THE KLÖNTHAL--VORAUEN--RICHISAU--THE PRAGEL--MUOTTA--BRUNNEN--THE RIGI
KULM.
Ever charming, ever new,
When will the landscape tire the view!
The mountains’ fall, the rivers’ flow;
The wooded valleys, warm and low;
The windy summits wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky;
Town and village; tower and farm;
Each give to each a double charm.--DYER.
_August 21._--From Glarus by the Pragel Pass to Brunnen is thirty-eight
miles. As we intended to sleep at Brunnen, we took a _char_ for the
first nine miles to Vorauen, where the carriage road ends. We were
under weigh at 6 A.M. You are now in the Klönthal; so good a valley
that it would be better for those to whom walking is not a pain to do
it on foot. You enter it as you leave Glarus. The Glärnish is on your
left; on your right steep-sided mountains--ill-clad, but the better for
that. On leaving Glarus you do not immediately lose sight of factories.
The last of them are at Riedern. Of course you are invited to leave
the road, to see, at a few yards’ distance, that the torrent of the
Klönthal, like other Swiss torrents, has not forgotten to cut, for
the astonishment of tourists, deep into the rock a rugged channel,
at the bottom of which, with much dashing and hurrying, it is still
continuing its excavations. This, at one point or other of their brief
run, all Swiss torrents regard as an imperative duty. In somewhat more
than an hour you reach the Klönsee; two miles, or so, in length, and
narrow. The lofty, massive Glärnish rises, almost vertically, from its
opposite side. The lake is sheltered; and this morning it reflected, as
a mirror, the blue sky, and the Glärnish, with its precipices, woods,
and snow streaks. You are told that there are still a few chamois on
these lofty summits. You think it an illegitimate and cruel use of the
rifle to exterminate so agile, graceful, and brave a creature, that
only asks, as its portion of the world, for the inaccessible rocks and
snow-fields. When you reach the head of the lake, you find that what
was, once, its upper part is now marsh, passing into meadow. You then
come to the inn of Vorauen. Its site has been ill chosen. It seems as
if it had dropped out of the clouds upon the open, level, treeless dank
grass. There is an unfinished, untidy, repellent aspect about it, both
within and without. You are glad that you are not going to stop at it.
Here you leave your carriage; and should you have had the driver we
had, you will shake his hand, and say adieu, with a perceptible sense
of regret that you are to see his face, his manly good-natured face, no
more.
At Richisau, three miles from Vorauen, we engaged a horse for the
little man to take him to the top of the Pass. Richisau is a very
different kind of place from Vorauen. Instead of being on the damp,
naked meadow, it is among woods and mountains. The difference is not
unappreciated; for at Vorauen we did not find a soul: here were sixty
visitors, many of whom we had passed, strolling about the woods we
had just come through. Many more we saw seated, in the shade, under
the large, ancient, detached sycamores that surround the inn. I
call it an inn, because there were so many people using the little,
shed-like structures, which were all that we saw. Had it not been for
the visitors we should not have supposed that there was any inn at
all. The landlord, however, is now building a large hotel--not quite a
monster, still a goodly structure of stone. Any oversights, therefore,
or misapprehensions of the kind we might have fallen into, will not,
for the future, be possible. Almost all the visitors--all, as far as we
saw--were Germans and Swiss; chiefly the latter. The landlord and his
wife are of the simple-minded, smiling, obliging sort; and so we will
wish that their new house may be a success. For people intending to do
the whole Pass, whether from Glarus, or from Schwyz, of course on foot,
the best arrangement would be to go as far as Richisau by the afternoon
of the first day. To stop at Vorauen would be in every respect a
mistake. To stop at Richisau would, I believe, be in every respect a
gain.
As the _Col_ is only 5,000 feet above the sea, and as you have at
Richisau a good part of the ascent behind you, you will find no stiff
work between Richisau and the summit. There are no striking mountain
ranges, or masses, in sight as you complete the ascent; nor when you
have made the top. A little beyond the _Col_ are two summer _châlets_
for herdsmen, with a huddling brook in front of them. Here we called
a halt for our mid-day cold meats and diluted medoc. For the use
of a table brought out, and set for us by the side of the stream,
the herdsmen were satisfied with what was left upon it, including a
half-franc: it would have been better had it been a whole one. But as,
in Switzerland, the price of brandy, except in hotels, is little more
than the cost of manufacture, the materials from which it is made being
only apples, potatoes, and such-like, which are abundant and cheap,
in that half-franc was concentrated an amount of force capable of
transmutation into a deep carouse.
We are on our legs again. While gaily making way, apace, down hill,
the only effort necessary being that required to prevent our going
too fast, we meet three youthful Germans, with, on their large bones,
a deal of superfluous flesh, and other matter less solid and more
superfluous, painfully toiling up. The two parties salute, as they
pass, but with very different feelings. On the way to Muotta we found
reason enough for their looking so solemn and dead-beaten. The ascent
from that side is at times bad, over long bits of stone-paved pathway:
the stones polished by the traffic of centuries to a marvellously
smooth surface. One reach of this is through a wood of ancient pine,
from the branches of which depend streamers of moss; and on the ground
are an abundance of male and female ferns, among which are many fine
specimens of _Blecnum spicant_, with the barren fronds spread out in
a flat circle on the earth, and the fruitful ones standing erect from
the centre of the circle. This indicates much moisture, which makes
the polished surface of the pathway very treacherous. The worst bit is
on the last descent towards Muotta. There you have a long, broken-up
staircase of glass-smooth (and, if there has been any rain, lubricated)
blocks of stone. From the summit to Muotta is not impressive as Alpine
scenery. But variety is pleasant; and to be passing through these
mountain pastures among herds of cows, and cowherds, with somewhat
mountainous barriers left and right, over short, smooth turf, and
beside clear, lively streams, on a sunny day, with fresh, breezy air,
will satisfy many. For those whom it does not satisfy we can only
have--well--but imperfect sympathy.
We reached the further end of the scattered village of Muotta, eighteen
miles in six hours’ walking, the halts deducted. Here at the little
inn we made the acquaintance of a Parisian _homme de lettres_. He had
come from Brunnen with his wife and another lady for the day. They had
a very roomy carriage, and were so good as to offer to give us seats
to Brunnen. Ammer, having come to a clandestine understanding with
the driver, managed to double himself up on the empty baggage board
behind. The Muotta is not outdone by the Klön in the ravine matter:
so here, too, you must leave your carriage to see what it has to show
in this way. It is at the point where the bridge of the old, and now
disused, road crosses the river. Its distinguishing feature is that
its almost invisible interstices everywhere support a thick growth of
shrubs and small trees. They seem to grow out of the rock, and go near
towards hiding the water below them. Part of the new road--I believe
it is nearly a century old--is grooved out of the mountain side, two
or three hundred feet, in places, above the river. You then pass along
the western foot of the Mythen, among innumerable orchards; and so, at
last, you reach Brunnen, and the margin of the lake.
It was a lovely evening, with a glorious sunset. The world, in the
direction of Stanz, was all ablaze with rapidly changing effects. On
the esplanade, in front of the Grand Hotel of the Four Forest Cantons,
people of many kindreds and nations had sent their representatives to
witness the scene. As I sat on a bench, talking with my new French
acquaintance, of course about the future of France and of Europe, he
delivered himself, _more Gallico_, of the following epigram: ‘You make
as many revolutions as we do, but with a difference: yours are all
bloodless, and for an object.’
The words magnificent and palatial are hardly inapplicable to this
great hotel. And it is only one of a class, of which there are several
other specimens around the lake. Another, the Axenstein, is close by,
on a spur of the Axenberg, over the Axenstrasse. Another is in sight
on the Seelisberg, on the opposite side of the lake. At the foot of
the lake, at Lucerne, are others of the same kind. And everywhere,
along the shores of its tortuous branches, are multitudes of smaller
establishments. You recall this, and think that the hundreds of people,
who have just left the esplanade of the Hotel of the Four Forest
Cantons, at the summons of the supper-bell, are only a small detachment
of the thousands of travellers who at that moment are assembled around
that single lake. Perhaps you prefer a cigar to a supper; at all events
the preference may be allowed on so lovely an evening; and, therefore,
you remain seated where you are, on the edge of the lake; and watch the
fading, and now white, light above the distant mountains, which have
themselves become only black masses. Half an hour ago they were purple,
and what is now white above them had then been purple-red, which had
passed through ruddy orange to pale gold. You will be looking at the
last fading traces of departed day: perhaps, however, you will be
thinking of the invading host of travellers, encamped around the lake.
Who are they? They are people, who, formerly, would not have
travelled--who, indeed, under the old condition of things would not
have existed; for it is new causes, the vast extension, and the rapid
profits of trades, manufactures, commerce, and professions, which have
called them into existence. This has brought them into the world:
railways and steamboats only help them in moving about upon it. And
these thousands around you, for the practice of travelling has with
this class become general, are merely the contingent it has sent, this
year, to this spot. They will all come in their turn. Travelling is
a regular part of their education; as much so as what they learn at
school, and in their respective callings.
These middle-class throngs have, of late years, taken the place of the
few territorial magnates, who, formerly, went what was called then, and
was so under the circumstances of those times, the grand tour. They
have not ceased to go the grand tour; but they are lost to sight now in
these middle-class multitudes. In the days of the grand tour the few,
who were on their travels, were somewhat conspicuous, like the large
trees in their open parks, standing, detached, here and there; but now
a forest has grown up all around these large, detached trees; and they
cannot anywhere be seen for the forest.
And you go on to think that it is not merely on the road, and in the
grand hotels, which have been built for them, that this great middle
class has made the territorial magnates almost invisible, but that it
has also, to a very considerable extent, begun to take their place
in Parliament, and as the governing class. Parliament now, and every
Government, are largely composed of its members. You are reminded that
an old order of things is passing away, and a new coming in its place.
These travellers are an indication not only of the existence, but of
the numbers and wealth, the power and activity, of the most prominent
element in that new order. To it they belong, and here they are to you
its representatives. These grand hotels are a gauge of its numbers and
wealth.
But the trail of thought does not stop at this point. A mighty element
in the new order of things is not at all represented here--that element
of modern societies which was so seen and felt in the Paris Commune,
that all Europe is now occupied in debating how it is to be dealt
with, or rather what place it will achieve for itself in the immediate
future. It is the class of the working hands of the vastly-developed
trade, manufactures, and commerce of the day. They have remained
working hands, because, as things have hitherto been in the world,
there has been no way to emerge from that class but that of saving;
and saving requires a combination of favourable circumstances and of
suitable qualities, first among the latter of which comes that of a
genius for saving. It was the turning to account of this combination,
which existed in their own case, or in that of their fathers, that
enabled far the larger part of the absolutely many, but, relatively
to the number of the working hands, comparatively few, whom we have
just been thinking about, to emerge from the working mass; and to
become capitalists, that is to say members of the middle class: for
capital is the product of saving--of saving only, and of nothing else.
And capital, either invested or employed, is the support of the great
middle class, and of the various professions, dependent mainly on it,
whether they be recruited from above, or from below: capital is its
support, just as the rent of land is that of the upper class, and wages
that of the lower or working class.
The trail of thought, then, passes on to the unemerged--the vast army
of working hands. And the question is asked, What is, and what will
be, their relation to the class so largely represented here, before
us, by the many more or less wealthy travellers, for whom these grand
hotels have been built? One thing is certain: the working hands can no
longer be kept down by the middle, capital-supported class, any more
than the middle class itself could have been kept down by the upper
land-supported class--the territorial magnates. Force was sufficient
for such purposes under the old, rude, simple, bygone order of things.
Now it is but a broken reed to lean upon; and will only pierce the hand
that would lean upon it. It is the masses, indeed, who now possess the
strength of numbers, together with growing intelligence, and means for
communicating and combining. You wish to look into the future. It is,
to some extent, a clue to its unevolved possibilities, that, under the
conditions now establishing themselves, force, in the old significance
of the word, will not be the principle, the bond, the dependence, the
cement of society. What, then, will be? Nothing can be suggested, but
knowledge, intelligence, justice. If they cannot exorcise the evil
spirits that may torment modern societies, there is nothing else to
turn to. Should, then, an honest attempt be made to spread knowledge,
to cultivate intelligence, and to be just to all, we are not without
hope. In all changes that come in the natural order of things, what
is needed is indicated, and more or less brought about, by the very
course of events. Happily, amongst ourselves, the course of events and
legislation are working together in the desired direction. All cannot
emerge, but all may be raised to a common level. This is what is now
being brought about. The artisan now reads the same newspapers, eats
the same bread, travels by the same train, interchanges thought by
the post on the same terms, and is endowed with the same amount of
political power, as the class that was formerly the most favoured.
And, now, education, which, because it is the most elevating, is,
therefore, the most equalizing, of all agencies, is being provided
for his children. We will, therefore, trust that what the travelling
middle class see in the many lands they visit, and their meditations on
what they see, will bring home to them as a clear conviction, and as of
the sort that ought to be acted on, as well as acknowledged, that it
will be their wisdom to accept frankly these inevitable changes. And
this may be the best way of bringing the working hands on their side
to understand, and practically to recognize, the duties of their new
position.
_August 22._--Our plan had been to climb Pilatus, and having slept at
the hotel on the summit, to go down in the morning to Alpnach. The
vote, however, which issued in this decision, had been taken in the
absence of _le petit caporal_. We now found that the whole question
must be reconsidered. On this having been done, the original vote was
reversed, unconstitutionally, by the minority. The new decision was,
that we must take the railway to the top of the Rigi. This idea had
not, in the first consideration of the subject, been lost sight of; but
had been rejected from a sense of the cockneyism of going up a Swiss
mountain, in a mob of tourists, by rail. It turned out, however,--a
result not new to history--that the minority was not wrong.
I am not, though on the Rigi, going into ecstasies, or particulars.
You will find plenty of both in the books. Who has not read--perhaps
enough--of its sunrises and sunsets; of the eight lakes visible from
its summit; of the effects, still uneffaced, and of which you have a
near view, of the great mountain-slip of the Rossberg; and of the long
range of massive, rugged, snow-topped Alps to the south, from east to
west, a world of mountains of many shapes? With all this, and a good
deal more, everyone is as familiar as he is with St Paul’s. But however
familiar a writer may make his readers with particulars enumerated in
this fashion, he will not thereby enable them to reproduce in their
minds such a scene and, if he have not enabled them to do this, his
ecstasies would be only cold and ridiculous. The question, then, is,
How are the particulars of so vast a scene to be so presented, as that
it may be adequately and truly reproduced? The most practised describer
would, I think, fail. The triumph, however, I believe might be achieved
by the aid of two good panoramic maps, drawn for the purpose. One for
the northern, and the other for the southern view. The one for the
northern view, which, as seen from the Rigi, embraces the apparently
level region of northern, and north-western Switzerland, should be
divided, longitudinally, by lines from south to north, into three
compartments; a central, a right, and a left one. And then, each of
these three should be, again, trisected, latitudinally, by parallel
lines from east to west. This would give to each of the three original
compartments three distances of its own; its near, its middle, and
its further distance. Each of the three distances of each of the three
compartments should be made to show the objects conspicuous to the
eye from the summit of the Rigi, and those, too, which though not
conspicuous, are yet of sufficient interest to be worthy of notice.
With such a map before you, you would almost be able to construct,
and put together, the view for yourself. He alone understands a
scene, who has in his mind distinct images of all its parts, and of
the relation of each to its environment. And in a scene of such vast
extent, as that of which we are now speaking, the man, who has it
actually before him, will not be able to reach this understanding by
a glance, or two: effort and study will be required for the purpose;
and even he will be much helped by some such artificial arrangement,
as I am here suggesting. It would, however, be also, strictly, the
natural arrangement; for such a map would only present, in easily
comprehensible spaces, what is here presented in one undivided, and
almost incomprehensible, expanse, in a marvellously map-like fashion,
by Nature herself. What you have spread out before you from the Rigi
Kulm is a map: as much a map as one of Keith Johnston’s, with the
addition, that, though a map, it is also, at the same time, the actual
concrete thing to be mapped--in form, substance, colour, detail,
life; of all which his paper map would be only a feeble suggestion
in symbols. And as to the man, who has not, or who has not had, the
scene before him; it would be quite hopeless to attempt to describe
it to him without the aid of a map, so constructed as to give separate
distinctness to the component parts of the scene. _Qui bene dividit,
bene docet_; and the larger the subject, the greater the need of
well-planned divisions.
In a similar fashion the world of snow-capped Alps to the south should
be divided into three parts; a middle, and two extremities. The general
outline of each part should be sketched, and its most conspicuous, and
famous summits signalized. And an attempt should be made to give some
general ideas of the ground-plan, and character of each range, and of
its relations to the contiguous ranges.
With two such panoramic maps before you, your companion in type might
then say to you: Look on this picture to the north, and on that to
the south. Never were two contiguous scenes--the two parts of an
unbroken whole--in more complete and impressive contrast. The picture
to the north, and north-west is a bird’s-eye view of a fertile,
highly-cultivated country. Here is spread out before you the greater
part of north-western Switzerland. The view may be roughly spoken of as
filling the area of a semicircle, the diameter of the circle being 100
miles. You are, therefore, looking, from the central point, at which
you are standing, fifty miles in every direction. This rich cultivated
country, while, in the distance, it trends away as far as the eye
can follow it, also, as your mountain observatory is precipitous on
this side, comes quite up to you--to beneath your feet--for a near
inspection. There is a filmy tint of green in everything you look upon,
with the exception of the towns, villages, and innumerable detached
human habitations, scattered over the whole of it; but which, of
course, as the distance increases, gradually become lost to sight. The
grass is, at this season, of a yellowish green; the trees and woods of
a brownish green; the lakes of a bluish green. I do not know where,
from a near point of view, without a particle of intermediate distance,
you could look over so wide an expanse of land, that has been, and
shows palpably that it has been, brought so thoroughly and successfully
into subjection to man. The expanse is vast, but man is everywhere.
Everywhere cornfields, and vineyards, and orchards, and prairies;
maize and potatoes; hemp and flax; sheep and cows; woods for fuel, and
streams for irrigation. Who could think of counting the plots of land
into which the whole of it is divided? But that were easier done than
to picture, and estimate the sum of the satisfaction and enjoyment,
their possession confers on those who own, and cultivate them. From the
vast plain--for to the eye, from the height of nearly 6,000 feet, it
all appears flattened out--there ascends to the mountain-top, in the
air you are breathing, an incense of human happiness, engendered by
industry, independence, and contentment. I looked in the direction of
Bretzwyl, and hoped that its unsophisticated peasants had had, since
I was among them, many more dances and concerts; and that the kindly
professor, his pleasing wife, and their rosy, lively children, were
still at Sonnen Halle. But there are many Bretzwyls in that broad view.
And there is not an acre in the whole of it, but would sell for twice
as much--so greatly has it been improved, and so much happiness does
its possession yield to its industrious cultivators--as an acre, of
equal goodness, in wealthy England.
So is it also with the opposite picture seen from the Rigi Kulm--the
other strangely-contrasted half of the wonderful whole--the long
range of Alps on the south. It is not their mountain massiveness, and
colouring only--unwonted sight to English eyes--that are capable of
interesting. They are something more than Nature’s architecture in
many forms--pyramids, towers, buttresses, pinnacles--appealing merely
to the sense of grandeur, of power, and of awe. That is much: but in
them there is much more. That is no more than what the eye reports
to the mind. There is, besides, what the memory reports, and what
the imagination gives body and life to; and which is of still deeper
interest. These craggy escarpments, built up from the plain to, and
above the clouds, bastioned with horrid precipices, parapeted and
battlemented with eternal snow, were, in its early days, the rampart
of the cradle of civilization. In its history they played a great
and indispensable part. So was it in early times. And the state of
things these Alps aided in bringing about in early times, did, in
its turn, contribute to bring about the state, to which we, in these
times, belong. Reader, it is demonstrable, that, if these ramparts
had not existed, neither should we, who are now contemplating them,
have existed. The combinations of human history would, then, have been
different from what they are; and in those different combinations we
should have had no place.
Again, if that rampart had not been there, what--to let old times
alone--would the subsequent history of Italy have been, and where would
have been the recent resurrection of united and independent Italy? It
could, without that rampart, have been only a province, as it was not
far from becoming with it, of France, or of Germany. It would have been
so, for the area of nations depends on natural boundaries.
And there is still another train of thought that belongs to the scene
before you. All that you are now looking on suggests only nakedness
and cold; hardness and barrenness. There is nothing that indicates
life. Man can have no dominion or place there. In everything it seems
the antithesis of the scene to the north. But this year, and in other
years, you have yourself travelled among those mountains. And what did
you find among them? A great deal besides nakedness and cold; hardness
and barrenness. You found them everywhere intersected and crossed with
innumerable valleys; and every valley you found the scene of patient
untiring human industry. You found every little plot of corn or garden
ground, every rood of grass, every individual tree carefully, nay
lovingly tended, and made the most of. You can recall how, not only in
the valley, by the stream-side, but up the mountain side also, and even
on many mountain-tops, between the crags and the snow-fields, at this
moment, man, woman, and child are busy in winning all that can be won
from niggard Nature. Here, then, is another order of objects, and other
colouring, to be added by the imagination to the scene before you.
Now, it is not only the craggy flanks, and the snowy tops of the Eiger
and the Jungfrau, the Titlis, the Uri Rothstock, the St. Gothard, the
Glärnish, and the Tödi, that you see. You clothe and people all between
them. You are, again, passing through the villages, the prairies, the
orchards of Unterwalden and Uri. You are, again, on the Oberalp alpe,
and on the long sides of the Surenen, and of the Pragel, among the cows
and the cowherds. You are, again, among the looms and the print-works
of Glarus. Thought is active in bringing before you the scene as it is;
natural details, and human details of many landscapes, set in those
mountain-frames; details out of sight, but visible to the mind’s eye.
Sympathies are awakened. Your understanding and your heart are both,
now, admitted to a share in the interest of the scene.