“On the 8th of October they reached Coire, where, at last, the starved wretches had something to eat.
“And all this loss and suffering might have been largely obviated had Suvórof known enough to follow the Splügen pass and the Grisons, or having reached Altorf, joined Lipken by the Schächental.
“In honour of the heroic management of the Swiss campaign the Emperor made him generalissimo of the Russian army, calling him ‘the most renowned commander of this or any other age.’”
“That is certainly a great story,” said I. “Isn’t there a statue or a memorial to Suvórof?”
“Oh, yes. At the Devil’s Bridge, on the side of the chasm, there is a tall granite cross, about ten meters high, put up in 1899, and with an inscription in Russian to the memory of him and his brave comrades. The bridge itself is generally called after him.”
“It brings these great events very vividly before one to be at the very spot where they took place, does it not?”
“Yes, just think what centuries of history this Zürich of ours has seen! While I was in England a few years ago I picked up at a second-hand bookshop a queer old copy of Thomas Coryat’s ‘Crudities.’ Here is the book: in his dedication he calls himself ‘Thy benevolent itinerating friend T. C., the Odcombian Legge-Stretcher.’ He travelled through all this region, using his ‘ten toes for a nagge.’ Here he refers to Zürich: he says that while here he met Rodolphus Hospinianus, Gaspar Waserus and Henricus Bultigerus. Gaspar Waserus was the ‘ornamêt of the town, speaking eight languages’ but Hospinian—that ‘glittering lamp of learning’—told him that their city was founded in the time of Abraham. He derives the names from the fact that it belonged to two kingdoms—zweier Reich—‘one, on the farther bank of the Limacus,’ he says, ‘belonged to Turgouia, that on the hither bank Ergouia.’ The Latin name, according to him, was Turegum, quasi, duorum regum civitas.”
“An amusing case of imaginary etymology,” I should say. “But Zürich is a very ancient city, I believe.”
“Oh, yes. In 1853 and the following year there was a remarkable diminution of the waters in the lake and wide surfaces were laid bare. Near Obermeilen, above half-way up the lake, some labourers were embanking some new land and they discovered piles, bits of charcoal and other relics. Ferdinand Keller began making investigations and he discovered that these piles were in parallel rows and were evidently the remains of habitations. After that any number of similar discoveries were made. At Concise, near Neuchâtel, from one single aquatic village twenty-five thousand different objects were recovered. And they now know exactly how these villages looked with their floors of fire-hardened clay, their circular walls, their conical roofs made of wattled reeds and straw or bark. If you have been into any of the Swiss museums you have seen their weapons and stag-horns, bulls’ skulls, flint arrowheads, serpentine hatchets, slings, horn-awls, rings, and clay vessels, toys, quoits, ornamented often with rude but not inartistic etchings,—there is no end to the things preserved,—and even their canoes hollowed out of one trunk, just such as Hannibal used for crossing the Rhône. Each village had probably two or three hundred huts connected with the shore by a bridge. One investigator discovered a storehouse containing a hundred measures of barley and wheat. They evidently had their farms; they raised apples, pears and plums. They had a trade with other tribes, for coral and amber articles were found. Yes, Zürich is built on a settlement that existed probably fifteen hundred years before Christ—not so very far from the time of Abraham.”
“Who were they?”