinnt
wen man sie kochen will!_"