Harper's Young People, October 3, 1882 / An Illustrated Weekly

ALL ABOARD!
Any one who had come down the St. Gothard to the village of Andermatt, just at daybreak one cold winter morning in 1799, would have seen a very curious sight. All night long the village folks had been busy packing up and carrying away in carts or on horse and mule back whatever they could most easily remove. The first gleam of dawn saw the hindmost fugitives slinking away into the passes of the northern hills, looking fearfully back every now and then at the towering crest of the St. Gothard, as if expecting the whole mountain to fall upon them at once, or to send forth a torrent of fire that would sweep them all away.
The danger from which they were flying was not long behind them. Scarcely had the sun peered above the surrounding hill-tops when the great white slope of the St. Gothard seemed to grow black all at once, like a white cloth swarmed over by flies. Instantly the whole mountain-side was alive with bear-skin caps, and glittering bayonets, and prancing horses, and bright epaulets, and rumbling wheels, and shining cannon.
Down they came, still downward, thousands upon thousands—tall sallow grenadiers in long overcoats of gray frieze, sharp-faced, narrow-eyed Cossacks with long lances in their hands, black-capped gunners, glittering hussars, blue-nosed, shivering staff officers—and high above all, fluttering gayly in the keen morning breeze, the bullet-torn standard that bore the imperial ensign of Russia.
At sight of the deserted village there was a murmur of satisfaction among the Russian soldiers; for it was now forty-eight hours since any of them had touched a morsel of food, and they were all as hungry as wolves.
These mountain goats have run away at the very sound of our coming, said a big grenadier; but so long as they've left some food behind them, it's all right.
Isn't this the place where they said the famous cheese was made? suggested a gaunt, red-bearded Cossack.
Sure enough! cried one of his comrades, joyfully. Hey, brothers! won't we have a good feed when we get down there!