SWITZERLAND AS SEEN ON FOOT.
Alpine Fever—Flags of Truce—Schiller and the Swiss Hero—Tell’s
Statue and Chapel—Ascent of the Rigi—Beautiful Scenery—Famous
Falls—Rambles in the Mountains—Glaciers—The Matterhorn—Yung
Frau—Ascent of Mount Blanc—An Eagle in the Clouds—Switzerland
and her People—The Oldest Republic in the World—”Home, Sweet
Home”—High Living—Land Owners—Alpine Folk—Night Spent in a Swiss
Chalet—Johnson in Trouble—Walk of Six Hundred Miles—Famous Alpine
Pass—A Night above the Clouds—Saint Bernard Hospice—Overtaken in a
Snow-Storm—Hunting Dead Men—The Alps as a Monument—Geneva—Prison
of Chilon—How Time was Spent—Tongue of Praise.
I HAVE been in Switzerland only a few days before I take what the
people here call the Alpine fever. It affects my blood; it gets into
my very bones. I can feel it in every limb at every breath. I consult
no physician—I need none. I know full well that the only cure for my
disease is to get out among the mountains and there commune with Nature
and Nature’s God. I did not come to Switzerland to hear fine music, or
to be initiated into the mysteries of fashionable hotel life. I came
to enjoy the wild and rugged scenery of the Alps. It seems, too, that
it takes more to satisfy me than it does most people. They tell me
they came here for the same purpose that I did, and yet they are quite
content to remain in the cities and behold the mountains afar off. Not
so with me. The moment I behold the gleaming snow on the uplifted
mountains, I see that it is not a scarlet ensign indicative of wrath,
war, and bloodshed. No, the signal is white, the flag of truce, the
emblem of peace, of innocence and purity. Hence, I am not repelled but
wonderfully drawn by the mountains. I can but repeat the language that
Schiller put into the mouth of his Swiss hero, William Tell:
“There is a charm about them, that is certain—
Seest thou yon mountains with their snowy peaks
Melting into and mingling with the sky?”
I think, too, of the wifely warning that Hedwige gave Tell:
“Thou never leav’st me but my heart grows cold
And shrinks, as though each farewell were the last—
I see thee midst the frozen wilderness,
Missing, perchance, thy leap o’er some dark gulf,
Or whirl’d down headlong with the struggling chamois;
“I see the avalanche close o’er thy head,
The treacherous ice give way beneath thy feet—
And thee—the victim of a living grave!
Death, in a thousand varying shapes, waylays
The Alpine traveler. ‘Tis a hazardous and fearful trade!”
The husband’s reply was:
“He who trusts in God, and to those powers which God hath given him,
May guard himself from almost every danger.
These mountains have no terrors for their children.”
[Illustration: GIESSBACH FALLS.]
And I am for the time being a child of the Alps. I have a mountaineer’s
spirit in me, and I say: “I will go!” The next thing is to secure an
Alpine outfit, which consists of spiked shoes, an Alpenstock, an ice
ax and a rope. These things in our hands and neatly strapped on our
backs, Johnson and I leave the social haunts of men, and start out to
“do the Alps.” On the “Rainbow,” we sail over Lake Lucerne from end to
end. We then walk to Fluelen and Altdorf, where is laid the scene of
Schiller’s immortal play, “William Tell.” We see Tell’s statue, erected
on the spot where with crossbow he shot the apple off his son Walter’s
head. We visit the place where during a raging storm, Tell sprang
from the boat upon a projecting rock, thereby saving himself from the
dungeon, and rescuing Switzerland from the hands of tyranny. We climb
the Rigi, the mountain that gave Mark Twain so much trouble. Standing
upon its elevated summit, we look down upon eleven silvery lakes spread
out in the valleys 5,000 feet below. We now strike out over Brüning
Pass for Brienz and Interlaken. The most interesting object during
this delightful sail was the famous Griessbach Falls. As the steamer
approaches, all eyes are fixed upon the rushing torrent whose foaming
waters, eager to escape from their mountain prison, burst forth from
the mountain side, and leap from rock to rock until they mingle with
the placid lake 1,200 feet below!
Interlaken, as its name indicates, is between the lakes, Brienz and
Thun. This is not a city, but a small, characteristic Swiss village,
hemmed in by two lakes, and two mountains, whose precipitous sides
are feathered over with fir trees. Indeed, the surroundings are so
picturesque and beautiful that we make Hotel de Nord headquarters for
several days, during which time we make several delightful excursions
on and around the lakes. Our stay is made more pleasant because of the
company of L. Woodhull and J. A. Worthman, of Dayton, Ohio; but theirs
is a flying trip, hence we are soon separated.
We now penetrate the very heart of the Alps. We spend a month, and
walk more than five hundred miles, creeping through the windings of
the mountains; in following up streams to their sources; in crossing
narrow chasms whose yawning depths even now make me dizzy when I think
of them; in climbing rugged peaks where one false step would have
dashed us against the jagged rocks, two, three, and sometimes four,
thousand feet below; in letting ourselves down by ropes into deep
gorges on whose rocky floor ray of sun or moonbeam has never fallen; in
traversing seas of ice or glacier fields, two of which, the Rhone and
the Aletsch glaciers, are the most extensive in the Alps, being fifteen
miles long and from one to three miles wide.
Reader, stand with me for a moment upon the banks of this Swiss river,
and we shall find it worthy of the world of savage grandeur through
which it passes. The river is quite narrow. Its rocky bed is full
three hundred feet below the banks on which we stand. The water dashes
by us with such force and velocity that, as it strikes the rocks and
bowlders in the stream, the spray rises up for a hundred feet or more.
The light of the sun shining through the rising mist flings a radiant
rainbow on the opposite wall of rock.
Mountains rise up abruptly on either side of the river. On the opposite
side of the stream from where we stand, a mountain rises up steeply
for six, eight, nine, thousand feet. Away up there 9,000 feet above
the world, on the broad top of the mountain, there is an everlasting
lake filled from Heaven’s founts, baring its blue bosom to the blue
sky. Around this “lake of the gods,” and also from its centre, Alpine
peaks lift their grey and ghastly heads up against the sky, as if to
support the blue dome of Heaven, lest the moon and the stars extinguish
themselves in the crystal sea. And that is not all. The water, as if
tired of its home in the skies, breaks over its rocky prison walls;
and, in a perpetual stream eighteen inches deep and thirty feet
wide, it comes, churned into madness and foam—comes madly dashing
and splashing down the mountain side for 9,000 feet at an angle of
seventy-five degrees. Finally with the swiftness of an arrow the
maddened stream leaps into the river, and we stand on the banks and
look down on the “hoarse torrent’s foaming breath below.”
“We gaze and turn away and know not where,
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart
Reels with its fullness, there—forever there—
Chain’d to the chariot of Nature’s triumphal Art
We stand as captives, and would not depart.”
Baedeker truly says: “The glacier—the most striking feature of the
Alpine world—is a stupendous mass of purest azure ice.” No scene in
Switzerland is so strikingly and so strangely beautiful as when, in
some fertile and wooded valley, the glittering pinnacles of a glacier
are suddenly presented to our gaze, in the immediate proximity of
wheat fields, fruit trees, smiling meadows and human habitations.
These extensive glaciers are long arms of solid ice, resembling a
thousand frozen cataracts, occupying entire valleys, and attaining
a thickness estimated at 1,500 feet. The surface of these glaciers
is by no means smooth and regular. Here one frowning terrace rises
above another; there the glacier swells and rises into huge pinnacles
and towering pyramids of purest ice. Again the surface is torn into
every conceivable shape by great crevasses which sometimes sink to
an enormous depth. In crossing these glaciers, guides, spiked shoes,
Alpenstocks, strong ropes, and ice axes are indispensable.
[Illustration: A GLACIER IN SWITZERLAND.]
The rope is tied around the waist of each one of us, guides and all,
leaving eight or ten feet of rope between each two persons, one guide
at each end of the rope. Thus we, “with cautious step and slow,” start
across a sea of ice, all following the foremost guide and stepping
in his tracks. Sometimes every foothold has to be cut with an ax.
Now we come to a deep crevasse into which we are let down by a rope.
Once safely down the guide cuts our way in the ice until we gain two
ladders, one above the other, that have been placed there for that
purpose. Notwithstanding one’s double suit of underclothing and heavy
wraps, he becomes so chilled and benumbed that he gradually loses
his native activity. Hence the greatest caution is necessary to get
back without broken limbs. As one sees these pinnacles and pyramids
of purest azure ice bathed in the golden splendor of the setting sun,
their shining steps look like a crystal stairway reaching from earth to
heaven. A glacier reflecting the sun’s evening glories could perhaps
not be better described than by saying, it looks like heaven hung out
to air.
“There are things whose strong reality
Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues
More beautiful than our fantastic sky.”
We must now quit the glacier field, and go up on the Aeggischhorn.
Reader, you must know that the way is long and rough and steep and
hard. But what man has done, man can do. The object is worth the labor.
What were a month’s climbing, even though it be doubly difficult, when
it is to be rewarded with the prospect from yonder imperial height? We
cross chasm after chasm, struggle from cliff to cliff, go from height
to height, until we stand 14,000 feet above the world! Around us are a
thousand snow-capped peaks rising up until they “melt into and mingle
with the skies.”
“The sun seems pausing above the mountain’s brow
As if he left reluctantly a scene so lovely now.”
The rays of light like arrows pierce the ice-covered rocks, and set
the Alpine world on fire. The bended heavens not far above us blush
to behold the sight. Gods, isn’t it glorious! Slow wanes the day
from these sequestered valleys. As the tourists watch the sun gather
up his spent shafts and put them back into his golden quiver, they
involuntarily take off their hats and contemplate the “afterglow” in
silence.
I might as well rest my pen, for I might write until my hand would
become palsied from use, and you might read my writing until your
eyes would grow dim with age, and yet I could convey to you no just
conception of the Matterhorn whose brow really seems ambitious of the
skies! nor yet of the majestic Jungfrau whose head goes careering ten,
twelve, fourteen, sixteen, thousand feet towards heaven. It is noonday
when I first stand at the foot of the Jungfrau, the young wife. The
clouds have come down and settled upon and around the mountain until at
least half of it is obscured from view. But my eyes are something like
daggers piercing the clouds through, for I want to get a glimpse of the
mountain as near to heaven as possible. All at once the clouds begin
to rise. They lift themselves clear above the mountain’s brow. Ah,
me! I have to shut the door close on my fluttering, my rising, soul,
lest it pass outward and upward in astonishment. This is the Jungfrau,
vailed in her dazzling shroud of eternal snow, and I am sure Ruskin
was correct when he said: “The seen walls of lost Eden could not have
been more beautiful, or more awful round Heaven the gates of sacred
death.” Now, as if the mountain’s brow was too sacred to be bared long
at a time, the clouds, like a mighty sheet, begin to unfold and come
down. The mountain is soon wrapt again in thick clouds, but she lifts
her ambitious head aloft. Above and beyond the clouds her icy crown
glistens in the light of the sun.
The people here say this is the best place in Switzerland to see an
avalanche. I am determined to see one, if I have to remain here all
summer. I see none the first day. As night approaches, I cross a
frightfully deep and yawning chasm, and come over on the Wengernalp,
3,000 feet high, which leaves me still 13,000 feet below the top of the
Jungfrau. Next morning, about half-past seven o’clock, I hear a strange
noise, apparently in Heaven, as though the angels had revolted. The
noise is in the direction of the Jungfrau, whose head is still hidden
in the clouds. The noise is heard, but the cause is unseen. It seems
that a thousand cyclones and thunder-storms have combined into one.
It comes “nearer, clearer, deadlier” than before. All eyes are turned
in one direction, and now we see a world of white snow bursting forth
like a thunderbolt from the bosom of the clouds. It comes leaping down
the mountain side from crag to crag, from peak to peak, across crack
and glen and crevasse. Gathering momentum with each successive leap, it
sweeps down the mountain side with such deafening noise and terrific
force that nothing on earth could stay its onward progress. The earth
trembles and the mountains reel as it leaps into the yawning chasm
below.
“These are the Alps,
The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
And throned Eternity in icy halls
Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
The avalanche—the thunderbolt of snow!
All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
Gather around these summits, as to show
How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.”
[Illustration: AMONG THE PEAKS.]
After ascending Mount Blanc, I can but say, I have scaled thy heights,
I have sniffed thy breeze, I have planted my feet upon thy glittering
crown, but who, oh who, can comprehend thy glory! Oh thou monarch
of mountains! I see thee in all thy majesty. Thy proportions are so
vast and gigantic, thy form so regal and grand, that the eye in vain
attempts to estimate them. Distance is annihilated by thy vastness,
for thou art towering above us as if thou wouldst bear thy burden of
virgin snow back to its native heaven. Yet above thy regal brow I see
an eagle. For a moment he pauses with outstretched wings, as if to
contemplate thy glory, and then screaming with delight and whirling
himself in the air, he continues his onward, upward flight, as if he
would clutch his talons in the fiery sun itself.
“Wave, eagle, thy pinion
Supreme in the air!”
But leave, ah leave, me alone on the mountain top amidst the frozen
wilderness. I love to roam among the mountains. I love their pure air,
their jagged heights, their snowy peaks, and their foaming cataracts
tumbling down. Yea,
“For the lifting up of mountains,
In brightness and in dread;
For the peaks where snow and sunshine
Alone have dared to tread;
For the dark of silent gorges,
Whence mighty cedars nod:
For the majesty of mountains,
I thank thee, O my God.”
This little country of Switzerland, locked in by the Alps, and
surrounded by Germany, France, Italy, and Austria, boasts the oldest
republic in the world, its present form of government having existed
half a thousand years. It is inhabited by 2,700,000 people, speaking
three different languages. One million and a half speak German, one
million French, and the remainder Italian. Unlike the people of other
European nations, four-fifths of these Switzers are land owners. They
love to sing
“Home, sweet home,
Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home!”
And, verily, their homes are humble, especially in the wilder parts of
the country. Their rude, structures are, for the most part, built of
fir poles and rough stones, and are often perched on the steep mountain
side, thousands of feet above the valley. Sometimes nearly the whole
house is hidden away in a blasted rock, only the end facing the valley
being visible. These mountaineers live high—I can not say _well_. They
have elevated thoughts, that is if they have any thoughts at all; they
look down upon kings and ordinary mortals, and only look up to eagles
and to God. Despite the extraordinary precaution taken to have their
houses shielded by the rock, many of them are annually swept away by
avalanches. It is difficult to trace out the dim and winding paths by
which these people reach their mountain huts.
I said most Switzers are land-owners, and so they are, on a small
scale. It is only a little here and less there; an acre in one place, a
half acre in another, and so on. They have few or no horses, but nearly
every family has two or three cows and a half dozen goats. They milk
both goats and cows; both are as gentle as cats, and each one appears
to know its name. Switzerland is a great country for honey, cheese,
vegetables and fruit. Pears and grapes of the finest quality everywhere
abound. Wine is plentiful and almost as cheap as water, though I do not
take advantage of the “reduced rates.”
There is something about the plain, simple, and unpretentious ways
of these Alpine folk that challenges admiration. They are earnest,
honest, pious, truthful, and industrious. Indeed, they can not be
otherwise than industrious. Necessity is their stern master. He treads
upon their heels, and cracks his whip over their heads. They have no
machinery—they want none. They know nothing, and care less, about what
progress the world is making. To them, “the world” means Switzerland,
and that is about the same from age to age. “Contentment is the price
of happiness;” they have paid the price, and enjoy the prize. The
iron-belted and thunder-riven mountains have lent strength of character
and force of will to the men. They are hardy mountaineers. They love
their country next to their God.
“True as yon Alp to its own native flowers
True as the torrent to its rocky bed,
Or clouds and winds to their appointed track;
The Switzer cleaves to his accustom’d freedom,
Holds fast the rights and laws his fathers left him,
And spurns the tyrant’s innovating sway.”
The crystal streams, silvery lakes, and smiling valleys, have
reflected their beauty in many a maiden’s face. True, these daughters
of the forest wear no high-heeled boots nor Paris bonnets, but they are
beautiful, nevertheless. I think Johnson will not soon forget a girl
whom we met in a Swiss chalet where we stayed a few nights ago. And
who can blame him? She was eighteen years of age, of medium height,
and had a faultless figure. She had a Grecian face, smooth features,
fair complexion, large brown eyes, and flowing auburn hair. A radiant
smile wreathed her innocent face. She looked at Johnson. He looked at
her. Neither one spoke. Neither one could speak so the other could
understand. But what is the use of words
“When each warm wish springs mutual from the heart,
And thought meets thought ere from the lips it part,
When love is liberty, and nature law?”
That night Johnson came to our room claiming that he was ill. When
I inquired as to the nature of his trouble, he said he did not know
what it was. He did not know whether he had the rash, whooping-cough,
measles, small-pox, or cholera; but he had something, and had it bad.
Whereupon I applied a flaxseed poultice to the back of his neck. Next
morning found him convalescent, though not entirely relieved. I see
from history that such occurrences were common in the middle ages.
We have now been in Switzerland forty days. It has been forty days of
hard work, and yet forty days of intense delight. We have walked nearly
six hundred miles, and the last mile was stepped off with as much
ease as the first mile. The last step had in it the same elasticity
and firmness as the first. My youth was renewed like the eagle’s. I
constantly felt like mounting on the wings of rejoicing, and gliding
over the country as a disembodied spirit.
In some places, the angles we made in ascending and descending were
not less than sixty to seventy-five degrees! One time, when nightfall
came, I was thoroughly tired—completely exhausted. Pain trembled in
every limb. My knees denied their office. Hearty supper, warm footbath,
bed, oblivion! Strange as it may appear, the next day was spent, not in
walking but in reading history.
In our Alpine experiences, we walked from Switzerland into France and
back again; over Napoleon’s famous Alpine pass from Switzerland into
Italy and back. One time, while crossing the Alps without a guide,
we lost our way. For several hours we wandered around—we knew not
whither. All at once the clouds dropped down upon us, and with the
clouds there came a blinding snow-storm. It seemed as if we would
freeze. I knew we could not survive the cold till morning. I thought,
“Is it possible that this white snow is to be my winding-sheet, and
some rocky chasm my lonely grave?” Just before dark, our hearts were
gladdened by the sight of six men not far away. We called to them.
Across the fields of snow, the cold wind brought their cheering reply.
The men, clad in fur and wrapped in black gowns, proved to be Augustine
monks, who keep the St. Bernard Hospice. They took us with them to the
Hospice which was only two miles away. On reaching there, Johnson and
I were almost frozen. We were soon seated by a glowing fire, and were
comfortably shielded from the cutting wind and falling snow during that
memorable night above the clouds.
[Illustration: HOSPICE IN THE ALPS.]
We spent some time with the monks of the Hospice. This noble
institution has been standing nearly a thousand years. It is in the
heart of the mountains—the highest winter habitation in the Alps.
Snow falls here nine months in the year. The Hospice is kept by
eighteen or twenty Augustine monks, whose sole business is to search
for, assist and rescue, Alpine travelers who have lost their way in the
snow. We saw here about a dozen of the famous St. Bernard dogs. They
are, by all odds, the largest and finest dogs I have seen. They are
thoroughly trained to assist the monks in their work. In the morning,
when they are let out of the house where they have been locked during
the night, the dogs seem wild with delight. They go bounding through
the snow in every direction. With fore feet on some huge bowlder,
and heads high in the air, they sniff the cold mountain breeze, and
off they go again. For miles around, they search the mountains for
travelers who, on account of cold and snow, have fallen by the wayside.
In this way these philanthropic monks and their noble dogs have saved
many lives.
It is impossible at the Hospice to dig graves in the rock and snow and
ice, so they have a “dead house” where the bodies which are found in
the snow are placed and kept. The atmosphere is so pure and intensely
cold that decomposition takes place very slowly. There are about fifty
bodies in the dead house now, the last two having been placed there
about eighteen months ago. I went into this house, and I really believe
that if I had ever known the two persons last placed there, I could
have recognized them then. Any traveler is kindly received by the
monks and entertained for the night without any charge. Each visitor
is expected, however, to “drop something in the box.” Napoleon once
stopped here, and hundreds of his soldiers, as they passed over the
mountains with the cannon, partook of the hospitality of the monks.
Afterwards, the great Frenchman sent one of his generals here to be
buried, that he might have the Alps as a monument.
I visited the prison of Chillon. It is a gloomy old castle with five
great towers, built upon a rock projecting some two hundred yards into
Lake Geneva. Byron says of it:
“Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar; for ’twas trod
Until his very steps have left a trace,
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface,
“For they appeal from tyranny to God.
There are seven pillars of Gothic mould
In Chillon’s dungeon deep and old,
And in each pillar there is a ring,
And in each ring there is a chain.”
The description is perfect. The whole thing is there as of old.
I must stay my weary hand. I have already perhaps, written too much
about Switzerland. But I have no apology to offer. I am in love with
the country, that’s all. Love Switzerland?
“Who could help it that has a heart to love,
And in that heart courage to make its love known?”
[Illustration: SWISS MOUNTAINS.]
To get up regularly at 5 A.M., and see the first grey streaks of
morning, to watch the grey turn to pearl, the pearl to copper, to
amber, to gold, and then to see the whole heaven flecked with blushes
and gattled with fire; to watch the rising sun slowly climb the eastern
hills and see the first gleam of light glistening on the snowy peaks
around you; to start on your day’s tramp while the air is fresh and
bracing, and while all Nature is smiling as though earth held no tomb;
to walk for hours and hours, climbing peaks and crossing glens; to sit
down at noon on the flower-fringed bank of a limpid stream, and listen
to the music of its rippling waters while you eat your cold lunch; and,
after dinner is over, to lie in the sun for an hour or two and read
the legends, poetry and history inseparably linked with the mountains,
lakes and valleys that you have been admiring all the morning; to walk
on until night, and then eat with an appetite that reminds you of your
schoolboy days of old, when you ate all that was cooked and then called
for more; to go out after supper and reflect on God’s handiwork, with
floods, snows, rocks, mountains, glens, forests round and heaven’s
bright stars above you,—to enjoy all this, and more, as I have done,
were enough to put the tongue of praise in the mouth of the dumb, to
wake well-springs of joy in the desert places of the heart, and send
never-failing streams of rejoicing through the garden of life.