OUT OF GERMANY INTO SWITZERLAND.
A Lesson from Nature—Tramp-Trip through the Black Forests—Heidelberg
Castle—Basle, Switzerland—Met by a Friend—Emigrants off for
America—Delivering an Address to the Emigrants—The Grave of
Erasmus—Gateway to the Heart of the Alps—Snowy Peaks—Rendezvous
of the Nations—Beautiful Scene—Moonlight on the Lake—Sweet
Music—Pretty Girls—Mountains Shaken with Thunder and Wrapped with
Fire.
I BELIEVE it was Zeno who said, “We have only one mouth, but two ears;
whereby Nature teaches us that we should speak little, but hear much.”
So, having two eyes and only one pen, I must see much and write little.
I shall not therefore pause, as I should like, to speak of a few
charming days spent in walking through the “Black Forests” of Germany,
nor of a visit to Heidelberg, beautiful for situation and famous for
its university,
“Half hidden in a gallery of pines,
Nestling on the sunny slope.”
There is no more impressive sight in Germany than the ruins of the
Heidelberg Castle. The remains of its frowning battlements, ivy-covered
walls, and hanging gardens speak most eloquently of its former
greatness and grandeur. I can never forget the moonlight nights that
Johnson and I spent in Heidelberg, wandering up and down the banks of
the Neckar, listening to the music of her waters as they flow on to
join the legendary Rhine, a few hundred yards below.
Leaving Heidelberg at four o’clock in the morning, we travel all
day through a comparatively uninteresting country, reaching Basle,
Switzerland, in time to break bread with a friend (?) who kindly sent a
committee to the depot to meet us. The committee insisted on carrying
us up from the station in a carriage, but we told them that as we had
no exercise during the day, we preferred to walk and carry our own
satchels.
The day after arriving in Basle, we see a hundred and twenty-five
German and Swiss emigrants starting for America. At the request of
the emigration agent, who was possessed of much intelligence and good
information, I make a speech to the emigrants the hour before their
departure. I tell them not to stop around New York and Boston, but
to go West. After speaking briefly of the advantages of the country,
I tell them that America is not an Eden, but a wilderness; not a
wilderness, either, where people are miraculously fed with manna, as
were the Israelites of old, but one where the horny-handed sons of
toil have to dig their bread out of the ground; yet it is a wilderness
which, when watered by the sweat of the brow, is transformed into a
waving harvest field. I tell them that we invite immigration, not
that we want foreigners to fill easy places and control political
affairs; that a few years ago there were some men in Chicago, who
went there with this false idea in their brains, and, in trying to run
the government, they made a mistake and ran their heads into a halter.
I insist that earnest, honest, persistent, and intelligent laborers
are the kind of men we want; that such men are protected by law, and
rewarded with a comfortable living. After expressing the wish that they
might be freed from sea-sickness while crossing the ocean, and from
home-sickness after landing on the other side, I bid them adieu.
A few days suffice to show us the parks, monuments, and public
buildings of the city. Among the latter, is the time-honored cathedral
in which rest the bones of Erasmus, the scholar of the Reformation.
It was two hours after leaving Basle, before we could realize that we
were in Switzerland. Now, however, a great mountain rose up before
us. It was too long to surround, and too high to surmount; hence, we
had either to stand still, retreat, go under, or else go through the
mountain. After boring our way through the solid rock for two miles, we
come into the light on the opposite side. We find that this tunnel is
only a gateway admitting us into the land of wonders, and to the heart
of the Alps, a description of which will occupy the next chapter.
We are now wild with delight, running first to one side of the car,
and then to the other, to catch a momentary glimpse of the mountains
as they dash by us. The snowy peaks now burst upon our vision, and,
just as Johnson is getting ready to stand on his head, the brakesman
shouts, “Lucerne! All out for Lucerne!” This announcement, of course,
interrupts the proceedings of my traveling companion; hence, leather
does not “go up,” as I expected.
We find Lucerne to be the general rendezvous of thousands of tourists
who, in the search of health or pleasure, have come hither from Russia,
Turkey, Greece, Hungary, and Asia Minor, from Germany, France, Italy,
England and America. Sometimes, at the evening hour the different
nationalities are represented in one room, and there follows a Babel of
confusion.
How beautiful and varied is the scene before me at this hour! It is
a lovely moonlight night, and the lake shines bright and tranquil as
a polished mirror. The laughing stars lie buried in the blue depths
below. On the bosom of this fairy lake are scores of lover-laden row
boats, shooting, turning, gliding, in every possible direction. As the
oars strike the water, they gleam in the moonlight like paddles of
silver. There are two, four, or six persons in each boat. Several boats
have now grouped together, and all have joined in singing “Moonlight
on the Lake,” and the soft music floats over the still waters until
it dies away in the distance. There is a momentary pause. And now,
just in front of the long line of four-story hotels, which are set
back about one hundred feet from the lake, the Hungarian Band breaks
forth and its wild melodies are echoed from the surrounding hills.
Next the Neapolitan Quartette causes a perfect uproar of laughter as
it discourses the latest Italian comic songs with banjo accompaniment.
As the clock from the cathedral tower announces the hour of eleven, a
change comes over the scene. The street lamps are extinguished, and
the good-humored multitude pour forth their extravagant praises of the
brilliant display of fireworks which are now filling the air with noise
and showers of falling stars. Thus do tourists and visitors spend their
summer evenings in this little town of Lucerne, this “Swiss Lady of the
Lake.”
All through the month of August, thunder-storms of unusual grandeur
have been prevalent in Switzerland. Twenty-four hours ago, I witnessed
a thunder-storm that made a lasting impression. It was twelve o’clock
at night. The evening before all nature was in confusion. The angry
clouds were like seething volcanoes, shooting up their thunderheads as
if they would strike heaven in the face. Behind these cloud-battalions,
which were constantly forming and reforming in ranks of war, the sun
was skirmishing. Now and then his fiery darts would pierce the serrate
columns, but immediately they would close up the gap and shut out the
sun. As if given up in despair, he retired behind the western hills.
The world was then locked in the embrace of night, and given over to
the remorseless storm-god. The angry clouds began to gather from the
east and west and north and south, growing denser and darker as they
came. Muttering thunder could be heard in the distance. At last the
crisis came. One blinding flash of lightning followed another. The
lakes roared. The earth moved. The mountains reeled! Thunder answered
thunder! Deep called unto deep! The peaks, like mountain monarchs,
seemed to be quarreling with each other; each peak had a voice and
each glen an echo! One moment all was painfully dark, and the next a
mighty sheet of flame could be seen falling from the clouds upon the
mountain tops. There it lingered for a moment, and then, rolling itself
into billows, it came dashing down the rocky steeps like cataracts of
fire, turning night into day and revealing a hundred snow-capped peaks
around.