a place. In the town hall are shown the tattered flags carried by the
warriors of Uri in the early battles of the Confederation, the mace and
sword of state which are borne by the beadles to the Landsgemeinde. In
a somewhat inaccessible corner, a few houses off, the beginnings of a
museum have been made. Here is another portrait of interest--that of the
giant Püntener, a mercenary whose valor made him the terror of the enemy
in the battle of Marignano, in 1515; so that when he was finally killed,
they avenged themselves, according to a writing beneath the picture, by
using his fat to smear their weapons, and by feeding their horses with
oats from his carcass. Just outside the village stands the arsenal,
whence, they say, old armor was taken and turned into shovels, when the
St. Gothard Railroad was building, so poor and ignorant were the people.
If you are of the sterner sex, you can also penetrate into the Capuchin
Monastery, and enter the gardens, where the terraces that rise behind
the buildings are almost Italian in appearance, festooned with vines and
radiant with roses. Not that the fame of this institution rests on such
trivial matters, however. The brothers boast of two things: theirs is
the oldest branch of the order in Switzerland, dating from 1581, and
they carry on in it the somewhat unappetizing industry of cultivating
snails for the gourmands of foreign countries. Above the Capuchins is
the famous Bannwald, mentioned by Schiller--a tract of forest on the
mountain-slope, in which no one is allowed to fell trees, because it
protects the village from avalanches and rolling stones.
Nothing could be fairer than the outskirts of Altdorf on a May morning.
The valley of the Reuss lies bathed from end to end in a flood of
golden light, shining through an atmosphere of crystal purity. Daisies,
cowslips, and buttercups, the flowers of rural well-being, show through
the rising grass of the fields; along the hedges and crumbling walls
of the lanes peep timid primroses and violets, and in wilder spots the
Alpine gentian, intensely blue. High up, upon the mountains, glows the
indescribable velvet of the slopes, while, higher still, ragged and
vanishing patches of snow proclaim the rapid approach of summer.
After all, the best part of Altdorf, to make an Irish bull, lies outside
of the village. No adequate idea of this strange little community can
be given without referring to the Almend, or village common. Indeed,
as time goes on, one learns to regard this Almend as the complete
expression and final summing up of all that is best in Altdorf, the
reconciliation of all its inconsistencies.
How fine that great pasture beside the River Reus, with its short,
juicy, Alpine grass, in sight of the snow-capped Bristenstock, at one
end of the valley, and of the waters of Lake Lucerne at the other! In
May, the full-grown cattle have already departed for the higher summer
pastures, leaving only the feeble young behind, who are to follow as
soon as they have grown strong enough to bear the fatigues of the
journey. At this time, therefore, the Almend becomes a sort of vision
of youth--of calves, lambs, and foals, guarded by little boys, all
gamboling in the exuberance of early life.
LUCERNE[33]
BY VICTOR TISSOT
A height crowned with embattled ramparts that bristle with loop-holed
turrets; church towers mingling their graceful spires and peaceful
crosses with those warlike edifices; dazzling white villas, planted like
tents under curtains of verdure; tall houses with old red skylights on
the roofs--this is our first glimpse of the Catholic and warlike city of
Lucerne. We seem to be approaching some town of old feudal times that
has been left solitary and forgotten on the mountain side, outside of
the current of modern life.
But when we pass through the station we find ourselves suddenly
transported to the side of the lake, where whole flotillas of large and
small boats lie moored on the blue waters of a large harbor. And along
the banks of this wonderful lake is a whole town of hotels, gay with
many colored flags, their terraces and balconies rising tier above
tier, like the galleries of a grand theater whose scenery is the mighty
Alps....
In summer Lucerne is the Hyde Park of Switzerland. Its quays are
thronged by people of every nation. There you meet pale women from the
lands of snow, and dark women from the lands of the sun; tall, six-foot
English women, and lively, alert, trim Parisian women, with the light
and graceful carriage of a bird on the bough. At certain hours this
promenade on the quays is like a charity fair or a rustic ball--bright
colors and airy draperies everywhere.
Nowhere can the least calm and repose be found but in the old town.
There the gabled houses, with wooden galleries hanging over the waters
of the Reuss, make a charming ancient picture, like a bit of Venice set
down amid the verdant landscape of the valley.
I also discovered on the heights beyond the ramparts a pretty and
peaceful convent of Capuchins, the way to which winds among wild plants,
starry with flowers. It is delicious to go right away, far from the town
swarming and running over with Londoners, Germans, and Americans, and to
find yourself among fragrant hedges, peopled by warblers whom it has
not yet occurred to the hotel-keepers to teach to sing in English. This
sweet path leads without fatigue to the convent of the good fathers.
In a garden flooded with sunshine and balmy with the fragrance of
mignonette and vervain, where broad sunflowers erect their black
discs fringed with gold, two brothers with fan-shaped beards, their
brass-mounted spectacles astride on their flat noses, and arrayed in
green gardening aprons, are plying enormous watering-cans; while, in
the green and cool half-twilight under the shadowy trees, big, rubicund
brothers walk up and down, reading their red-edged breviaries in black
leather bindings.
Happy monks! Not a fraction of a pessimist among them! How well they
understand life! A beautiful convent, beautiful nature, good wine and
good cheer, neither disturbance nor care; neither wife nor children; and
when they leave the world, heaven specially created for them, seraphim
waiting for them with harps of gold, and angels with urns of rose-water
to wash their feet!
Lucerne began as a nest of monks, hidden in an orchard like a nest of
sparrows. The first house of the town was a monastery, erected by the
side of the lake. The nest grew, became a village, then a town, then a
city. The monks of Murbach, to whom the monastery of St. Leger belonged,
had got into debt; this sometimes does happen even to monks. They
sold to King Rudolf all the property they possest at Lucerne and in
Unterwalden; and thus the town passed into the hands of the Hapsburgs.
When the first Cantons, after expelling the Austrian bailiffs, had
declared their independence, Lucerne was still one of Austria's advanced
posts. But its people were daily brought into contact with the shepherds
of the Forest Cantons, who came into the town to supply themselves with
provisions; and they were not long in beginning to ask themselves if
there was any reason why they should not be, as well as their neighbors,
absolutely free. The position of the partizans of Austria soon became so
precarious that they found it safe to leave the town....
The opening of the St. Gothard Railway has given a new impulse to this
cosmopolitan city, which has a great future before it. Already it has
supplanted Interlaken in the estimation of the furbelowed, fashionable
world--the women who come to Switzerland not to see but to be seen.
Lucerne is now the chief summer station of the twenty-two Cantons. And
yet it does not possess many objects of interest. There is the old
bridge on the Reuss, with its ancient paintings; the Church of St.
Leger, with its lateral altars and its Campo Santo, reminding us
of Italian cemeteries; the museum at the Town Hall, with its fine
collection of stained glass; the blood-stained standards from the
Burgundian wars, and the flag in which noble old Gundolfingen, after
charging his fellow-citizens never to elect their magistrates for more
than a year, wrapt himself as in a shroud of glory to die in the fight;
finally, there is the Lion of Lucerne; and that is all.
The most wonderful thing of all is that you are allowed to see this lion
for nothing; for close beside it you are charged a franc for permission
to cast an indifferent glance on some uninteresting excavations, which
date, it is said, from the glacial period. We do not care if they do....
The great quay of Lucerne is delightful; as good as the seashore at
Dieppe or Trouville. Before you, limpid and blue, lies the lake, which
from the character of its shores, at once stern and graceful, is the
finest in Switzerland. In front rises the snow-clad peaks of Uri, to the
left the Rigi, to the right the austere Pilatus, almost always wearing
his high cap of clouds. This beautiful walk on the quay, long and shady
like the avenue of a gentleman's park, is the daily resort, toward four
o'clock, of all the foreigners who are crowded in the hotels or packed
in the boarding-houses. Here are Russian and Polish counts with long
mustaches, and pins set with false brilliants; Englishmen with fishes'
or horses' heads; Englishwomen with the figures of angels or of
giraffes; Parisian women, daintily attired, sprightly, and coquettish;
American women, free in their bearing, and eccentric in their dress, and
their men as stiff as the smoke-pipes of steamboats; German women, with
languishing voices, drooping and pale like willow branches, fair-haired
and blue-eyed, talking in the same breath of Goethe and the price of
sausages, of the moon and their glass of beer, of stars and black
radishes. And here and there are a few little Swiss girls, fresh and
rosy as wood strawberries, smiling darlings like Dresden shepherdesses,
dreaming of scenes of platonic love in a great garden adorned with the
statue of William Tell or General Dufour.
ZURICH[34]
BY W.D. M'CRACKAN
If you arrive in Zurich after dark, and pass along the river-front,
you will think yourself for a moment in Venice. The street lamps glow
responsively across the dark Limmat, or trail their light from the
bridges. In the uncertain darkness, the bare house walls of the farther
side put on the dignity of palaces. There are unsuspected architectural
glories in the Wasserkirche and the Rathhaus, as they stand partly in
the water of the river. And if, at such times, one of the long, narrow
barges of the place passes up stream, the illusion is complete; for, as
the boat cuts at intervals through the glare of gaslight it looks for
all the world like a gondola....
Zurich need not rely upon any fancied resemblance of this sort for a
distinct charm of its own. The situation of the city is essentially
beautiful, reminding one, in a general way, of that of Geneva, Lucerne,
or Thun--at the outlet of a lake, and at the point of issue of a
swift river. Approaching from the lakeside, the twin towers of the
Grossmünster loom upon the right, capped by ugly rounded tops, like
miters; upon the left, the simple spires of the Fraumünster and St.
Peter's. A conglomeration of roofs denotes the city houses. On the
water-front, extensive promenades stretch, crescent shaped, from end
to end, cleverly laid out, tho' as yet too new to quite fulfil their
mission of beauty. Some large white buildings form the front line on
the lake--notably the theater, and a few hotels and apartment houses.
Finally, there where the River Limmat leaves the lake, a vista of
bridges open into the heart of the city--a succession of arches and
lines that invite inspection.
Like most progressive cities of Europe, Zurich has outgrown its feudal
accouterments within the last fifty years. It has razed its walls,
converted its bastions into playgrounds, and, pushing out on every side,
has incorporated many neighboring villages, until to-day it contains
more than ninety thousand inhabitants.[35] The pride of modern Zurich is
the Bahnhof-strasse, a long street which leads from the railroad station
to the lake. It is planted with trees, and counts as the one and only
boulevard of the city. Unfortunately, a good view of the distant snow
mountains is very rare from the lake promenade, altho' they appear with
distinctness upon the photographs sold in the shops.
Early every Saturday the peasant women come trooping in, with their
vegetables, fruits, and flowers, to line the Bahnhof-strasse with carts
and baskets. The ladies and kitchen-maids of the city come to buy; but
by noon the market is over. In a jiffy, the street is swept as clean as
a kitchen floor, and the women have turned their backs on Zurich. But
the real center of attraction in Zurich will be found by the traveler in
that quarter where stands the Grossmünster, the church of which Zwingli
was incumbent for twelve years.
It may well be called the Wittenberg church of Switzerland. The present
building dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries; but tradition
has it that the first minster was founded by Charlemagne. That
ubiquitous emperor certainly manifested great interest in Zurich. He
has been represented no less than three times in various parts of the
building. About midway up one of the towers, his statue appears in
a niche, where pigeons strut and prink their feathers, undisturbed.
Charlemagne is sitting with a mighty two-edged sword upon his knees, and
a gilded crown upon his head; but the figure is badly proportioned, and
the statue is a good-natured, stumpy affair, that makes one smile rather
than admire. The outside of the minster still shows traces of the image
breakers of Zwingli's time, and yet the crumbling north portal remains
beautiful, even in decay. As for the interior, it has an exceedingly
bare and stript appearance; for, altho' there is good, solid stonework
in the walls, the whole has been washed a foolish, Philistine white. The
Romanesque of the architectural is said to be of particular interest to
connoisseurs, and the queer archaic capitals must certainly attract the
notice even of ordinary tourists....
It is also worth while to go to the Helmhaus, and examine the collection
of lake-dwelling remains. In fact, there is a delightful little model of
a lake-dwelling itself, and an appliance to show you how those primitive
people could make holes in their stone implements, before they knew the
use of metals. The ancient guild houses of Zurich are worth a special
study. Take, for instance, that of the "Zimmerleute," or carpenter with
its supporting arches and little peaked tower; or the so-called "Waag,"
with frescoed front; then the great wainscoated and paneled hall of the
"schmieden" (smiths); and the rich Renaissance stonework of the "Maurer"
(masons). These buildings, alas, with the decay of the system which
produced them, have been obliged to put up big signs of Café Restaurant
upon their historic façades, like so many vulgar, modern eating-houses.
The Rathhaus, or Town Hall, too, is charming. It stands, like the
Wasserkirche, with one side in the water and the other against the quay.
The style is a sort of reposeful Italian Renaissance, that is florid
only in the best artistic sense. Nor must you miss the so-called
"Rüden," nearby, for its sloping roof and painted walls give it a very
captivating look of alert picturesqueness, and it contains a large
collection of Pestalozzi souvenirs.
Zurich has more than one claim to the world's recognition; but no
department of its active life, perhaps, merits such unstinted praise as
its educational facilities. First and foremost, the University, with
four faculties, modeled upon the German system, but retaining certain
distinctive traits that are essentially Swiss--for instance, the broad
and liberal treatment accorded to women students, who are admitted as
freely as men, and receive the same instruction. A great number of
Russian girls are always to be seen in Zurich, as at other Swiss
universities, working unremittingly to acquire the degrees which
they are denied at home. Not a few American women also have availed
themselves of these facilities, especially for the study of medicine....
Zurich is, at the present time, undoubtedly the most important
commercial city in Switzerland, having distanced both Basel and Geneva
in this direction. The manufacturing of silk, woolen, and linen fabrics
has flourished here since the end of the thirteenth century. In modern
times, however, cotton and machinery have been added as staple articles
of manufacture. Much of the actual weaving is still done in outlying
parts of the Canton, in the very cottages of the peasants, so that
the click of the loom is heard from open windows in every village and
hamlet.
But modern industrial processes are tending continually to drive the
weavers from their homes into great centralized factories, and every
year this inevitable change becomes more apparent. It is certainly
remarkable that Zurich should succeed in turning out cheap and good
machinery, when we remember that every ton of coal and iron has to be
imported, since Switzerland possesses not a single mine, either of the
one or the other.
THE RIGI[36]
BY W.D. M'CRACKAN
If you really want to know how the Swiss Confederation came to be, you
can not do better than take the train to the top of the Rigi. You might
stumble through many a volume, and not learn so thoroughly the essential
causes of this national birth.
Of course, the eye rests first upon the phalanx of snow-crests to the
south, then down upon the lake, lying outstretched like some wriggling
monster, switching its tail, and finally off to the many places where
early Swiss history was made. In point of fact, you are looking at quite
a large slice of Switzerland. Victor Hugo seized the meaning of this
view when he wrote: "It is a serious hour, and full of meditations, when
one has Switzerland thus under the eyes." ...
The physical features of a country have their counterparts in its
political institutions. In Switzerland the great mountain ranges divide
the territory into deep valleys, each of which naturally forms a
political unit--the Commune. Here is a miniature world, concentrated
into a small space, and representing the sum total of life to its
inhabitants. Self-government becomes second nature under these
conditions. A sort of patriarchal democracy is evolved: that is, certain
men and certain families are apt to maintain themselves at the head
of public affairs, but with the consent and cooperation of the whole
population.
There is hardly a spot associated with the rise of the Swiss
Confederation whose position can not be determined from the Rigi. The
two Tell's chapels; the Rütli; the villages of Schwiz, Altdorf, Brunnen,
Beckenried, Stans, and Sarnen; the battlefields of Morgarten and
Sempach; and on a clear day the ruined castle of Hapsburg itself, lie
within a mighty circle at one's feet.
It was preordained that the three lands of Uri, Schwiz, and Unterwalden
should unite for protection of common interests against the encroachment
of a common enemy--the ambitious house of Hapsburg. The lake formed at
once a bond and a highway between them. On the first day of August,
1291, more than six hundred years ago, a group of unpretentious
patriots, ignored by the great world, signed a document which formed
these lands into a loose Confederation. By this act they laid the
foundation upon which the Swiss state was afterward reared. In their
naïve, but prophetic, faith, the contracting parties called this
agreement a perpetual pact; and they set forth, in the Latin, legal
phraseology of the day, that, seeing the malice of the times, they found
it necessary to take an oath to defend one another against outsiders,
and to keep order within their boundaries; at the same time carefully
stating that the object of the league was to maintain lawfully
established conditions.
From small beginnings, the Confederation of Uri, Schwiz, and Unterwalden
grew, by the addition of other communities, until it reached its present
proportions, of twenty-two Cantons, in 1815. Lucerne was the first to
join; then came Zurich, Glarus, Zug, Bern, etc. The early Swiss did not
set up a sovereign republic, in our acceptation of the word, either in
internal or external policy. The class distinctions of the feudal age
continued to exist; and they by no means disputed the supreme rule of
the head of the German Empire over them, but rather gloried in the
protection which this direct dependence afforded them against a
multitude of intermediate, preying nobles.
CHAMOUNI--AN AVALANCHE[37]
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni--Mont Blanc was before
us--the Alps, with their innumerable glaciers on high all around,
closing in the complicated windings of the single vale--forests
inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty--intermingled
beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road, or receded, while lawns
of such verdure as I have never seen before occupied these openings, and
gradually became darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc was before us, but
it was covered with cloud; its base, furrowed with dreadful gaps, was
seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the chain
connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on
high. I never knew--I never imagined--what mountains were before.
The immensity of these aerial summits excited, when they suddenly burst
upon the sight, a sentiment of ecstatic wonder, not unallied to madness.
And, remember, this was all one scene, it all prest home to our regard
and our imagination. Tho' it embraced a vast extent of space, the snowy
pyramids which shot into the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our
path; the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth
below, so deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve, which
rolled through it, could not be heard above--all was as much our own, as
if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others
as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our
spirits more breathless than that of the divinest.
As we entered the valley of the Chamouni (which, in fact, may be
considered as a continuation of those which we have followed from
Bonneville and Cluses), clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance
perhaps of 6,000 feet from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal
not only Mont Blanc, but the other "aiguilles," as they call them here,
attached and subordinate to it. We were traveling along the valley, when
suddenly we heard a sound as the burst of smothered thunder rolling
above; yet there was something in the sound that told us it could not
be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the mountain
opposite, from whence the sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the
smoke of its path among the rocks, and continued to hear at intervals
the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of a torrent, which it
displaced, and presently we saw its tawny-colored waters also spread
themselves over the ravine, which was their couch.
We did not, as we intended, visit the Glacier des Bossons to-day, altho
it descends within a few minutes' walk of the road, wishing to survey it
at least when unfatigued. We saw this glacier, which comes close to the
fertile plain, as we passed. Its surface was broken into a thousand
unaccountable figures; conical and pyramidical crystallizations, more
than fifty feet in height, rise from its surface, and precipices of ice,
of dazzling splendor, overhang the woods and meadows of the vale. This
glacier winds upward from the valley, until it joins the masses of frost
from which it was produced above, winding through its own ravine like a
bright belt flung over the black region of pines.
There is more in all these scenes than mere magnitude of proportion;
there is a majesty of outline; there is an awful grace in the very
colors which invest these wonderful shapes--a charm which is peculiar
to them, quite distinct even from the reality of their unutterable
greatness.
ZERMATT[38]
BY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES
Those who would reach the very heart of the Alps and look upon a scene
of unparalleled grandeur must go into the Valais to Zermatt.
[Illustration: PONTRESINA IN THE ENGADINE]
[Illustration: ST. MORITZ IN THE ENGADINE]
[Illustration: FRIBOURG]
[Illustration: BERNE]
[Illustration: VIVEY ON LAKE GENEVA]
[Illustration: THE TURNHALLE IN ZURICH Courtesy Swiss Federal Railway]
[Illustration: INTERLAKEN]
[Illustration: LUCERNE]
[Illustration: VIADUCTS On the new Lötschberg route to the Simplon
tunnel]
[Illustration: WOLFORT VIADUCT On the Pilatus Railroad, Switzerland]