Letters from Switzerland

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

The path by and by led under an extraordinary projection of rock, shelving over, and making a pavilion. The descent became more rapid, until we took to a long flight of stone steps in the path: and then on a lower grade, we came upon meadow land, through which the grass had been cut away for foot passengers to make a shorter course than that by which the horses must find their way down. We entered a little cottage and refreshed ourselves again, with coffee and milk, and had some pleasant talk with the old lady and one or two of the neighbors who had dropped down from some mountain home; for it is even pleasant, if no useful knowledge is gathered, to learn the thoughts and feelings of these secluded people, and to find that enjoyment, and contentment can exist as truly and beautifully in the dreary heights of these Alpine pasturages, as in the courts of kings: and a little more so.

For we were not very far above a lovely valley, one of the sweetest spots that I carry in my memory. It is surprising how suddenly the line of barrenness is passed, and the region of fruits and abundant vegetation bursts upon you in this country. We had not been two hours from dreary and inhospitable Guttanen, when we emerged from the narrow defile into a vale, a plain, a basin of rare loveliness for situation and embellishment. Level as a threshing floor, with a hundred Swiss cottages scattered over it, and each of them surrounded with a garden stored with fruits, apples, pears, and the like, while a stream flowing through the midst of it divided the vale into two settlements, in one of which a neat church sent up its graceful spire. We had been loitering along down, and it was now drawing toward evening: the bell of the old church was ringing for evening prayers, and the people, a few of them, were gathering in their sanctuary as we passed. Four mountains, each of them a distinct pyramid, rise on as many sides of this valley, and seem at once to shut it from the world, and to stand around it as towers of defence, as the mountains are round about Jerusalem. This is the Vale of Upper Hasli; the river Aar flows through it; on the right as we are going, is the village of Im-Hof, and on the left the settlement is called Im-Grund. We passed a low house, like all the rest, and three little children in a row, broke out with a song, a sweet Psalm tune, such as our Sabbath school children would sing. We stopped to listen, and the guide stood with us in front of the group, while they sang one after another of their native melodies as birds of the forest would warble an evening song. The youngest was not more than two years old; and when we had given them some money for their music, I took the little thing by the hand, and said, “Come away with me.” The guide took it by the other, and it trotted along between us with so much readiness, that it occurred to me instantly that these might be the children of the man who was with me. I said to him, “Are these yours?” “Yes Sir,” said he, and catching up the little thing in his arms, he kissed it fondly, and carried it on with all the burdens already on his back. When he had put it down and the children had returned, I asked him why it was that no sign of recognition passed between him and his children when we first came up to them as they stood by the side of the house. He told me that he had taught them to receive him in this way when he came by with strangers, whom he was guiding, and as they sang to receive what money might be given them it was better that it should not be known there was any relation between him and them. I had detected the connection by the willingness of the babe to follow us, and the father was delighted to be able to discover himself to his child, and to take it for a moment in his arms. This incident reminded me of a striking scene in the well known history of William Tell, where the tyrant Gessler confronts the son with the father, and they both, without preconcert, but by a common instinct of caution, deny one another, and persist in the denial till the father is about to die.

Leaving the valley, we have a sharp hill to climb. A zig-zag path for carriages has been made over it at great expense of money and labor; so that this vale may be reached from the other side. The hill must at some distant period in the past have resisted the progress of the Aar, and this romantic valley was probably a beautiful lake in the midst of these noble mountains. But the hill by some convulsion has been rent from the top to the bottom, and the river finds its way through a fearful cavern; one of the most awful gorges that can be found in Switzerland. After crossing the hill we left the road, and following our guide for twenty minutes came to the mouth of the cave, that leads down to the bed of the river, where it is rushing through with frightful force in darkness but not silence; for the roar of the waters is repeated among the rocks, adding greatly to the terror of the scene. It is only half an hour’s walk from the Cave to Meyringen; but we made it more than an hour, enjoying the fine views that opened upon us as we stood above the village. It is but three miles across the plain, and as I look upon the splendid cataract of the Reichenbach falling into it on one side, and the Alpbach coming down on the other, and streaming cascades in great numbers pouring into it down the precipitous sides of the mountains, the first thought that strikes the mind is of the danger that the valley would be filled with water one of these days and the people driven out. Such a calamity has indeed occurred, and to guard against its return, a stone dyke one thousand feet long and eight feet wide has been built, that the swollen river may be conducted with safety out of the vale. Long years ago the mountain torrent brought down a mass of earth with it, so suddenly and so fearfully that in one brief hour, a large part of the village was buried twenty feet deep, and the desolation thus wrought still appears over the whole face of the plain. The Church has a black line painted on it to mark the height to which it was filled with the mud and water in this deluge of 1762. There is something very fearful in the idea of dwelling in a region subject to such visitations. But there is a fine race of men and women here. The men are spoken of as models for strength and agility, and the matches and games in which they annually contend with the champions of other cantons decide their claims to the distinction. The women are good looking, and that is more than I can say for most of the women I have met among the Alps; where the hardy, exposed, and toilsome life they lead, in poverty and disease, gives them such a look as I cannot bear to see in a female face. In fact I could not tell a man from a woman but by their dress in many parts of the mountains. Now we are down in the region of improved civilization, and some taste in dress begins to appear among the women, who rig themselves out in a holiday or Sunday suit of black velvet bodice, white muslin sleeves, a yellow petticoat, and a black hat set jauntingly on one side of the head, with their braided hair hanging down their backs. An old woman on the hill at whose house I stopped for a drink, told me I ought to stay there till next Sunday and see them all come out of church; “a prettier sight I would never see in all my life.”

Coming down from the Hospice of the Grimsel, I was filled with admiration when I entered the valley in which the villages of Im-Hof and Im-Grund lie, with their single church and hundred cottages. Naigle, my guide, was one of the dwellers in this vale, and the meeting with his children as he passed through had deeply interested me in the place and the people. I wished to know more of their habits and especially I would know the spirit and the power of the religion which these people professed. They are so secluded from all the world, so girt with great mountains and compelled to look upwards whenever they would see far, that it seemed to me they must be a thoughtful religious people, even if their way of religion was not the same as mine. It was a Protestant Canton, and so far their faith was mine, but there is a wide difference between the faith and practice of many churches that profess Protestantism, as there is also in the churches under the dominion of the Pope of Rome.

Naigle was a character. I was sure of it in five minutes after he was in my service. Six feet high on a perpendicular, he was at least six feet four, on a curve, for long service in carrying heavy burdens over the mountains had made a bend in his back like a bow that is never unstrung. I had asked him how many of those children he had, and he had told me eight: and he did not improve in my good opinion when he offered as the only objection to selling me the youngest, that he would be sent to prison if he did. Yet Naigle loved his children I am sure, and would not part with one of them unless for the sake of improving its prospects for the future. His own were dark enough. One franc a day, less than twenty cents of our money, is the price of a day’s labor in the hardest work of the year, though the very men who are glad to get this of their neighbors, will not guide a stranger through their country, or carry his bag, for less than five francs for eight or ten hours. The women will work out doors all day for less than a man’s wages, and perform the same kind of labor. This Naigle was a hard-working man, it was very plain, and there was a decided streak of good sense in him that assured me, he could give me much valuable information, in spite of that miserable mixture of German and French which was the only language he could speak. Fortunately I had my young German friend with me, and we managed among us to extract from Naigle all we desired. We had good rooms at Meyringen, and Naigle was to stay over night there and return to his family in the morning. I asked him where he would sleep; and he said “in the stable,” a lodgment I afterwards found to be common in this and other European countries: not in rooms fitted up over the stalls, as in America, but in bunks by the side of the horses: in the midst of foul atmosphere which would be enough, I should suppose, to stifle any man in the course of the night. Yet I have heard a German gentleman say that there is no smell so pleasant to him as that of a stable, and I record it as another evidence of the truth of the adage “there is no disputing about tastes.” Naigle came up to my room in the evening, sat down on a trunk, and answered questions for an hour or two, but I can put all I learned of him into a moderate compass, though it will want the freshness and often the peculiar turn of thought with which he imparted it.

Naigle told me first of his family which he had great difficulty in supporting on the low wages he received, and the small profits he could make on his trade with the neighboring valleys. At least half of the year, he said, they do not have a particle of meat in the house: they live chiefly on potatoes and beans, with bread and milk: few vegetables, and these not the most nutritious. The snow comes on so early in autumn and lies so late in the spring that the season for cultivation is very short, though they try to make the most of it while it lasts, as they do of the little land in their valley, and on the mountain sides. Yet poverty often stares them in the face with a melancholy threat of famine. No people on earth dwell in such glorious scenery and in such destitution of the real comforts of life.

But what are the morals of such a people? Are the virtues of social life held in honor among them, and are the children of these mountain homes trained up in the way they should go? One of the severest replies I have had was given to me by a Swiss guide, who had followed his business of showing strangers through the country for thirty years: and when he told me he had three sons grown up to manhood I asked him if they were guides also? He said, “No, he never allowed them to travel about with foreigners: the boys learned too many bad words and ways in that business.” Very likely intercourse with travellers is not happy on the morals of any people, but it is little that the dwellers in these valleys see of foreigners, who push through them without pausing even to spend a night. Naigle gave me however to understand that the standard of social morals was very low among them, and this was confirmed by all that I learned from the various classes of men with whom I came in contact during my journey in this country. It is true everywhere, that virtue does not flourish in the extremes of poverty or wealth.

He was greatly interested in the little church, and was pleased to answer all my inquiries. The pastor, he said, was a good man who was kind to them in sickness, visiting them to give the consolations of the gospel, and especially at such times did they prize his instructions and prayers. This service was rendered freely to the poorest among them, on whom the pastor calls as soon as he hears that they are in distress, and he is always engaged in looking among his flock to find those who have need of his peculiar care. The same good shepherd has charge of the parish school, to which all the children are sent; and if the parents are able to pay anything toward their children’s education, they are expected to do so, but if not they are not deprived of the privileges of the school. Here they are taught to read, to write, and to keep accounts; but more than all this, they are instructed in the catechism of the church, and are examined often on it, and encouraged to become acquainted with the doctrines and duties of religion. It was hard for me to convey my idea to Naigle when I sought to learn of him, if the good pastor required of the young people any proof of regeneration, or a change of heart, before giving them the second sacrament. He said their children are all baptized in infancy, and admitted to the Lord’s Supper when they are old enough, and good enough, and understand the doctrines taught in the school.

“But what if one of those who has come to the holy sacrament falls into some sin, as stealing, or profane swearing?”

“O, in that case he is not allowed to come to the sacrament, till he has repented and reformed. The minister is very strict about that, and the people who belong to the church, that is, those who wish to be considered as good Christian people, never indulge in any of those things which are forbidden by the Bible. There are many loose people in the valley who have no care for God or man, but have no connection with the church.”