The steamer in somewhat less than an hour from Beckenried—we wished it had been longer about it—deposited us at Brunnen, having by the way touched at sunny Gersau, and at tiny Trieb—it is but a little châlet, the landing place for the Sonnenberg, adhering to the perpendicular side of the big mountain, where it dips into the lake. In half an hour more the diligence, en correspondance with the steamer, took us on to Schwyz. Here we had an early dinner at the Rössli. At 12.30 my wife and the little man went on by char to Einsiedln. Ammer and I started at the same time, for the same destination, by way of the Hacken Pass.
As to the Hacken Pass, it is a very small affair, but a very pleasant walk. You begin the ascent as soon as you are out of the town of Schwyz. It is over the depression between the Hochstock on the north, and a spur of the Great Mythen on the south. The ascent, from the town to the top, requires two hours. It frequently brings you in sight of the lake of Lowerz, and of the two branches of the lake of the Four Cantons, which at Brunnen make an angle. Grass and woods alternate to the top; the former being in excess of the latter. As you look down, occasionally, on Schwyz, you think of the history of the men, who in old times made it a home for freedom. And, as you note the countless divisions of the plain below, you think that its existing state is not unworthy of attention; for there is evidence before you not only that the old freedom has been maintained, unimpaired, on the two bases of general possessive, and of universal political, equality, but also that unflagging industry, the associate of much manly virtue, has aided in its maintenance. You see that every little plot of prairie, or of corn land, and every fruit tree, you are looking upon, is watched, and tended, with an interest none but small proprietors can feel. You sympathize in the emotions with which the members of the little community below you regard their history, their freedom, and the modest rewards of their unflagging industry.
As you, toilsomely, climb up the mountain, in the bright sunshine, frequently shaking off, with a toss of your head, the briny drops, which are trickling down your face, and finding their way into your eyes, you will perhaps ask yourself, whether this is pleasure. Do you, honestly, like it? That you find it pleasant to be at rest in the cool shade, does not necessarily imply that you do not like exertion in the warm sun, if the exertion neither distress your lungs, nor blister your feet. There is a kind of enjoyment to the mind at all events, if not to the body also, in violent effort, when you find that you can sustain it. It is pleasant to feel that the bodily mechanism is being made to respond to the will. But be this as it may with many, there is no disputing about individual tastes. Each must be allowed his own; with respect to which he is a law to himself, without appeal to any higher tribunal.
There is something almost startling, from its instantaneousness, and completeness, in the change of view on reaching the summit of a col. You have been, for a long time, struggling up against the mountain: that side of it, and the mountains right and left of that side, have all the time been filling your eye. Without giving the matter a thought, you step upon the summit. Every object you have so long been looking at is out of sight; is gone; is down behind you. All that you are now looking upon is new, and generally very different—another valley; other ranges of mountains. That in the twinkling of an eye such vast objects should disappear, and such vast ones take their places, staggers you for the moment that is necessary for the comprehension of the new situation.
Having now accomplished the short, and sharp ascent of the Pass, the long and easy descent lay before me; and easy enough it is at first, being almost level, and over short springy turf. After a time you enter the pine forest, which along the path clothes an underlying ridge of the Hochstock. Here you have a made road; and before the great storm of a fortnight back you would have had a bridge over the torrent—at this time of the year usually little more than a torrent channel—which comes down from the mountain. The storm, however, had not only carried away the bridge, but had also dug out a ravine in the loose rocky débris of the mountain side, to the depth, just about where the bridge had stood, of twenty feet, or more. I had, therefore, to scramble down to the bottom of the ravine, and to scramble up the other side, having in the bottom stepped over the little thread of water, to which the mighty raging torrent of a fortnight back had now shrunk. These excavations are easily formed by unusually heavy storms, because the mountain sides are generally only a talus of loose detrital matter that has, in the course of ages, fallen from the summits, and accumulated at the bottom, and on the flanks of the mountain, and eventually become covered with forests, and turf. This torrent, and many others on each side of the valley, had, on the occasion of the late storm, carried down hundreds of thousands of tons of stones and earth to the valley bottom, and into the Alpbach, the stream that drains the whole valley. Much of this freshly brought down stone had been spread out over the bottom of the broad channel of the Alpbach. In this way the new deposit has for a time raised its bed, that is to say till the pieces of which it is composed shall be ground down, and worn away. But while they, and the additional volume of storm-water, had to be provided with space, the Alpbach had been obliged in many places to widen its channel. This I saw it had done, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, by cutting away its banks. The lighter particles, those which the galloping freshet maintained in a state of suspension, had, of course, been carried down to the lake of Zurich.
Near the village of Alpthal I saw old stumps of alders and firs, that had been disinterred from grips, lately cut for the drainage of some damp prairies. These prairies, then, had been, at no very remote date, forest. In other places I have seen similar evidence of a change, which has of late been largely brought about in Switzerland in the uses to which land is put. As population increases, and, too, as more distant markets, by extended and improved means of communication, are brought within reach, more cows are kept. More milk and cheese are wanted at home; and can, profitably, be disposed of abroad. The forest, therefore, is cleared away; the rocks are quarried; and the land is laid down to grass. In this way more money is made of it. This conversion, however, by diminishing the amount of fuel brought to market, enhances its cost, which had already been enhanced by the increase of population. It is obvious that the poor, or rather those who have no land, are the chief sufferers by this change.
The scarcity, and consequent enhancement of the price of fuel, have now become in many parts of Switzerland, very considerable. In some places this has reached such a point that, as a check on its further progress, the Communes have ceased to supply their burgers with timber for new constructions, obliging them for this purpose to use stone. Great attention is now paid, pretty generally, to the maintenance of existing forests; and the profession of foresting is becoming an important one. The traveller, as he passes through the country, will, often, be struck with the care, he cannot but observe, has been bestowed on arboriculture. He sees that the rocky mountain side is supporting as many trees as could possibly be made to grow together on the space devoted to them; and that each individual tree has been carefully looked after, and scientifically pruned and trained, so that they shall not interfere with each other, but each have its fair share of space and light. In this work nature aids man’s labour and thought by giving to the forests abundance of moisture; and, between the frequent storms and showers, abundant floods of sunlight and warmth. It is this, that, on the mountain sides, enables trees to take root, and grow to considerable size, on what apparently is little more than bare rock. I often observed far from insignificant conifers on the summit of detached blocks of granite—situations which, in this country, could not have kept them alive.
The same cause it is that gives to the Swiss their abundance of grass. Grass, under such conditions of moisture and warmth, will grow anywhere. You see it in Switzerland rapidly establishing itself on the tops of roadside walls. If a heap of stones has been piled up in a field, lichens and moss soon appear upon it; and, by their decay, in time, fill the interstices. Then trees spring up upon it, or a mantle of turf creeps over it. This may be the work of a century, or two. I noted multitudes of instances of every step of the process. And in excavations on hill sides I saw evidence of how the process had been repeated, again and again, as the mountain torrents had brought down successive avalanches of rocky detritus. Each successive layer, in turn, and in time, had become in this way consolidated with mould, and then covered with forest, or turf: only for the steps of the process to be again repeated. Indeed, the greater part of the prairies, and of the workable land in the valleys, consists of nothing but a thin film of soil, superimposed on fragments of rock. If a tree in such situations is blown over, its roots tear up this thin film of soil, and leave the substratum of fragments of rock exposed to view. The industry of petty proprietors, who both have much time at their disposal, and will, themselves, reap the whole benefit of their labour, aided by the climatic conditions of the country, has created the cultivated surface of south-eastern, and no small part of that of north-western, Switzerland.
On the way to Einsiedln I met several parties of pilgrims, almost exclusively Valaisans, it would be more correct to say Valaisannes, returning from their devotions before the shrine of the black-faced Virgin. Ammer recognized them by their costume. The day was warm, and they were going up hill. The women of between fifty and sixty years of age were, I observed, suffering less from their exertions than, and were not looking so much heated as, their younger and more vigorous companions. For the last three, or four, miles the road is very much on a level. I reached Einsiedln at 4.30 P.M.—just four hours out. As the carriage-road from Schwyz makes a large loop, my wife and the little man were about the same time—only ten minutes less—on the way.