From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

by Henry M. Field

CHAPTER XI.

SWITZERLAND.

Lucerne, July 22d.

To know Switzerland well, one should spend weeks and months among its lakes and mountains. He should not merely pay a formal visit to Nature, but take up his abode with her. One can never "exhaust" such a country. Professor Tyndall has been for years in the habit of spending his summer vacation here, and always finds new mountains to climb, and new passes to explore. But this would hardly suit Americans, who are in the habit of "rushing things," and who wish in a first visit to Europe, to get at least a general impression of the Continent. But even a few days in Switzerland are not lost. In that time one may see sights that will be fixed in his brain while life lasts, and receive impressions that will never depart from him.

We left the Vale of Chamouni with the feeling of sadness with which one always comes down from the mount, where he has had an immortal vision. Slowly we rode up the valley, often turning to take a last lingering look at the white head of Mont Blanc, and then, like Pilgrim, we "went on our way and saw him no more."

But we did not come out of Chamouni as we went into it, on the top of a diligence, with six horses, "rolling forward with impetuous speed" over a magnificent highway. We had now nothing before us but a common mountain-road, and our chariot was only a rude wagon, made with low wheels to go up and down steep ascents. It was only for us two, which suited us the better, as we had Nature all to ourselves, and could indulge our pleasure and our admiration, without restraint. Thus mounted, we went creeping up the pass of the Tête Noire. Nature is a wise economist, and, after showing the traveller Mont Blanc, lets him down gradually. If we had not come from those more awful heights and abysses, we should consider this day's ride unsurpassed in savage grandeur. Great mountains tower up on either hand, their lower sides dark with pines, and their crests capped with snow. Here by the roadside a cross marks the spot where an avalanche, falling from yonder peak, buried two travellers. At some seasons of the year the road is almost impassable. All along are heaps of stones to mark its track where the winter drifts are piled so high in these gorges that all trace of a path is lost. Even now in mid-summer the pass is wild enough to satisfy the most romantic tastes. The day was in harmony with the scene. Our fine weather was all gone. Clouds darkened the sky, and angry gusts of wind and rain swept in our faces. But what could check one's spirits let loose in such a scene? Often we got out and walked, to work off our excitement, stopping at every turn in the road that opened some new view, or sheltering ourselves under a rock from the rain, and listening with delight to hear the pines murmur and the torrents roar.

The ride over the Tête Noire takes a whole day. The road zigzags in every direction, winding here and there to get a foothold—now hugging the side of the mountain, creeping along the edge of a precipice, where it makes one dizzy to look down; now rounding a point which seems to hang over some awful depth, or seeking a safer path by a tunnel through the rocks. Up and down, hither and thither we go, but still everywhere encompassed with mountains, till at last one long climb—a hard pull for the horses—brings us to a height from which we descry in the distance the roofs and spires of a town, and begin to descend. But we are still more than an hour winding our way through the gentle slopes and among the Swiss chalets, till we rattle through the stony streets of Martigny, a place of some importance, from being at the foot of the Alps, and the point from which to make the ascent of the Great Saint Bernard. It was by this route that Napoleon in 1800 led his daring soldiers over the Alps; the long lines of infantry and artillery passed up this valley, and climbed yonder mountain side, a hundred men being harnessed to a single cannon, and dragging it upward by sheer strength of muscle. Of all the host that made that stupendous march, perhaps not one survives; but the mountains are still here, as the proof and the monument of their great achievement. And the same Hospice, where the monks gave bread and wine to the passing soldiers, is on the summit still, and the good monks with their faithful dogs, watch to rescue lost travellers. Attached to it is a monastery here in Martigny, to which the old monks, when worn out with years of exposure and hardship in living above the clouds, can retire to die in peace.

At Martigny we take our leave of mountain roads and mountain transport, as we here touch a railroad, and are once more within the limits of civilization. We step from our little wagon (which we do not despise, since it has carried us safely over an Alpine pass) into a luxurious railway carriage, and reclining at our ease, are whirled swiftly down the Valley of the Rhone to the Lake of Geneva.

Of course all romantic tourists stop at Villeneuve, to visit the Castle of Chillon, which Byron has made so famous. I had been under its arches and in its vaulted chambers years ago, and was surprised at the fresh interest which I had in revisiting the spot. It is at once "a palace and a prison." We went down into the dungeon in which Bonnivard was confined, and saw the pillar to which he was chained for so many years that his feet wore holes in the stone floor. The pillar is now covered with names of pilgrims that have visited his prison as "a holy place." We were shown, also, the Chamber of Question, (adjoining what was called, as if in mockery, the Hall of Justice!) where prisoners were put to the torture, with the post still standing to which they were bound, with the marks upon it of the hot irons which were applied to their writhing limbs. Under this is the dungeon where the condemned passed their last night before execution, chained to a sloping rock, above which, dimly seen in the gloom, is the cross-beam to which they were hung, and near the floor is an opening in the wall, through which their bodies were cast into the lake. In another part of the castle is shown the oubliette—a pit or well, into which the victim was thrown, and fell into some unknown depth, and was seen no more. Such are some of the remains of an age of "chivalry." One cannot look at these instruments of torture without a shudder at "man's inhumanity to man," and rejoicing that such things are past, since in no country of Europe—not even in Spain, the land of the Inquisition—could such barbarities be permitted now. Surely civilization has made some progress since those ages of cruelty and blood.