Letters from Switzerland

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

The waterfalls of Switzerland are among its crowning glories; and of these the falls of Schaffhausen are altogether the most imposing. The European, who has never worshiped at the foot of our own great cataract, looks down from the base of the Castle of Lauffen, after paying a franc for the privilege of getting to a standing-place; or he looks up from the opposite shore, where is reared the Castle of Worth, and he pronounces it magnificent. Mrs. Bull does not hesitate to declare it charming! Mr. Murray, in that everlasting Red book, without which no Englishman could do Europe—as this is the authority on which alone he ventures to admire any thing in art or nature, just as he swears only by the Times—Mr. Murray, in his never-to-be-dispensed-with Hand-book, informs him that this is “the finest cataract in Europe,” and, of course, in his opinion, it is the finest in the world. He leads the trembling traveller to the verge of the awful precipice, where, covered with spray, he may enjoy the full grandeur of this “hell of waters,” and then he adds, “It is only by this close proximity, amidst the tremendous roar and the uninterrupted rush of the river, that a true notion can be formed of the stupendous nature of this cataract!” The Rhine here leaps over the rocks into an abyss of fifty feet. The river is cloven in twain by a tower of rock in the centre of the stream, and the spray rises from its base in an eternal cloud. Picturesque and beautiful the falls certainly are, but grandeur can hardly be affirmed of them.

It was my first day of travel in Switzerland when I reached them—a warm day in the summer of last year. A month of hot weather in Dresden and Munich had been too much for the restoring powers of the waters of Baden-Baden, and it was like waking up in a new world of beauty, with a new soul to love it, to find myself in the midst of this Swiss scenery—the breezes of its snow hills and glaciers fanning me, and its peaks pointing skyward, where there are temples and palaces whose every dome is a sun and every pinnacle a star. But I could not be satisfied till, with the aid of two stout fellows, I made my way through the boiling waters nearly to the foot of the central tower, and there, in the toppling skiff which threatened to tip over on very gentle occasions, I looked up at the mass of waters tumbling from above. The rocks were partially covered with green shrubbery, and a scraggy tree stretched its frightful arms into the spray; but I was not disposed to climb, as some have done, to the top of the cliff, for the sake of enjoying the scene.

A curious old town is Schaffhausen, so named from the boat-houses, or skiff-houses, which were here erected, for the falls made this the great terminus of navigation on the Rhine. We had come by diligence from Basle, and after passing a night in Weber’s excellent hotel at the falls, we came on in the morning, and spent an hour or two looking at the ancient architecture of the town, whose buildings are adorned with such fanciful and extravagant carvings as would hardly be deemed ornamental in the Fifth Avenue.

A very small specimen of a steamer received us now, and bore us up against a strong current. The banks on either side were green with vineyards, now loaded with unripe fruit, and in the midst of the vines the dressers were at their work. On the sloping hillsides the neat cottages of the Swiss peasantry were scattered, making a picture of constant beauty through which we were passing. Among our passengers were a dozen German students, with their knapsacks on their backs, making a tour of Switzerland, the most of which they would perform on foot, gathering health and strength as they trudged on through the mountain passes, and studied the glacier theories on the spot.

It was noon when we arrived at Constance, on the lake of the same name, and a city to be forever associated with the trial and martyrdom of John Huss and Jerome of Prague—a city on which the curse of shedding innocent blood seems resting to this day. In the loft of a long building, now standing near the water’s edge, was gathered a Council, in the year of our Lord 1414, over which the Emperor Sigismund presided, and attended by some five hundred princes, cardinals, bishops, archbishops and professors, who deposed two popes and set up another, and crowned their four years’ labor of love by condemning to the flames those martyr men of God, whose names are this day fragrant in the churches of a land that was not known when Huss was burning. In the midst of a cabbage garden outside the gate, yet called the Huss Gate, we were led to the spot where he suffered; and returning, we called at the house in which he was lodged before he was brought to trial. But the streets of the city had grass growing in them; for of the forty thousand inhabitants who once filled these houses but seven thousand remain! Tenements are now tenantless that once were thronged with life. It was sad to wander by daylight through the streets without meeting a living being; and this was my experience here, and afterward in the island city of Rhodes. A chain stretched across the street sustained a lantern in the centre—a very convenient substitute for lamp-posts, if there are no carriages to pass, but a very awkward arrangement for a city infested with omnibuses.

Another day and the diligence brought us to Zurich, on the lake of the same name—the most thriving town in Switzerland. Here the lion-hearted reformer, Zwingle—the soldier of the cross, who perished on the field of battle—preached in the Cathedral, and dwelt in a house which is still standing and known as his. Here Lavater, the physiognomist, had a home and found a grave, over which the flowers are blooming. His was a lovely and loving spirit. Switzerland, strange to say, has not given birth to poets, but she is the mother of many noble sons, and her scenery has inspired the souls of the sons of song from other climes, who have wandered here and meditated among her lakes and hills.

Coming into Zurich, as we descended into the vale that holds the city and the lake, I had been charmed with the view; and now at the close of the next day, we were led to the height of one of the old ramparts, to behold a Swiss sunset, and certified to be “one of the finest scenes in Switzerland.” The elevation, no longer needed for purposes of defence, has been tastefully transformed into a flower-garden. Enormous shade trees are crowning the summit, and on rude benches the romantically-disposed people, citizens and strangers, are seated. As we came to the top of the hill, the god of day was coming down from the midst of a dense cloud, like a mass of molten gold distilled into a transparent globe. His liquid face was trembling; but the world below sent back a smile of gladness as the king in his glory looked down upon it. The nearer summits seemed to catch the brightness first, and then in the distance others, invisible before, stood forth in their majesty, as if called into being by his quickening beams. At our feet was the lake, like a sea of glass. The spires of the city and the sloping hills were reflected from the mirror; and all over the country side, as far as the eye could reach, were thousands of white cottages and villas, the abode of wealth and peace and love—sweet Swiss homes, rejoicing in the sunshine as they send up their evening psalm of praise. It was a scene to make its impress on the memory, and to come up again and again in the far-off dreams of other lands and years.

To climb the Rigi, to spend the night on the top, to see the sun go down and get up in the morning, these are among the things to be done in a tour of Switzerland, and all these we set off to do, taking the steamer at Zurich and touching at Horgen, crossing over to Zug, and by steamer again to the little village of Arth, which lies at the foot of the hill we are to ascend. As we were approaching the shore, the reflection of the Rigi from the lake was so vivid and perfect that we could study the mountain in the water with as much satisfaction as a good-looking man contemplates his own person in a glass. Every particular cliff and crag, individual trees, and winding paths, and torrent beds, which we could see above, were defined with marvelous precision below. On landing, we dispatched a fleet mountain-boy ahead of us to engage beds at the house on the summit; for so many were with us on board the steamer, and so many more were doubtless climbing from the other side at the same time, that we were likely to have a bed on the floor unless we stole a march on our fellow-travellers. Most of them pushed upward from Arth, while we kept upon the plain for a mile or more to the village of Goldau, once the scene of a terrible catastrophe, the gloom of which still seems to be hanging over the ill-fated spot. The Rossberg Mountain is on the east of it, five thousand feet high, and in the year 1806 a mighty mass of it, some three miles long and a thousand feet thick, came sliding down into the valley, burying four hundred and fifty human beings in one untimely, dreadful grave. Travellers, like ourselves, who were making their way among these romantic regions, were suddenly overwhelmed in the deluge of earth and stones, and the places of their burial are unknown to this day. This event happened fifty years ago; but the broad, bare strip on the mountain side, which no verdure has since clad, is an ever-present record of the awful fall; and the great rocks that are lying on the opposite side of the valley, and away up the Rigi, are present witnesses of the messengers of death that came down in their wrath on that memorable day. The village church was then buried with the people who had been wont to frequent its courts, and nothing of it was ever found but the bell, which was carried a mile or more and now hangs in the steeple of another little temple filled with memorials of the ancient calamity.

Here we began the ascent of the Rigi. Some on horses, some on mules, more on foot, two or three ladies in sedan chairs, each borne by four stout men—a very lazy way of getting up hill, where health as well as pleasure is sought in travel; but every one choosing his own mode of ascent, and none having wings, we set off, as motley a party of mountain-climbers as ever undertook to scale a fortress. Four hours’ steady travel, pausing only to look in occasionally at the chapels in which the Catholic pilgrims perform their prayers as they ascend to the church of “Mary in the Snow,” which is about half-way up, brought us to the top where as yet the sun was half an hour high. And now, for the first time, did we know that we were in Switzerland. Not because we are on a very lofty mountain top—for the Rigi is not quite six thousand feet high—but we are on a mountain which stands so isolated that it affords us a better view than any other point, however elevated, of the mountains, the lakes, valleys, and villages, that make this land so peculiar for its beauty and grandeur. On the west, where we gazed with the deepest emotion as soon as we planted our feet on the summit, we saw the hoary Mount Pilatus, and at its base the Lake Lucerne, the most romantic of the Swiss lakes, and not exceeded by the scenery of any lake in the world. The city of Lucerne sends up its towers and battlements, and the whole canton of that name is spread out, with the River Reuss flowing over its bosom. At our feet, nestling under the Rigi and on the borders of the lake, is the village of Kussnacht, and the chapel of William Tell, marking the spot where the intrepid patriot pierced the tyrant’s heart with his unerring arrow. And now the descending sun is pouring a flood of golden glory over all this broad expanse of lake and forest, plain and towering hills, whose peaks are touching the blue skies, gilded with last rays of declining day. Far southward we look away upon the mountains of Unterwalden, of Berne, and of Uri, whose snow-clad summits and blue glaciers are in full view, the beautiful Jungfrau rising, queen-like, in the midst of the magnificent group of sisters in white raiment. The eastern horizon is supported by the snowy peaks of the Sentis, the Glarnisch, and the Dodi; and the two Mitres start up from the midst of that region where Tell and his compatriots conspired to give liberty to their native land. All around us are lakes, so strangely nestled among the mountains that they seem to be innumerable, peeping from behind the hills and forests. And now the sound of the village bells, and the Alpine horn, and the evening psalm, comes stealing up the rugged sides of the Rigi, and we are assured that, in this world of ice, and snow, and eternal rocks, there are human hearts all warm and musical with the love of Him whose is the strength of the hills.

We had a short night’s sleep, for what with a late supper and a crowd of people who had no beds, our rest was broken; and just as the dawn began, a monster, with a long wooden horn, marched through the halls, startling the sleepers with its blast, and forbidding sleep to come again. We had been warned over night that, at this signal, we must wrap up and run if we would see the sun rise; and as a posted notice in French forbade the use of the bed-blankets, we hurried on our clothes, and in a few moments stood, with a hundred others, like the Persian fire-worshippers, gazing eastward to catch the first glimpse of the coming king! Not long had we to wait. Another blast of the wooden trump gave notice of his approach, and presently a coal of fire seemed to be glowing in the crown of the mountain directly in front of us. It grew till the whole peak was ruddy with the glow, and then the great globe rose and rested on the summit! From this, as from a fount of light new-created and rejoicing in the first morning of its being, the streams of glory were poured out upon the world below and around us. Peak after peak, and long mountain ranges and ridges, domes and sky-piercing needles, and fields of fresh snow, and forests of living green, began to smile in the sunlight. In the space of a brief half hour the world was lighted up for the business of another day, and when we had had a cup of wretched coffee and a bit of sour bread, we “marched down again.”