Swiss allmends, and a walk to see them

by F. Barham Zincke

I remained at Lungern for the rest of the day, that I might look at the allotments of the peasants. These were chiefly in the 500 acres of bottom land, which had been gained by lowering the lake. This work was accomplished by the peasants themselves, by cutting a tunnel through the rocky ridge that forms the foot, here the northern boundary, of the lake. You everywhere see the old margin of the lake, about 120 feet in vertical height, above the present level of the water. The diminished lake, like its neighbour of Sarnen, abounds in fish, which this day contributed to both my dinner and supper. While I was taking the latter, with no companion but my own thoughts, a young woman, connected with the Inn, approached, and leaning against the sill of the window opposite to my chair, entered into conversation with me. At first I supposed that she was prompted merely by the good-natured desire that a solitary stranger should have some one to talk with. But she soon told me that her object was to find whether I could assist her in carrying out a wish she had to get to England, to learn English. She was willing to give her services, sans gages, to a family that would board and lodge her, and give her a lesson daily in English. Of course, this little scheme was not motived by a disinterested thirst for knowledge, but by a praiseworthy desire to get on in the world. For an acquaintance with English is an accomplishment which at present secures for those, who have attained to it, well-paid places in Swiss hotels.

Aug. 4.—Had breakfasted, and left Lungern at 6 A.M. Sent on my malle and sac by a porter, who started 15 minutes before me. Reached Sacheln at 8.30, and found that the porter had already arrived. The road passes along what remains of the lake of Lungern, next along a gentle descent of two or three miles, and then along the lake of Sarnen. At Lungern I found that the carriage traffic had been interrupted for a time by the storm of Friday night. It took all the labour, that could be brought upon the road, during the two following days, to render it passable. As I walked along, I counted twelve places where torrents had, on that night, in their descent from the mountains, cut through the road, or deposited barriers of mountain débris upon it. In two instances culverts, for carrying torrents beneath the road, had been swept away. As such a storm had occurred, I was glad to have an opportunity for seeing its effects. In some places, where the storm-torrents had cut for themselves channels on the mountain side, only soil had been brought down, and in some only small stones. These were places in which the incline was not great. In other places, where the mountain side was precipitous, large rocks had been undermined, and dislodged, and swept down by the rush of water. The largest rock I saw on the road—I did not go off the road to look for effects—was in a place where it passed through a wood, and a bridge had been carried away. Here the prisoners from the jail of Sarnen, with shackled feet, were at work under the inspection of a gendarme. This rock was a cube of somewhat more than 3 feet. There were tens of thousands of tons of rocks of less size above, and below, and around. One can imagine with what crashing, and thundering, they must have come down through this wood—a torrent, a continuous avalanche, of rocks.

I observed in one place, where a torrent had at last reached a gently sloping meadow, that it had formed for itself a levée on each side, and had rigidly confined itself to the space between the two levées. The pieces of wood and stone, and the earth it had carried along with it, when running down a greater incline, it had, when it reached the meadow, where, from flowing with less rapidity, it was no longer able to carry them along, dropped, and piled up on the right and left. And, then, these torrent-constructed barriers had confined the torrent, that had constructed them, to the intermediate space. The grass, just fit to be cut for the second hay crop, was standing outside the levées, as erect as if there had been no storm at all; but between the levées it was either completely washed up by the roots, and carried away, or flattened down to the ground. It was interesting, and instructive, to have presented for leisurely examination this instance of the way in which rivers often embank themselves. The immediate bank of the Nile is generally raised considerably above the level of the country it is passing through; and so it must be with all rivers whose waters are at times much charged with solid matter, readily deposited. If during the coal epoch the amount of rain-fall in this part of the world, or generally throughout the world, was greatly in excess of what it is now, the kind of work exhibited in my walk of this morning, that is to say the transportation of soil and broken rock from higher to lower levels, must then have been going on upon a grand scale. There are, I suppose, reasons for believing in a wet epoch at that time, just as there are for believing that there was once a glacial epoch.

On the gently rising mountain, on the side of the lake of Sarnen opposite to the road, there is a great deal of land in small prairies. It may be inferred that almost all these prairies are private property from the way in which they are interspersed with châlets, and planted with trees. Here and there are patches of grain, the golden colour of which, at this season, contrasts well with the bright green of the prairies, and the dark green of the trees, and patches of wood. Above, are more extended forests, and mountain pastures. Many of both of these latter belong to the Commune. In the foreground is the blue lake. The whole is a varied, quiet, charming scene.

I called a halt at Sacheln, as I had a letter to one of the magnates of the place—in the address he was styled as Bundesrichter—who had paid some attention to the history, and present working, in Unterwalden, of the Swiss system of commonable land. I intended in the afternoon to go on to Sarnen. I put up at the Rössli Inn, between the road and the church, kept by Von Ah. He is a rough-looking fellow, but I found him good-natured, talkative, and intelligent. He had much to say about the past history of the Canton, and the present condition of the people. He was proud, and with good reason, of the gaststube of his wooden house. Its walls were covered with carved panelling. The buffet was very rich in carving, into which was introduced the date of 1619. The clock, by the same token, had been ticking for a hundred and one years.

For dinner he gave me two kinds of fish from the lake—alet and boriksen, as the rosy, black-eyed damsel in attendance told me, with pleasure at finding that she could answer the stranger’s questions. Then came, in succession, a veal steak, a mutton stew, stewed prunes, cheese, dessert, and a bottle of eau de Seltz. As the good man’s charge for all this was but two francs, and, to be precise, ten centimes, he must have taken the satisfaction he had felt at showing his gaststube in part payment.

I found the Bundesrichter ready to give me the information I required, and to aid me in any way he could. He procured for me a printed copy of all the regulations relating to the public property of the Commune; and offered to answer by post whatever questions might subsequently occur to me.

At Sacheln, of course, one goes to the church to stand before the bones, and the old coat, of St. Nicholas Von der Flüe, for the sake of the thoughts the sight may give rise to in the mind, on the spot. He a saint! Heaven save the mark; and some day send the simple folk of Unterwalden better ideas on what goes to make a saint. This saint was one only because to indulge a morbid crotchet, at all events a mistaken and mischievous idea, he deserted his family, and the duties he owed to them, to his neighbours, and to himself, to live in solitude, and mortification, in a cave; and who gave out, as vouching for his sanctity, that for eighteen years heaven had supported his body with no other food than the sacramental wafer, received once a month. This was what made him a saint. Why, there is not a rural parish in England without its poor Hodge, who is a better man, a truer saint than he; and who, if at last he were to break down under the strain on mind and body he is now manfully sustaining, and attempt what invested this old crazy ascetic with the halo of sainthood, would be bid by the law to maintain, and not to desert, his family. And who, if he were to defend his dereliction of natural duty by the assertion that heaven was keeping him alive without food, would be regarded as belonging to the same class of impostors as the Welsh fasting girl. And yet here, in this church, dedicated to the God of truth, and Who is to be served by truth, are exhibited the troglodyte’s bones, and his old coat, by the priest who ministers at the altar, and by the ecclesiastical authorities who stand behind the priest; and who are teaching the peasants of Unterwalden that these bones, and this old coat, work miracles. Over the old coat they have set up the text of Holy Writ, from the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, which tells us that ‘from the body of Paul were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.’ And there on the walls around are the tablets which affirm the miracles this old coat has worked. It must have worked them, for the infallible authority of God’s Vicar will vouch for it. Poor Hodge! let us hope that your turn will some day come; and that the miracle of patient and unnoticed self-denial, your life exhibits, will work the mighty miracle of bringing some of us to understand in what virtue and sanctity consist, and of casting out the evil spirits of discontent, selfishness, and vice.

From Sacheln to Sarnen I went by the lake. The boat was of unpainted deal, of the size, form, and colour of the boats you see on all the Swiss and Italian lakes. It was propelled by two men, standing up, and working their paddles, vis-a-vis. You are reminded of a gondola, though why is not obvious, for the resemblance is as lacking in body as that between Monmouth and Macedon. These lake-boats are flat-bottomed, with their bows rising out of the water in the segment of a circle. Any village carpenter might put them together. The flat bottom is connected with the perpendicular sides by wooden angle-pieces, fastened with wooden pins. Till recently iron was dear in Switzerland; and wood, and, in winter, time were cheap. The same cause led to the same practice in the construction of their châlets, for which wooden trenails were used. In the English church at Meiringen, hardly yet finished, I observed that the fastenings of the benches, of the church furniture, of the window mullions, &c., were of the same material, though by the aid of the railway iron fastenings must be now of much the same price in Meiringen as in Belgium and Germany. In this, as in many other things, a practice, long after what gave rise to it has been removed by a change in circumstances, is still conserved by custom.

To Sarnen the lake is about three quarters of an hour. I was satisfied at finding myself on the water; not merely because it was a pleasant change from exertion to repose, but also because it gave an opportunity for seeing both sides of the valley to advantage. But that was not all. There is in water something that is of itself pleasing. We may not be able to define precisely what it is that makes it so, but we feel that it is so. It has a kind of history; a kind of life; an intelligible purpose. It came from far, from other parts of the world, on the way it had passed through other forms. It is moving back to the great ocean from whence it came. It will, as it returns, be supporting organized life. To the eye, to the ear, to the bodily sense, it is pleasing: and so is it also to the mental apprehension.