Letters from Switzerland

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

“It is upon this that the superiority of the lake of Lucerne to all other lakes, or as far as I know, to all other scenes upon earth, depends. The vast mountains rising on every side, and closing at the end, with their rich clothing of wood, the soft spots of verdant pasture scattered at their feet, and sometimes on their breast, and the expanse of water unbroken by islands, and almost undisturbed by any signs of living men, make an impression which it would be foolish to attempt to convey by words. The only memorials which would not disgrace such a scene as those of past ages renowned for heroism and virtue, and no part of the world is more full of such venerable ones.”

The shores of this lake are the scenes of William Tell’s illustrious deeds, and the theatre also of modern deeds of valor not surpassed by those of ancient times. It was the contemplation of the moral as well as the physical sublime in this region, that led the same elegant author to write:

“The combination of whatever is grandest in nature, with whatever is pure and sublime in human conduct, affected me more powerfully in the passage of this lake, than any scene which I had ever seen. Perhaps neither Greece nor Rome would have had such power over me. They are dead. The present inhabitants are a new race who regard with little or no feeling the memorials of former ages. This is perhaps the only place in our globe where deeds of pure virtue, ancient enough to be venerable, are consecrated by the religion of the people, and continue to command interest and reverence. No local superstition so beautiful and so moral anywhere exists. The inhabitants of Thermopylae or Marathon know no more of those famous spots than that they are so many square feet of earth. England is too extensive a country to make Runnymede an object of national affection. In countries of industry and wealth the stream of events sweeps away these old remembrances. The solitude of the Alps is a sanctuary destined for the monuments of ancient virtue; Grutli and Tell’s chapel are as much reverenced by the Alpine peasants as Mecca by a devout Musselman; and the deputies of the three ancient cantons met, so late as 1715, to renew their allegiance and their oaths of eternal union.”

Filled with such emotions as these and fresh from the perusal of these fine passages I left Lucerne on a lovely morning in August, the atmosphere pleasantly cooled by the previous storms, and now a glorious cloudless sky hanging over this mountain sea. On a little island, and strange to say the only island in the lake, a monument of wood once stood to the memory of William Tell, but it was struck by lightning and has disappeared. Near it the bay of Kussnacht sets up, where is a chapel to mark the spot on which the arrow from Tell’s unerring bow drank the heart’s blood of his enemy and tyrant Gessler; and a ruined castle said to have been the prison to which Tell was destined when he made his memorable escape of which we shall soon speak. But the boat put up into another bay on the other side under old Pilatus and landed passengers who were taken into the small boats which ply continually among these bays, and distribute the passengers at the several points from which they would make their excursions into the country. Pilatus rises in gloomy grandeur from the very shores of the water, and its bifurcated peak soon is lost sight of, while but one presents itself. Rugged, barren and uninviting as it is, there are those who yet make the ascent, and from this landing, though the ascent is far more difficult, and the view from the summit far less satisfactory than the Rigi.

We now returned to Kussnacht bay; and if the great shooting match which occurred last Monday had been coming off to-day, we would go ashore to see it. Once a year the marksmen of the canton assemble for a trial of their skill with the rifle, and there is also an annual festival, when the best from all the cantons assemble for the federal shooting match. With music and banners and processions, with garlands and arches of victory and feasting and drinking, they keep up this custom from generation to generation; and the riflemen of the Swiss and Tyrol mountains, like their ancestors of the bow, have no rival. The military displays were very miserable. Having just come from France, Prussia, and Austria, where the army was evidently the pet of governments, and the curse of the people, I was pleased to see that the Swiss had no need of armies, and the military procession was sorry enough. But the music was stirring, and the Swiss feel it a part and parcel of their patrimonial inheritance, to be roused by its strains to noble deeds, or melted to tenderness by its subduing power. The lake had assumed to the eye, when looking down upon it from one slope of the Rigi, the form of an X, and now the two promontories that divide it come within a mile of each other, and are called the Noses, which we pass, and enter the bay of Brochs, where the Horn of that name and Stawzer rear their lofty heads. We touched at Bechenried, and then swept the width of the lake again to Gersau, a little cluster of houses at the foot of a gently-receding hill, one of the most remarkable spots of land in the whole world, in the fact that for four hundred years the people of this village, shut out from the rest of mankind by these mighty ramparts of mountains, and having but three miles long and two wide of territory, maintained an independent democratic government of their own. The French invasion of 1798 destroyed their freedom by uniting them to the Canton Schwytz. The mountain-side is covered with orchards, in the midst of which neat cottages nestle sweetly. All the land they have has been washed down from the mountains, and it would not be strange if trees and cottages and people should one day be washed into the lake together. Such a calamity would carry off the old gallows, still standing, but which the government had no occasion to use during its independent existence. Here the scenery of the lake becomes in the highest degree sublime. We stop for a moment at Brunnen, where goods are deposited that are to go over the Alps by St. Gothard into Italy, and on one of the warehouses you see three men painted in bold colors, and their names affixed, the heroes who with Tell achieved the deliverance of Switzerland in 1315. On this spot the alliance was formed between the three cantons of Uri, Unterwalden and Schwytz. Now the vast mountains rise more perpendicularly from the lake: a solitary rock stands a few feet from the shore on the promontory opposite, and passing it we seem to be issuing into a new lake altogether. Away on the ledges, or table land on the heights, stands a little church, and a few dwellings are scattered around, but we lose sight of them, and are now in the midst of a solitude of water, mountain, snow and sky, the grandeur and sublimity of which it is equally impossible for me to exaggerate or describe. No road, not even a footpath can be made along the base of these rocky mountains that literally stand in the water, and thence rear their heads so far into the upper air that the fields of snow lie there in full view, forever whitening in the sun. A little recession from the shore gives lodgment for soil enough to make a secluded bosom in the hills; and this oasis is a sacred spot in Swiss history, for here in the dead of night, the three confederates met to form their plans to deliver their country from the Austrian yoke. This is Grutli, and every American who passes the spot will feel a sympathetic thrill of joy to look on the birth-place of a country’s freedom. Nearly opposite to Grutli, the steamboat slackens its speed, and moves slowly and solemnly by a small chapel, with an open front, and filled with rude paintings of scenes in Swiss history. This chapel is to commemorate the spot where Tell leaped ashore from the boat in which the tyrant Gessler was conveying him from Altorf to his dungeon in Kussnacht. A storm came up with such fury that Gessler, being frightened, and his oarsmen failing, ordered the chains to be taken off from Tell, that he might guide the skiff ashore. He ran it to this rock, leaped ashore, and made his escape. Before the despot reached his castle, Tell had waylaid him and sent an arrow to his heart. This chapel was “built in 1388, by the Canton of Uri, only thirty-one years after Tell’s death, and in the presence of one hundred and fourteen persons who had known the hero. Once a year, mass is said, and a sermon preached in the chapel to the inhabitants of these borders, who repair hither in boats, forming an aquatic procession.”

We were at the head of the lake in a few minutes. I was willing that it should be extended for hours, but the little village of Fluellen was reached, and here we go ashore. The village stands in a marsh, which is formed at the entrance of the river Reuss into the lake, and in consequence the people are subject to goitre and cretinism, those terrible diseases so peculiar to this country. It is not desirable to stay here any longer than is necessary to get away; and there is nothing to attract the stranger. We took the first carriage we found, and rode on to Altorf. At the hotel two young women came out to receive us, as men waiters would do in another country. It was a novelty to be thus received, and giving a hand to each of the damsels I was assisted from the carriage and escorted into the house. One of them, a fine-looking girl of eighteen, in a picturesque and becoming dress, white spencer and short sleeves with a dark skirt and bracelets, insisted on taking my knapsack, which I declined giving up, and leaning on my Alpen stock, I had so much of an argument with her that the travellers formed a circle about us and looked on. While dinner was preparing I walked out to the open square in which that scene was enacted which has been more famous than any other in Swiss history. Here by this fountain was the tree to which the son of William Tell was bound, with the apple on his head, and at the other fountain the father stood, to obey the infamous order of the tyrant to shoot with his cross-bow the apple from the head of his lovely boy. A statue of the father surmounts the fountain. The old village has all the signs of decay, and I found it difficult to believe that here the crowd had gathered five hundred years ago to behold that dreadful spectacle—here stood the monster who had given the cruel order, here fell the arrows from beneath the garment of Tell, which he declared he designed for the tyrant if his arrow had slain his son. I walked out of the village into the narrow meadow under the brow of overhanging mountains, and admired the industry that has terraced the slopes and wrung all the support it would yield from the soil. A row of targets was here, with evidences that the people having long since laid aside the cross bow, are now experts with the rifle: and as this village is the capital of the canton of Uri, it is the rallying place for those trials of skill in which they take so much delight. The tree on which Gessler’s hat was hung, with the command that the people should bow down to it, stood here till 1567, when it was removed and a stone erected in its place.

The valley of Schachen, which we enter on leaving Altorf, delighted me with the beauty of its meadows, in which the Swiss peasants were making hay under a burning sun, while the mountains rising from the edge of the fields were white with snow. The men and women at noon when we passed were resting from their toil, and lying around on the mown grass, the very picture of slow and easy hay-makers. We crossed a rapid stream foaming in its downward course, in which William Tell was drowned while nobly striving to save the life of a child; and a little further on we passed the village in which he was born. Thus in a single day which is not yet half gone, we have seen the various spots in Switzerland made classic by the deeds of William Tell and his compatriots, and the places where that illustrious though rustic hero was born, where he performed his great exploits, and where he perished in the midst of one not less noble than any other that sheds honor on his name. It was a great day to have passed through all these scenes, and I can say, without affectation that my solitary walk in that ruined town of Altorf moved me more than the contemplation of any battle field in Europe.

CHAPTER V.
PASS OF SAINT GOTHARD.

The Priest’s Leap—The Devil’s Bridge—Night on the Mountains—Storm—Hospenthal—the Glaciers—a Lady in Distress—the Furca Pass—Glacier of the Rhone—Heinrich and Nature—Heinrich asks after God—Scene in the Hospice.