ST. GOTHARD.
We did not start till after 9 next morning, and meantime some more Diligences had come up, so that we formed a procession of one large and heavy, followed by three smaller and more fit carriages, when we moved out of the little village, and, leaving the larger branch of our creek, now a scanty mill-stream at best, to bend away to the left, we followed the smaller and charged boldly up the mountain. The ascent is of course made by zig-zags, no other mode being practicable for carriages, so that, when we had traveled three toilsome miles, Airolo still lay in sight, hardly a mile below us. I judge the whole ascent, which with a light carriage and three hard-driven horses occupied two hours and a half, was about eight miles, though a straight line might have taken us to the summit in three miles. The rise in this distance must have been near five thousand feet.
For a time, the Hemlocks held on, but at length they gave up, before we reached any snow, and only a little weak young Grass,—nourished rather by the perpetual mists or rains than by the cold, sour earth which clung to the less precipitous rocks,—remained to keep us company. Soon the snow began to appear beside us, at first timidly, on the north side of cliffs, and in deep chasms, where it was doubtless drifted to the depth of thirty feet during the Winter, and has been gradually thawing out since May. At length it stood forth unabashed beside our road, often a solid mass six or seven feet thick, on either side of the narrow pass which had been cut and worn through it for and by the passage of travelers. Meantime, the drizzling rain, which had commenced soon after we started, had changed to a spitting, watery sleet, and at length to snow, a little before we reached the summit of the pass, where we found a young Nova Zembla. An extensive cloud-manufactory was in full blast all around us, shutting out from view even the nearest cliffs, while the snow and wind—I being on the outside and somewhat wet already—made our short halt there anything but comfortable. The ground was covered with snow to an average depth of two or three feet; the brooks ran over beds of ice and under large heaps of drifted and frozen snow, and all was sullen and cheerless. Here were the sources (in part) of the Po and of the Rhine, but I was rather in haste to bid the former good-bye.
We reduced our three-horse establishment to two, and began to descend the Rhineward zig-zags at a rattling pace, our driver (and all the drivers) hurrying all the way. We reached the first village (where there was considerable Grass again, and some Hemlock, but scarcely any attempts at cultivation), in fifty minutes, and I think the distance was nearly five miles. "Jehu, the son of Nimshi," could not have done the distance in five minutes less.
We changed horses and drivers at this village, but proceeded at a similar pace down through the most hideous chasm for the next two or three miles that I ever saw. I doubt whether a night-mare ever beat it. The descent of the stream must have been fully 1,500 feet to the mile for a good part of this distance, while the mountains rose naked and almost perpendicular on each side from its very bed to hights of one to two thousand feet, without a shrub, and hardly a resting-place even for snow. Down this chasm our road wound, first on one side of the rivulet, then on the other, crossing by narrow stone bridges, often at the sharpest angle with the road, making zig-zags wherever space could be found or made for them, now passing through a tunnel cut through the solid rock, and then under a long archway built over it to protect it from avalanches at the crossing of a raving cataract down the mountain side. And still the staving pace at which we started was kept up by those on the lead, and imitated by the boy driving our carriage, which was hindmost of all. I was just thinking that, though every one should know his own business best, yet if I were to drive down a steep mountain in that way I should expect to break my neck, and suspect I deserved it, when, as we turned a sharp zig-zag on a steep grade at a stiff trot, our carriage tilted, and over she went in a twinkling.
Our horses behaved admirably, which in an upset is always half the battle. Had they started, the Diligence managers could only have rendered a Flemish account of that load. As it was, they stopped, and the driver, barely scratched, had them in hand in a minute.
I was on the box-seat with him, and fell under him, catching a bad sprain of the left wrist, on which I came down, which disables that hand for a few days—nothing broken and no great harm done—only a few liberal rents and trifling bruises. But I should judge that our heads lay about three feet from the side of the road, which was a precipice of not more than twenty feet, but the rocks below looked particularly jagged and uninviting.
Our four inside passengers had been a good deal mixed up, in the concussion, but soon began to emerge seriatim from the side door which in the fall came uppermost—only one of them much hurt, and he by a bruise or gash on the head nowise dangerous. Each, as his or her head protruded through the aperture, began to "let in" on the driver, whose real fault was that of following bad examples. I was a little riled at first myself, but the second and last lady who came out put me in excellent humor. She was not hurt, but had her new silk umbrella broken square in two, and she flashed the pieces before the delinquent's eyes and reeled off the High Dutch to him with vehement volubility. I wished I could have understood her more precisely. Though not more than eighteen, she developed a tongue that would have done credit to forty.
The drivers ahead stopped and came back, helped right the stage, and each took a shy at the unlucky charioteer, though in fact they were as much in fault as he, only more fortunate. I suspected before that this trotting down zig-zags was not the thing, and now I know it, and shall remember it, at least for one week. And I have given this tedious detail to urge and embolden others to remonstrate against it. The vice is universal—at least it was just as bad at Mount Cenis as here, and here were four carriages all going at the same reckless pace. The truth is, it is not safe to trot down such mountains and hardly to ride down them at all. We passed scores of places where any such unavoidable accident as the breaking of a reach or a hold-back must have sent the whole concern over a precipice where all that reached the bottom would hardly be worth picking up. Who has a right to risk his life in this fool-hardy manner?
The next time I cross the Alps, I will take my seat for the stopping-place at the nearer foot, and thence walk leisurely over, with a long staff and a water-proof coat, sending on my baggage by the coach to the hotel on the other side. If I can get an hour's start, I can (by straightening the zig-zags) nearly double it going up; if not, I will wait on the other side for the next stage. If it were not for the cowardly fear of being thought timid, there would be more care used in such matters. Hitherto, I have not given the subject much consideration, but I turn over a new leaf from the date of this adventure.
We came down the rest of the mountain more carefully, though still a great deal too fast. A girl of twelve or thirteen breaking stone by the road-side in a lonely place was among the note-worthy features of the wilder upper region. Trees, Potato-patches, Grain-fields were welcome sights as we neared them successively, though the Vine and the Chestnut did not and Indian Corn barely did reäppear on this side, which is much colder than the other and grows little but Grass. At the foot of the pass, the valley widened a little, though still with steep, snow-capped cliffs crowding it on either side. Five hours from the summit and less than two from the base, we reached the pretty town of Altorf, having perhaps five thousand inhabitants, with a mile width of valley and grassy slopes on the surrounding mountains. A few minutes more brought us to the petty port of Fluellen on Lake Lucerne, where a little steamboat was waiting to bring us to this city. I would not just then have traded off that steamboat for several square miles of snow-capped sublimity.
Lake Lucerne is a mere cleft in the mountains, narrow and most irregular in form, with square cliffs like our Palisades, only many times higher, rising sheer out of its depths and hardly a stone's throw apart. Mount Pilatte and The Rhigi are the most celebrated of those seen from its breast. After making two or three short turns among the hights, it finally opens to a width of some miles on a softer scene, with green pastures and pleasant woods sweeping down the hills nearly or quite to its verge. Lucerne City lies at or near its outlet, and seems a pleasant place, though I have had no time to spend upon it, as I arrived at 8½ P. M. too weary even to write if I had been able to sleep. I leave for Basle by Diligence at eight this morning.
XXXII.
LUCERNE TO BASLE.
Basle, July 13, 1851.
Very striking is the contrast between all of Switzerland I had traversed, before reaching Lucerne, and the route thence to this place. From Como to the middle of Lake Lucerne is something over a hundred miles, and in all that distance there was never so much as one-tenth of the land in sight that could, by any possibility, be cultivated. The narrow valleys, when not too narrow, were arable and generally fertile; but they were shut in on every side by dizzy precipices, by lofty mountains, often snow-crowned, and either wholly barren or with only a few shrubs and stunted trees clinging to their clefts and inequalities, because nothing else could cling there. A fortieth part of these mountain sides may have been so moderately steep that soil could gather and lie on them, in which case they yielded fair pasturage for cattle, or at least for goats: but nine-tenths of their superficies were utterly unproductive and inhospitable. On the mountain-tops, indeed, there is sometimes a level space, but the snow generally monopolizes that. Such is Switzerland from the Italian frontier, where I crossed it, to the immediate vicinity of Lucerne.
Here all is changed. A small but beautiful river debouches from the lake at its west end, and the town is grouped around this outlet. But mountains here there are none—nothing but rich glades and gently swelling hills, covered with the most bounteous harvest, through which the high road runs north-easterly some sixty miles to Basle on the Rhine in the north-east corner of Switzerland, with Germany (Baden) on the east and France on the north. A single ridge, indeed, on this route presents a ragged cliff or two and some heights dignified with the title of mountains, which seem a joke to one who has just spent two days among the Alps.
Grass is the chief staple of this fertile region, but Wheat is abundantly grown and is just beginning to ripen, promising a noble yield. Potatoes also are extensively planted, and I never saw a more vigorous growth. Rye, Oats and Barley do well, but are little cultivated. Of Indian Corn there is none, and the Vine, which had given out on the Italian side some twenty miles below the foot of St. Gothard, does not come in again till we are close to the Rhine. But in its stead they have the Apple in profusion—I think more Apple trees between Lucerne and the Rhine, than I had seen in all Europe before—and they seem very thrifty, though this year's yield of fruit will be light. There are some other trees planted, and many small, thrifty forests, such as I had hardly seen before on the Continent. These increase as we approach the Rhine. There is hardly a fence throughout, and generous crops of Wheat, Potatoes, Rye, Grass, Oats, &c., are growing close up to the beaten road on either side. I don't exactly see how Cattle are driven through such a country, having passed no drove since crossing Mount St. Gothard.
The dwellings are generally large, low structures, with sloping, overhanging roofs, indicating thrift and comfort. Sometimes the first story, or at least the basement, is of hewn-stone, but the greater part of the structure is nearly always of wood. The barns are spacious, and built much like the houses. I have passed through no other part of Europe evincing such general thrift and comfort as this quarter of Switzerland, and Basle, already a well built city, is rapidly improving. When the Railroad line from Paris to Strasburg is completed, the French capital will be but little more than twenty-four hours from Basle, while the Baden line, down the German side of the Rhine, already connects this city easily with all Germany, and is certain of rapid and indefinite extension. Basle, though quite a town in Cæsar's day, is renewing her youth.