While the west grows momentarily more pale the eastern heavens flush with afterglow, suffuse their spaces with pink and violet. Daffodil and tenderest emerald intermingle: and these colours spread until the West again has rose and primrose and sapphire wonderfully blent, and from the burning skies a light is cast upon the valley—a phantom light, less real, more like the hues of molten gems that were the stationary flames of sunset. Venus and the moon, meanwhile, are silvery clear. Then the whole illumination fades like magic.... There is hardly any colour except the blue of sky and shadow. Everything is traced in vanishing tints, passing from the almost amber of the distant sunlight through glittering white into pale grey and brighter blues and deep ethereal azure. The pines stand in black platoons upon the hillsides, with a tinge of red or orange on their sable. Some carry masses of snow. Others have shaken their plumes free. The châlets are like fairy houses or toys; waist-deep in stores of winter fuel, with their mellow tones of madder and umber relieved against the white, with the fantastic icicles and folds of snow depending from their eaves, or curled like coverlids from roof and window-sill, they are far more picturesque than in the summer. Colour, wherever it is found, whether in these cottages or in a block of serpentine by the roadside, or in the golden bulrush-blades by the lake shore, takes more than double value. It is shed upon the pallid landscape like a spiritual and transparent veil. Most beautiful of all are the sweeping lines of pure untroubled snow, fold over fold of undulating softness, billowing along the skirts of the peaked hills. There is no conveying the charm of immaterial, aerial, lucid beauty, the feeling of purity and aloofness from sordid things, conveyed by the fine touch on all our senses of light, colour, form, and air, and motion, and rare tinkling sound. The enchantment is like a spirit mood of Shelley's lyric verse.
A MOUNTAIN PATH, GRINDELWALD.
To the tourist who contemplates a first visit to Switzerland, and can give but little time to the country—making the visit, let us suppose, as part of a European tour,—perhaps the best centre of interest is Lucerne. There he may enjoy at the outset all the characteristic charms of Swiss scenery—the beautiful lakes, the meadows, and orchards stretching up from the blue waters to the hills, the great mountains of Rigi, Pilatus (said by an ancient myth to have been the refuge of the despairing Pontius Pilate), and the Stansenhorn. There, too, may be found the delight of the Alpine pine forests and of the Alpine flowers. There, too, are splendid survivals of the picturesque life of medieval Switzerland. And, as the Swiss gate of the St. Gothard Pass, Lucerne offers at once the opportunity to explore one of the most wonderful paths of the world, and to pass quickly through to the Italian lakes when the time that can be given to Switzerland has been exhausted.
The St. Gothard Pass was a Middle Ages' track across the Alps. It was not known to the Romans, who used the passes of the Valais and the Rhaetian Alps. From the oldest document in which the Gothard is mentioned, it seems that in the middle of the thirteenth century the pass was already frequented by pilgrims. Following the pilgrims came merchants from Lucerne, Zurich, and Basel, to trade with the rich towns of fertile Lombardy. Originally the St. Gothard Pass was a narrow mountain-path gradually widening into a mule-track. It was not until the early part of the nineteenth century that the pass was made accessible to carriages, and the highway constructed which still is a fine example of a mountain road. Under the most favourable conditions four days was the time required to pass from Lucerne to Milan, and inclement weather would often force the traveller to take shelter for days. Now the pass is traversed in a few hours by the St. Gothard railway built jointly by Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. After tedious conferences, a treaty was signed by these three countries in 1871, providing that subsidies to the work should be granted by the contracting parties. The share of Germany and Switzerland was fixed at £800,000 each, and that of Italy at £1,800,000. During the process of construction, however, a material increase was necessary, so that Germany in the end contributed £1,200,000 to the cost, Switzerland £1,240,000, and Italy £2,320,000.
In September 1872 work was begun, and on February 29, 1880, after nearly eight years of dangerous work, the piercing of the tunnel was accomplished. The courageous chief engineer, Louis Favre, eight months before the completion of the tunnel, fell a victim to its close, heavy air, and died of heart failure whilst in the workings. The line was opened in June 1882 and is still a great highway of railway traffic, though the Simplon railway and the new Loetschberg railway have come as rival trans-Alpine routes.
The oldest pass of the Alps is that which is now called the Great St. Bernard, the Summus Penninus of the Romans. Mr. Coolidge, in Swiss Travel and Swiss Guide-Books, states that the first known guide-book was written for the crowd of pilgrims crossing this pass, by the Abbot of Thingör in Iceland, about 1154. There was a shelter building on the pass before the year 812. A century later the Little St. Bernard was similarly provided. The Simplon was equipped with a shelter before 1235, the St. Gothard before 1331, and the Grimsel before 1479.
But before leaving Lucerne by the St. Gothard Pass, the traveller with any claim to historic imagination will visit Schwyz, the cradle of Swiss independence and the various shrines of the heroes of the Forest Cantons. Zurich, too, is easily accessible from Lucerne; also the battlefield of St. Jacob on the Birse, where, in the year 1444, 1500 valiant Swiss held their ground against a force of French more than twenty times as great. When night fell, this band, defying death with the cry, "Our souls to God, our bodies to the Armagnacs," was almost annihilated. Along the St. Gothard Pass are the records of another great military exploit, Suwarow's passage of the Alps. At the Devil's Bridge, over the Reuss, a Russian cross records the desperate fight between the French and Suwarow's army in 1799.
For the tourist who would mingle with his enjoyment of natural beauty visits to famous literary centres, Geneva of course will be the Swiss headquarters. From there stretch right and left the storied shores of Lake Leman. He may visit in turn Ferney, Coppet, and Lausanne, where the gloomy austerity of Genevan Calvinism seemed to take on something of a comic spirit. There the use of tobacco and snuff was forbidden under the Seventh Commandment! "Here," said a preacher, "we snuff only the Word of God." Montreux can be visited, or can be made the headquarters of a stay by the Lake of Leman if economy is a consideration, for it has the reputation of being the cheapest Swiss place to live in.