Swiss allmends, and a walk to see them

by F. Barham Zincke

August 16.—Stayed at Engelberg till 10 P.M. to see something more of the place. The monks declined to show us their library, or anything within their walls. To have admitted us would have been a violation of their rules. I was afterwards told that they do show their library on certain stated days: but as few people would be able, or disposed, to remain at Engelberg some days for the purpose of seeing a library, my inference was that it was not—which may be no fault of theirs—particularly worth seeing; for monks, in this respect like the rest of the world, if they have anything worth showing, are seldom indisposed to show it. In this way you may escape the unpleasant necessity of having to condemn them for churlishness.

Engelberg, as the books tell us, is 3,343 feet above the sea level: an elevation which gives it a fine, invigorating air, and a pleasant temperature in August. This, and the mountain excursions that may be made from it, among which is chief the ascent of the grand Titlis, are its attractions in these days; and there are many who feel their force. But of all those who yesterday were coming and going, none excepting ourselves came or went by the Surenen Pass. This appears to be a district that is not greatly in favour with pedestrians; and of those who are attracted to it, but few would wish to undertake so long a day without any snow-work, and even without any hard climbing. The Pass admits of being taken on horseback; but on the eastern side the path would be very rough for riding, and as this would also be a very tedious way of doing it, I, for one, would very much prefer doing it on foot.

Our immediate destination was Beckenried. We went by way of Stanz. The distance is given at thirteen and a half miles. The descent is nearly 2,000 feet, and is made in the first half of the road, much of which is through pleasant woods. The remaining part, that nearer to Stanz, is very much on a level, through meadows and orchards. The valley is not wide; and the mountain-ranges which inclose it are at a distance which enables you to see with distinctness every object on large expanses of their slopes, from the bottom to the top.

At Stanz we stopped for an early dinner. We put up at the Angel. I had spent an afternoon, and slept there, on my outward journey; and, as in the case of La Croix Blanche of Am Stag, had agreeable recollections of a pleasant-mannered and conversible manageress. At her suggestion, almost request, we visited the studio, hard by, of M. Deschwanden, the best known, at all events in his own locality, of living Swiss painters. One is glad to find an artist in Switzerland. Confining my remarks to the specimens of his work I saw in churches, and elsewhere than in his studio, I would hazard the criticism that his figures are not sufficiently suggestive of a substratum of bones and muscles, and that his colouring is too suggestive of lilies and roses. Of course the sacred subjects, in which chiefly he deals, generally require the expression of humble resignation, and of rapt devotion: still it is the resignation and the devotion of men and women, that is of organisms of bones, muscles, and nerves; and furthermore, resignation and devotion are, after their kind, action; and their surface, if one may so put it, presupposes the recognition, and anatomically correct disposition, of the inner mechanism. The external must be built on the internal.

In the afternoon we went on to Beckenried. Here we found that our voiturier and ourselves had formed very dissimilar estimates of the pecuniary value of the services he had rendered us. At Engelberg we had agreed with him for the payment of a certain fixed sum for taking us to Stanz, but had omitted this precaution for the stage from Stanz to Beckenried. For this his demand was unjustifiably extortionate. It was still early in the afternoon, and as I wished to see how matters of this kind are arranged in Switzerland, I was for laying the case before the Landamman. For this purpose I had not far to go; for this functionary was, as it happened, the landlord of the hotel at which we had just engaged apartments. The case was settled then and there, off-hand, as soon as stated, by the Landamman, standing in the middle of the road, without his hat, and with his hands in his pockets. He taxed the demand to the amount of four francs. The deduction should have been greater according to the tariff; but I was satisfied with the exposure of the man’s roguery, and with the expression exhibited in his face of baffled and impotent spite.

Had this voiturier been a good-natured vagabond, who, in making his exorbitant demand had betrayed some consciousness of its character, I should probably have compounded his roguery—and at the same time paid the due penalty for my carelessness in taking an article without asking the price of it—by giving him half the fictitious excess he demanded. I here record his attempted imposition not at all as an instance of what people must expect in Switzerland (though, of course, there, as elsewhere, they ought to be on their guard against the possible occurrence of such cases); for this youth—small-headed, hatchet-faced, low-browed, with small cold gray eyes, meagre bony nose, and thin bloodless lips—would have been as bad anywhere else: nature had gone wrong with him in his original composition, and had denied him all human feeling except that for a franc. My mention of the matter is rather intended as a reply to the loud and frequent charges we have lately heard against the administration of justice in Switzerland. We have been told that it is so tardy as to amount to a denial of justice. This little affair, as far as it goes, points in the opposite direction.

As to the charges, about which, too, one hears much, of greed and roguery in the people one has to deal with while travelling in Switzerland, I for my part am surprised at finding so little of this kind of thing; and that what I do find of it is not carried further. In England—for of course our standard of comparison is ourselves; I say nothing of Scotland, for the Scotch are a peculiar and privileged people, to be judged only by Scotchmen—I believe that innkeepers, lodging-house keepers, horse-jobbers, and porters, are in the matters complained of, a long way ahead of the corresponding classes in Switzerland. Let us, too, make a little allowance for ordinary human nature, when tempted beyond the ordinary human capacity for resisting temptation. Here are people who have been brought up under conditions of life, confirmed by long traditions, which oblige them to believe that there is nothing in the world like francs; and who then have for three or four months in the year such temptations to act on this belief as assail no other people. During these three or four months, mobs of travellers from all parts of the world are bidding against each other for every horse, porter, and apartment in the country. Those who have what is wanted know that many of those who want these things are rich, many in a hurry, and that all must have what they want. My astonishment is that the Swiss who cater for travellers have so much forbearance, so much honesty, are so obliging, and give themselves so much trouble to please. Most people, I think, would be of opinion that in this country, under such circumstances, there would be a general break-down in these virtues. Let any one recall what he has himself experienced at home in matters of this kind. We are a very exemplary people in the knowledge of virtue. In its practice, too, we can resist everything except temptation: but here the Swiss go beyond us, for they can, to some little extent, resist even that.

Our first care on reaching Beckenried had been to telegraph to the Sonnenberg Hotel, on the Seelisberg, for rooms for Saturday. The answer had been immediately returned that we could not be accommodated till Saturday next, the 23rd. In the matter of time we could not afford a week at Beckenried; and so, with regret, we gave up the idea of staying a few days at the Sonnenberg for the purpose of visiting and investigating its interesting neighbourhood. Being, then, obliged to drop this out of our programme, we determined to go on next day to Einsiedln, which stood next after Sonnenberg in our plans.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon and the next morning at Beckenried. It is a pleasant place. There is the lake to be looked at, and to be turned to account for bathing, boating, and fishing. All the hotels have bathing-houses. There is the view across the lake; charming walks up the mountains behind and beyond it; and a great many excursions to be made by steamboat to places on the lake. As to the fishing, as you see people fishing, and as the hotels are supplied with fish, we must infer that there are fish that may be caught. But we have no reason for supposing that any in this part of the lake ever allow themselves to be caught; for all this afternoon, and the following morning, we saw, on the terrace of our hotel, patient Germans watching their floats, but did not see anything come of their patient watching; nor do I suppose that they would have got anything by watching through other afternoons and mornings. As I looked at them I was reminded of the patience with which the same good people had laboured and waited for the resurrection of the Fatherland—patience worthy of the energy and determination they exhibited when the time came for action. I fancied that I saw in the patience of these unrequited anglers some of the honest pride late events had made justifiable. One can understand their feelings. The day many generations had desired to see, but had not seen, had come at last; and when it had come they showed themselves not unequal to the supreme occasion. They had plenty to ruminate upon. At Beckenried, for them the fishing was enough without the fish.

August 17.—When, yesterday, we had telegraphed to Sonnenberg, we had supposed that it was Friday. We had therefore thought that the answer returned, that we could not be accommodated before Saturday next, the 23rd, was wrongly expressed; for was not the next day, the 16th, Saturday? It had never crossed the mind of any one of the party that yesterday was Saturday, the 16th; and so this morning no one was aware that it was Sunday, the 17th. We had lost our time-reckoning; otherwise we should have arranged for staying this day at Beckenried. The first suggestion we had of our mistake was seeing Ammer, on the steamboat pier, in his Sunday attire. We had given up our apartments at Telfer’s, which, indeed, had over night been engaged, by telegraph, over our heads; and as we had on the previous evening been rejected both at the Sun and at the Moon, the two chief hotels of the place, which were full to overflowing, there was now nothing for us to do but to remain where we were, on the pier, for the steamboat. This loss of time-reckoning is a common occurrence in travelling; at least I generally find it to be so. At home every day has its appointed work. The work, therefore, of the day of itself informs you what day of the week it is. You are kept au courant of the almanac by the work you have to do. In travelling you have no work at all except to go on. This is the same for every day. You cannot, therefore, remember the days of the week without a continual effort, which would be disagreeable, and of no advantage.