Read Ebook: Swiss allmends and a walk to see them by Zincke F Barham Foster Barham

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I found the Bundesrichter ready to give me the information I required, and to aid me in any way he could. He procured for me a printed copy of all the regulations relating to the public property of the Commune; and offered to answer by post whatever questions might subsequently occur to me.

At Sacheln, of course, one goes to the church to stand before the bones, and the old coat, of St. Nicholas Von der Fl?e, for the sake of the thoughts the sight may give rise to in the mind, on the spot. He a saint! Heaven save the mark; and some day send the simple folk of Unterwalden better ideas on what goes to make a saint. This saint was one only because to indulge a morbid crotchet, at all events a mistaken and mischievous idea, he deserted his family, and the duties he owed to them, to his neighbours, and to himself, to live in solitude, and mortification, in a cave; and who gave out, as vouching for his sanctity, that for eighteen years heaven had supported his body with no other food than the sacramental wafer, received once a month. This was what made him a saint. Why, there is not a rural parish in England without its poor Hodge, who is a better man, a truer saint than he; and who, if at last he were to break down under the strain on mind and body he is now manfully sustaining, and attempt what invested this old crazy ascetic with the halo of sainthood, would be bid by the law to maintain, and not to desert, his family. And who, if he were to defend his dereliction of natural duty by the assertion that heaven was keeping him alive without food, would be regarded as belonging to the same class of impostors as the Welsh fasting girl. And yet here, in this church, dedicated to the God of truth, and Who is to be served by truth, are exhibited the troglodyte's bones, and his old coat, by the priest who ministers at the altar, and by the ecclesiastical authorities who stand behind the priest; and who are teaching the peasants of Unterwalden that these bones, and this old coat, work miracles. Over the old coat they have set up the text of Holy Writ, from the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, which tells us that 'from the body of Paul were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.' And there on the walls around are the tablets which affirm the miracles this old coat has worked. It must have worked them, for the infallible authority of God's Vicar will vouch for it. Poor Hodge! let us hope that your turn will some day come; and that the miracle of patient and unnoticed self-denial, your life exhibits, will work the mighty miracle of bringing some of us to understand in what virtue and sanctity consist, and of casting out the evil spirits of discontent, selfishness, and vice.

To Sarnen the lake is about three quarters of an hour. I was satisfied at finding myself on the water; not merely because it was a pleasant change from exertion to repose, but also because it gave an opportunity for seeing both sides of the valley to advantage. But that was not all. There is in water something that is of itself pleasing. We may not be able to define precisely what it is that makes it so, but we feel that it is so. It has a kind of history; a kind of life; an intelligible purpose. It came from far, from other parts of the world, on the way it had passed through other forms. It is moving back to the great ocean from whence it came. It will, as it returns, be supporting organized life. To the eye, to the ear, to the bodily sense, it is pleasing: and so is it also to the mental apprehension.

As you enter Sarnen you pass its asylum for the destitute. Upon its front is the inscription 'Christo in pauperibus.' I suppose this is meant as a reference to His saying that whatever is done to the least of His brethren--it being implied that those who have nothing in this world are least of all--He will regard as done unto Himself. He, then, is in the pauper, looking for, and ready to acknowledge, the charity of the disciple. The expression is worthy of the idea, and of the sentiment that animates the idea.

The steamer was not long in reaching Stanzstad, where we again got on our legs, and in a little more than half an hour were in the Angel of Stanz--a quiet inn, about the centre of the place, facing the church. As the Commune of Stanz possesses an unusual amount of cultivable land, so much as to enable it to give to each of its numerous burgers an unusual amount of garden-ground, I spent the rest of the day here in looking into the working of the system. And again the next morning on the way to Buochs, where I was to take the steamer for the Canton of Uri, I inspected a large part of the Almend ground of Stanz. Each burger peasant is allowed 1,400 klafters, which is about equal to an English acre. Of this amount I found 800 in garden-ground, and the rest in marshy grass. Switzerland, speaking generally, has very little straw for foddering cattle, but a great many cattle to fodder. The rushes, sedges, and young reeds cut from such land, and dried, go some way towards supplying this want. This difficulty is so great that I have seen horse-keepers resort for bedding to a mixture of sawdust, and of leaves and weeds that had been collected in the woods, and then dried and stored away.

This is a scene that tells its own tale. The properties must be small, because the owners of these dispersed houses must possess, each, the land immediately around his house; for, of course, in such a place there can hardly be any other means of living than that derived from the land. And nothing, but the fact that, here, each man cultivates with his own hands his own land, can account for the completeness with which the rocks have been quarried, and removed; and for the loving care with which the grass, and fruit trees, are tended. How unlike was this to the aspect of the Almend lands of Stanz I had just been looking at. There the plan is to do as little as possible for the land, and to get as much as possible out of it this current year. Next year, or at all events in a year or two, some other transitory occupant will be treating it with the same thoughts, and in the same fashion. Here the heart of the owner is in his land, as, for many generations, the hearts of his forefathers have been. We can show nothing of this kind in England. With us there is not the relation of man to the land which can alone produce such a scene. But I believe that in old, almost prehistoric Italy, before it was devastated, and ruined, by the greed, and brutality, of Rome, many such scenes might have been looked upon. The same careful culture of small properties was, probably, in very many places there the rule then; with the addition, in harmony with the circumstances of those times, of some loftily walled place of refuge, seen from far, on its coign of vantage: as Virgil describes them, 'Towns perched on precipices of rock, with rivers gliding by beneath their antique walls.'

BUOCHS--GERSAU--THE BAY OF URI--ALTORF--AM STAG--WASEN--G?SCHENEN--SCH?LLINEN--THE DEVIL'S BRIDGE--THE URSEREN THAL--ST. GOTHARD.

Oh! how I love with thee to walk, And listen to thy whispered talk!--THOMSON.

As you leave the bay of Buochs you find that the mountains on all sides show well from the lake. Behind is Obburgen, at which we have just now been looking. On your immediate right is Buochserhorn. Beyond it is Seelisberg, though not yet itself visible, but only the way to it by Beckenried, on the east face of which is the Sonnenberg Hotel, a head-quarters for much that is good and interesting. On your left is the Rigiberg. Before you, in sight of which you soon come, is Brunnen, the port of Schwyz, which is seen three miles back, at the foot of the rocky and precipitous Mythen. A fair expanse, how fair! of bluest crystal, set in a glorious frame of multiform mountains, superficially more or less subdued by long ages of human industry: this, however, being possible only to such a degree as to diversify, and enrich the interest of the scene. In itself a glorious scene! but there is, besides, all about it the glamour of the memory that it was the cradle of Swiss liberty.

Along the beach at Buochs I had seen several peasant women, turning over in the bright sun to dry, as if it were so much wet hay, the roots and fragments of wood they had collected from what the storm of Friday night last had swept from the mountains into the Engelberg Aa, which had brought them down to the lake. This was to be added to their store of winter fuel. Fuel has now become very dear in Switzerland, not only from its participation in the general rise of prices--that affects everything--but also from an exceptional cause. The recent increase of population has led to a corresponding increase of cultivation; and this has been effected chiefly at the expense of the forests, which are here the only source of fuel. While, therefore, the number of consumers has increased the supply of fuel has diminished. On reaching Gersau I came on further evidence of the violence of that great storm.

As far as Brunnen, which is about four miles beyond Gersau, our steamer's course had been due east. Her head was now put due south, down the bay of Uri, which is the southern branch of this tortuous lake. The character of the scene changed as rapidly and completely as the direction of our course. The mountains no longer, as at Buochs, Ennetburgen, Beckenried, Gersau, and Brunnen, gradually shelve down to the water, offering space for little communities, whose successful industry, and careful thrift, it is so pleasing to contemplate. Their sides are now mostly naked precipitous rock; in some places rising a thousand feet, sheer above the glassy water, which, in its turn, is another thousand feet deep. But even on these mountains, which like some old-fashioned fish, wear bones on the outside, and, going further, are bone to the heart, the industry of the people, which will take no denial, has set its mark. Wherever a little space could be found for grass, there its emerald green gems the rocks, just as some bright parasite might the ganoid fish. So, too, wherever a little wood, or even a tree, or two, could be made to grow, there it springs from the mountain side. On the left you face the line of the new road to Fl?elen, with the Axenstein Hotel above it; on the right, two or three thousand feet above the water, you look up to the Sonnenberg Hotel. Above and beyond the latter, reaching on for some distance in front, a combination of snow-fields, and of naked peaks, appropriately completes a scene, which once beheld is for ever remembered.

In some places you see sections of rock, exposing strata that have been contorted into zigzags. This convolution of the rock, the mountain high precipices, and the depth of the water, indicate how great were the forces that have been at work here, and with what mighty throes they worked, or through how long a range of ages.

I reached Altorf, in time for the 12 o'clock dinner, at the Golden Key. There were twenty-five people at table, among whom I was, I believe, the only Englishman; the rest being Germans, or Swiss. English people, however, do not like these hours; but I had breakfasted early. Altorf, though the capital, is not itself a Commune, but belongs to the quasi-Commune of Attinghausen, as Am Stag does to that of Silenen. I use the word quasi-Commune, because politically all the Communes of northern Uri, speaking roundly, and subject to some qualifications and explanations, form one body; each being a distinct body, again with qualifications and exceptions, only for economical purposes. This is the case also with the Communes of Southern Uri, or the Urseren Thal.

What is the intellectual life of the peasants of Am Stag? If even in a broad country-side, where a bookseller can live, and the world is not quite unknown, the one subject of conversation that interests all, and alone never flags, is one's neighbours, and their affairs; and if, even in its larger atmosphere, petty jealousies and heart-burnings abound; and often grow, for the soil and atmosphere have some qualities that stimulate such growths, to not insignificant dimensions, from beginnings no bigger than, and as unsubstantial as, the midge's wing; what, in these matters, must be the state of this little community, when imprisoned for the winter in its mountain cage? How A. manages, now that he no longer has a cow; or how B. managed to get one, are fruitful topics, that will not be dropped till next summer. That C. has, or is supposed to have, beaten her cat, that D.'s hen is reported to have laid an egg, will not be without interest, though the former particular, however long and sedulously nursed, may never get beyond the stage of inference. This, however, will not unfit it for many improvements; which, perhaps, the intervention of the Priest, in his capacity of moral policeman, may sometimes prevent being carried too far. For, though his authority may not now be always quite unquestioned, he still wields a machinery which, under the circumstances of the valley, leaves him master of the situation.

As to A.'s not having any longer a cow to send up to the common pasture--poor fellow! he does not see exactly how this came about. But it is not inexplicable. He is a peasant burger, with a pedigree as old as that of the Hapsburgs. His ancestors, each in his day, to a time back beyond history, had a cow or two to send in the summer. He does what he can; and yet, though still a co-proprietor of the old pastures, just as his ancestors were, he has no cow to send. That is the puzzle. His voice is as potent as that of any of his fellow-burgers in the management of those pastures. He is as much co-owner of them as they. Nothing can divest him of his right in their common use. It is a personal right inherent in his blood. But now he can turn it to no account. He looks on as the rich Innkeeper sends up his dozen, or score of cows, while he has himself none to send. As the herd is driven by, through the village, with bells tinkling, and joyous at the prospect of returning at last to the fresh, thymy, mountain herbage, he looks on in silence, with his mouth open, as if his hopes, and his wits, too, were departing from him, through the passage he is providing for their exit.

He cannot understand how things have come to be as they are. He worked hard all the summer. But, then, he worked for wages: and that is the key to the puzzle. The valley is now advancing into the condition in which, on account of the traffic and business it supports, there will be some who will have to employ others; and many, as population is increasing, who will have no means of living except that of being employed by others. Those who employ others will have cows, some of them many, to send up to the common pastures; some very many more than any had in old times. Of those who are employed by others, many, having necessarily been otherwise occupied, were not able in the foregoing summer to collect food for keeping a cow through last winter, and so this summer, and among these is our poor friend, have not one cow to add to the herd, that is now being collected from the village for their three months' sojourn on the mountain pastures. These he can no longer turn to account. And he will not emigrate to a new world, where there are openings for his industry and thrift to make him a richer man than anyone in his Canton will ever be; nor will he even leave his Canton for another. And all this for the sake of his long line of burger ancestors, and for the sake of his common rights in the land, which--as far as pasturage go--are of no manner of use to him. It is the sentiments, so lovely and so human, of home, of kindred, of the accustomed locality, of country, that have fastened themselves to, and fed on, the now valueless corporeal hereditament, that bind him to the spot with a chain he has no power to break. The hopes and chances of the distant world do not allure him. For them he will not sell the inheritance, nor leave the graves, of his Fathers.

And as it is, here, with the common pasturage, so is it in some degree with the produce of the common forests. In conformity with immemorial usage, the fuel, and timber for repair of houses, are distributed in proportion to the size of the house. A large house, in which many fires are needed, and which will require more timber for repairs, will receive its proportion. So will also the poor man's humble tenement. To him this will perhaps give for fuel one klafter, which will not be enough for his wants. But to his rich neighbour, who could well afford to pay for his fuel, it will give four or five klafters. A klafter of wood is a solid measure, six feet long, wide, and high, and three feet deep. This method of distribution, which worked fairly enough under the old condition of things, when none were rich, and none were poor, works unfairly now, when there are opportunities, of which some will be able to avail themselves, for getting rich. A man may now prosper at home in ways unknown formerly; or he may go out into the world, and make several thousand francs, as my Am Stag informant had done, and then come back, and resume his rights, none of which absence forfeits; and he will be rich, and will, therefore, build, and live in, a large house; and this will entitle him to a large proportion of the common fuel and timber. There will, therefore, be so much the less to divide among his poorer fellow-burgers.

At the last bridge before you enter Wasen, the Reuss flows below in a channel it has excavated for itself, so deep, dark, and narrow, that you cannot make out where the water is, till you have looked for it. On the left of the bridge, the eastern bank of the torrent is much higher than the opposite side. The place is called the Priest's Leap--Pfaffensprung. Here Ammer repeated the legend, you will find in the books, of the enamoured Priest, who baffled his pursuers, in the days before the bridge, which were also the days of faith, by leaping across the stream, with the cause of his lapse in his arms. He concluded the story with the comment, that, 'if the Priest did it, the devil must have helped him;' then adding, as a comment on his comment, that 'in these days the Devil has become inattentive to his friends, and does not aid them as he did of yore.' This legend will help us to understand how it came about, that, in order to promote morality, the people of these Cantons persuaded their priests to keep concubines.

I was at Wasen, seven and a half miles, by 8 o'clock. The road, all the way, was at this time of the morning, in the shadow of the eastern mountains. Yesterday evening at Am Stag, I had debated with myself the question, whether it was better to have, or not to have, an object. I had walked a little way up the Maderaner Thal, under the influence of a growing desire to give up my pre-arranged route--arranged because I had an object--and to take to the mountains. There was before me an inviting opportunity, the charming Maderaner Thal, by which I might find a way to Dissentis. But virtue triumphed. And now that I was at Wasen, and saw a party starting for the Meien Thal, the same question recurred. I had had enough of carriage-road valley-work for the present, and wished for something rougher and harder. Having, however, once entered on the path of virtue, you keep it, if only for the sake of consistency. This was the first time I had ever travelled, when on my own hook, along a prescribed route. In former excursions, I had always left the route throughout, from day to day, an open question. It is very pleasant, so unlike staying quietly at home, to be going you do not at any time know exactly where, and you do not at all care where. An object, which requires a plan, makes this impossible, and substitutes bondage for what the recollection of former excursions tells you would be freedom. An object is not bad, still no object may be better. But I had also another reason for adhering to my pre-arranged plan, which was, that it would bring me to Andermatt, where I was to meet my wife, and the blue boy of last year's excursion; and some mountain work with them was part of this pre-arranged plan. But still I said to myself this morning, It is all pre-arranged, and that excludes liberty.

On returning the following week, this way, I found her again, at the same place, in the same attitude, engaged in the same work. For a few years longer, perhaps, she will be able to continue it; and then she will have sunk, out of sight of the folk who pass in carriages, to something lower and harder, and will be looking back regretfully to the better times, when between sunrise and sunset, she could earn fivepence.

In an hour from Wasen I reached G?schenen. Here the aspect of things becomes what you might have been expecting in a great and famous pass. All the way up from Am Stag the valley of the Reuss had been narrowing and hardening: and now a break in its western wall forms the G?schenen Thal. You see the snow-field of the Damma, and the eastern glacier-shed of the Damma, of the Galen, and of the Rhone-Stock; on the other or western side of which is the vast Rhone glacier. Here, as in Alpine, and as indeed in all scenes, thought aids in deepening the interest of what is at the moment before your eyes. As I looked around I felt as the spider feels in the centre of its web. Along one thread, sensitive to thought, I passed by the arrowy Rhone to the sunny Middle sea, through thrifty Switzers, and light-hearted Frenchmen. Along another by the vine-clad Rhine to the stormy North Sea, through studious Germans and plodding Hollanders. Along a third attached to the next mountain a few miles further on, by the way of the Ticino, Lago Maggiore, and the Po, through many cities of the quickwitted Italian, cities of ancient renown in the wealthy field of teeming Lombardy, to the gusty Adriatic, and its lovely Queen, whose glories have not yet all departed.

No sooner have you passed through G?schenen than Sch?llinen takes up, and advances, the interest of the spectacle. The gorge now becomes narrower, more precipitous, more iron-faced. Here it is that you come upon the mouth of the tunnel that is being bored beneath St. Gothard for fifteen miles, from Sch?llinen to Airolo, all in granite, with Andermatt and St. Gothard above it. You are walking on the carriage road, a grand work completed thirty years back. The old horse-road it superseded is close on your right. On its margin, on your left, is the long line of iron tubing, of sufficient diameter for a man to crawl through, which brings from a higher level the water power that is being used in the excavation of the tunnel for the modern railway, that will supersede the carriage-road, as that in its turn had superseded the horse-road. Our world is large and busy, but the world in which our children will play their part will be larger and busier.

You cut off a few zigzags. The way becomes more precipitous, narrower, more iron-faced; and you find yourself, a few minutes beyond Sch?llinen, on the Devil's bridge. Black granite rises in sheer cliffs, mountain-high above you. The Reuss thunders seventy-five feet below the arch on which you are standing. You are wet with the spray. A sense of personal nothingness, of annihilation, comes over you. You feel as a shrimp might between the jaws of a whale.

The granite appears absolutely naked; but a closer inspection shows you a few humble Alpine plants in such crannies and crevices as their roots could find a hold in, together with a little mould from decayed lichens to feed upon. And, here and there, but never rising more than a few inches above the storm-swept surface, you will make out a Pinus pumilio, or two, but of so weather-worn, and weather-stained, and snow-crushed an aspect as to be thoroughly toned-down to the dark granite. How bravely and obstinately does life struggle to maintain itself amidst all this wrath and desolation! It will have the whole world. It will not submit to exclusion anywhere. Even up here, though so nipped, and starved, and frozen; so snow-smothered, and storm-torn, it will not shrink for asserting its universal right.

You pass through a tunnel, excavated in the perpendicular granite, which here overhangs the dashing, dinning Reuss on your right. As you step out of the tunnel the broad grass-clad expanse of Urseren Thal is before you: Andermatt at the near side; Hospenthal, two miles off, on the far side. All grass between. The mountain slopes, too, around are all in this livery of soft green. Where else did one ever see such a contrast, and so unexpected! Behind you the ruthless granite and eternal snow: before you the sheen of a smooth lawn, with these busy little communities nestling in its bosom. No one, who comes along this way, on foot, on a bright sunny day, as this was, will ever forget this contrast.

VAL TREMOLA--AIROLO--DAZIO GRANDE--FAIDO--BODIO--BELLINZONA--LOCARNO--LUGANO--BELLAGGIO--COMO.

O Italy, how beautiful thou art!--ROGERS.

A little beyond the remains of this great avalanche we left the carriage-road, and took pretty nearly a straight line all the way to Airolo; at first through alpes, that is mountain pastures, then through prairies, that is grass land for mowing: sometimes at very steep inclines. When we entered Airolo we had been out one hour and fifty minutes from St. Gothard. Here, as at G?schenen, the commencement of the great tunnel had caused a great deal of building. Beyond Airolo the valley often has a flat bottom; and the near scenery, at times, is tamer than you might have expected to find it in the immediate neighbourhood of a great and famous Pass. But whatever there may be of this kind, for some little distance below Airolo, is completely compensated for by the gorge of Dazio Grande.

Here the Ticino descends rapidly, broken and blustering, through a deep defile it has cut out for itself. In the cliffs above the present channel man, too, has cut out for himself his path. The best part of the gorge begins, and ends, with a bridge; and is about three quarters of a mile in length. The channel, worn by the stream through the tough rock, is narrow, perpendicular, rugged, and tortuous. The water, from variations in its depth, and in the speed at which it is moving, and from the varying effects of the light in which it is seen, is, when looked at from the upper bridge, of a brownish bottle green: while in the gorge itself it is of a clear whitish green. In several places the foam is so touched by the light as to present a pale tint of pink, which still more softens it. This softness of its colour you contrast with the force it is exerting to cut away the rock, and with the aspect of the hard dark rock itself, but which you see, notwithstanding its hardness, is being ground down, and excavated, often on the sides into little rounded holes, by what appears to be only soft, feathery, almost downy, white foam, touched with this faint tint of pink.

The merits of this valley are underrated: there is much in it worthy of notice. Its character is manifestly Italian, as is that of the people, who in all probability would feel irresistibly attracted towards the Kingdom of Italy, if only the taxation of the Kingdom were as light as that of the Republic. The regular increase in the variety and richness of the vegetation must strike even a somewhat unobservant traveller, as he rapidly makes the descent. The contour, too, and colouring of the mountains are somewhat distinctive. Those just below Faido had, this year, their barren tops in August flecked with snow. This attracts your eye as you are passing through fields of luxuriant maize, and trellised vineyards at their feet. You see how vegetation has struggled to ascend them. It begins by having it all its own way. Down below it covers all the ground. After a time it finds the struggle harder, and fails in places. Then comes a zone in which bare rock predominates. One step more, and to the eye vegetation dies out altogether; and cold and nakedness are supreme. All this you here take in at a glance.

Further on you pass along the foot of a long mountain range, in which the rock, wherever it is exposed, as high up as you can make it out, has evidently been smoothed, and rounded off by glacier action, or that of running water, for either could have set that kind of face upon it. I am, however, disposed to think that some, at all events, of the effects you may here observe, are due to the action of the stream of the Ticino in some remote past; for I saw little polished excavations in the otherwise smooth and even face of the rock, of precisely the same kind as those I had seen in the gorge of Dazio Grande, where there could never have been moving ice. These excavations exactly resembled the half of a reversed basin, and could have been formed by running water only. Of course they were produced by pebbles and grit being thrown by the stream against, and gradually working into, accidentally soft spots.

The middle course of night was run, when men Wake from their first sleep; and the good housewife, Whose distaff is her slender livelihood, Gets her from bed, and stirs th' ash-buried fire, Robbing sweet rest for work; and at first dawn Rouses her women to their long-tasked day: For 'twere not life to her to live, if drawn To shame her husband's bed, or should in vain Her little darlings crave their daily bread.

Morality is the soul of poetry, because we are still conscious--though theology and the pulpit have done much to deaden our consciousness of this--that it is the life of life. It inspires the poet, and hallows his pictures. This was of old 'the piety of the poets, who spoke words worthy of Phoebus.' At all events there were in that old world good wives, the charm of whose goodness was felt; and so there must have been good husbands, too, whose goodness was honoured. I believe then, as the Mantuan would have believed, that my opposite neighbour of this morning was good in heart as well as in deed; and, for her sake, I hope her husband was good. If not, she was by so much the better in heart and in deed.

The road to Lugano begins on a rich and well-cultivated level. The broad, highly varnished leaf of the maize, and the more sober green of the vine, are side by side everywhere. Some country houses are passed. After five miles of this rich cultivation, grass becoming more common, and country houses less so, at Cadenazzo, you leave the valley, and begin the ascent of the Monte Cenere, by which you cross the range that separates the valley of the Ticino from the basin of Lugano. We had been for some little time slowly toiling up the zigzags; and I was at the moment noting the heath in flower, and the stunted russet brake with rock everywhere protruding; and all beneath the old gnarled chesnuts; when, on coming to a masonry-supported angle of the road, projected on the mountain side, almost as if for a look out, there burst on my sight, beyond and below, at perhaps a distance of two miles, the head of Lago Maggiore, and the town, on its margin, of Locarno. I was not expecting anything of the kind; and was indeed, at the moment, intent on the heath and brake, when they abruptly vanished, and this glorious prospect took their place.

At my feet, for the foreground, was the broad, richly cultivated valley, partitioned into innumerable bright green prairies, and grain fields yellow for harvest; all full of fruit trees. Beyond were mountains of very varied outline and colour, scarred with rocky ravines of varying size, which the melting snow, and the storm torrents of ages, had cut from their naked summits down along their forest-clad sides. Snow still, here and there, spotted their summits, in consequence of the cold late spring of this year. Along the margin of the glass-smooth, green-blue lake were the white houses of the long straggling town. Above the town, scattered in woods, at wider intervals up the mountain, and for some distance from the town along the margin of the lake, were innumerable white villas. It being early morning the bright sun was full on the town, and mountains, bringing out clearly every white wall, every dark roof, every green field, every patch of wood, almost every individual tree, and every dark gray rock. It was a scene of surprising variety, interest, and beauty, that had come suddenly before me without any preparation. I was reminded that I had felt, when staying at Jerusalem, some years back, just the same kind of surprise. I had been riding up Mount Scopas, and had been occupied, as I ascended the crest, in looking at the broken pieces of red pottery which strewed the ground, and thinking that they might have been left there by the army of Titus, who, during the siege of Jerusalem, had held this summit, for it commanded a complete view of every house in the Holy City; when, on lifting my eyes from the ground, they were filled with the sight of the twenty miles of white sandy desert, in which had once been Jericho, and on the further side of this white desert was the black line of the Jordan, leading straight to the light blue of the Dead Sea; and beyond all this, the long, wall-like line, ablaze with purple, for it was verging towards evening, of the mountains of Moab, closing the scene, like a barrier of ruby and amethyst, to give promise of some brighter world beyond. The suddenness of the change, and the gloriousness of the new scene, in both cases affected the nerves of the mind with a sensation which can never be forgotten. But, however, in one case it was absolute desolation; not a tree, not a human dwelling-place in sight; all rock and sand; and the complete absence of man from a scene where of old he had often been busy: in the other case it was the complete present subjection and subserviency of the scene to man, and his busy presence everywhere, which were, respectively, the predominant elements of interest. In both scenes nature was grand; but in one grand in desolation, and in the other grand in combination with widely expanded and well-requited human effort.

As you pass on to Lugano, though you are still on high ground, there is something that tells you that you are on the south side of the mountains. It may be hard to say precisely what this something is, but it is in the vegetation, in the people, in the air. There is more of the chesnut, and less of the fir tribe. The oak is more spreading. The undergrowth in the copses, and the plants by the roadside, are more varied. The people are gayer, and more light-hearted. The air is more stimulative of life. At Lugano, as might be expected from its contiguity to the lake, the aspect of things is very different from what it is at Bellinzona. Many appear to be in easy circumstances, and at ease in their minds. This they show by the care they bestow on the exterior of their houses, and on the ground around them.

At Menaggio I took a boat to cross the lake to Bellaggio--the fac-simile of the boat in which I had gone from Sacheln to Sarnen. It was propelled also in the same fashion by two men, who stood up to their work. Of course they demanded at first twice as much for their services as they were glad to accept eventually. As we got afloat the sun was shining brightly, as it had been since we left Bellinzona in the early morning; and there was just enough air to be pleasantly perceptible. At the head of the lake, however, far away to the north, we saw that a storm was raging. There all was black, and distant thunder was at times heard. When we had got about half-way across the lake, the surface being still unruffled where we were, we descried a line of broken water reaching across the lake, rapidly advancing upon us from the north. Our boatmen made all the haste they could, and succeeded not quite, but almost, in escaping the squall: for it struck us when we were but little more than 200 yards from the beach.

We had to wait at Bellaggio about an hour for as it was to go to Como I suppose I must say, the up steamer. If I had remained at Menaggio I should have gone on by the same boat, but I was glad that I had not done so, not merely because crossing in the boat was an additional small incident in the day's work, but also because it enabled me to see the finest, I might say perhaps the grandest, display of flowers I have ever looked upon. In going down to the new pier, to the left of the road, or rather of the street, for it was still in the town, there is a long wall about 10 or 12 feet high; evidently the boundary of the grounds of a house situated somewhere behind it. I infer from the lay of the land that the grounds, immediately behind the wall, must be 6 or 7 feet higher than the roadway. Over the top of this wall, rising several feet above it, and bending down 4 or 5 feet from the top, was one thick, bushy, unbroken line of oleanders, every spray of which ended in a large truss of freshly expanded rose-red blossoms. I paced the wall, and, if I remember rightly, its length was 62 yards. The stems of the plants were invisible, being behind the wall. Crowning then this lofty gray stone wall, and hanging down over its side was a long, broad, even, unbroken line of bright blazing colour. The eye fed upon it, and was more than satisfied with the feast.

The streets of Bellaggio were sheltered from the squall. In crossing the lake to Cadenabbia it was on our starboard beam. The little wet it made on deck was sufficient to drive pretty nearly all the native below. A little further down, on rounding the point, which opens the long reach, at the bottom of which stands Como, there was no more wind: either the interposing mountain acted as a screen to keep it off; or, as is common in mountain lakes and valleys, it was a local affair along a single reach. As we neared Como, at about 6 P.M., we saw that a heavy storm was gathering at that end of the lake, and just as we were leaving the boat for the pier, the rain came down in earnest; and lasted for two hours, accompanied with much thunder and lightning.

On seeing, this evening, in the reading-room of the Volta, a file of the 'Times' down to the 6th, I was amused at recalling that for some days I had been suffering under a complete deprivation of this necessary of English life, without having once given the loss a thought.

As I descended Monte Cenere I was on the look out for the glimpse I had had, yesterday morning, of the head of Maggiore. But in these matters there is often a wide difference between evening and morning. The sun was now to the west of the mountains, behind Locarno. The lake was no longer blue, but hazy. The same haze shrouded Locarno, and its environs. Everything that had given life and interest to the scene then, was veiled from sight now. Its present aspect was too dull and dead even for imagination to work upon. The disappointment was just that so common in human lives, when, where we look for a garden of roses, we find desolation.

BELLINZONA--AIROLO--ST. GOTHARD--ANDERMATT--THE OBERALP ALPE.

Thought is the slave of life, and life time's fool. SHAKESPEARE.

The morning had been bright and cheery; but in the afternoon a cold, wet, leaden mist, sometimes worsening into a shower, rolled over the mountains from the direction of the Devil's Bridge, and settled down doggedly on the broad deep depression of our valley of Urseren. There was no breeze to sweep it away, even to give it the slightest movement. On the side of the mountain to the south of the village, just about the height of the little wood, which partially shelters it from avalanches, that is to say a few hundred feet above our heads, patches of dense cloud hung for hours together in the somewhat less dense mist, without moving, without even any alteration of shape. The mist was in the Hotel. It was everywhere. It penetrated to one's bones. In the reading-room men buttoned their coats, and lighted their cigars, wishing that the stove, too, were lighted. Last week, when passing through Andermatt, on my way to St. Gothard, I had sat for half an hour in the shade of the Hotel, on the bench in front of it; and had thought that nothing in the way of climate could be more freshening and delightful than the shade, on an August day, at such an altitude, with the flood of pure sunlight poured on every object around. But, now, the difference was cruel to those whose bodies, as well as minds, respond with too sensitive a readiness to the skyey influences of such altitudes. A fine, bright day quickens them into unwonted life; they feel as if they had been bathed in, and were breathing an exhalation of, champagne. And even mortals whose fibres are of the ordinary callousness, find it hard to be jolly, when for the exhalation of champagne has been substituted a cold vapour bath.

When Andermatt is in the clouds, the only local resources are the streams of carriages, and the arrival and departure of the diligences. The rolling rattle of the carriages, the jingling of the horses' bells, and the clatter of their feet on the granite pavement, are incessant. The new monster Hotel, the Belle Vue, being a little to the north of the new road from the Rhone valley to the Grisons, sees and knows nothing of the up and down traffic on this line. The Old Hotel, however, the St. Gothard, in the main street of the village, is in the way both of this traffic, and of that which passes, to and fro, over the St. Gothard Pass, wherewith, in such weather, to divert the thoughts of its prisoners from themselves. It all passes in front of the reading-room, within arm's length of the window. This advantage was not, this afternoon, thrown away; for some found, or endeavoured to find, a grain of comfort in the remark that the occupants of the carriages, at all events the gentleman who is generally seen seated on the box, by the side of the driver, must be very wet and cold. One, however, of the party, who appeared to have a scientific turn of mind, refused to be comforted by a comparison which might soon be to our disadvantage; and therefore remarked, unfeelingly, that such weather was generally very local, and that the occupants of the carriage would, probably, soon be in sunshine, in the Rhone valley. The majority at once saw the advantage of adopting his view; as it would give an additional justification for their discontent, and so aggravate their discomfort.

The well of conversation appeared to have been pumped dry. Fortunately, however, an opposite neighbour, some few paces lower down the road, who had a little piece of grass a few square yards in extent, kept geese. And these sagacious birds, having found that the road was no longer dusty, had sallied out in quest of a puddle, in which they might wade at least foot-deep. Their advent was hailed by those at the window as an event worthy of notice. This opened a new fountain for conversation; and it turned out to be one that for a time appeared inexhaustible. The first observation made was the most obvious one, that these Andermatt specimens were not much more than half the size of our English geese. The gentleman with scientific proclivities immediately suggested the effects of a cold climate in stunting animals, with a reference to Shetland ponies, as an illustrative instance. He was met with the remark that the Arctic bear is larger than the Westphalian. The last speaker for a moment appeared to have received a check by the observation that they do not belong to the same species. From this momentary check, however, he recovered by requesting his interlocutor to define species. The interlocutor being unwilling to lose his supposed advantage, retorted by the announcement that to ask for a definition of what all the world had always understood very well, implied belief in Darwinism, which was the demonstration of the absurdity that there was no difference between a man and a monkey. This, having been delivered with a show of denunciatory earnestness, was followed, as might have been expected, by a pause. But in the now ascertained dearth of subjects for conversation, one in which many were looking forward to taking a part, was not to be put aside in this way; and so there now commenced a recital, by several of the party in turn, of what each had observed, or heard, or read of geese. One prefaced what he was about to narrate by announcing that it was extremely curious. This was injudicious, for it excited more expectation than what he had to tell could satisfy. He thought it a proof of the justice of common opinion in regarding the goose as a stolid bird, that it always, as it crosses the sill of a barn door, cranes out its neck, and lowers its head, for fear of striking the lintel, generally some 10 or 12 feet above. There was nothing curious in this but the speaker's mistake; for the goose cranes out its neck, and lowers its head, because it very sagaciously supposes that it is not improbable that the barn, it is entering, may contain some enemy; and this is its attitude of cautious observation, and of defiance. A second, who appeared to have had some experience of the fallibility of testimony, or of the incredulity of mankind, acknowledged that what he was about to narrate had in it something marvellous. It was a story of a goose having contracted so devoted a friendship for a horse, that fed in the same paddock as itself, that it was never easy except in the society of the horse. There was, however, nothing very marvellous in a highly gregarious animal attaching itself to the only other animal with which it could associate, notwithstanding that that other animal belonged to a different natural order. Talking of geese reminded a third--it must have been on the principle of the game of dominoes--that he had once bought his Michaelmas goose at a poulterer's, four of whose children, he afterwards heard, were laid up at the time with small pox. This was evidence that the subject of geese was worn out. And, as no successor for it could be found, the party dispersed; some to their rooms to attend to any small matters they were so fortunate as to think required attention, and some to the post office, to see the arrival and departure of the afternoon diligences.

At dinner I was placed next to a party of five young men. At a glance I inferred that they were Americans. I was sure, however, that they were not Yankees, for they had neither the features, nor the bearing of the men of the hub of the world, nor of anywhere in that neighbourhood. Judging in the same way I concluded that they were not western men. I was not, therefore, surprised--it was only what I had expected to hear--when they told me that they were from Baltimore; the city of the United States in which I had found the American most like the European in manner, and tone of thought. They were of varying ages between the limits of twenty and thirty; and had formed a party, as they informed me, to complete their professional education--they were all aspirants for the faculty--by visiting, and studying for two years in, and acquainting themselves with the practice of, the chief medical schools of Germany, France, and England. This reminded me of an observation I had made while travelling in the United States, that, there, in some matters, especially practical ones, larger and more complete views are taken than with us: at all events, it would be well if a like desire for study and culture were common among the medical students of the old country.

To reach this alpe you leave the village either by the old mule-path, or by the new carriage-road, and are immediately on the skirts of the mountain, which is here quite devoid of trees, and all in grass. You do not ascend the zigzags, by which the road climbs the mountain, but cut them all off by going over the grass, straight up the mountain side. As long as you are cutting off the zigzags, and till you come out on the straight road, you will be going up, and through, about a mile and a half of prairie, where the grass is cut for hay. This is kept clean, all noxious weeds being eradicated, and, as I saw, is pretty well manured. Upon this you will see no stock in August. They will take whatever parts of it are ever fed, in their way down from the upper pastures. When you get to the road, it has become straight and level, and remains so, with only a very gradual ascent, till it gets beyond the Oberalpsee, that is to say, for something more than two miles further. It then rises, and turns to the right. But if you go straight up the mountain that is before you, facing you as you walk up to the lake, you will come, on the summit, to the end of the Oberalp alpe, and will be on the Tiarms Pass, by which you may leave Uri, and enter the Grisons.

While I was counting the cows, I saw Ammer among them, picking his way across the stream from rock to rock. On his return he had in his hand a bouquet--by no means a small one--of the rose of the Alps. This he informed me was for Madame on her arrival.

Turfy mountain slopes, and cattle, are not much to go to see. You may find at home, in Wales, or Scotland, just as good combinations of these objects as at Andermatt; possibly even better, for the actually subaerial mountains here are no great height above the elevated plateau from which they spring. But, then, these turfy slopes, and these cattle, belong to the peasants of Andermatt; and that to the thought, whatever may be the case with respect to the eye, makes a world of difference. The peasants of Andermatt are a very old community. They are as little changed from what their fathers were many centuries ago, as the mountains that stand round about Andermatt. While the outside world, north, south, east, west, has been changing from century to century, they, from century to century, have continued the same. They have had neither a governing class, nor a destitute class. All the while they have, themselves, managed their own affairs. Among them there have been neither governors, nor governed; neither rich, nor poor. These alpes, as far back as their history goes, have been held in common; and by the line of ancestors of those who hold them now. They have been held, generation after generation, down to the generation whose cattle are now upon them, in precisely the same fashion. Land, elsewhere, has ever been changing hands; been held by different tenures; been turned to account in different ways; and given rise to different political constitutions. Here it has never changed hands. It has passed from the father's to the son's by an unbroken lineal succession. It has all along been held by the same tenure; been turned to account in the same way; and maintained the same political constitution. This is what gives to the sight its interest.

And now a change is coming over their little world. The great world, and its influences, are encroaching upon them. The causes, which have brought about changes elsewhere, are beginning to bring about changes among them. Some are getting rich, and some are getting poor. Some are amassing capital; some are working for wages. Oberalp alpe is already let, that is to say, its proprietors pay for sending their cows on to their own property; and the rent is wanted to defray the growing expenses of the old village, which has now become a modern town. If they did not turn it to account in this way, they would have to pay road-rates, and fountain-rates, and antiavalanche-rates. Perhaps the day is not very distant, when this alpe will be sold to a joint-stock company, who will supply with milk, butter, and cheese the two railway towns that are now springing up at G?schenen and Airolo, and the town in the high vale of Urseren, to which the pleasure-worn and business-beaten inhabitants of the cities of the plains will come to summer. And then the long communal history of the Oberalp will have ended; and those who walk through it will no longer be able to read in it the life of the past: for that will be found then only in books. This enhances the interest, with which the beholder now contemplates it. It is one of the last pictures, and a fading one, of a form of human life that will soon have completely vanished for ever. But for the present there it stands, exactly where it ought to stand. It has, as it were, taken refuge; and been able down to our own times to maintain itself, in this lofty, inaccessible, central nucleus of our Continent. But the flood of change has at last come near to it, has risen high upon its sides, is still rising rapidly, and must soon sweep over it.

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