SKETCH MAP SHOWING SWISS NATIONAL PARK.
As to the locality of this forbidden land, public opinion has unanimously endorsed the choice of the commission. In no part of Switzerland is there an equal area that could be given over to untrammelled natural agencies with so little social or economical derangement. It is wholly without permanent human habitation, there is no tillage and but little pasturage to be disestablished, while the hardly less important Fremdenindustrie has barely touched the hem of the great reserve, which boasts none of the transcendent charm that has made the rest of Switzerland the playground of Europe; with the exception of a short reach below the Fuorn Pass, no rail or post-road threads its savage solitudes, it cradles no enchanting lake, it enshrines no soaring peaks or shining glaciers, its valleys, which enjoy such uninviting names as Val del Diavel, Sassa, Cluoza, Nuglia, Sainza bon (I will not insult the reader's ingenuity by translating them), though full of wild charm, are little haunted by artist and photographer; wood-cutting, hunting, and scanty and sporadic pasturage are the only industries that will be interfered with. This unkempt, unused wilderness at the eastern edge of the Confederation has the further recommendation that, partly from this isolation and neglect, partly from lying on the borderland of distinct botanic zones, it exhibits a varied and comprehensive flora, and has given asylum to sundry odds and ends of vanishing fauna.
Though, following precedent elsewhere, the term 'reserve,' which was first employed for the sequestrated area, has officially given place to that of National Park, the former better expresses the aim of the scheme. The proposed object of such sequestration in other countries has been public enjoyment, but this is only incidentally an object of the Swiss enterprise, which is rather a great scientific experiment in the interplay of unimpeded natural agencies. Nature is to be given a free hand, and man, his hands behind his back, will look on and see what she makes of it.
Of course, the field of unsophisticated nature is not, when closely looked at, the peaceful paradise dreamed by the artless philosophy of a century ago. The beneficent mother pictured by sentimental idealists has been revealed to these latter days as a soulless monster, red in tooth and claw with ravin, working blindly under the impulsion of inexorable tendencies that know not truce nor ruth. To make a sanctuary where she shall have her way without let or hindrance amounts to keeping the ring for a free fight of flora and fauna, only the meddlesome hand of her supreme masterpiece—whom it is rather amusing we should exclude from our conception of nature—being ruled out.
As regards flora, I believe the procedure has been mainly thus to let things alone, but the administration are introducing much that is new, or that has disappeared, in the way of fauna. To a large extent, indeed, they have introduced themselves with that telepathic percipience of a sanctuary so remarkable in hunted creatures. Already in October, 1913, a large bear appeared in the Park. Their former presence is attested by sundry place-names—Val del Orso, Bagn del Uors—and in the Val Cluoza and elsewhere old timber bear-traps still stand. Bears, however, are too expensive guests to be welcomed. Not sixty years ago their ravages among sheep and cattle were still considerable, and the administration has engaged with the neighbouring communes not to harbour them.