Letters from Switzerland

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

We are now on the great road that leads over the Alps into Italy by the famous Pass of St. Gothard. The diligence to Milan went off this morning at nine o’clock, and had we come on in the earliest boat from Lucerne, we might have been taken on as far as we liked by that lumbering conveyance. A party of students, seven from Germany, and two from Oxford joined us, and we resolved to hire a carriage to Amsteg, two hours onward, and there to begin the ascent and pedestrianism together. The ride to Amsteg was lively, but when we were set down at that village, with a walk of five hours before us, all the way up the mountains, I confess to a slight sinking at the heart; and my courage oozed out gradually at the end of my toes. At the inn of Altorf, a young German student attracted me by the gracefulness of his manner, the delicacy of his features, and the pleasant expression with which he conversed. He attached himself to our party, and we walked on together, pilgrims to see Switzerland, and rejoicing in the power to take leave of all modes of travelling, but that first and best, which nature had provided. The river Reuss comes dashing along down with the fury of a young torrent, pouring over rocks, and whirling around precipices with a madness that brooks no control. The Bristenock mountain towers aloft into the regions of snow and ice, and nature begins to grow wild and dreary. The soft meadows on which the maids of Uri were making hay have disappeared, and the green pastures with frequent herds are now the only hope of the shepherd. The road is no longer a straight path, but in its toilsome way upward, it crosses again and again this foaming river, and bridges of solid masonry, built to resist the flood when it bears the ruins of avalanches on its bosom, and spreads them in the spring on the plains below.

We crossed the third bridge and came to a gorge of frightful depth through which the river rages furiously, in a maddened torrent too fearful to look on without awe. It is called Pfaffensprung, or the Priest’s Leap, from a story—which no one will believe who stands here—that a monk once leaped across the chasm with a maiden in his arms. I have no doubt a monk would do his best under the circumstances, but I doubt the possibility of his clearing thirty feet at a bound over such an abyss as this, even for the sake of the prize he is said to have carried off. We had been beset by beggars under all sorts of guises, and here a miserable old woman—alas that a woman could come to this—appeared with a huge stone in her hands, which she hurled into the deeps, for us to see it leap from rock to rock and finally sink into the raging waters far below. A few cents she expected for this service, and she received them with gratitude; when an old man, perhaps her husband, came on with another rock which he was willing to drop for a similar consideration. As I turned away from the scene, a carriage came up in which an English gentleman was riding, with two servants on the box. I walked by the side of his carriage and fell into conversation, when he very politely invited me to ride with him. I declined of course, and told him that I was making a pedestrian tour, and designed to walk to Andermatt, three hours and a half farther up the mountain. “I spend the night there also,” he said, “and I will esteem it an honor, Sir, if you will take a seat in my carriage.” Such an invitation, under the circumstances, was not to be refused, and I took a seat by the gentleman’s side. How wonderfully the scenery improved, certainly how much my appreciation of it increased, when I fell back on the cushions! My companion was an accomplished member of the London bar. He knew public men whom I had met, and was well acquainted with all subjects of international interest, so that in fifteen minutes we were comparing minds on those questions in which England and America are so much concerned. We stopped at the little village of Wasen for refreshments. I insisted on paying the reckoning, when he stopped me with this remark, “Sir, you are my guest to-day: when I meet you in America I shall be happy to be yours.”

We rode on and upward, the road now assuming the character of a mighty structure of mason work through a savage defile, only wide enough for the carriage-path, and the torrent of the Reuss, which no longer flows, but tumbles headlong from one cliff to another, while for three or four miles the lofty precipices hang fearfully on high. In the spring, the rage of this mountain river, swollen by melting snows, and bringing down ice and rocks in its thundering fall, would tear away the foundations of any common pathway, and this must be built to defy the fiercest storm. Twenty-five or thirty thousand persons cross the Alps by this route every year; and to secure this travel, which would otherwise be carried off to the other passes, the cantons of Uri and Tessin built a road which has twice been swept away by the avalanches, but one would think that the present might stand while the mountains stand. So rapid is the ascent, that the road is made often to double on itself, so that we are going directly backward on the route; a foot passenger may clamber across the doublets and save his time, but the carriage must keep the zig-zag way, patiently toiling up a smoother and more beautiful highway than can be found in the most level region of the United States of America! Not a pebble in the path: the wheels meet no other obstruction than gravitation, which is sufficient to be overcome only by the strongest of horse power. Yet through this very defile, long before any road like this had been built, three armies, the French and the Russians and the Austrians, have pursued each other, contesting every inch of this ground, and each one of these rugged heights, and disputing the possession of dizzy cliffs where the hunter was afraid to tread. Never did the feeling of Nature’s awful wildness so take possession of my soul, as when night was shutting in upon me in this dreary pass. Sometimes the road is hewn out of the solid rock in the side of the precipice, which hangs over it as a roof, and again it is borne over the roaring stream, which in a gulf four hundred feet below is boiling in its obstructed course, and making for itself an opening, it leaps away over the rocks, and rushes down while we are toiling up. In the day-time it would be gloomy here; it will be terrible indeed if the darkness overtakes us before we reach our resting-place for the night.

More than five hundred years ago an old Abbot of Einsiedeln built a bridge over an awful chasm here, but such is the fury of the descending stream, the horrid ruggedness of the surrounding scenery, the smoothness and solidity of the impending rocks, the roar and rage of the waters as they are tossed about and beaten into spray, and so unlikely does it appear that human power could ever have reared a bridge over such a cataract, that it has been called from time immemorial the Devil’s Bridge, and so it will be called probably till the end of time. It was just nightfall when we reached it. It was very cold, so far up had we ascended. We had left the carriage and were walking to quicken the blood, when the roar of the waters rose suddenly upon us, the spray swept over us, and we were in the midst of a scene of such awful grandeur, and with terror mingled, as might well make the nerves of a strong man tremble. The river Reuss, at this stage of its course, makes a sweeping leap, a tremendous plunge at the very moment it bends nearly in a semi-circle, while the rocks, as if by some superhuman energy, have been hurled into the torrent’s path, so as to break its fall, but not to withstand its power. Two bridges are here—for when the old road was swept away, the bridge defied the storm, and this one, more solid and of far greater span, has been thrown high above the other which is left as an architectural curiosity in the depths below. And long before that was built, another one was there, and when the French in 1799 pursued the Austrians over it, and while the embattled hosts were making hell in a furious fight upon and over this frightful gorge, the bridge was blown up, and the struggling foes were whelmed together in the devouring flood. A month afterwards, and the Russians met the French at the same spot—no bridge was here, but the fierce Russians bound timbers together with the scarfs of the officers, threw them over the chasm, crossed in the midst of a murderous fire, and drove the enemy down the Pass into the vales below.

THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE.

It was dark before we were willing to quit this fearful place. The strength of the present bridge is so obvious, and the parapet so high, that the scene may be contemplated without fear; but the clouds had now gathered, hoarse thunder muttered among the mountains, spiteful squalls of rain, cold, gloomy, and piercing, were driving into our faces, and we were anxious to find shelter for the night. We left the Bridge, but in another moment plunged into utter darkness as we entered a tunnel called the Hole of Uri, where the road is bored one hundred and eighty feet through the solid rock, a hard but the only passage, as the stream usurps the rest of the way, and the precipice admits no possible path over its lofty head. This was made a hundred and fifty years ago, and before that time the passage was made on a shelf supported by chains let down from above. It was called the Gallery of Uri, and along it a single traveller could creep, if he had the nerve, in the midst of the roar and the spray of the torrent, and with an hungry gulph yawning wide below him.—Emerging from this den, we entered a valley five thousand feet above the sea; once doubtless a lake, whence the waters of the Reuss have burst the barriers of these giant fortresses, and found their way into more hospitable climes. No corn grows here, but the land flows with milk and honey—by no means an indication of fertility, for the cows and the goats find pasture at the foot of the glaciers, and the bees their nests in the stunted trees and the holes of the rocks. We drove through it till we came to Andermatt, where the numerous lights in the windows guided us to a rustic tavern.

By this time it had commenced raining hard, and I began to be anxious for my young friend Rankin, and a German student, Heinrich. But I could do no more for them than to send a man to watch in the highway till they should come up, and lead them into the house where I was resolved to spend the night, whether we could find beds or not. These rural inns in Switzerland are rude and often far from comfortable. But travellers here must not stand upon trifles. The house was designed to lodge twenty travellers, and thirty at least were here before us. A large supper table was spread, and around it a company of gentlemen and ladies, mostly German, were enjoying themselves right heartily, after the day’s fatigue was over. The London lawyer and myself had a separate table laid for us—we soon gathered on it some of the good things of this life, which by the way you can find almost every where, and had made some progress in the discussion of the various subjects before us, when Rankin and Heinrich arrived nearly exhausted with their toilsome walk. They had a dreadful tale to tell of the storm they had met—which we just escaped, and barely that. The lightning filled the gloomy gorge, lighting up for an instant the mighty cliffs and hanging precipices, while the thunder roared above the sound of the torrent, and the rain drove into their faces, disputing with them the upward pass. But they were young men, and strong. They told me that I never could have borne the labor and the exposure of the walk. Two travellers and a guide had given out, and taken lodgings in a hamlet we had passed, and the man whom we had employed to bring on our light bags, had also halted for the night, and would come up early in the morning.

After supper I led them to our chamber. Upon my arrival, the landlady assured me that every bed in the house was full, but I insisted so strenuously on having three, that the girls exchanged looks of agreement, and one of them offered to show me a chamber, if it would be acceptable. She led me up three pair of stairs, into a low garret bed-room, with one window of boards which could be opened, and one small one of glass that could not, and here were three beds kindly given up by the young women. Into this chamber I now conducted my young friends.

Worn out with their hard day’s work, but free from all anxious care, they were asleep in five minutes, while I coaxed the candle to burn as long as it would, fastened it up with a pin on the top of the candlestick, and tried to write the records of the few past hours. It was amusing to hear my companions, one on each side of me, talk in their sleep; Heinrich in his native German, and Rankin in his English, showing the restlessness of over-fatigue, while I sat wondering at myself, so lately a poor invalid, now in this wild region, exposed to such nights of discomfort, and days of toil. Yet was I grateful even there, not only for a safe shelter and a much better bed than my Master had, but for the strength to attempt such things, and for the luxury of health that lives and flows in a genial current through every part of a renovated frame.