Away we sped from the town of Altorf, passed a little castle on a height, said to be that of Gessler, and soon emerged on the broad, hard, floor-like road of the St. Gothard Pass; and what pen can describe the grandeur and beauty of this most magnificent of all Alpine passes! One may read descriptions, see engravings, paintings, photographs, or panoramas, and yet get no idea of the grandeur of the spectacle.
There were huge walls of splintered crags, so high that they seemed to be rocky curtains hung down out of the blue heavens. These were mountains, such as I imagined mountains were when a child. We had to look straight up into the sky to see them. Great rocky walls rose almost from the road-side sheer up thousands and thousands of feet. A whole range of peaks is printed against the sky directly before us, half of them glittering with snow and ice. On we rolled over the smooth road, and emerged into a vast oval amphitheatre, as it were, the road passing through the centre, the green slopes the sides, and the huge peaks surrounding the outer barriers that enclosed it. We all stood up in our carriage, with exclamations of admiration at the magnificent scene that suddenly burst upon us.
Just below the broad road we were upon rushed the River Reuss, a foaming torrent. Beyond it, on the opposite side, all the rest of the distance, the whole beautiful valley, and along the green slope of the opposite mountain, for three or four miles, were Swiss chalets, flocks feeding, men and women at work, streams turning water-wheels, romantic waterfalls spattering down in large and small ravines. We could see them starting from their source miles away up among the blue glaciers, where, beneath the sun's beams, they fluttered like little threads of silver, and farther down came into view in great brooks of feathery foam, till they rushed into the river that owed its life to their contributions.
The distance is so enormous, the scenery so grand, that it is beyond description. I was like Gulliver among the Brobdingnagians, and feared I never should get my head down to a level with ordinary mortals again. I discovered, too, how deceptive the distance was among these huge peaks. In attempting to toss a pebble into the stream that flowed apparently thirty or forty feet below the road, and, as I thought, about twenty feet from it, it fell far short. Another and another effort failed to reach it; for it rolled over three hundred feet below, and more than two hundred and fifty from us.
Every variety of mountain peak rose before us against the dark-blue afternoon sky. There were peaks that ran away up into heaven, glittering with snow; old gray crags, splintered, as it were, with thunder-bolts; huge square, throne-like walls, the very throne of Jupiter; mountains that were like great brown castles; and peaks that the blue atmosphere of distance painted with a hundred softened and varied hues.
The reader may fancy himself viewing this scene, if possible, which we saw as we rode over this smooth, well-kept road—at our right a ridge of mountain wall, at our left the great ravine, with the white-foamed torrent rushing over its rocky bed, every mile or so spanned by arched stone bridges. On the other side of the stream were the pretty rural picture of farms, chalets, gardens, herds, and flocks. Every inch of ground that was available was cultivated, and the cultivation runs up the mountain side as far as vegetation can exist. All around the air was filled with the rattle of running water. Rushing torrents leaped from great ravines, little ribbons tumbled down in silver sheets, brooks clattered and flashed as they wound in and out of view on their way to the valley, cascades vaulted over sharp crags, and the sides of this vast amphitheatre were glistening with silvery veins. I counted over twenty waterfalls within one sweep of the eye.
We were surprised into admiration at the state of the road. It is a magnificent specimen of engineering, and, although it is a steady ascent, it is rendered easy and comparatively imperceptible by numerous curves. There are forty-six great curves, or zigzags, in the ascent. The road itself is nearly twenty feet wide, kept in admirable order, free as a floor from the least obstruction, and protected on the side towards the precipice by strong stone posts planted at regular intervals. There are many streets in Boston more difficult of ascent and more dangerous of descent than the road of the St. Gothard Pass.
The magnificent roads in the mountain passes, the fine hotels, the regulations respecting guides, and the care and attention bestowed upon travellers in Switzerland, are all for a purpose; for the Swiss, as I have remarked, live on the travel of foreigners, and are wise enough to know that the more easy and pleasant they make travelling to tourists, the more of them will come, and the more money will be spent. The roads are almost as great a wonder as the scenery. Sometimes, when a spur of the mountain juts out, a tunnel, or gallery, is cut right through it; and really there is comparatively but very little danger in traversing the Swiss passes, except to those venturesome spirits who persist in attempting to scale almost inaccessible peaks, or ascending Mont Blanc, Mont Rosa, or the dangerous Matterhorn.
As we rode on and on, and up and up, we came to a wild scene that seemed a very chaos—the commencement of creation. We found ourselves in the midst of great black and iron-rust colored crags, five or six thousand feet high, jagged, splintered, and shattered into every variety of shape. The torrent fairly roared hundreds of feet below. I had left the carriage, and was walking some hundreds of yards in advance alone as I entered this tremendous pass. The road hugged the great black rocky wall of the mountain that rose so high as almost to shut out the light. On the opposite side were mountains of solid black rock, not a spear of grass, not a speck of verdure, from base to summit. The great rushing mountain torrent tore, rushed, and leaped madly over the huge boulders that had rolled into its jagged bed, and its fall was all that broke the awful stillness and the gloomy grandeur of the place; for the whole scene, which the eye took in for miles, was lofty masses of everlasting granite, hurled together and cleft asunder as by supernatural means. I could think of nothing like it but Gustave Doré's pictures in Dante's Inferno; and this terrific pass was a good representation of the approach to hell itself. It is astonishing to notice how the scene hushes the visitor into an awe-struck silence; for it seems as if in these wild and awful heights, as on mid-ocean, man stands more immediately in the presence of the Almighty.
The scene culminates at the bridge itself,—appropriately named the Devil's Bridge,—where is a tremendously rapid waterfall pouring down, and where the eye takes in the whole of the black ravine, with the road like a white snake clinging to the precipitous mountain wall. Thirty or forty feet below, also spanning the torrent, are the remains of the old bridge upon which the battle was fought between the French and Austrians—a terrible place, indeed, for a death struggle. The new bridge, over which we crossed, is a splendid structure of granite, and has a single arch of twenty-five feet. Through the mighty ravines we wound upward and onward, on through a great tunnel, fifteen feet high and sixteen feet wide, cut through the solid rock a distance of over two hundred feet, soon after emerging from which we came to a verdant, broad, level pasture, here up among the mountains, a valley surrounded by lofty snow-clads. This is the valley of Uri, and its pleasant verdure, watered by the river which flows through it, is an agreeable contrast to the savage and gloomy grandeur of the scenery we had left behind us. There are only about four months of summer here, and the inhabitants subsist by their herds, and by conveying travellers' baggage and merchandise over to St. Gothard Pass.