1881
ELM AND ALL ITS PEOPLE DESTROYED BY AN AVALANCHE--A FOOT TRIP
IN IRELAND--FENIANS--REDCOATS--POVERTY--THE QUEEN HOOTED--
OUT OF JAIL AND A HERO--MUCKROSS ABBEY BY MOONLIGHT--AN
IRISH FUNERAL--A DUPLICATE BLARNEY STONE-LETTERS FROM GENERAL
SHERMAN--THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON--THE ASSASSINATION OF
PRESIDENT GARFIELD.
_September, 1881._--It is a year now since pretty Elm and all its
people were buried in an avalanche.
Only a few days before, we had climbed over one of the obscure bridle
paths from the Rhine valley to Elm. The path led over a glacier and was
9,000 feet high. All that summer night in Elm we heard the avalanches
fall in the neighborhood, for we were in the higher Alps; lofty and
awful pyramids of eternal rock and snow were all about us.
Right behind the little inn, where we staid that night, frowned a
threatening, almost perpendicular mountain, 12,000 feet high. What if
that dark pile should tumble over on the village, we thought, as we
looked out into the moonlight. How little we dreamed what was about
to happen. We were hardly back in our home in Zurich, when a telegram
announced that the mountain had fallen, that Elm and all the people had
been destroyed.
Shortly, Consul Mason, of Basel, and myself hurried by rail to
Schwanden, and in a little wagonette went up the comparatively easy
valley road to what was once Elm. The sight was terrific. A part of the
mountain overhanging the village slipped off on Sunday, just as the
people had returned from afternoon church services. The mighty debris
of rock and earth overwhelmed and buried the pretty village. It filled
the valley for half a mile. Mason and I climbed over granite boulders
and broken rocks as big as a house. Nothing of the town was to be seen,
the houses had been torn to pieces and buried fifty feet below. Nearly
everybody had been killed. There were no funerals, for till this day
the peasants of Elm sleep under the mountain that overwhelmed them.
The few who had escaped, by being on hillsides or out looking at their
herds on the higher fields, wandered about as if dazed. They shed no
tears. To them, the end of the world had come. Some of them told me,
without a tremor in their voices, how they stood on some high place
and saw their wives, their fathers or their children first thrown into
the air by the awful concussion and then buried with their houses. The
keeper of the little inn where we stopped that night had been spared,
and told us how he saw the big iron bridge across the river Sernf
tossed a hundred feet into the air, twisted like a straw, and thrown
against a hillside.
The river bed had been dammed up by the falling rock, and the waters
now wandered aimlessly over the ocean of debris above the people’s
homes. It is all silent now, up there in the Alps where Elm stood,
silent save where the winds from the mountain peaks on moonlight nights
moan a requiem to the sleeping dead.
_September 20._--President Garfield died yesterday at 5 A. M. (Swiss
time), and all the world went into mourning. I draped the flag here,
and put it out at the consulate. Many people called to express their
sorrow. A more unprovoked murder of a ruler never occurred. The
President’s agony since July 2d has been terrible, and his courage to
bear it has been tremendous.
Early this month, I made a little foot tour in Ireland. Everybody
said, “Don’t go!” Even in Dublin, a friend warned me, saying: “It is
a terrible time in Ireland. Landlords are being murdered and farmers
locked up in prison. You are a stranger here. The English soldiers, on
the watch everywhere, will take you for an American Fenian. The Irish
will take you for an English spy.”
It was all a mistake, as to myself at least. I went everywhere
unmolested. True, the tourists were frightened out of the country.
British redcoats were being sent up and down the island looking for
“boycotters” and assassins. The people everywhere were sullen, and
ominous silence reigned in many places. The country seemed to be
sitting on a volcano. I often walked miles on country roads without
meeting a soul, and nobody at all dared to be abroad at night. At
little country inns where I stopped, people did not talk about the
situation. I suppose they dared not.
By accident I picked up a newspaper one day and read a warning signed
by New York Fenians against any one’s traveling to Europe on an English
steamer. “They would blow them all up.” To my horror another item told
how an “infernal machine” was believed to have been put on board the
“Adriatic,” that had sailed on the 8th. This might go off in mid-ocean
and destroy the ship. My wife and two children were on board that
vessel, and the ship had sailed. There was nothing to do but wait,
and fear. Besides, it did not seem possible to me that the friends of
Ireland could resort to such crimes. In Ireland itself, however, there
was little respect for law, and for England none at all.
Once I was on a railroad train near Mallow. I was in the third class,
because there I could see the common people. A Fenian, out of jail that
very morning, sat next to me. He would not talk about the government,
but constantly asked me to “look out at the green fields”--they were so
beautiful to him after months of imprisonment.
Many redcoat soldiers, in charge of prisoners wearing handcuffs, were
on the train. The prisoners yelled: “Down with England! Hurrah for free
Ireland!” and sang the “Wearing of the Green.” The soldiers could not
help themselves and simply laughed.
The train stopped at a little country village and I saw a great mass of
people running towards us. The soldiers said they were coming to stone
the train. I wished now that I had listened to the “warnings.” Instead
of stoning us, however, the mob rushed into the car where I was, seized
the man by my side and bore him out on their shoulders. The men hugged
him, the women kissed him, and everybody cried for “free Ireland.” It
was his welcome home from prison. The redcoats said nothing and did
nothing. As the train moved on, I could see the mob still carrying the
man up the street, while the village band marched at their head.
I wanted to go to Limerick for the races next day, but I saw a train
with three hundred armed and uniformed policemen going to the same
place, so I stayed away, and took to the quiet and safer country roads.
I passed lovely scenes in the neighborhood of Killarney. The lakes
equal the Swiss lakes in beauty; there are bright waterfalls there,
groves, grand estates, ruined castles, and wretched poverty.
Saw Muckross Abbey by moonlight--nothing more romantic conceivable.
The grand old trees, the broken arches, the ivy-covered walls, the
graveyard with its bones of long-dead Irish kings, all silent and lone
under the soft light of a summer moon, impressed me.
A young Irishman and his newly wedded wife, stopping at the inn, had
joined me in the wish to see Muckross by moonlight. We walked down
the road to the entrance of the ground. The care taker at the gate
was upstairs in the lodge in bed. When we called to him to unlock the
gate, he poked his head out of a window and ordered us away instantly.
We offered him good pay to come down and let us into the grounds. “Not
for a dozen pounds would I come down there,” he yelled back at us. “How
do I know what you are or who you be, tramping around the roads this
time of night. You might be going to blow the top of the head off of
me. I tell you go along wid you.” We went along further down the road,
climbed over into the enclosure, and without blowing off tops of heads
of anybody, had a good time. We knew the man would not venture from his
lodge. His fear showed the kind of times Ireland was living in.
The next day I saw an Irish funeral at Muckross Abbey. The coffin was
borne on men’s shoulders, at first. When they passed out of Killarney
village, they put it on top of an immense hearse, the shape of an
omnibus, and behind it capered along a company of old women and girls,
groaning, bawling and shrieking by turns. Occasionally, on seeing a
friend at the roadside, these hired mourners rested themselves a moment
and greeted the friend with a grin. It seemed a hideous performance.
The grave was not dug when the procession reached the abbey, and there
was nothing to do but wait till some one came with shovel and spade. In
the meantime I slipped away.
I had many long walks through the country as I footed it off towards
Cork. Most of the peasants seemed sticking close to their wretched
little hovels, called houses. Excepting an occasional magnificent
estate that I saw walled in at the country roadside, all seemed
wretchedness. In a hundred miles I did not see a farmhouse that an
American would regard as anything more than a barn or pig sty. These
huts are of stone, one or one and a half stories high, covered with
straw, and no floor but the ground.
Wherever I talked, pitiable tales were told of bad living, high rents,
extortionate landlords. In the midst of all the wretchedness and the
present danger (and danger there is, for arrests and murders and crimes
are going on all the time), the peasants seem rather jovial and cheery,
though not contented. It is amazing where they get the money to pay
the landlords. One man told me he paid thirty dollars a year for a
dirty little hut without a foot of ground or garden. It was all the
house would sell for. “Yes,” said the man, “and I would be tumbled
into the road in six minutes if my rent were not paid; that’s what
all them constables are hanging around for.” I went into many of the
little dark farmhouses. All I saw was wretchedness--a pig or two, a few
chickens--maybe a cow staked outside--some dirty children--a woman,
cheery in spite of it all.
At one little hut a peasant woman asked me to stay and see what her
dinner was. Shortly she gave a call and the “brats” came running in.
She took a pot from the fire and gave to each a few potatoes, some salt
and a piece of bread, nothing more. The boys took their dinners in
their caps.
I was affected to tears, when the good woman put some potatoes on a
plate and offered to divide with me, as I stood looking on in the
doorway. “Oh, sir,” she said, and even cheerfully, “there are many
worse off than we. We cannot complain.” The husband was off at the
coast at work. On Sundays, he brought home a part of his wages to pay
the rent and part of the wages he spent for drink. He brought a little
coarse fish with him, too.
In some houses no meals were had. The potato pot hung by the fire, and
each helped himself out of it, whenever he felt hungry.
And that was peasant life in Ireland.
Potatoes and bread, with a bit of meat or fish on Sundays, seem to be
the regular rations of the family. What would have happened had Sir
Walter Raleigh never introduced the potato there? And what did the
people live on before they had potatoes?
The Irish are full of hope, and all the people look to the new “Land
Bill” to save them. But it won’t do it!
One day I overtook two Americans who, like myself, were wandering about
Ireland on foot. We went together to Blarney Castle. We did not see the
herd of white cows that rise up out of Blarney Lake at night, but we
climbed to the top of the castle tower (120 feet), where the youngest
of the party caught hold of an iron bar at a window and let himself
down outside the tower until he could reach the Blarney stone. Few ever
venture so foolhardy a feat, or have the muscle to hang on by one hand
at so perilous a height. The rest of us thought him a dead man. No
wonder the ancient Irish firmly believed that if one could kiss this
stone it would give him eloquence, because they knew it _could not_ be
kissed, not by one mortal in a million.
The old poet was safe in saying:
“There is a stone there
That whoever kisses,
Oh, he never misses
To grow eloquent.”
There is a kind of duplicate “Blarney stone” placed at a convenient and
easy spot on the castle for kissing, and the old woman in charge smiles
as she pockets the tourist’s shilling, turns the key in the door and
says to herself: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
At Queenstown I met my wife and two little ones returning from America,
the little girl suffering with a pain that shortly took her sweet life
away from us.
* * * * *
At the request of the Harper’s Magazine editor for something of the
kind, I have written an article called “My Farm in Switzerland.” My
wife has illustrated it, as well as the one on “The Swiss Rhine.”
The farmers here seem to be doing as well on ten acres as our people do
on quarter sections. There is the same complaint about mortgages and
all that, of course; but with it all, at the end of the year, the Swiss
peasant, like the American farmer, has made a living.
The investigation necessary for this paper showed me two things. First,
the Swiss are better farmers than the Americans. Second, they are ten
times as economical, else they would starve to death. Economy is a
fine art here. There is no other way to explain how it is a Swiss
lives, even poorly, on ten acres, while the Yankee requires one hundred
and sixty. Grass land here costs $200 an acre, grape land $1,000. Big
farms are impossible at such prices.
Suppose the Swiss has five acres of grape and garden land and ten of
pasture and meadow. His investment is $7,000. He lives from it with
less hard work than the American has, who owns one hundred and sixty
acres, worth $60 an acre or $9,600. The American’s investment is much
more than that of the Swiss, his labor must be double, his income the
same--a _living_. What is the matter? It is this. The one _saves_; the
other _wastes_. Expensive farm machinery does not lie around the fields
rusting to pieces in Switzerland. Horses and cattle are not thinned
down and killed off by exposure to bad weather. Care for what you have
earned, is the Swiss peasant’s motto. Waste everything you get, is
the practice of the American. After a while, careful foreigners will
own all the farms in America, and the American farmer will be loafing
around village stores, starving. Swiss economy applied to American land
culture, would enrich every farmer in America. Economy is the thing
that keeps the Swiss farmer from the poor-house.
* * * * *
I give two letters from General Sherman; the first, with something
about the Duke of Wellington, and the science of war; the second, about
President Garfield’s assassination. The little girl, referred to in the
first letter, was our little Helen, now drifting away from us, although
we did not think it.
“WASHINGTON, D. C., October 4, 1881.
“DEAR BYERS:--I have your good letter of September 21, with the slip
from the London _Times_, which I have read with profit. The English
cannot discuss any proposition without bringing in the Duke of
Wellington. No man, if living, would be quicker to avail himself of
improved transportation and communication than the Duke, but it would
astonish the old gentleman to wake up and read in the _Times_ of all
events in America and Asia the same day of their occurrence.
“The science of war, like that of natural philosophy, chemistry, must
recognize new truths and new inventions as they arise, and that is all
there is of change in the science of war since 1815. Man remains pretty
much the same, and will dodge all the risks of war and danger if by
electricity and nitroglycerine he can blow up his enemy ten miles off.
Nevertheless, manhood and courage will in future wars be of as much use
as in the past, and those who comprehend the object and come to close
quarters will win now as before.
“I am very sorry to hear that your little girl is in such precarious
health, and hope with you that the complete change in surroundings may
bring her back to her wonted health. All my flock is about as well
as usual, but now scattered. I expect Rachel home from Europe by the
Celtic, which leaves Queenstown October 21. My aide McCook lost his
wife at Salt Lake City and Bacon lost both his children, boys, this
summer.
“We all feel the effect of Garfield’s death yet, but next week the
called session of the Senate will meet, and then the political pot will
begin to boil and bubble. The telegraph keeps you so well advised that
it seems useless to attempt anything by letter.
“Give my best love to your wife and family and believe me as always,
“Your friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
* * * * *
“WASHINGTON, D. C., Dec. 14, 1881.
“DEAR BYERS:--I have owed you a letter for a long while, and though
we have had enough in all conscience here to furnish fit topics for
letters, I have known that the telegraph would be a long way ahead.
In Europe you know as much of the tragedy of Garfield’s shooting and
death as our own people in the interior, and many returned travelers
describe the intense interest of all classes in Garfield’s fate, as
long as he clung to life. The patient submission of our people, and
their continued endurance of the brutal Guiteau till he shall have had
a fair trial, is most honorable to us as a law-abiding people, but even
I am sometimes impatient at the law’s dallying, as this trial draws its
slow length along. I think the court means to make the trial so full,
and so perfect, that all the world will be convinced of the justice of
the sentence of death. So intense is public feeling that if the fellow
was turned loose, he would be stoned to death by the boys.
“The transition of power from Garfield to Arthur has been so regular,
so unattended by shock, that it proves the stability of the Government.
I have never known a time when there was so little political
excitement, or when the machinery of government worked more smoothly
than now. There is the same outward pressure for place, but President
Arthur fends it off with the skill of an old experienced hand. So I
infer there will be as few changes as possible. Blaine goes out to-day
and Frelinghuysen in, but it makes no more noise than a change of
bank presidents. In the army the same general composure prevails, and
we believe Congress will give us our 30,000 men, which will increase
the strength of companies and thereby increase the efficiency of the
establishment.
“All my family continues _statu quo_, reasonably well, in our house on
Fifteenth Street. Our season also seems mild for December, for this far
we have had no signs of winter.
“With my best love to all your folks, I am as ever,
“Your friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.”
On Sunday, as often happens after church here, the people were at
the polls, voting as to the adoption or rejection of a batch of laws
that had been adopted by the parliament. This is the “Referendum”
in action. Absolute order and decency prevailed, and there were no
intriguing ward politicians hanging around the polls, to buttonhole
voters. Voting is a responsible, dignified act with the Swiss. A
majority of the people seem to think the “Referendum” operates well
enough with a people so intelligent and patriotic as themselves, and in
so small a country. Yet, thousands here ridicule the idea of submitting
great questions of state to be voted on by the intelligent and ignorant
alike. In great cities, the world over, the ignorant and vicious are in
the majority, and the laws would all be bad if such citizens had the
decision of them. My own observation is that even the Swiss misuse this
Referendum and adopt just as many bad laws as they do good ones.