This charming halting-place is enriched with far the best waterfall in

Switzerland—the Fall of the Handeck. The Staubbach, Byron’s

magniloquence nevertheless, and the rest of them, are only overflows of

house-gutters. There, where they are, just at the first stage of the

watershed of Europe, they can be accepted as being very much what they

ought to be; but one cannot be impressed with them as waterfalls. Here,

however, is something of quite a different kind: not so much from the

volume of the falling water, as from its character, and the point of

view from which it is seen. Two or three hundred yards below the

_châlet_ the Aar is chafing along its clean rock-channel, strewn with

boulders as large as houses; on a sudden it takes a leap, of about two

hundred feet, into a dark, appalling, iron-bound chasm. Precisely at the

point, where it takes this leap, the Handeck, coming blustering down on

the left, at a right angle to the Aar, takes the same leap. The two

cataracts are mingled together, midway in the chasm. A wooden bridge has

been thrown over the falls. You stand upon this, and see the hurrying

torrents dashing themselves into the deep chasm below you. You are half

stunned by their angry roar. You observe that they have no power to

undermine, and wear away, the granite against which they are dashing,

and breaking themselves. The frail bridge vibrates under your feet.

Fortunately you are looking down the fall instead of up, and this, by

engendering an irrational sense of the possibility of your slipping into

it, heightens the effect. For some hours about midday—we were there at

that time—it is crowned with the prismatic bow.

Here my wife took a horse for the rest of the day, being too ill of the

Hôtel du Glacier du Rhône to walk any further. After some miles the

savage character of the scenery began to relent. This mitigation went on

increasing, till at last we found ourselves crossing the emerald meadows

of Guttanen—a village of _châlets_. Next came the little town of Imhof.

Here an hotel, and a brewery, a good road, and the slackened pace of the

Aar made it evident that we were out of the mountains; and the plain at

Meiringen was soon reached. This was a walk of about twenty-six miles.

As all the hard work came in the first hour, it was a very much easier

day than the twenty-seven miles up the southern side of the Simplon.

As we were in Meiringen by 4.20 P.M., there was time for a walk up the

hill, close to the hotel, to see the Falls of the Reichenbach. I was

glad to find the little man ready to accompany me, for he had been so

silent all day that I had been thinking he was fatigued, or not well.

When we had got some way up the hill we met a Frenchman coming down, who

told us that a toll would soon be levied upon us; his comment upon the

fact being that we should have to pay for looking at the mountains, if

it could in any way be managed. Regarding this toll as a piece of

extortion, and not at all caring to see the fall, we returned to the

hotel. If I had thought it really worth going to see, I should, acting

on the wisdom I had purchased at Ponte Grande, have eliminated from

consideration, though perhaps with a growl, the meanness and rapacity of

the demand, as irrelevant matter, and have gone on; but it was getting

late, and we thought we had seen enough of the fall from the road as we

were entering Meiringen.

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CHAPTER X.

_CHAR_ TO INTERLAKEN—WALK OVER THE WENGERN ALP TO GRINDELWALD

I love not man the less, but nature more

From these our interviews.—BYRON.

_September 12._—This morning we went by _char_ from Meiringen to

Interlaken, along the northern side of the Lake of Brienz. Again, if we

had had time, it would have been better to have walked along the

southern side, putting up for the night at Giesbach. While stopping at

the town of Brienz to bait the horse, we visited some of the

wood-carving shops, in one of which we found a school for indoctrinating

children in the mysteries, not of the three R’s, but of this trade,

which is the great industry of the place: everybody here being engaged

in it. The three main staples of Southern Switzerland are this

wood-carving, cheese-making, and hotel-keeping. With the latter we must

connect the dependent employments of the guides and porters, and of

those who let out horses and carriages. I know not how much of the

cheese is sent out of the country in exchange for foreign commodities,

but pretty nearly the whole of the carved wood, and of the hotel

accommodation, is exchanged for foreign cash.

This morning I witnessed the following scene. A practical man—I took him

for one, who had struck oil—was leaving the hotel. A porter, assuming an

expectant air, takes up a position at the door of the hotel. The

practical man addresses him in a firm tone, ‘Now, sir, tell me

everything, you have done for me beyond your duty to the hotel.’ A look

of blankness comes over the porter’s face, and he steps aside. The

practical man, with the look of one who has discharged a lofty duty,

steps into his carriage. I do not record this for imitation.

Interlaken, which we reached early in the day, is a town of hotels and

_pensions_. We were at The Jungfrau, which commands an excellent view of

the famous mountain from which it takes its name. The view from this

point is much improved by its comprising two intermediate distances in

two ranges of hills, which do not at all interfere with the dominant

object, but rather set off to advantage its snowy summits and flanks.

The Jungfraublick, a large new hotel, on a spur of the nearest hill, is

better situated, for it is out of the town; and, being elevated above

the lakes, commands several good views. The majority of the visitors at

our hotel were Germans: quiet, earnest, and methodical, they appeared to

be regarding travelling, sight-seeing, and life itself, scientifically.

Interlaken, being situated on low ground, between two high ranges of

mountains, at no great distance from each other, is, on a quiet sunny

day, a very oven for heat. It has, however, in its main street some very

umbrageous lofty walnut-trees. They are the survivors of what was once,

and not many years ago, a grand unbroken avenue.

_September 13._—Started early in a carriage for Lauterbrunnen, where we

left it, with orders that it should be taken round to Grindelwald, there

to be ready for us the next morning. At Lauterbrunnen we put the blue

boy on horseback, and began the ascent of the Wengern Alp. People go up

this mountain for the purpose of getting the most accessible, nearest,

and best view of the Jungfrau, Mönch, and Eiger. As you turn to the left

to ascend the mountain, you regret that you are not going up the valley,

which you see would lead you up among glaciers and snowy peaks; or that

you are not taking the path to the right, which you see would carry you

over, and above the Staubbach, and you know would give you grand views

of the snow-world. The path you are taking you take in faith, for it

does not, from what is in sight, give any indications of what is in

store for you; before, however, the day is done, you will have reason

enough for being satisfied with the choice you had made; or which,

perhaps, had been made for you.

At first the ascent is very stiff, and a good test of lungs and legs.

This lasts for about an hour. Then comes a reach of easy work among

upland meadows and forest. The work, however, again stiffens; but one is

cheered by the nearness of the Jungfrau, and, occasionally, by the

thunder of an avalanche, falling from its sides. You are now above the

forest, and on the coarse sedgy turf; and, if you please, you may sit

down, and light your cigar, giving as your reason, that you wish to

contemplate the view, and listen to the avalanches. It would, however,

be better to go on at once to the hotel, which is not far off. This was

what we were virtuous enough to do. The ascent occupied a little under

four hours. We had luncheon at the hotel. It is on the edge of the

ravine, on the opposite side of which rises, almost perpendicularly, the

mighty Jungfrau. Though it must be two miles off, it seems so near that

you fancy you might almost touch it with your hand. The dark,

slate-coloured rock, and the snow, are in excellent contrast. The vast

chasm below you, and the cold, hard, silent cliffs before you, the

silence frequently broken on bright, warm days—and the day we were there

was as bright and warm as could be—by the reverberation of the falling

avalanches—there are no small, or insignificant objects in sight to mar

the effect—are the elements of an Alpine scene you are glad to think you

will carry away impressed on your memory. You are now content that the

path on the right, up to Mürren, has been left for another day. As you

watch the avalanches gliding down the ravines, and shot over the

precipices, in streams of white dust, for the first fall or two shiver

them into minute fragments, you are puzzled to know what it is that

makes the thunder—what the noise is all about, the process being so

smooth and regular.

We allowed ourselves an hour and a half for mental photography and for

luncheon—mine was a basin of rice-water, for I had not yet recovered

from the Hôtel du Glacier du Rhône. We then again took up our staves,

and set our faces towards Grindelwald. In half an hour from our inn, we

came to a second, on the summit of the Col. The descent immediately

commences. This is not nearly so steep as the ascent we had just

accomplished. It requires three hours. The path passes through the

forest of death-struck pines Byron mentions in his journal. Not many

remain. Of these some are quite, some are almost dead. It was composed

of the Pinus Cembra. The malady which is destroying it may perhaps have

been engendered by a local change of climate; or some other circumstance

may have prevented the young plants from establishing themselves; as,

for instance, want of shelter, from too much of the forest having been

cut at the same time. I mention this because I observed in exposed

situations in the Rocky Mountains—it was so above Nevada City, on the

road to Georgetown—wherever the forest had been entirely cleared away,

the young pines came up in myriads, but all died off, either withered by

the droughts of summer, or by the bleak winds of winter: of course

neither of these causes could have afflicted the tender nurselings, had

the old forest been standing.

The descent, like that to Virgil’s Avernus, is easy, but, unlike that

into the Vale of Years, has a charming prospect; for the valley of

Grindelwald, with its meadows, corn-fields, and _châlets_, is all spread

out before you, like a map. It is a sight which awakens thought and

touches the heart. You see that a good breadth of land has been

reclaimed, where nature was so hard and adverse. How much labour has

been expended in burying the stones, and bringing the soil to the

surface, and in irrigating those many, now bright, smooth meadows! How

much thought and care is, day by day, bestowed on every little plot of

that corn and garden ground, in the hope of getting a sufficiency of the

many things that will be needed in the long winter! How much talk is

there, every evening, in every household, about the way in which things

are going on, and about what has to be done! A shoulder-basket must now

be made for little Victor, and little tasks must be found for him,

proportioned to his little strength, that he may, betimes, learn to

labour; and something must be found, too, for the old grandame to do,

that she may not come to feel that she is only burdensome. Some garden

or dairy product, a little better than common, they may have in their

humble stores, must be reserved for the _fête_, now not far off.

Wilhelm, who many a mother in the valley wishes may be her son-in-law,

and who of late has been more thoughtful than was his wont, hearing the

_fête_ mentioned, is reminded of the _edelweiss_ he had gone in search

of, and found on the Eiger, that he may have its tell-tale flower, on

that day when all hearts will be glad and open, to offer to Adeline. I

suppose the fat Vale of Aylesbury, where purple and fine linen are not

wanting, and there is sumptuous fare every day, has its poetry; but so,

also, has the hard-won valley of Grindelwald, where home-spun is not

unknown, and every man eats the bread of carefulness.

We put up at the Aigle, a new hotel, with three or four _dépendances_,

at the further end of the village. Grindelwald is not of the compact

order of Swiss villages; indeed, it is almost a town; at all events, it

is lighted with gas. It straggles along the main road for about three

quarters of a mile; to those coming from Lauterbrunnen all uphill. It

abounds in hotels. After a hard day—not the Wengern Alp, but the Hôtel

du Glacier du Rhône, had made it hard—it appeared a gratuitous, almost a

cruel, infliction to have to pass so many doors that stood open

invitingly, with more than usual persuasiveness, and to trudge on, and

up, in the hope of reaching the end of the place, which, under the

circumstances, seemed like the Irishman’s bit of string, which had had

its end cut off. But to those who will persevere, even the street of

Grindelwald will be found to have an end; and one, too, that is worth

finding, for it brings you to a pleasantly situated, and well-kept inn,

where you can get a chicken that has not been detained in the bath an

unconscionable time. What has been disagreeable in travelling we soon

forget, but my recollections of the Aigle of Grindelwald remain.

There are, as I just said, many hotels in the place; but as there are

also six thousand cows in the valley, not travellers, but cheese must be

its main reliance. It has another industry in ice, which is cut in

blocks out of the glacier, and sent as far even as Paris. The price

returned for this is one of the rills of the stream of wealth, which

railways are pouring into Switzerland, or enabling it to collect for the

outside world. Two great glaciers come down into the village from the

two sides of the Mettenberg, which here has the Eiger on its right, and

the Wetterhorn on its left.

We had been on the tramp to-day, excluding the halt for luncheon, eight

hours. With the exception of not more than five minutes on the little

man’s horse, my wife did the whole of it on foot, stepping out briskly

even to the long-sought end of Grindelwald.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER XI.

INTERLAKEN AGAIN—CHAR UP THE VALLEY OF THE KANDER—WALK OVER THE GEMMI,

SLEEPING AT SCHWARENBACH

—rather—

To see the wonders of the world abroad

Than, living dully sluggardized at home,

Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.—SHAKESPEARE.

_September 14._—Returned early in our _voiture_ to Interlaken. From the

tramping point of view, the right thing to have done in the afternoon

would have been to have ascended one of the ranges of mountains, which

shut in Interlaken on the right and left. But it was fair that the

little man should have his turn, and his heart was all for the railway,

the steamer, and the Lake of Thun: and so we went by rail, and boat, to

Thun and back. The railway, with its smart carriages, some of them two

stories high, is only a mile or two in length, from Interlaken to its

port on the lake, and is a mere toy. As to the sail on the lake, it

supplies enough for the eye to feed upon. The chief objects on the south

side are the Niesen and the Stockhorn; the two mountains which form the

porch of the valley of the Kander, up which lies the road to the Gemmi.

The boat was very crowded with people who were going northward; the

greater part of them to Berne, the rail for which commences at Thun.

About Thun what interests one most at this season, as things are seen

from the water, are the gardens of some of the houses on the edge of the

lake. The little man, from familiarity with threshing machines and

agricultural implements, has a strong turn for machinery; hence the

attraction for him of the railway and steamboat. On board the latter he

poked about, looking into everything, as if he were taking the

opportunity to inspect some of his own property.

This was a day, which, to its end, was given up to the young gentleman,

for in the evening he would have us go to the Cursaal to see a display

of fireworks. They were pretty good. The best thing was the illumination

of a copious jet of water, which was thrown up to the height of about a

hundred feet, and fell very much broken and dispersed; the upward rush,

and the falling drops, reflecting a powerful red light, which, screened

to the spectators, was burnt in front of the fountain. The shrubberies,

and trees, all about, were at times illuminated, successively, with red,

blue, and white lights: this was meant to be weird and spectral.

_September 15._—It was Sunday. We went twice to the English service. On

both occasions the preacher was extemporary. He was fluent and

imaginative. Fluency, and imaginative power (I say this without

intending a reference to the sermons we heard this day), if entirely

trusted to at the moment of speaking, and not kept under the control of

previously matured thought, will generally run away with a preacher, and

lead him into making inconsequential, and unguarded statements. And if

he is, besides, a man of some miscellaneous reading, it is not

improbable that much of it will be presented to his audience in an

undigested form, and not unfrequently rather incongruously. In short,

all that he says is likely to be what Shakespeare calls unproportioned

speaking.

While we were at Interlaken, the moon was approaching the full. Both

evenings we watched it passing over the peaks of the Jungfrau. The snow,

however, had none of the deadly white, I had expected it would have had

when seen by moonlight. But the moon was beyond the mountain, and so

almost all the snow on our side was in the shade.

_September 16._—Were to have started at 6 A.M. for the Valley of the

Kander, on our way to the Gemmi: through the dilatoriness, however, of

the _voiturier_ we had some difficulty in getting off by 6.25. And this

was not his only lapse; for, an hour after a forty minutes’ halt for

breakfast, he insisted on halting again, for two hours more, at a

roadside inn, where he, and his horse, were baited; both probably at our

expense, for he had brought nothing with him for either. As these

stoppages are, sometimes, not so much needed for the horse, as the

result of arrangements between innkeepers and drivers, which become

profitable to them through what is extracted from you, it would,

perhaps, not be a bad plan to make it understood beforehand, that your

payments will, to some extent, depend on the time at which the driver

may bring you to your destination.

The road is, at first, along the lake. At the place, where it makes an

angle, and turns its back upon the lake, we breakfasted. The inn looks

upon the lake. The house itself is not bad; but what is best about it is

the feeling it gives rise to that you have escaped from the crowding,

the bad smells (the Jungfrau was free from these), and the pretensions,

of a monster hotel, where everything is in disagreeable contrast to

surrounding nature; the effects of life in the former at every turn

counteracting and marring the effects of the latter.

A geologist should follow the new channel by which the Kander 150 years

ago was taken into the lake. He will be interested by an inspection of

the large delta, at the mouth of its new outlet, formed by the vast

amount of _débris_ the torrent-stream has since brought down. Formerly

it ran parallel to the lake; and joined the Aar below it, in this part

of its course keeping a great deal of land in a marshy condition. All

this has now been reclaimed.

The scenery of the valley is interesting. From Frutigen—it was here that

our two hours’ halt had been called—to Kandersteg, at the foot of the

Gemmi, is eight miles. The last half of this my wife and I walked.

At Kandersteg we dined; and having placed the little man, and the

baggage, on horses, we began the ascent at 3.30. The road is in

excellent repair. For the first hour and a half it is stiff walking

through a pine forest. The views of the valley of the Kander, and of the

mountains, are good. The road is then, for some distance, taken

horizontally along the side of the mountain, again through the pine

forest. Between the clean stems of the trees you look down, on your

left, into the barren, and truly Alpine, Valley of Gasteren. At first it

is a rocky gorge; and then it opens into an expanse of level, pale grey

sand, and small shingle, through which you can make out, from above, the

glacier stream passing in several small channels. The forest is

succeeded by an open level of poor mountain pasture and rocky ground. On

the left of this are the peaks of the Altels, and of the Rinderhorn,

with snow-fields and glacier. You then begin to ascend again through a

scene that is the very grandeur of desolation. There is no vegetation;

nothing that has life. It appears as if the mighty fragments of dark

rock, with which the whole is covered, had been rained down from heaven

in its wrath, and had completely buried out of sight everything that

might once have struggled up here for life, and even whatever could have

supported life. This mountain in ruins, this wrack of rocks, brings you

to the Schwarenbach inn. It stands on the edge of a crateriform

depression, in what appears at the time, and from the spot, to be the

summit of the mountain. This depression terminates, on the right, in a

grand mountain amphitheatre.

The inn is precisely what it ought to be; small, without any pretension,

and without any artificial _entourage_. The people, too, who keep it are

most ready, and obliging. This is just the sort of place one would like

to make one’s head-quarters, for a few days, for excursions from it

among the surrounding summits, and for familiarising oneself with the

spirit of the mountains.

_September 17._—Started a little after 5 A.M., that we might see the sun

rise from the summit of the pass. Overnight I had been roused out of my

first sleep by a loud, hurried knocking against the thin partition, that

separated my room from my wife’s, accompanied by repeated calls to get

up at once. I lighted a match, and looked at my watch. It was just 11

o’clock. At 4.30 A.M. the knocking was again heard: but this time it

came from the opposite side of the partition.

The morning was very cold. The blue boy, and the luggage, were on

horseback; my wife, and I, on foot. The ascent continued for about two

miles further. For the first mile the path takes you by two or three

more crater-like depressions, similar to the one on the edge of which

the inn stands. You then come to a dark mountain lake, fed by the

glacier of the Wildstrubel, at the southern end of it. It is another

scene of awful desolation. You are surprised at observing that the

detrital matter, neither of the glacier, nor of the environing

mountains, has in the least degree diminished the size of the lake. It

seems to-day to be just the same, in size and form, that it must have

been thousands of years ago. The crest of the ridge is reached a little

beyond the lake. The sight that here bursts upon you is grand indeed.

The eye passes over the valley of the Rhone—that, however, is not yet

visible—and rests on the long series of snowy peaks, which you know are

the finials of the barrier ridges that separate Switzerland from

Italy—the Michabel, the Weisshorn, the Matterhorn, the Dent d’Heréns,

the Dent Blanche. On this morning they all stood clear of cloud. While

close, on our left, just to show us how near we were to losing the view,

a dense mist was streaming over the mountains, like a turbid, aerial

river, flowing uphill Nothing could be grander; the rocky peaks around

us, the snowy peaks before us, and the river of cloud rolling by us. We

had reached the right point at the right moment.

Having impressed the view on our minds, as ‘a possession for ever,’ we

began the descent. The little man got off his horse, for the descent can

only be made on foot; at all events it always has been, since the fatal

accident, caused by the stumbling of her horse, which here befell the

Comtesse d’Arlincourt in 1861. The luggage, too, was now readjusted, and

more tightly braced up on the baggage horse.

Among those who keep to beaten paths the descent of the Gemmi is the

crowning glory of their excursion. This it is that awakens within them

most the sensations of awe and wonder. And there is much to justify

these feelings. As you come down the pass, you cannot but be surprised

at the boldness, ingenuity, and perseverance of those who projected, and

made it. And, perhaps, your surprise will be heightened when, on getting

to the bottom, and looking up at the sheer precipice of some thousands

of feet of hard rock, you find that you are unable to make out a trace

of the path you have just been descending. A fissure in the

perpendicular face of the mountain just made it conceivable that a

series of zig-zags might be carried up to the top. And this was what the

engineer attempted, and succeeded in doing. Originally, many of the

zig-zags were nothing more than grooves in the face of the rock, just

sufficient to give foothold to a pedestrian. During the last century,

however, they have been widened into grooves that admit, with perfect

safety, the passage of a packhorse with his burden. The external wall of

a house may be ascended by a staircase applied to it; and so may the

perpendicular face of a mountain, two or three thousand feet high. And

it will come to the same thing if the staircase is, in some places, let

into the face either of the house, or of the mountain wall. The motive

of the formation of the pass was to save a _détour_ of some days in

getting from the neighbourhood of Thun and Interlaken to the Valais. I

suppose it was worth making as a saving of time and labour. But, be that

as it may, it impresses itself on the mind as a never-to-be-forgotten

passage of one’s Alpine travel. The blue boy skipped down it, like a

chamois, far in advance of everybody; a guide, of course, being with

him. My wife insisted on going down at the head of the rest of the

party, on the plea that she was incapable of going behind. I took the

position assigned me, with a little hug of myself at the conceit, the

benefit of which, however, at the time I kept to myself, that those, who

can go as well behind as before, must be twice as clever as those who

can go before only.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER XII.

LEUKABAD—AIGLE

The life of man is as the life of leaves,

Which, green to-day, to-morrow sears, and then

Another race unfolds itself to run

Again the course of growth and of decay:

So waxes, and so wanes the race of man.—HOMER.

AT a little after 8 A.M. we entered Leukabad, having been out three

hours from Schwarenbach. I was content that both our _personnel_ and our

_matériel_ were safe, plus the ineffaceable impression on our minds of

the pass itself.

Having breakfasted—it is pleasant to have lived so much before

breakfast—we sallied forth to look at the town and the baths. There are

several hotels in the place, and they were all pretty well tenanted.

Still the aspect of things was not lively. There was none of the stir

you observe among the Alpine people at such places as Chamouni and

Zermatt; nor was there any of the obtrusive bigness, and of the staring

newness of the hotels almost everywhere, which give you to understand

very clearly that, at all events, a great deal of business is being

done. Here nothing was new, and everything was faded. The names over the

hotels and shops had been there many a day; and the hotels and shops

themselves made one think of a dead forest covered with lichens and

moss, the lichens and moss being at least half dead also. People moved

about so noiselessly that you looked to see if their feet were muffled;

saying nothing to each other, and having nothing to say. The place was

as dumb as it was faded. We saw an old man washing old bottles, of a

by-gone form, at an old fountain, into and out of which the water was

feebly dribbling, as if it had nearly done coming and had nowhere to go.

He was the only person we saw doing anything, and he did it as if he

thought there was no use in doing it. Those who were taking the baths

were oppressed with a consciousness that they were getting no good from

them; and that they were doing it only because something must be

attempted. Their despondency had an air of obstinacy that would not be

comforted, deep and silent; like that of people who have just found out

that the foundations on which they have long been building great

expectations, are all a delusion,—either a figment of their own, or a

tradition from times when such things were not understood—and who have

not yet come to think that the world may still have something else for

them to turn to. At 12 o’clock the _voiturier_ we had engaged to take us

to Sierre, came up to the door of the hotel, with his worm-eaten vehicle

and his worn-out horses. But he came in so mute and spectral a

fashion—anywhere else he would have announced himself with a little

final flourish and crack of his whip—that we were not for some time

aware of his arrival. It was a relief when he lighted his cigar, for

that was the first indication of life we had seen in the place.

On the road to Sierre we passed through dust enough to bury Leukabad—a

ceremony which it would be as well should not be deferred any longer.

And, if Sierre had been put on the top of it, there would still have

been some to spare.

This dusty drive enhanced the pleasantness of recalling our late

mountain walks. We had now completed the circuit of the great ice-field

of the Bernese Oberland, which is more than 100 square miles in extent,

and is supposed to be the largest in Europe. Its boundaries, all of

which we had traced, are the Valais, the Grimsel, the Valley of the Aar,

and the Gemmi. We had had a near or more distant view of all its chief

snowy peaks, but had nowhere crossed any part of the snow-field itself.

That, perhaps, may be the work of another day, when the blue boy will be

old enough, and the rest of the party not yet too old, for such work;

for those who are not up to Peaks, either of the first or second class,

may still graduate as Pass-men by crossing the ice-fields between the

Peaks.

Another possible arrangement for the work of the two last days would

have been to have ascended the Niesen, at the foot of which we had

passed yesterday morning. This would have obliged us to have slept at

Kandersteg instead of, as we did, at the top of the Gemmi. The ascent of

the Niesen, even for such a party as was ours, would have been easy

enough; and the views from it are said to be very good. In that case,

however, we should have had to do the Gemmi at one stretch. Our loss

would have been sleeping at Kandersteg, and not at the Schwarenbach, and

the abandonment of our chance of a good sunrise from the summit of the

Pass; though that was a chance which, as it happened, was worth nothing

to us; for, in such perfectly fine, and singularly clear weather as we

had, the sun rises and sets without those glories of colour which

require haze and clouds for their reflection.

As to weather, which is the first, the second, and the third requisite

in such an expedition, we had scarcely seen a cloud during our three

weeks’ tramp. Up to the day before I got on my legs at Visp it had been

an unusually wet and cold season. During the night I was at the Simplon

Hospice it rained a little. That was the only shower that fell, where I

was, during the whole time we were out. The quarter of an hour’s snow on

the Riffel was merely the passage of a stray bit of mountain scud. The

sun, throughout, had shone so brightly that some of its brightness had

been reflected from the world outside upon the world within. Almost

every party of travellers in Switzerland, this year, we met with had a

very different account to give of the weather they had encountered. When

good luck is pleased to come, it must fall to some one; and this year it

fell to us.

So ended the second act of our little family excursion. The scene of the

first had been the Valleys of Zermatt and Saas, with my intercalated

tramp over the Monte Moro, through the Val Anzasca, and over the

Simplon. I can, with a safe conscience, recommend the precise route we

took to any family party, constituted at all as ours was. The time

occupied, from first to last, was exactly three weeks; and three weeks

they were, which we look back upon as well spent. It had no

difficulties, and enough of interest and variety. As to the cost, I can

give no details or items, for I keep no accounts, and never have. But,

speaking in the gross, I believe it cost somewhat less than thirty

shillings a head a day. Doubtless, it may be done for less. The best

rule in such matters, of course, is, if you can afford it, to have what

you want, and what will make a pleasure pleasant. As to equipment, what

you need actually carry along with you is so little, that the statement

of it would appear to people at home ridiculous. But, then, you can send

on by the Post from place to place not only your heavy luggage, but such

articles as your hat, if you are youthful, or old-fashioned enough to

take a hat with you, and your spare pair of walking boots, and every

thing else you may wish to have occasionally.

And here I have a suggestion to throw out, which occurred to me while I

was on the tramp. What put it into my head was the incongruity of hotel

life with excursions amid such scenes. In the Rocky Mountains the great

enjoyment of the year is camping out in the fine season. In Syria and in

India people travel with their tents. Why should we not camp out, and

travel with our tents, in July and August in Switzerland; and so break

loose altogether from the hotels? One mule, or horse, would carry the

tent and all the tent furniture. If sometimes, but such a necessity

would seldom arise, you had to pitch your tent on damp grass land, no

inconvenience, I believe, would ensue. I have slept on a damp meadow

under a tent on a bare plank, and was none the worse for it. And with

the addition of a little hay, or straw, upon the plank, and upon that a

waterproof sheet, you would have a luxurious bed for one who had walked

five-and-twenty miles, and had not been under a roof during the day. The

tent-mule might carry three light planks, each six feet long; for I will

suppose that the party consists of two travellers, and a guide who also

acts as muleteer. A saucepan, kettle, gridiron, and a few stores, to be

renewed as required, would be necessary. Were the weather to prove

unaccommodating there would always be the hotels at hand to take refuge

in. A month of such campaigning would be very independent; and, I

believe, very healthful and enjoyable.

At Sierre we took the rail for Aigle. There were a great many tedious

delays on the way: one at almost every station. But to complain would be

unreasonable, for, of course, the natives like to get as much as they

can for the fares they have paid; and the lower the fare the greater the

gain, if they get much of the rail for it. It was near 6 o’clock when we

reached Aigle, where we intended to set up our head-quarters for some

days, while looking out for a winter residence for my wife and the

little man.

The night was still, and clear. In that unpolluted atmosphere, and among

the mountains, the bright, soft, gleaming of the moon—it was now a

little beyond the full—as it brings out the silvered peaks, and seems to

darken the ravines, casts, as old Homer[2] noted long ago, a pleasing

spell over you; and you become indisposed to mar the silence of nature

with a word. The spell, however, on this occasion was somewhat broken by

the disturbing effect of continuous lightning, in the direction of the

head of the valley, though the horizon was undimmed, throughout its

whole circumference, by so much as a trace of haziness.

Footnote 2:

As when in heaven the stars

Are shining round about the lustrous moon,

Exceeding bright; and all the air is still;

And every jutting peak, and beacon point

Stands clear, e’en to the wooded slopes below;

And the whole field of ether, opened out

Unfathomable, shows each particular star;

And at the sight the shepherd to his heart

Is fill’d with gladness.—ILIAD viii. 551.

I have essayed a rendering of this famous simile, not because I hope

to succeed where so many are supposed to have failed, but because, as

may be believed of a country parsonage, I have not a single

translation of it at hand. It may be objected to the one I am driven

to offer that the unfathomableness of the field of ether is a modern

idea; and that Homer meant immensity in the direction, not of the

profundity of the celestial space, but in the direction of its

expansion. Our idea, however, embraces the whole of Homer’s, and goes

beyond it.

The double mention of the stars is hardly tautological; for the first

mention of them is an indispensable stroke in the sketch, which was

intended to convey to our minds the idea of a fine bright night; while

the shining of so many particular stars in the immeasurable field of

heaven is the point of the simile. As many as are the stars visible in

such a sky, so many were the camp fires of the Trojan bivouac on the

broad plain.

Of this witching power of the moon all people appear to be conscious.

But how does it come to act upon us in this way? Many, doubtless, have

tried to analyze, and get to the bottom of the feeling. I would suggest

that the effect is produced by an unconscious comparison of the moon

with the sun; and, then, by an unconscious inference drawn from the

comparison. The sun is the lord of our waking hours, and, as respects

the moon, is our standard of comparison. Whatever we think of we must

think of in reference to something else, that something else being the

leading and most familiar object of the class the thing, at the moment

thought about, belongs to, except it be the leading object itself, when

the reverse reference is made. When, then, we look at the moon, there is

a reference in the mind to the ideas and feelings, the results of our

experience, we have about the sun. We may not be aware of this, but it

is so, and cannot be otherwise. The sun is what gives us our conception

of a large luminous body, apparently moving, majestically, round our

earth. Having, then, made this comparison unconsciously—if it were done

consciously there would be no spell, or witchery—we note the

differences. The light is not the same. It does not penetrate to the

recesses of objects. It does not give clear definition. It does not

enable us to make out surfaces at a distance. It is not dazzling. It

does not enable the beholder to distinguish colours. There is something

spectral about it. But, above all, it is light unaccompanied by warmth.

The substratum of our thought, as we look at the moon, is the sun: yet

everything is different. The inference, again unconsciously arrived at,

is that of the wondrous variety, combined with unspeakable magnitude,

and other deeply affecting particulars, in these the greatest works, as

they strike us at the moment, of the dimly-apprehended mystery of the

universe. These half-formed thoughts, and their corresponding emotions,

are brought home, not so much by the sun, because we are too familiar

with it, and the objects we compare it with unconsciously are of

inferior grandeur, as they are by the moon, that is, by the

contemplation of it on a bright clear night. The moon stands far above

all natural objects, indeed, it stands almost alone, in possessing the

means for producing, in the way I have supposed, on all minds the effect

we are endeavouring to understand. And the effect is deepened by the

character of the hour. It is night. All is still. There is nothing to

distract attention; nothing to dissipate the effect.

It will help us here, if we see that it is, in part, the same reason,

which impels the dog to bay the moon. With him, as with ourselves, the

standard of comparison is the sun. The light of the full moon invites

him to look out from his kennel. He sees, as he thinks, the sun in

heaven. The sun has ever been to him the source of warmth as well as of

light. He has come to connect the idea of light emanating from a great

luminary in heaven with that of warmth. But this sun, he is looking at

now, does not give him any warmth. It even appears to strike him with a

chill. The light, too, which it emits has differences, which are very

perceptible, but unwonted, and unintelligible. It does not enable him to

make out familiar objects in the way in which light ought. His nerves

are affected by these differences and disappointments. His agitation

increases. In the still night there is nothing to divert his thoughts.

It becomes insupportable. He gives unconscious expression to his

agitation. He bays the moon. It is an expression of deep distress.

These feelings of the dog may also in some respects be compared to the

feelings that used to come over all mankind, and still come over the

savage, and other untutored people, at the contemplation of an eclipse.

_September 18._—The lightning of last night was not an empty threat, for

this morning dense masses of cloud were rolling down the valley, and

there was much rain. We had been talking of going up the _Dent du Midi_;

but, as it was, we could not get out till late in the afternoon, and

then it still continued to be showery. We managed, however, to see one

of the factories for parquetry floors, of which there are several here.

Their work is beautifully executed, and very cheap. It is sent all over

the world. We saw some orders that had just been executed for Egypt, and

for the United States.

The contrast between Aigle and Leukabad is complete. Here everything is

new, and neat, and bright. Opposite to us, across the road—we were quite

new ourselves—was a house, in its trim grounds, as new, and neat, and

bright as freshly wrought stone, and fresh paint could make it. There

was not a weather-stain upon it. At the bottom of our garden were a

party of jabbering Italian masons running up what was to be a large

_pension_. But the most conspicuous of the new things in Aigle was a

grand hotel, a little way off, nearer the mountains: so new that the

grounds were not yet laid out. And so it was with almost everything in

this flourishing little place, which has secured its full share in the

rapidly-growing prosperity of the country. Its attractions are that it

has a dry soil; a warm, sunny situation; and cheerful views. The baths

of Leukabad cannot keep it alive. The sunshine of Aigle gives it life.

If the decay of Leukabad, and the prosperity of Aigle at all show that

people now endeavour to retain health by natural means, whereas the plan

formerly was to let it go, and then endeavour to recover it by very

doubtful means, we may deem the world has, in this particular, grown

somewhat wiser than it was of yore; and so far, to go back once more to

our old friend, Homer, we may boast that we are better than our fathers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER XIII.

THE DRAMA OF THE MOUNTAINS

Non canimus surdis.—VIRGIL.

I will here give two or three pages to the blue boy. He is not at all

aware that I am about to put him into print. The reader, I trust, will

think that the betrayal of confidence involved in my doing so is not

altogether unjustifiable. I mentioned that on the day we crossed the

Grimsel, from the Rhone Glacier to Meiringen, he was unusually silent.

He afterwards told me that he had then been engaged in composing a

drama, which was to be entitled ‘The Drama of the Mountains,’ in which

the most conspicuous mountains he had seen—he had in 1870 made the

acquaintance of M. Blanc—were to be the _Dramatis Personæ_. Nothing more

was said on the subject then, or afterwards. We have infantine

productions of Dr. Johnson, Pope, the late Professor Conington, and of

others. I now offer the following drama, as an addition to this kind of

literature. I can vouch for its entire authenticity and genuineness. It

shall be printed from the blue boy’s own MS. The whole composition was

arranged in his mind, some days before it was put upon paper, without a

hint or suggestion from anybody, and subsequently not a word was

corrected, nor even a point in the stopping altered. It could not have

been more entirely his own had he been the only soul in Switzerland at

the time it was composed. He was alone, too, at the time it was put upon

paper. On the first day we were at Aigle—I have just mentioned that it

was a wet day—I found him writing it _currente calamo_; and on hearing

what he was about, I immediately left the room.

I must premise that last summer I had read to him Shakespeare’s Julius

Cæsar (he was then translating Cæsar’s Commentaries), and the Midsummer

Night’s Dream. On each of which occasions he immediately afterwards

produced a drama of his own; one in the high classical style founded on

Roman history, the other in the style of Bottom’s interlude. His having

had those two plays read to him is the extent of his acquaintance with

dramatic literature.

Those who may happen to have no personal acquaintance with his _dramatis

personæ_, will allow a word or two on the appropriateness of the parts

imagined for them. Blanc, of course, is Emperor in his own, the old,

right: from his shoulders and upwards he is higher than any of his

people. So with Rosa: she has the same fitness for being Empress.

Weishorn and Jungfrau are, beyond controversy, worthy of being, as the

order of nature has made them, Prince and Princess Imperial. Cervin (the

blue boy thinks in French, and so he calls Matterhorn by his French

name), by reason of his signal and conspicuous uprightness, is the best

of Prime Ministers. Schreckhorn’s name and character fit him for the

Ministry of Police, and prepare us for his horrible treason. Simplon has

conferred on him the place of the Emperor’s Messenger, on account of his

services to the world in supporting the most serviceable of the great

passes into Italy. We are not surprised at finding Silberhorn acting as

Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mönch appropriately counsels peace.

Finsteraarhorn, it will be observed, is taunted with hardly daring to

show his face: a sarcastic allusion to the difficulty there is of

getting a view of this mountain.

That the Empire of the Mountains was transferred to the Potentate of the

Himalaya, was intended not only as an illustration of the bad policy of

calling in to our assistance one stronger than ourselves—the mistake the

horse made when he entered into a league with man to drive the stag from

the contested pasture—but, also, as an application, and this was the

main idea, of the broad simple principle of _detur digniori_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_THE DRAMA OF THE MOUNTAINS._

-------

Dramatis Personæ.

BLANC, _emperor of the Alps_.

ROSA, _his wife_.

CERVIN, _his prime-minister_.

JUNGFRAU, _his daughter_.

WEISHORN, _his son_.

FINSTERAARHORN, _Jungfrau’s husband_.

MÖNCH, _the priest_.

SCHRECKHORN, _the police-agent_.

SIMPLON, _messenger of the Alps_.

SILBERHORN, _treasurer_.

────

CHIMOULARI, _king of the Himalaya_.

DWALAGIRI, _his prime-minister_.

EVEREST, _his son_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prologue.

The empire of the Alps consists of a large number of European

mountains, who think themselves the highest in the world; but it

is not so, for the kingdom of the Himalaya is still higher and

wiser. In the empire of the Alps, there had been internal

disturbances between Blanc, the emperor, and Schreckhorn, the

police-agent, in which Schreckhorn had mostly had the advantage

and had shut the others up in a prison. But they escaped and

applied to Chimoulari, king of the Himalaya, to help them, which

he accordingly did, and defeated Schreckhorn. Chimoulari then

received the empire of the Alps, and was then emperor of all the

mountains in the world.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACT I.

SCENE I.

BLANC’S _Palace_.

(_Enter_ BLANC, CERVIN, WEISHORN, JUNGFRAU, ROSA, FINSTERAARHORN,

MÖNCH.)

BLANC.

Are we all met?

WEISHORN.

Yes, we are; we must not speak too loud, for Schreckhorn is outside the

door.

CERVIN.

Schreckhorn outside the door! impossible!

FINSTERAARHORN.

Fear nothing.

CERVIN.

Finster, really, this is too bad: you wish to have us all in the lockup;

yes, you who hardly dare to show your face!

ROSA.

Blanc, my husband, please send Finster out.

JUNGFRAU.

Blanc, don’t, don’t.—Rosa, what do you mean; do you wish to deliver

Finster into the hands of Schreckhorn?

MÖNCH.

Peace! peace! (_Exeunt omnes._)

(_Enter_ SCHRECKHORN _and_ SILBERHORN.)

SCHRECKHORN.

Silberhorn, pay me your debts.

SILBERHORN.

Please, my lord.

SCHRECKHORN.

Please is nothing to me; pay!

SILBERHORN.

Blanc, come and help me. (_Enter_ BLANC.)

SCHRECKHORN.

I condemn you both to lose fifty feet of your height.

BLANC.

Ah! (_Exeunt omnes_).

SCENE II.

_The Same._

(_Enter_ BLANC _and_ SIMPLON.)

BLANC.

Would it not be better if you called in Chimoulari?

SIMPLON.

Yes, I will immediately. (_Exeunt duo._)

SCENE III.

_The Same._

(_Enter_ BLANC, CHIMOULARI, DWALAGIRI, _and_ EVEREST.)

CHIMOULARI.

Blanc, what do you want?

BLANC.

To make war against Schreckhorn.

DWALAGIRI.

That is very easy.

EVEREST.

I will be general. (_Exeunt._)

SCENE IV.

_The Same._

(_Enter_ SCHRECKHORN _and_ EVEREST.)

EVEREST.

Down with Thee.

SCHRECKHORN.

I will bring thee to nothing!

(EVEREST _knocks down_ SCHRECKHORN, _kills him, and goes out_.)

SCENE V.

_The Same._

(_Enter_ BLANC, CHIMOULARI, _and_ EVEREST.)

EVEREST.

I have killed Schreckhorn.

CHIMOULARI.

Now, Blanc, give me the Empire of the Alps.

BLANC.

Must I yield it? yes, I suppose.

(EVEREST _and_ BLANC _exeunt_.)

CHIMOULARI.

Now am I monarch of all around me! let me rejoice.

* * * * *

I do not give this little drama as a wonderful work for a child of

between nine and ten, but to show what I think any child of average

powers might do, spontaneously and with pleasure, if only parents and

teachers could be brought to understand that the area of their

teaching should be expanded to its natural limits, that is to the

history of man, and to a general acquaintance with our earth. The

proper starting point for the former is the history, in its widest

sense, of the towns and localities with which the child is familiar;

and for the latter the natural objects, mountains, rivers, valleys,

plains, vegetation, animal life, meteorology, &c., of the same

localities. The teacher should then pass on, in both these

departments, from what has been understood, because it has been seen,

to what will be understood, though not seen, because it differs in

certain particulars, that can be explained, from what is already

understood. So much for the area: and an equally great change must be

brought about in the manner of teaching. We must adopt the natural

method as well as the natural area; that is to say, we must teach

orally and conversationally. In this way only can what is taught to a

child be made intelligible. And if it be not made intelligible it

cannot possibly interest. One step more: all about man and nature,

that has thus been taught orally and conversationally, should always

be subsequently repeated in the child’s own words. This, among many

other great advantages, cultivates as nothing else can, because,

again, in the natural way, both the power of attention and the power

of continuous extemporary expression. Teaching by the book and by

heart—well so phrased, for the understanding has nothing to do with

it, and it takes all heart out of a child—has, among others, this

conspicuous evil, that at the cost to the child of compulsory

ignorance, and gratuitously-engendered aversion to mental effort, it

saves nothing, except the necessity, in the teacher, of knowing

anything about what he professes to teach.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER XIV.

ON SWISS HOTELS

In this the antique, and well-noted face

Of plain old form is much disfigured.—SHAKESPEARE.

For the word or two I have to say about the Swiss monster hotels, I can

make the one mentioned at the close of the twelfth chapter my _point de

départ_ with safety; for I never entered it, and only know from what I

saw outside, that it is fire-new, and as monstrous as new. As you look

at one of these modern caravansaries, you are amused at thinking how

precisely everything in it is the facsimile of all that you have seen in

a score of others. The Swiss believe, and act, too, on the belief, that

they have reduced hotel-keeping to an exact science; among them,

therefore, in this matter, there cannot be any longer two opinions about

the form of, or the way of doing, any one thing whatsoever. Everywhere

the building itself appears arranged, externally and internally, on the

same plan. Of an hotel, as of a five-pound note, there can be but one

idea. In either case any deviation from the archetypal paradigm would

disqualify the thing produced from being regarded as that which it

professes to be.

As to life within the hotel, everywhere you have the same breakfast:

coffee, two kinds of bread (the more solid kind almost always sticky and

sour, the flour having been made from imperfectly ripened and

imperfectly harvested grain), butter that is somewhat insipid, and honey

that will inevitably soil your fingers, and perhaps trouble your

interior. Exact science has demonstrated, beyond controversy, that

precisely this breakfast, for every day in the three hundred and

sixty-five, hits with mathematical rigour the point at which the wants

and rights of the traveller—though, indeed, he has no business himself

to think about his having any rights or wants at all—meet the

scientifically regarded economies of the innkeeper. This unvarying

breakfast is everywhere served to you on the same unvarying china—always

white, solid, and heavy. Exact science informs us that if china of this

kind be used there is a smaller amount of breakage, and that

replacements are easy: and from exact science there is no appeal. That

you who have to use it would prefer a little variety now and then has

nothing at all to do with the matter.

And then as to your dinner: it also is always the same. As the

dinner-bell reminds you of this, you find that you are agitated by an

involuntary shudder. Always, and everywhere, the same viands cooked in

the same fashion; and served, too, again on the same white, solid, heavy

china. There is the inevitable _filet de bœuf_: more inevitable than the

conscience of an evil deed, for that does not rise up before you

throughout your whole life every day. One feels that one could almost

give a year’s income never to see or hear mention made of this _filet de

bœuf_ any more. Then come mutton and chicken, the latter always with

salad. Sometimes, however, one of the two latter is replaced with veal.

But the beef, the mutton, the veal, and the chicken, before they were

roasted or ragouted, had been passed through the already-mentioned bath,

in order to make the _potage_ with which you commenced your repast. The

mind, encouraged by the wilfulness of the palate, refuses to form a

conception of a sirloin of beef, or of a leg of mutton, that had been

boiled before it was roasted; or of a beef-steak, or of a mutton-chop,

that had passed through the digester on its way to the gridiron; or of a

veal-cutlet that has had its natural insipidity aggravated by this

exhaustive treatment. The regale concludes with, every day, the same

dried figs and the same raisins; or if it be late enough in the season,

with the same plums and the same pears, so called, eked out by the same

little cakes and the same little biscuits. Swiss hotel science

repudiates entirely the ideas of roasted joints, and almost entirely of

puddings. As to the wine, it has not, as might be expected, any

exceptional merit; and as to the varieties indicated on the _carte_,

they do not always correspond with the varieties of Nature: for science

has demonstrated that a variety of labels constitute a variety of kinds.

You are pursued by this scientific sameness to your bed-room; and are

soon haunted in your dreams with the idea that you are carrying about

with you everywhere your bed and your bed-room furniture. As to the

looking-glass, it is never on a dressing-table, but always nailed to the

wall; for the science of Swiss hotel-keeping has discovered that the

frame for a glass of this kind is cheaper than what would be required

for one placed on a table; and that, besides, there is a far less chance

of the glass itself being broken when it has become a fixture on the

wall. This, however, obliges you to encumber yourself with a glass of

your own; for a man cannot shave by a glass that has not its back to the

light. Not even in the lock of your bed-room door is there a shadow of

variation. It is always of iron, for iron is cheaper than brass; and

always of the same form and size: they must all have been made at the

same factory. And this unfailing black iron lock, always of the same

size, is always attached to the surface of the door instead of being let

into it. Your candlestick, too, is always the same—you fall back again

on the theory of a single factory—a mere pedestal of brass with a glass

cup at the top—I have, however, occasionally seen them without this

glass cup—to receive the overflowings of the compo, which is often

euphoniously described in the bill as _bougie_. But possibly where the

glass is now wanting, it may, as exact science does not recognise

disturbing causes, have originally existed. The candle again, in the

unvarying candlestick, is always everywhere the same, with a wick that

is but little more than a thread. The _rationale_ of this tenuity of the

wick is that the compo may not be consumed too rapidly for science. But

then the least gust of air, or a careless quick movement of the candle,

extinguishes it. You then have to relight it with a sulphurous lucifer,

always everywhere sulphurous.

As to the traveller himself, he soon comes to find that he is not

regarded as a thinking, feeling, and acting, or in any way independent

entity. He is not supposed to have any likes or dislikes; any wants or

ways of his own: he is merely one of the constituent molecules of an

aggregated mass of inert, insentient matter, which must be manipulated

in a certain fixed manner, which the discoveries of hotel science have

shown to be necessary in order to produce a certain determinate result

in the form of a certain amount of profit. Or he may compare himself to

one of the milch-cows belonging to the hotel, which must have that

amount of attention bestowed upon it, that amount of daily provender,

and of that kind, and at night that berth and bedding, which at the

least cost will produce the greatest amount of milk. Finding yourself

treated in this way, merely as a unit in a large herd, you become aware

that you are losing your sense of personal identity. How can you go on

believing that you are what Nature made you, or that you have any

special nature at all of your own, when, from being constantly herded

with a hundred other people, all fed during the day, and provided for

during the night, in precisely the same fashion, everything is

conspiring to impress upon you the self-obliterating conviction that you

are exactly what all the rest are: nothing more, nothing less, and

nothing different?

Of your associate molecules, your fellow milch-cows, in these monster

hotels, the majority speak your own language. Of these perhaps you will

regard with most sympathy and favour the mountain-climbers, although you

may yourself have ceased, as will probably be the case, if you are on

the shady side of fifty, to look upon athletics, pure and simple, as the

object of life. Still these vigorous specimens of youthful British

humanity have set themselves something to do, and are doing it; and it

is something that requires, at all events, enterprise and endurance. Not

many of them, however, are to be found in the most aggravated form of

the monster hotel, for that belongs to the towns rather than to the

mountains. Another class is composed of those who do not climb, but are

merely enthusiasts on the subject of mountain scenery. Of these the most

gushing are of the fairer sex. With them, too, you can go as far as they

go; though not quite to the extent of applying the epithet of ‘lovely’

to everything indiscriminately, even to rugged peaks, and rivers of ice;

nor of being consumed by their uncontrollable desire to know, for a few

moments, the name of every peak and point that happens to be in sight,

and to arrive at this evanescent knowledge by the process of questioning

the bystanders. You meet also multitudes of lawyers, clergymen,

schoolmasters, and literary men. These, speaking generally, are the

_élite_ of the corresponding classes you have at home. Another large

item is made up of men engaged in trade and business, from London and

the manufacturing districts. It is a very good thing for them that they

are able to leave their counters, and counting-houses, and factories;

and to exchange, for a time, the murky atmosphere, and the moil and toil

of the routine of their ordinary lives for the mountains. This makes you

glad to see them also.

Everybody knows that our Transatlantic cousins will be met with

everywhere in shoals, and nowhere are these shoals greater than in

Switzerland. Some of those you fall in with will be New York

shoddy-lords, some will be Pennsylvanians who have struck oil, some will

be successful speculators in real estate in the neighbourhood of rising

western cities. But if you have known the American in his own country,

and in his own home, and are not dissatisfied with a man, merely because

he cannot pronounce the Shibboleths of Eton and Oxford, you will be glad

to make the acquaintance of a large proportion of the Americans you

encounter. They are clear-headed and hard-headed; men who hold their own

ground, and are, at the same time, sociable and friendly.

The Germans come next in number to those who speak our own tongue, they

are quiet, honest, and earnest; and have evidently come to Switzerland

for the purpose—there is no doubt about that—of constructing in their

minds a correct idea of the nucleus, and central watershed, of Europe.

But, as few of us speak German, there is little intercourse between them

and English travellers.

Among the inmates of all these large hotels, because it is in them that

such wanderers find most nearly what suits them, there remains a

conspicuous _residuum_, that of those who have nothing in the world to

do, and who, as thoroughly as if they were peak-and-pass-men, do it.

They belong to all countries: Russia, France, England, and America

supply each its respective quota. They are, for the most part,

carefully, sometimes rather loudly got up: they have not much else to

attend to. And from this, perhaps also from a little assumption in their

manner, they contrive somewhat to obtrude themselves on the general

notice of the world in the hotel. They belong to the class of failures,

the _coups manqués_, of civilised humanity. They are the waifs and

strays of modern society, with money enough, and often plenty of it, to

live out of their own country. Sometimes with not enough left to live at

home as they once did. They have no sense of home, nor love of country;

but a sufficient sense of the duty men owe to themselves. You sometimes

hear them intimating, as a reason for their voluntary expatriation, that

they do not quite like their own country, and countrymen—perhaps no

great proof of the demerit of either, or of their own judgment. The

largest portion of the self-depreciators of this kind belong to the

English quota of the class.

The disciples of so exalted and serene a philosophy, having got beyond

home, and country, and all inconveniently large ideas of duty, can have

no prejudices. Pet ideas, however, like the rest of the world, they

have; and the one they most pet is expressed in our time-honoured,

home-manufactured phrase, though amongst ourselves its use is prompted

by the anxieties and fears of deep love, that ‘the sun of England has

set.’ This is quite intelligible in a certain class of Frenchmen and

Russians. The wish, with them, was father to the thought. They, as might

have been expected, have become dazzled at the excess of light which

radiates from our sun, and can now only look at it through the green

lens. This old familiar phrase, coming from such oracular lips (but the

announcement as it comes from them is history, not prophecy, for it is

the announcement of a _fait accompli_), is accepted, with thorough

satisfaction, by those of our countrymen who are disposed to regard its

promulgators with submissive admiration, and are vainly endeavouring to

form themselves on their model. They are only too thankful for any

crumbs which fall from such tables. But be this as it may, the business

of these wanderers is to go up and down, and to and fro, upon the earth.

In this respect their occupation resembles the description the reprobate

sprite gave of his. And he, too, had lost the sense, if we may so put

it, of home, and country, and duty; and must also have had in his eyes

some tint of green. But they go only where locomotion and life are easy;

and where they may expect to find the society of congenial sprites, who

will not ruffle them, will not be blind to their merits, and will take

them, occasionally, at the price they set upon themselves.

It may, then, be placed on the credit side of the account of these

scientifically managed hotels, though, at the time, one, being averse to

entering them, and not averse to leaving them, is not disposed to credit

them with much good, that they supply some materials for ‘the proper

study of mankind.’ It was not, however, for the purpose of obtaining

facilities for the prosecution of this study that you came to

Switzerland: perhaps, rather it was that you might lose sight of it for

a time.

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CHAPTER XV.

BERNE—SWISS FOUNTAINS—ZURICH—MUSEUM OF RELICS FROM ANCIENT

LAKE-VILLAGES—BAUR EN VILLE—RÉCOLTE DES VOYAGEURS—C’EST UN PAUVRE

PAYS

Beyond compare, of all things best

Is water.—PINDAR.

_September 19._—We spent the day at Vevey. Vineyards were everywhere

along the sides of the railway. It is pleasing to note the care with

which the vine, that peerless gift of Nature’s bounty to man, is

cultivated; how the land is terraced and fenced, and how scrupulously

clean it is kept. This indicates the value of the land that is adapted

to its growth, and is in keeping with the character of the gift. Had a

swim in the lake. My first plunge into it was thirty-one years ago, on

returning to Geneva from a walking expedition to Chamouni.

On the following day (dates are no longer needed, for our excursion was

now ended, and I was returning home, on my own hook) I started for

Zurich by way of Berne. The country, as seen from the rails, looks as if

it were fertile, and carefully cultivated. The three points in which, to

the eye of a passer-by, their agriculture appears to differ most from

ours are, first, the greater cleanness of the land. I know no farmers—of

course there are many exceptions, and notably where there is

steam-ploughing—who cultivate so many weeds as the famous British

farmer. Secondly, their not giving to their land so much manure as we

do. One, however, may be mistaken on this point. And, thirdly, in the

absence of live stock from the fields. I understood that the price of

land is very high: the figures given to me were higher than the price of

equally good agricultural land would come to here at home.

Since I was last at Berne, it appeared to me that a great deal had been

done in the way of extension and improvement. The place has the look of

having thriven much, and of still continuing to thrive. A few years ago

a neighbouring stream was diverted, and made to flow through the heart

of the city. It supplies, in its new course, several copious public

fountains. These are sculptured and decorated, as if the people loved

the water, and wished to heighten their pleasure at seeing, and

welcoming, and using it. One of the most pleasing sights in a Swiss

town—it is the same down to the smallest village—is this abundance of

good water with which it is supplied. It is ever in sight, for every use

of man and beast. In our English cities there was no want—the omission

is still far from having been set right—that was so conspicuously

neglected. And this, though an abundant supply of good water is not only

a first necessity of life, but equally so of civilisation. The reasons

of our negligence, in a matter of so much importance, are not far to

seek. As the Swiss manage their own affairs, their first care is to

provide themselves with what all need; and, evidently, the first thing

of this kind to be attended to is the water-supply. Their system, too,

of political, and, as respects the land, to some extent, of possessive

equality, has engendered a sentiment of philanthropy; not of the

charitable, or condescending, kind, but a general desire in all to

attend to the rights, the wants, and the well-being of all. It would be

distressing to all alike to find that any one had not as much water as

he could require, supplied to him in the handiest way, in which it might

be possible for the opportunities, and combined resources of the

community to effect this.

Different influences have been at work amongst ourselves. The community

has not managed its own affairs in such a manner, and on such a footing,

as that the wants and interests of the humbler, and more helpless,

classes should be as much felt, and attended to, as the wants and

interests of the well-to-do classes, and of those who are able to take

care of themselves. This has hindered the importance, or rather the

necessity, of an abundant supply of water presenting itself, generally,

to men’s intelligence, and conscience, as really one of the primal cares

of the community. This has not been one of the points which town

councils, and rate-payers (perhaps because they were rate-payers) have

seen in a proper light. There has been something which has stood in the

way of their seeing it at all. Then there have been influential bodies

in every community, whose interests lay in an opposite direction. I mean

the water companies, and the manufacturers, and retailers of

intoxicating liquors. You could hardly expect them to have seen very

distinctly that it was the duty, and the interest, of the community to

provide everywhere, and for everybody, a visible, constant, gratuitous

supply of fresh, running, sparkling water. Nor, indeed, could the

government of the country be expected to be more sharp-sighted in this

matter than the local administrations; for it had to collect an enormous

revenue for the purpose of enabling it to pay the interest of an

enormous debt. There was, therefore, something to indispose it, also, to

supply a want, the supply of which must inevitably reduce the number of

millions it was collecting, every year, on the production and

consumption of intoxicating drinks. These are the reasons which have

issued in the fact, that water has been kept out of, or not brought

into, the sight of the inhabitants of our English towns, and villages.

It was not because water could be supplied on easier terms in

Switzerland than in this country, because we find as much attention paid

to its abundant free supply in some other continental countries, for

instance in Italy, as in Switzerland.

Everyone who will give the subject a little thought will come to the

conclusion, that it is this neglect which is mainly answerable for some

of the preventable maladies, and for much of the drunkenness, and so of

the misery and crime, which afflicts our working classes. The efforts

that have been made of late years to set up drinking-fountains in

London, and in many of our towns, is an indication that in this supreme

matter our eyes are beginning to be opened. When they are completely

opened, a public, free, inexhaustible supply of the purest possible

water will be the first care of every community, great and small; and

drinking-fountains will, everywhere, offer an alternative to the

gin-palace and public-house, and in winter as well as in summer.

To the reflecting mind, the overflowing sparkling fountains of the Swiss

towns are very pleasing objects. So, too, to the natural eye, and ear,

are the brawling stream in every valley, and the trickling rills on

every hill-side. There is water, water, everywhere; and every drop to

drink. This the pedestrian, at all events, will appreciate; and when the

sun is bright, he will be thankful for it a dozen times a day.

* * * * *

At Zurich I was much interested by the public collection of objects,

found at the bottom of the lake, and on the site of the old

lake-villages. Herodotus mentions a powerful Thracian people, who dwelt

in a similarly constructed city on Lake Prasias. The Irish and Scotch

cranoges are also instances of ancient structures of the same kind. To

this day, in New Guinea and Borneo, and in Africa, we find water-towns

still inhabited. In all these cases it was the same necessity, that of

providing against sudden attacks from more powerful neighbours, that

suggested the idea. And if we may refer to the same class, the

lagoon-protected infancy of Venice, then the Queen of the Adriatic, with

her St. Mark’s, and her palaces, owes her existence to the idea, from

which originated, in a very old past, the little wooden huts of the Lake

of Zurich.

The objects which have been recovered reveal the habits, arts,

conditions of life, and much of the internal history of those who

formed, and used them. About the events of their external history,

though much of this can be pretty well imagined, of course they are

silent. Nor have they anything to tell us in reply to the questions of

who the people were, whence they came, or what became of them? The

information they give us begins with the time when men, in central

Europe, had not attained to a knowledge of metals, and were using

implements of bone and stone for war, hunting, and domestic purposes.

Abundance of their stone tools have been found, and also of specimens of

the work done with them. For instance, some of the series of piles, upon

which the dwellings were placed, and these piles are found by the

hundred, we see were hacked to the point, which was to fit them for

driving, with stone chisels and hatchets. And then, in other series of

piles, we pass on to the era when stone had been superseded by bronze

and iron tools. It is very interesting to have thus before us the actual

tools, and the actual work done with them, together with ocular

demonstration of the way in which, by the superiority of their work, the

first metal tools superseded their perfected predecessors of stone.

Everything, one may almost say, has been preserved, and, too, in a most

wonderfully perfect state. Besides the tools and weapons in great

variety, there are their nets and clothes, their pottery in jars and

cups, and utensils for many purposes, the bones of the animals on which

they feasted, the different kinds of fruit they had gathered from the

forest, and of grain they had cultivated. In all these matters the old

lake-dwellers have bequeathed to us the means of comparing notes with

them. The bones that have been found of the ox, the sheep, and the dog

show that the varieties of the respective species then kept by the

dwellers in this neighbourhood were not precisely identical with any of

their varieties now known. They were, too, great hunters, and game was

abundant in the locality. Among the vast quantities of bones of wild

animals, that have been found, are those of the wolf, the bear, the

beaver, the wild boar, the stag, the European bison (which still exists

in the Forest of Lithuania, and is the largest quadruped next after the

rhinoceros), and of the urus, the aboriginal wild ox of Europe, which is

now extinct.

They were also agriculturists. One of the kinds of wheat they cultivated

was what we call the Egyptian, or Mummy Wheat. Some of the specimens of

this could not be more perfect had they been only just harvested. It had

several small ears ranged round a main central ear, and from this reason

sometimes goes by the name of the hen-and-chickens wheat. It is

interesting to know that so distinctly marked a variety was being

cultivated at so remote a period, on the banks of the Lake of Zurich, by

these trans-Alpine barbarians, and on the banks of the Nile, by the

subjects of the early Pharaohs, at the same time. Here is a kind of

possible connection between the builders of Karnac and the builders of

these pile-supported huts; and also a point in the history of one of our

Cereals, of the birth, parentage, and education of all of which so

little is known. Two kinds of millet, and a six-rowed variety of barley

have also been found. These rude contributories to the ancestry of the

modern European were at the same time collecting for food, from the

neighbouring forests, sloes, bullaces, wild cherries, beech-mast,

crab-apples, elder-berries, the hips of the wild rose, raspberries,

blackberries, and hazel-nuts; for well-preserved remains of all these

have been found on the sites of the lake-villages. Some of the specimens

are supposed to show slight differences from the same fruits now growing

wild in the neighbourhood. These differences, if they do really exist,

must, notwithstanding their slightness, indicate a long lapse of time.

They also cultivated flax. Nets and lines made from it, together with

the very scales of the fish the nets and lines caught, and the woven

cloth, with the very fringes that decorated the dresses into which it

had been formed, and even the weights used in working the looms, are all

here, to teach us how widely spread, in very early times, were the most

necessary of the useful arts. There has, then, been no solution in the

continuity of man’s history. His wants were from the first substantially

the same as they are at this day; and these wants were from the first

supplied by the same contrivances as at this day, with the difference

that, in every age, the contrivances were raised to the level of the

knowledge, and consequent resources, of the times. The spinning-jenny,

and the power-loom, in a few large cities, are now doing for millions

what the wives and daughters of these old lake-dwellers, seated in

summer on the wooden platform above the water, and in winter within the

hut, did for each separate family. The wants of what appear to us as the

primæval times, but which were in fact very far from that, have been

enlarged and multiplied, in proportion as man’s means for meeting them

became improved and enlarged; and this kind of growth in the old wants,

consequent upon growth in our means for supplying them, constitutes what

is generally meant by progress. And this material progress it is, which

makes possible moral and intellectual progress, the glory, and

privilege, and happiness of man.

One cannot help comparing these relics of the old lake-village with the

copiously furnished stateliness of its modern neighbour, the city of

Zurich. You set them, in thought, by the side of its handsome streets of

stone houses, its rich shops, its large factories, especially of iron,

in which labour is so skilfully organised, and so scientifically

directed, its university, its general intelligence, its conscious

efforts to cultivate, and turn to account, that intelligence, its

accumulated wealth, its patriotism, its knowledge of, and connection

with, every part of the world. But varied, complex, great, and

interesting as all this is, still it is only the step now at length

reached, by the labour of many generations, in the true and natural

development of what was existing on the lake some thousands of years

ago. Society, such as it was, in those old days, in the rude,

wood-built, water-protected huts was the embryo of society, such as it

now is in the proud, modern city. How natural, then, is the jealous care

with which it guards these old relics; for if they do not speak to the

Zurichers of their own actual ancestors they show them what were the

germs out of which has grown their present condition.

* * * * *

I spoke of the large Swiss hotels exactly as they impressed me. I found

in them nothing that was attractive to me. Why it was so I endeavoured

to explain. I must, however, here note that what I then said is not

applicable to Baur’s Hotel at Zurich. I said as much to the manager on

leaving, though I was sure that he must often have received similar

commendation from others. The house is as well ordered as you would wish

to see your own home. The bedrooms are of a good size, and well

furnished. The table is liberal. The _cuisine_ good. A wholesome Rhenish

wine is supplied at dinner. The attendants are clean and attentive.

Everything you are likely to want is provided; nor are there any traps

set, or any wish apparent that you should call, for extras. For meals at

irregular hours there is an excellent _restaurant_ in the house,

distinct from the dining _salon_. This hotel, though large, has none of

the cold, hard, obtrusive air of its monster brethren. In short, things

are so managed that you feel that you are in a good, comfortable hotel,

and not in a large factory, where bales of travellers, yourself a bale,

are undergoing the process, like truck-loads of brute material, of

scientific manipulation. I was at Baur _en ville_. Baur _au lac_, at a

distance of three or four minutes’ walk, is, I suppose, managed in the

same fashion, and is the same kind of thing.

But how about the _note_? I suppose wages, and the price of provisions,

must be much the same in Zurich as in other Swiss towns, but the _note_

did not lighten my purse as much as experience would have led me to have

expected. A man, then, even an innkeeper, may sometimes be found, whose

merits are obvious to the world, but who enhances them—and this is true

virtue—by himself setting a low price upon them.

* * * * *

Hitherto the risings and settings of the sun had been, as I mentioned,

almost achromatic. I suppose on account of the clearness of the

atmosphere. But now a great change had taken place; there had been falls

of rain, and even of snow, and the air had become full of moisture, and

there was much cloud; in consequence, there were in the evenings some

most glorious atmospheric fields of colour. I keep in mind one of these

sunsets above the rest, because of the way in which it placed the murky,

swart outline of the ridges and peaks of the Jura in contrast with the

usual oranges and reds above, but which, though seen so often, one never

tires of looking at. It is almost enough to condemn a country house,

that the sunset cannot be seen from it.

I have another reason for recollecting this sunset. I was with several

persons at the moment who were observing it together. Among these were

two Swiss gentlemen. But in the change of weather which it indicated,

they only saw a hint that this year’s _récolte des voyageurs_, as they

phrased it, was drawing to a close: a true harvest, which costs

Switzerland little, and is got in with not unthrifty husbandry, and

which one is glad should benefit so many, both among those who do the

harvesting, and among those who are harvested. A French gentleman,

however, who happened to be present, and had been spending the summer on

the banks of the Lake of Geneva—it might be inferred that his

recollections of the way in which he had himself been harvested, were

not in all respects pleasant—turned to me with the aside, _C’est un

pauvre pays_.

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CHAPTER XVI.

A REMARK ON SWISS EDUCATION

The proper study of mankind is man.—POPE.

It has long been my practice, wherever I find myself, to inquire into

the provisions made for education, and into the modes of teaching

adopted; and, also, by observation, and talking to the people

themselves, to do what I can, as far as opportunities go, to collect

materials for enabling me to form an opinion on the results and fruits

of what has been done. I did this wherever I was on this excursion; and

as it was my object in going to Zurich to see its Polytechnic

University, I will here give one of the conclusions I came to on the

subject of Swiss education.

It was constructed by the Swiss to suit their own wants. That it does

admirably well. Such a system, however, would be very far from suiting

equally well that large class amongst ourselves, who are destined for

either a public life, or for what may be called the semi-public life of

our men of property, and of a large proportion of those whose special

work is that of one of the learned professions: at all events, both law

and divinity, as practised in this country, have direct connections with

political life. The Swiss, however, are a small, and a poor people,

whose affairs are, in the main, managed locally. They have no need of

trained statesmen; they have no _haute politique_. Speaking generally,

they are a nation of peasant-proprietors, artisans, manufacturers, and

tradesmen. At present, in many parts of the country, the only tritons

among the minnows are the innkeepers. Manufactures, which mean also

commerce, are, here and there, introducing a moneyed class; and the

hundreds of thousands of pounds, spent every year in the country, by

tens of thousands of travellers, are enriching bankers, and, through

many channels, many others. Now the education such a people requires is

one that will make intelligent artisans, intelligent manufacturers, and

intelligent tradesmen; and which will give to that portion of the

population for whom work cannot be found at home, sufficient

intelligence to dispose them to go into foreign countries; and will

enable them, when there, to take their bread out of the mouths of the

inhabitants of those countries. This is what the Swiss system aims at

doing. And wherever it is well carried out,—of course this is done much

better in the Protestant than in the Catholic cantons,—it attains its

aim. In many of the Catholic cantons the people are content to be as

their fathers were: they do not see very distinctly the advantage of

cultivating the intelligence of their children; and it cannot be

supposed that the village priest will be very forward in enlightening

them on this point.

What the Swiss system, true to its object, sets itself to teach is the

languages that will be useful in business, arithmetic, mathematics, the

principles of the useful arts, and the elements of the sciences. All

this is just what will enable the Swiss to get on in the careers that

will be open to them. They are an intensely practical people; and these

thoroughly practical subjects they take care shall be taught

sufficiently for the purpose they have in view. They have no idea of not

getting their pennyworth for their penny. Their philanthropy, and their

love of home, the unfailing and fruitful source of so many virtues, make

them desirous of giving every chance to their children; and they are

interested in, and proud of, and spend their money on, their schools for

their children’s sake. All this is just as it should be. It is a very

good thing for them; and, as far as it goes, it would be a very good

thing for us, if we had the same system at work here. It is exactly what

is wanted for nine-tenths of our population; and what they must have if

we are to keep our place in the world. But when this shall have been

done, if there is ever to be a time when it will have been done, there

will still remain one-tenth of our population, a number equal to, or

greater than, that of the whole Swiss nation, which will be capable of

receiving, and will need for the life that will be before them,

something different from, and higher than, a Swiss education.

The Swiss system is large and liberal for a tradesman; it almost makes

of him a gentleman. But for an English gentleman it would be narrow and

illiberal. It would not properly qualify him for the careers that are

open to him, and for the life that is before him. It is not the kind of

culture that will produce statesmen, jurists, divines, orators, poets,

historians, literary lay teachers, or philosophers. If, by the grace of

nature, an English boy had been intended for any one of these vocations,

to bring him up in the Swiss fashion would be to rob him of his

birthright: and the more thoroughly the system had been applied to him,

the more complete would be the robbery, and the greater the injustice

and the injury.

An English gentleman has not been properly qualified for what is his

work in life, unless his education has been such as to make him

acquainted with the history of man, and with what may be called the

sciences of humanity. By the sciences of humanity I mean ethics,

economics, polity, jurisprudence, the history of opinion, the history of

literature, dialectics, oratory. An acquaintance with these is what,

from the first, should be kept in view. They should be worked up to from

the beginning of the process, for they are the crown and completion of

the mental training he will require. They are that training. And this is

just what our system, not from intelligent and deliberate design, but

from a happy accident, does in some degree attempt. It provides for it

in the study of the history of Greece and Rome, two of the most

important and instructive developments of the history of man; and,

furthermore, in the direct study of some of the above-mentioned

sciences. I say it does this not so much by intelligent design, as by a

happy accident, because that it is doing it at this day is merely the

result of our having retained the classical system our forefathers

established at a time when there was nothing else to teach; and which

they established just because there was nothing else to teach then. We

may now, knowing what we want, and what materials we have to work with,

very much enlarge and improve their system. We may advance from the

classics to general history and humanity; of course still retaining the

classics, which contain the most important chapters in the history of

the fortunes, of the culture, and of the mind of man. And this, which is

just what we ought to do, is what, perhaps, we shall do, when we come to

understand what it is that gives it its value, and makes it

indispensable for us.