Here we are in Zurich,—"by the margin of Zurich's fair waters,"—at the Hotel Baur au Lac, fronting Lake Zurich—a large and beautiful hotel, with an extensive garden, with flowers, shrubs, and pretty walks in front of it. Our windows command a full view of the beautiful lake, with its sides enlivened with chalets, villages, vineyards, and a highly-cultivated country, while in the background rise the snow peaks of the Alps, glittering in the morning sunlight, or rosy in its parting rays. There was the great Reiseltstock, looming up over eighty-six hundred feet, the Kammtistock, very nearly ten thousand feet, between which and the Scheerhorn is imbedded a great glacier, the Bristenstock, and other "stocks" and "horns" that I have not noted down, and therefore forgotten, save that even in the distance they looked magnificently grand, and like great altars with their snowy coverings lifted up to heaven.
The scenery of mountain, lake, and valley, seen from the promenades in Zurich, like grand pictures framed in the rim of the horizon, and presenting charming aspects, varied by the setting sun, give the tourist a foretaste of the picturesque beauty of the country he is now just entering. Lake Zurich, or the Zuricher See, as they call it, looked so pretty and romantic that we determined to embark on one of the little steamboats, and sail up and down it, to know and enjoy it better. So, after enjoying the creature comforts of the fine hotel, and fortified with a good night's rest, we embarked in the morning.
This lake is twenty-five miles long, and, at its broadest part, two and a half miles wide. As we sailed along, we noted the beautiful slopes of the hills, which are finely cultivated at the base, close down to the little villages on the shore. Above are vineyards and orchards, and still farther up, the dark-green forests clothe the hills, which lift their frontlets twenty-five hundred feet above the clear mirror that reflects them on its surface. We passed numerous picturesque little villages, making landings on alternate shores as we proceeded. Here was Thalwyl, charmingly situated, Horgen, with its hotel and charming garden upon the lake front, the picturesque little wooded peninsula of Au, and a pretty little village of Mannedorf, behind which rises a romantic height, called some sort of a "stiel" or "horn." And so we glided along, sometimes stopping at little villages that seemed, as we approached them, children's toys upon a green carpet, this effect heightened by the huge mountains, which rose grand and sublime in the distance; but they had all that novelty so charming to the tourist—their odd-shaped little churches, and curious and quaint houses nestling in romantic nooks, and the occasional odd dress worn by peasants who had come down from the interior, and the customs which to us seemed so old-fashioned.
We found our steamer was a mail-boat, and at one station, instead of the usual official in waiting, the sole occupant of the little pier was a huge Newfoundland dog, who seized the little mail-pouch, holding perhaps a couple of quarts, that was tossed ashore, and galloped off with it at full speed for the village, half a mile distant, to the infinite amusement of the spectators. He was the regular mail-carrier, performing the service twice a day of bringing down the mail-pouch, which he deposited on the pier on the arrival of the boat, and carrying back the one which was left by it.
We went on shore at a town bearing the delightfully-euphonious name of Rapperschwyl—a picturesque old place, with an old castle and church, and wooded heights, which command fine views. At this point a fine bridge, forty-five hundred feet long, and supported by one hundred and eighty oaken pillars, crosses the lake. So we strolled over it, and through the town, which contains about two thousand inhabitants, looked at the old church and castle, and then reëmbarked on the return steamer, once more to admire the beauty of the scenery of the lake shores in this romantic region, and birthplace of Switzerland's freedom.
[CHAPTER X.]
Now let us tighten our girdles for our first experience in Swiss mountain-climbing, for we start for Righi at nine A. M., on the summit of which we propose to see the sun set, and watch his rising on the morrow. Out of the handsome railway station we ride in an elegant and comfortable car, and in two hours are at the steamboat landing at Lake Zug, one of the most picturesque sheets of water in Switzerland—an azure pond nine miles in length; and, as we float upon its blue bosom, we see the object of our excursion, Righi-Kulm, which towers full forty-two hundred feet above the lake. The "Righi" consists of a group of mountains lying between the three Swiss lakes of Zug, Lucerne, and Lowerz, and "Righi-Kulm" is the Righi summit, or highest peak—fifty-five hundred and forty feet above the level of the sea. We disembark at Arth, get a bad dinner, or lunch, of tough chicken, poor soup, and bad claret, and start away for the foot of the mountain in an open carriage, with our saddle horses, mules, and guides rattling along behind us, for the ascent. Half an hour brings us to Goldau.
Goldau! And as I stood on the high road, and looked over into what was once the little valley where stood the village, and marked the track of the tremendous avalanche of a thousand feet broad and a hundred feet thick, which started three thousand feet above, from the mountain, on its resistless career of destruction, my memory went back to days in the public schools of Boston, where, from that best of compilations as a school reader, John Pierpont's American First Class Book, we used to read the "Lament of a Swiss Minstrel over the Ruins of Goldau," commencing,—