If the tourist has not previously learned that the Bear is the heraldic emblem of Berne, he will learn that fact before he has been in the city a quarter of an hour. Two granite bears guard the city gates; a shield in the Corn Exchange is upheld by a pair of them, in wood; fountains have their effigy carved upon the top; and in the cathedral square, keeping guard of a large bronze statue of a mounted knight in full armor, Rudolf von Erlach, are four huge fellows, the size of life, in bronze, at the four corners of the pedestal. Then the city government keep a bears' den at the public expense—a huge circular pit, in which three or four living specimens of their tutelar deity solemnly promenade or climb a pole for buns and biscuits from visitors.
Wood-carving can be bought at Berne of very pretty and artistic execution, and the wood-carvers have exhausted their ingenuity in producing groups of bears, engaged in all sorts of occupations. I had no idea what a comical figure this clumsy beast makes when put in such positions. We have stopped at many a shop window and laughed heartily at the comical groups. Here were a party of bears playing at ten-pins: a solemn old Bruin is adding up the score; another, with one foot advanced and the ball poised, is about to make a ten strike, and a bear with body half bent forward watches the effect of the roll. Another group represented a couple at the billiard table, with one, a rakish-looking cub, making a scientific stroke, and his companion, another young "buster," with arm akimbo and cigar in mouth, watching them. There was a group of bear students, all drunk, arm in arm; two old bears meeting and shaking hands on 'Change; whole schools studying, with a master putting the rod upon a refractory bear; and a full orchestra of bears playing on every variety of musical instrument; in fact, bears doing almost everything one had seen men do, and presenting a most irresistibly comic appearance. These figures were all carved from wood, and were from a couple of inches to six inches in height. Scarce any tourist leaves without a bear memento.
The great music-box and carved wood-work stores here are museums in their way. Of course the more elaborate and best wrought specimens of wood-carving command high prices, but nothing like the extortions of the fancy goods stores in America. Berne is a grand place to buy music-boxes in carved wood-work, and cuckoo clocks; some of these contrivances are very ingenious. We visited one great "magasin" near the hotel, where they had photograph albums, with carved wood covers, that played three tunes when you opened them; cigar buffets that performed a polka when you turned out the weed to your guests; work-boxes that went off into quadrilles when you lifted the lid, and tables that performed grand marches when you twisted their drawer-knobs. Every once in a while the cuckoos darted out of one or two of the threescore clocks, of which no two were set alike, bobbed their heads, cuckooed, and went back again with a snap; and there was one clock fashioned like a Swiss chalet, from the door of which at the hour a figure of a little fellow, six inches in height, emerged, and, raising a horn to his mouth, played an air of a minute's duration, and retired. Fatigued, I sank into a chair whose arms were spread invitingly, when I was startled by that well-known air, the Sailor's Hornpipe, going off as if somebody had put a band of music into my coat-tail pocket. Springing to my feet, the music stopped; but as I sat down, away it went again right underneath me. It was a musical chair, and I sat it playing.
We strolled through the curious old streets with the sidewalks under the arcades of the buildings, saw the curious old clock-tower, where, a few minutes before the hour, an automaton cock crows, and then it is struck by a comical figure with a bell and a hammer, while a troop of automaton bears appear, and march around on a wooden platform. An old fellow with an hour-glass turns it over, and the cock concludes the performance by again flapping his wings and crowing.
One of the most delightful places of promenade in the city is the cathedral terrace, a broad, shady walk, three or four hundred feet long and two hundred or more wide. It is one hundred feet above the river, and about ninety above the city street at the base. This terrace commands a fine view of the whole range of distant mountains, and is a favorite resort on summer evenings, where one may enjoy an ice-cream, cigar, cup of coffee, or light wine, and long after the twilight has deepened in the valley, watch the rosy hue that varies its tints upon the shining mountain peaks in the distance.
At the old cathedral we heard a finer and larger organ than that at Lucerne, but an inferior performer, which made even the beautiful harmony that pealed beneath the Gothic arches seem tame in comparison. From Berne by rail, a ride of an hour and a half brought us to Freiburg, where we tarried a few hours to see its great suspension bridges, and hear its great organ. The hotel at which we stopped commanded a fine view of both the bridges, black threads spanning a deep ravine. Freiburg is upon a steep rocky hill-side, at the base of which winds the river, and extending over the chasm, to the opposite bank, are the graceful and wondrous bridges. The first we crossed was nine hundred and eighty-five feet long, and one hundred and seventy-five feet above the river beneath, and is suspended by four chains of about twelve hundred feet in length. The ends of this great bridge are secured by one hundred and twenty huge anchors, fastened to granite blocks sunk deep into the earth. After crossing, we took a pleasant walk upon the lofty bank opposite, from which we had a good view of the town, with the River Sarine winding close about it. We passed on to some distance above, where the other bridge, known as the Bridge of Gotteron, spanned a romantic rocky ravine; and from the centre of this structure we looked down two hundred and eighty-five feet, into the very streets of a little village directly under us, jammed in between the cliffs. This bridge is seven hundred feet long.
The great organ in Freiburg is said to be one of the finest in Europe, and a little guide-book says it has sixty-seven stops and seven thousand eight hundred pipes, some of them thirty-two feet in length. We heard almost the same programme performed as at Lucerne, and had, therefore, opportunity of comparison. The instrument was not managed with the consummate skill of that at Lucerne, and the vox humana stop was vastly inferior; but in the Storm piece the performer, in addition to the music of the convent organ, faintly heard amid the war of elements, also introduced the pealing of the convent bell, a wonderfully correct imitation; and in the Wedding March the blast of the trumpet was blown with a vigor and naturalness not exceeded even by human lips.
From Freiburg we sped on to Lausanne, and, without stopping in the town, rode down to the little port of the place, Ouchy, on the very bank of the very blue and beautiful Lake Leman, and stopped at the Hotel Beau Rivage. This hotel is another one of those handsome and well-kept hotels, which, from their comfort, elegant surroundings, and many conveniences, add so much to the tourist's enjoyment. This house is three hundred feet long and five stories high, fronts upon the lake, and has a beautifully laid out garden and park of nearly two acres in front and about it. My fine double room looks out upon the blue lake, with its plying steamboats and its superb background of distant mountains. At the little piers in front of the hotel grounds are row and sail boats for the use of visitors; and some of the former are plying hither and thither, with merry parties of ladies and gentlemen beneath their gay striped awnings. Flowers of every hue bloom in the gardens. A band of eight or ten pieces performs on the promenade balcony in front of the house every evening from six to ten o'clock. There are reading-rooms, parlors, and saloons. The table is excellent, and attention perfect. Prices—for one of the best rooms looking out on the lake, for two persons, eight francs; breakfast, three francs each; dinner, four francs each; service, one franc each; total, for two persons, twenty-one francs, or four dollars and twenty-five cents, gold, per day; and these are the high prices at the height of the season for the best rooms. Reasonable enough here, but which they are fast learning to charge at inferior inns, in other parts of the country, on account of the prodigality of "shoddy" Americans.
The view of Lake Geneva, or Lake Leman, as it is called, is beautiful from Ouchy. The panorama of mountains upon the opposite shore extends as far as the eye can reach, and in the sunset they assume a variety of beautiful hues—red, blue, violet, and rose-color. We have been particularly fortunate in arriving here while the moon is near its full; and the effect of the silver rays on the lake, mountains, and surrounding scenery is beautiful beyond description.
Up in Lausanne we have visited the old cathedral, which is built upon a high terrace, and reached by a dirty, irregular flight of plank steps, about one hundred and seventy-five in number; at any rate, enough to render the climber glad to reach the top of them. From the cathedral terrace we have a view of the tortuous streets of the town, with its picturesque, irregular piles of buildings, a beautiful view of the blue lake, and the battlements of the distant peaks of Savoy. The cathedral, which is now a Protestant church, is very fine, with its cluster columns supporting the graceful vaulted roof over sixty feet above. It is three hundred and thirty-three feet long and one hundred and forty-three feet in width; and at one end, near where the high altar once stood, we were shown deep marks worn into the stone floor, which the guide averred were worn by the mailed knees of thousands of crusaders, who knelt there, one after the other, as they received the priestly blessing as their army passed through here on its way to do battle with the Saracen, and recover the Holy Sepulchre.