CHAPTER XII.
LUCERNE—ALPNACH—THROUGH UNTERWALDEN—MEIRINGEN—THE KIRCHET.
I could have better spared a better man.—Shakespeare.
August 23.—Yesterday, having spent some hours on the Rigi, we had got to Lucerne with two or three hours of daylight still at our disposal. I here found my malle at the post office, to which I had directed it eight days previously from Altorf: I now redirected it to Lausanne. We walked over the town before dusk, and afterwards took a second stroll to see the tourists sitting out in front of the large hotels. They appeared to be chiefly Germans and Americans. The day had been very warm; and at 8 o’clock it appeared as if those who were remaining indoors could not be many.
There are several churches in Lucerne; and this morning I noticed, as I was walking to and from Tivoli, that the clocks of all these churches were keeping time with wonderful exactness. They went so well together, that, in striking the hours and quarters, the last was but a very few seconds behind the first. Is this uniformity the result of their all being regulated and wound up by one authority? If so, will it be so long? As Lucerne is not a town of poor and ignorant peasants, we may suppose that before many years have passed, many of the better sort, intellectually, will have joined the Old Catholic party, or, at all events, will have refused to join the new church of the Infallibilists; and will, therefore, have assumed the regulation of, at least, their own church clocks.
I had gone to Tivoli for a swim in the lake. I found the place more than half a mile distant from the town; and the bath-house inconveniently small and very dilapidated. It seems unaccountable that this should be the only provision of the kind for a population of about 20,000, and for the many thousands of visitors who yearly stay at the place. With this exception—the want, however, appears to be one that is not felt, for at seven this morning I was the only person using the bath-house—the people of Lucerne are doing all that they can for their city. Their quays, bridges, streets, hotels, shops, all show this. They are proud of their city, and have spent much money in making it commodious and handsome. We here, in England, do little or nothing of this kind for our towns; because with us the owners of the land contiguous to a town do not reside in it, and can take no interest in it. With us, therefore, a town—the exceptions are not many—has become merely an agglomeration of workshops, and retail shops, and public-houses, with the residences of the necessary complement of professional men, everyone, however, of whom is determined to get away from the town as soon as he can. If our system is the best, I am sorry that it is so. I had rather see our towns centres of culture and refinement; with more to please the eye, and with greater resources for amusement.
After another excursion into the city this morning, we left Lucerne at 10 A.M. by boat for Alpnach, which, in turn, we left by diligence at 12. It would have been better to have turned out at 4 A.M., and walked over Pilatus to Alpnach. This might have been done easily, and I had thought of it; but had said nothing about it, knowing that I should not be allowed to do it alone; and so Pilatus now stands over for the chances of another day. The mob of tourists at Alpnach, and the confusion among them, were worth seeing. The post office had to provide for them all, for they had booked places at Lucerne, or on board the boat, for Interlaken. They were, eventually, provided for by two diligences, and ten supplementaires. The senior conductor of the two diligences had to arrange all these good people according to their crotchets and parties, and the nature of the means at his disposal. Some would not be separated from their friends. Some were not averse to separation. Some would not go in a diligence. Some would go in the coupé, if they could. Some would not go in a supplementaire, supposing that the diligences would go first. In this, however, they were mistaken, for the officer in command was too old a soldier to allow any of his army of carriages to be in his rear, and wisely, therefore, throughout the day, kept them all before him.
On such an occasion, as on many others in travelling, when many people have to struggle, or think they must, for accommodation, it is amusing to observe the diversity of idiosyncrasies. One man knows the world, and is as cool as a cucumber. It is not worth while putting himself out. He knows that, if he did, he would gain nothing by it. Another takes it for granted that the conductor, who has to go through precisely the same scene every day of his life, knows nothing at all about his business. A third announces, with a display of self-command and assumption of profundity, that everybody in the country is in a conspiracy to cheat and plunder travellers. Some are impressively polite, and hope to gain their point by soft words. Others, who have a low opinion of mankind, put their trust in francs. Some wear a look of helpless resignation. Others, who are of the lucifer-match kind, but not of the kind that ignites only on the box—that is to say, in their own homes, where they have a right to be fiery—explode at once. Collision with anything puts them in a flame. And now you amuse yourself with the way in which they are blazing up, if you are not thereby at all scorched yourself.
At last, all these different specimens of humanity having been provided with seats, just as they would have been had not one of them spoken a word, we got under weigh—an imposing procession of twelve carriages. The horses in some of the supplementaires had been shockingly overworked. The constant straining up hill had so changed the form of their visage, that it was scarcely equine. On noticing this to the conductor, he was of opinion that it would not have been so had they been Swiss horses; they were French horses that had been left behind by Bourbaki’s army; and the effect had resulted from their having been put to work which they had not been used to, and for which they were unfit; but that it was a matter of no great consequence, for the work was killing them fast.
For the two miles beyond Sarnen, there was evidence of how shallow in a Swiss prairie is, generally, the film of good soil. Since I passed by on foot, two or three weeks back, a violent storm-gust had swept over this space, and had thrown down scores of fruit trees. In every instance their roots, which, it appeared, were quite superficial, had lifted the good black soil, and exposed, beneath, the fragments of white rock, on which the soil, to the depth of nowhere more than two feet, had been superimposed, in great part by the industry of many generations of peasants, who had removed the superficial fragments of rock and levelled the good surface. At Eywyl my wife and myself left the diligence, and walked to Lungern, five miles. I again descended at the foot of the Brünig, and walked to the top.
I here saw a black squirrel, the only living wild quadruped I met with during this excursion. Of wild birds also there is to an English eye a surprising dearth in Switzerland. This results in some measure from everyone being allowed to carry a gun, and to use it at all seasons for the destruction of any feathered, or four-footed wild creature that may come in his way; but chiefly from the length of the winter, and dearth of insects, and of plants bearing such seeds and fruits as, at that season, might supply food for birds. During this excursion the only birds I saw were, on several occasions, on open high ground, a solitary little chirper, probably of the finch kind; one jay in the wood—the Aletschwald—on the west side of the Rieder Alp, just above the Aletsch glacier; one coot in a reedy pool in the Valais; a flock of a dozen, or so, rooks eating grapes in a vineyard near Vevey; some gulls on the lake of Geneva; a small covey of red-legged partridges in the valley of the Tessin; in some few towns a few sparrows; and in some a few swallows: no very long catalogue for the distance travelled over. It is a strange thing that you see bee-hives everywhere, but rarely meet with a bee. The whole of the honey, however, that is consumed by travellers in Switzerland is not the product of this little ill-used hymenopteron; for there is, at all events, one factory in a lofty out-of-the-way retreat in the Canton de Vaud—the Swiss are a very ingenious people—where it is produced without insect aid.
We were to sleep at Meiringen: but we found it necessary to go to Brienz, several miles beyond the point on the Brünig where the road branches off to Meiringen, in order to get a private carriage to take us to Meiringen. Just on this part of our way we had to pass through what to those who are unaccustomed to any but English rain-falls would have appeared a surprisingly dark and heavy storm. While we were leaving the diligence at Brienz the darkness and this rain-fall were at their height.
In half an hour the rain had ceased, and our carriage came round to the door of the hotel. My engagement with Ammer was now ended. As I took his hand, and expressed a parting wish for his welfare, his last words were, ‘Sir, if you write a book, put me into it.’ That was not the moment when a man could say no to the harmless request of one who had been his companion for three weeks; and so he returned to Interlaken, to look out for another engagement, in the belief that his request would be complied with. I must, therefore, attempt his portrait. Here it is. He was a tall, bony man, with a long face and grave expression. His talk was that of one who is by nature of an easy simple disposition, but to whom experience has taught that this is a world in which a man must take care of himself. He would rather not have had to do this; but he acquiesced in the necessity of doing it. As to his knowledge of English, he naturally, and allowably enough, overrated it. It was travellers’ English only: nothing more; but for that purpose sufficient. For the only purpose I had in view in engaging him, it was of little or no use. Still, notwithstanding, I held him to be worth his eight francs a day. His polyglot, or rather piebald, or, to be precise, his tortoiseshell, of German, French, and English was, at times, an amusing form of speech. The predominant idea in his mind, the mother idea that gave birth to all others, the focal point to which all lines of thought converged, was that there was nothing in the world like francs. As most of us do, he read others by the light of the knowledge he had of himself. He, therefore, always went on the supposition that nothing could so enhance the merit of his services as some scheme for saving me a franc. This, in his ideas of the scale of duty, came first; and he would be overwhelmed with deep disappointment, mingled with humiliation, whenever, in dealing with porters, voituriers, hotel-keepers, &c., I took matters into my own hands, and did not allow him to make arrangements for effecting this saving. His uncomfortable feelings, however, on these occasions were quickly dissipated by the offering of a cigar—in extreme cases, of two—which he readily accepted, as implying an amount of general approval, friendliness, and liberality sufficient to salve the wound and kill its smart. If I made some small pecuniary acknowledgment he was disposed to think uncalled for, or did not make a reclamation he thought might have been successful, the light that was within him began to be dimmed with uncertainties and confusion. His accustomed landmarks were disappearing. The scent was being lost. He was off the line: the wheels were revolving, but there was no going forward. When at the Hôtel de Ville at Altorf I gave the official a franc for the few square inches of spongy paper, with a few figures printed upon it, his difficulties of this kind culminated. Was I a lunatic or a millionaire? The easiest conclusion—that to which he came—was that I was something of both. ‘There is not,’ he said, meditatively, ‘a man in Uri who would have given that franc for a large volume.’ And then, more confidently, as if he saw, or fancied he saw, a ray of light, ‘But the English are very rich.’ This solution he frequently, afterwards, reverted to. ‘No,’ I would always reply, ‘not so rich as the Swiss, for they can afford to give twice as much as the English for a thousand klafters of land.’ Out of this economical puzzle he could never see his way. The evening before we started he decided that he would draw his pay in one sum, at the conclusion of the engagement. I had proposed to him that he should receive it in weekly payments. He soon, however, began to draw upon me for ten francs at a time. So that, when we had reached Brienz he had, by these payments on account, received a third of the whole. As he knew that I was aware that he must have, originally, taken with him enough for his personal wants, he always gave for these applications, accompanied with many apologies, the reason that he wished to make some additions to his wardrobe. To this, however, I never saw that any additions were made; for his little water-proof sac was always empty; and he returned home in the same clothes, the same billy-cock felt hat, and the same boots in which he had originally set out—all rather marked objects of their kind. I was obliged, therefore, to come to the conclusion, that these successive draughts on account had no purpose but the satisfaction he would receive from having some of the francs in his own actual keeping. If on any occasion he was charged a few cents more than he had expected, or if his dinner and supper had not, in some way or other, been manipulated into my account, for upon this point he was never sufficiently clear, his solemn denunciations, and feeling reprobation, of this strange form of baseness were invariably concluded with the apothegm—I soon knew when to look for it—‘Il y a des voleurs partout.’ This was always announced in precisely the same tone, and with the same heart-chuckle, as if he were announcing a discovery combining the greatest profundity with the greatest novelty, which had just, at that moment, flashed into his own mind, for the first time in the philosophic observation of mankind.
It was his habit to make the Valaisans, on all occasions where it was possible, and at times, too, when the ground of the remark was not discoverable, a butt for the shaft of a depreciatory comparison. If, for instance, we anywhere saw a boy in a pair of sabots, he would say, ‘In the Valais the ladies wear sabots: they only cost them half-a-franc, and last through a summer and winter.’ If he saw the land anywhere ill-cultivated, or a forest ill-managed, or anything done clumsily, wastefully, or neglectfully, he would say, ‘That is arranged badly; that is how it is arranged in the Valais.’ If I talked to him about schools, he would say, ‘We have schools everywhere: but in the Valais they do not teach much.’ I would ask him, ‘Why?’ He would reply, ‘You must ask the priests.’ If we came up with a flock of goats on a mountain pasture, or by the roadside, he would say, ‘The Valaisans keep goats in their forests, to destroy the young trees.’
There was a mystery about his Sunday apparel. On that day his flannel shirt was doffed, and he would appear in a clean hempen shirt, and with a new pair of thick, apparently homespun, woollen trousers, neither of which was it possible for him to have had on the week days, before or afterwards. I must, therefore, suppose that he hired, or borrowed, them for the occasion. When in any little matter I would go my own way, and not his, I was soon prepared for what would come; and knew, when it came, precisely what it meant; for, on such conjunctures, he would never fail to announce, with a tone of sorrowful submission, ‘It is of your opinion.’ When he was utterly in the dark as to some question I was putting to him, and, evidently, knew nothing about the matter, he would assume, suddenly, the air of a man who has, by a happy inspiration of the moment, unriddled some ancient world-puzzle. The whole solution was, in every case, precisely the same, for it was all contained in the never-failing oracular utterance of the single word, ‘Infallibly,’ accompanied with a fixed look and solemn nod.
I held him at the time to be, and still hold him to have been, cheap at the money. He belongs to a bygone order of things, to the old Swiss world, in which a franc was a large object for contemplation, enough to occupy a man’s thoughts, and to satisfy his heart, and most days quite out of reach. He represents a class of guides that was formed before Alpinism had been evolved; and before streams of travellers had brought into Alpine villages streams of gold—a commodity then only known by report, and which in those valleys no eye had yet beheld. The old and the new experiences are, in his mind, in conflict. No guide on the sunny side of fifty can be like him. Travellers, who are, themselves, on the shady side of those figures, will be reminded by him of the slow and cautious world they once knew; and he will help them to measure how different is the world in which they now are.
We had, then, said our adieux to Ammer, and were now on our way to Meiringen. I observed that the horses we met on the road had dry hoofs; and when we had got a little more than three miles from Brienz the dust was flying; so confined had been the area of the heavy mountain storm, in which we had reached Brienz. We entered Meiringen just as the evening lights were beginning to show through the windows of the village, and of the neighbouring scattered châlets. The labours of the day were done, and families were again reunited to talk over its little events, before going to rest. We stopped at the door of the Reichenbach Hotel. We had been there last year, and had been satisfied with our reception. It is about half a mile from the village, near the foot of the mountain. A little stream passes by it; I believe through it. Its entourage is of garden-ground, turf, and trees.
I may mention that the manager of this hotel showed me, by reference to his books, that he was paying the commune twenty-five cents a klafter for good garden-ground, and twelve cents for ground of inferior quality. Another Meiringen man told me that good land was letting from twenty to thirty cents a klafter. There are 1,400 klafters in an acre. Twenty-five cents a klafter is, therefore, 14l. an acre. These hotels must have vegetables. This high rent, however, does not matter much to those tenants, who are proprietors of hotels, for they can recompense themselves for it through the medium of the little notes they present to their visitors.
August 24.—It was Sunday. We went twice to the English church. It is a new structure; and was erected at the expense of an English clergyman. The services I was glad to see were well attended. As the fashion, in which they were conducted, is a public matter, it is fairly open to comment; I may, therefore, say of them, and which, of course, those who direct them wish should be seen and known, that they were done in the ritualistic style. Those, who are far advanced in the direction of this style, might, perhaps, say of them only, that they showed a tendency towards ritualism. Personally, I am not annoyed at this fashion of conducting the service, any more than I am at witnessing an attempt to create the spiritual excitement, with which the opposite party in the Church has familiarized us; but, as it is presented to us for the very purpose of influencing, or obtruded upon us for the very purpose of challenging, our ideas and opinions, I am quite at liberty to say of it, that I think it, at least, as much of a mistake as the other. Still, as the embodiment of a bonâ fide opinion, or theory, it is entitled to be treated as such, that is to say to be met not with outcry and denunciation, but with facts and arguments. Now I am disposed to think, though, indeed, this is not the place for going into the facts and arguments, that neither of these two parties could have helped itself. Each works according to its light, and with the materials, that is to say the amount of knowledge, and kind of ideas, it possesses. And as, too, not far from all of those, to whom each has to address itself, are in the same mental condition as the leaders themselves of these parties, or are ready to be brought into it, little else can, at the moment, be done. We may, therefore, be almost disposed to say, So far well. Still we ought to keep in mind that religion must have, if it be any thing in rerum naturâ, a body of absolute truth. Now an induction from all religions appears to demonstrate the fact that the substance and body of religion is morality. And by the same process we come to the conclusion that its morality does not differ specifically from the ordinary forms and divisions of morality, as for instance that which is the regulation of the family, or that which is the regulation of society. Its morality does not differ specifically from these, or from any branches of morality, because it includes them all. Still it has a differentia; otherwise it would be only a synonyme for morality; and that differentia is its motive. It is the moral life, in all its relations, modified by, and practised from, motives drawn from the idea of a future life, or of there being a moral Governor of the world. This is religion in its simplest expression. This it is that makes it something in rerum naturâ; gives it existence; and has made it a power in all times, and among all races of men. The more distinctly men see, or even feel this, the more powerfully they are attracted to it; for this it is that reveals to them its nature and its uses, and enlists on its behalf the understanding and the moral sentiments, accompanied with immediate satisfaction, and the hope of better things to come. Anything which obscures the perception of this weakens its power. Now one of the parties, of which we have just made mention, obscures the perception of this simple and mighty truth by a veil of forms, and by what it calls reverence. It thus metamorphoses, and lowers religion. As respects its ministers and exponents; it puts the priest in the place of the prophet. As respects the wealthy, the luxurious, and the self-indulgent; it encourages them in substituting for religion these forms, and this reverence, which are so far from being religion that they may co-exist with that which is its most complete contradiction. And as to the ignorant; it attracts them; though, of course, not morally, but theatrically: for it is delightful to them to find religion so like a stage-play; that is to say something that is pleasant to look at, not something that is to regulate the whole inner and external life. The other party obscures the same great truth by a veil of sentimental excitement, and of exaggerated, factitious spiritualism. These, as they are not the actual things the human soul wants in this matter, cannot, of course, be maintained; and must, after a time, die away, if not in individuals, yet inevitably in bodies of men. And this accounts for the reaction from the teaching of this party, which is now going on before our eyes; and which, as it goes on, enables us to see how little, that is substantial and real, it has effected, except in the way of preparing us for what is real and substantial.
Both these parties were, under the circumstances of the times, unavoidable. But the aims and methods of both are, nevertheless, to a great extent, untrue; and, therefore, to a certain extent, and in a sense, mischievous. They have not sought first the kingdom of God, which is morality shaped and motived by the idea of a future life, or of there being a moral Governor of the world. With respect to the theory, and practice of the ritualistic party, we may be sure that there will be a reaction from them, just as they are themselves an incident of the reaction from the theory and practice of the opposite party. For ten, or even twenty, years we may not see it, but we must see it sooner or later. And those who choose to look at what is now going on will be able to anticipate, probably with some degree of accuracy, the direction the coming reaction will take; because what is to be, can be produced only by what now is. Those, who resort to this kind of divination, will see that, as both ritualism, and the so-called evangelicalism, so far as they are moral and religious, are efforts, only in unhistoric and unphilosophic minds, to attain to truth and reality; and as even in the outside world, which is neither ritualistic, nor evangelical, the same effort is being vigorously made; therefore the reaction, whenever it may come, will be in the direction of what all are desiring, and in search of, that is to say of truth, and reality. History, and philosophy will not be ignored. On the contrary: their authority will supersede that of men who were unhistoric, and unphilosophic. And, then, perhaps, the idea of religion that underlies, and is embodied in, the Sermon on the Mount, which is neither ritualistic, nor evangelical, will have its turn, again, once more, after so many centuries: and this will be only a reversion to that primitive conception of Christianity, which was what sent it forth conquering, and to conquer.
The source, then, and the forms of the mistakes we have been speaking of, are in our view of these matters, to be ascribed entirely to want of knowledge, both in those who had to lead, and in those who had to be led. We can say this without being disposed in any degree to blame either the one, or the other: for want of knowledge of the kind needed is an ever-recurring phenomenon; because it is an incident of progress. Those, who see this, ought to be satisfied with the faith they may have in knowledge. It must come; and, when it comes, it must have its due effect. There never, in the whole history of the world, has been a time in which, or a people among whom, religion has not been the expression of knowledge which has always, and everywhere, modified it, and necessarily in the direction of lifting it up to its own level. This is its highest, and its main use; for religion is the harmonizing, and the systematizing, of all the knowledge men have at any time attained to, both of nature and of man, for the most practical of all purposes—that of enlightening, guiding, purifying, elevating, and strengthening the moral life.
Before the evening service we walked to the Kirchet, perhaps a mile and a half up the valley, to see the old deserted ravine channel of the Aare. This is well worth a visit, even by those on whose minds such a sight will leave impressions only of strangeness and novelty. The Kirchet is a hill, that, just above Meiringen, runs completely athwart the Haslithal. It is said to be 800 feet high. Above it, therefore, the valley must have been, at some remote period, a lake, as far up as would be requisite for bringing its head to the level of the 800 feet of this bar, which formed its foot. At that time the overflow of the lake, instead of going straight over the Kirchet, when it had reached the summit, somewhere about the middle of it, made an angle on the summit, which is broad and flat, and then took a course along it to the north-east. In this course along the summit, it cut for itself a rapidly descending ravine passage, down to the foot of the lofty mountain that here rises above the Kirchet. At this point, that is to say at the foot of the mountain, the ravine channel made a second sharply defined right angle, and proceeded then almost due north to Meiringen along the line of the junction of the Kirchet and the eastern mountain.
There must, however, in times of floods and freshets, have been in those early days a subsidiary channel all along the foot of the eastern mountain. This was ever deepening itself, as all channels do. Perhaps it could only carry on this work in times of floods and freshets. At last it deepened itself to such a degree as to produce two very notable effects. One was that of draining the lake, and so of laying dry the broad bottom land where Im Hof now stands. The other was that of rendering useless the old channel of the north-eastern half of the axis of the Kirchet. The new channel is straight, and at right angles to the old one. This cutting off of bends and angles is what river channels are constantly engaged in doing. The only difference here is that, the old channel being in hard rock, the lapse of untold centuries has not in the slightest degree obliterated, or defaced, the earlier work of the Aare. The old ravine channel is just as clear, and as sharply defined, as it was on the day upon which the last waning streamlet from the Aare trickled over its bed, and then died away; and the whole outflow of Haslithal took the way of the new channel, which it has retained to this day.
As you go down the steep, narrow, deep descent of this old watercourse, so narrow and so deep that, at times, the rocks completely meet overhead and the sky above is shut out, you read its history more rapidly and more plainly than you can on this page. There are the clear, perpendicular, rock walls, right and left, at most only two or three yards apart; their sides water-worn, with edges here and there rounded off, and in some places hemispherical holes excavated in the rock, where some fracture, or soft spot, had enabled the old torrent to work at an advantage. Beneath your feet, in the long staircase of the ravine—the bed of the old channel—are the loose rocks, just as they were left; some much worn, that had been there, beneath the rushing tumbling torrent, for a long time; some not much worn, that had been brought in not long before the Aare withdrew to the new channel; all worn only on their surface and their upstream side. Everywhere between these rocks is the clean sand, just as it was left, washed clean, thousands of years ago. And when you get to the bottom of the old ravine, there, before you, is the Aare of to-day, thundering by in the new ravine it has cut for itself, exactly at right angles to the old deserted ravine, at the mouth of which you are standing. And here, at this point, down in the bowels of the mountain, is a charming little beach of white sand, two or three yards wide, and a dozen or so yards long, of precisely the same sand as that you have been stepping over in your descent of the old ravine.
Who could stand on this little marge of sand unmoved? It is a point of contact between the distant days—represented by the deserted channel—when the valley above you was a broad and long lake, and your own day—represented by the channel now in use—when, 800 feet below what had been, in the first period, the surface of the old lake, is now the site of the busy and thriving community of Im Hof. Here you are reminded of what was the old, and humanly unrecorded state of things; and are enabled to understand what brought about the existing state of things, and how it brought it about. The old torrent played its part by the slow but unfailing exercise of the rock-eroding power, with which running water had been invested from the beginning of things; and the existing torrent, as it rushes by before you, is, you see, playing the same part in the working of the world-organism—the part it has been playing, without failing or rest, for no one can say how many thousands of years; which, however, only began to run their course, when the thousands of years of the old channel had ended theirs. You are even carried, in the process of thought, beyond the world-organism to the world-organiser, who impressed on matter its properties, modes of action, uses, and relations. As these visions pass before you, and these thoughts form themselves, the nerves of your mind are thrilled with an emotion, that will make that little marge of sand, at the juncture of the old with the new ravine, deep down in the bowels of the mountain, ever to you a memorable spot.