Yes, it speaks. Aye, and the mountains speak, the Lake speaks, the whole wide landscape speaks—speaks of all we owe to the violent deaths of such as these. And if to-day this land breathes freedom throughout every pore; if to-day she attracts all wanderers by her beauty, how shall we deny that it is due to a convulsed and tortured past?
But in admitting this, our deep sense of gratitude to bygone men and days, is such gratitude to bespeak our resolve to follow closely their example? Are we to despair of freedom and beauty being maintained, even accentuated, by other and more refined methods? Why should we? Why should not this very freedom, this very beauty be the instrument of our secure regeneration? In view of the hundreds of thousands of travellers who come to Switzerland (it is deputed that 300,000 yearly visit Lucerne alone), who fall under the beneficent spell of her life and landscape, and who return to their hearths and homes with ineffaceable souvenirs—in view of all this precious and increasing influence, it seems impossible that history can so far repeat itself as to soil afresh the Alps with battle-carnage. Walk along the lake-front amid the gathering shades of night, when the gulls have gone to slumber, leaving the duck and coot alone to seek their supper from the passer-by, and when the lights flash out from the great hotels on the heights of Pilatus, the Stanserhorn, the Bürgenstock and the Rigi. Can you help believing, when you gaze over at those far-off constellations of electric lights, that men are now living in closer and truer communion with all that is ennobling in Nature? can you help believing that, although men may drag luxury with them to the summits of the Alps—although they there must have their billiard and their music room, and eat their evening’s dinner in full dress, yet are they inevitably influenced for good in their ideals, and in the practical assertion of their ideals, by the air, the flowers, the snow-capped peaks and rolling glaciers around them, and the wondrous lake-land panorama spread out low about their feet?
THE LAKE, THE RIGI, AND MOUNT PILATUS
To call the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons the Lake of Lucerne is as correct locally as to call Lac Leman the Lake of Geneva; and it meets with as much sympathy among the inhabitants. The Lake of Lucerne is really but a modest portion of the whole, and the whole is so delightfully irregular in form as almost to be three lakes, if not four. The form of the Lake is sometimes likened to that of a cross, but this, as any map will show, is a reckless definition, and has far less warrant than the profile of Pilate’s face which some find in the outline of Mount Pilatus, or the lion couchant which some see in the combined outline of the two Mythen when viewed from Brunnen. As a matter of fact, the Lake’s form is too eccentric to resemble anything but what it is—a series of bays. And, speaking strictly, the Lake of Lucerne is just one of these bays.
Where fascination and charm are so great and abundant, where places of historical and natural interest are so many and famous, it is not easy to decide what to see first; and yet, I suppose, comparatively few visitors hesitate to make a bee-line for the Rigi. By right of conquest the Rigi holds a prime place among the attractions of the district. Thanks to sunrise, thanks to Mark Twain, to Tartarin, and a host of others, thanks also to the fact of the railway to its summit being the first of its kind in the field, the Rigi’s fame is as great as, if not greater than, that of Tell’s Chapel on the Bay of Uri. Certainly it is greater than that of Pilatus—though whether it is deservedly so is another matter. So famous is it, that writers, carried far upon the wave-crest of enthusiasm, have not shrunk from acclaiming it “Queen of the Mountains”—a valuation which gives one furiously to think how uncommonly crowded with royalties is this stanch republic. But whatever may be thought of the Rigi as a monarch among mountains, it is, in any case, a Mecca among mountains. Its summit, the Kulm, is deservedly popular, not only for the intrinsic beauty of the vast panorama of Alp, valley, lake, and plain, but also because it is an eminently suitable spot from which to comprehend something of the rugged, tumbled country whose stern exigencies upon life have bred that simple, direct, and nobly independent spirit which broke the might of Austria and of Burgundy and wrung—indeed, still wrings—respect from all enemies of Freedom.
However, with all due respect for Her Majesty, I see no reason why her illustrious presence, though it dominate the Bay of Küssnacht, should so overwhelm the rights and reputation of that Bay. In course of sequence, and moving, as is seemly, with the orbit of the sun, the Bay of Küssnacht should come first upon the programme. But there stands the Rigi, clothed in such bright repute that the Bay which laves its northern base is, as far as tourists are concerned, comparatively neglected. Little else do many see of its beauty-spots than the tiny gleaming-white shrine to St. Nicholas, the fishermen’s patron saint, set picturesquely upon one of the isolated rocks of Meggen; and this only as the steamer passes on its way across to the royal presence at Vitznau. And yet this Bay possesses a very charming individuality. There is little that is wild and rugged about it, if the bold escarpments of the Rigi be excepted. Handsome châteaux—particularly Neu-Habsburg, standing by the ruins of an ancient seat of the Dukes of Hapsburg—and country houses, orchards, and rich farm-pastures claim its shores. The verdure of field and tree touches the water’s edge and merges in a velvet-rich reflection of itself. Happy prosperity is the keynote of this Bay: “Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest”—welcome complement to the wild, weird shores of Uri. Moreover, at the end of the Bay is Küssnacht,
RUINS OF GESSLER’S STRONGHOLD AT KÜSSNACHT