All that Earth has of most sweet, softest, easiest, most suggestive of langor and love, of fertility and abundance—here is seen in one vision beside all that Nature has most hard, most cruel, most unkind to Man—where life is one long weary battle with a frost bitten soil, and every peasant's hut has been built up stone by stone, and log by log, with sweat and groans, and wrecked hopes. In a few hours one may pass from an enchanted garden, where every sense is satiated, and every flower and leaf and gleam of light is intoxication, up into a wilderness of difficult crags and yawning glaciers, which men can reach only by hard-earned skill, tough muscle and iron nerves….
The Alps are international, European, Humanitarian. Four written languages are spoken in their valleys, and ten times as many local dialects. The Alps are not especially Swiss—I used to think they were English—they belong equally to four nations of Europe; they are the sanatorium and the diversorium of the civilized world, the refuge, the asylum, the second home of men and women famous throughout the centuries for arts, literature, thought, religion. The poet, the philosopher, the dreamer, the patriot, the exile, the bereaved, the reformer, the prophet, the hero—have all found in the Alps a haven of rest, a new home where the wicked cease from troubling, where men need neither fear nor suffer. The happy and the thoughtless, the thinker and the sick—are alike at home here. The patriot exile inscribed on his house on Lake Leman—"Every land is fatherland to the brave man." What he might have written is—"This land is fatherland to all men." To young and old, to strong and weak, to wise and foolish alike, the Alps are a second fatherland.
INTERLAKEN AND THE JUNGFRAU[30]
B.T. ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES
It is hard to find a prettier spot than Interlaken. Situated between two lovely lakes, surrounded by wooded heights, and lying but a few miles from the snowy Jungfrau, it is like a jewel richly set. From Lucerne over the Brunig, from Meiringen over the Grimsel come the travelers, passing on their way the Lake of Brienz, with the waterfall of the Giessbach, on its southern side.
From Berne over Lake Thun, from the Rhône Valley over the Gemmi or through the Simmenthal come the tourists, seeing as they come the white peaks of the Oberland. And Interlaken welcomes them all, and rests them for their closer relations with the High Alps by trips to the region of the Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, and Mürren, and the great mountain plateaux looking down upon them. Interlaken is not a climbing center. Consequently mountaineering is little in evidence, conversation about ascents is seldom heard, and ice-axes, ropes, and nailed boots are seen more often in shop windows than in the streets.
Interlaken is not like some other Swiss towns. Berne, Geneva, Zurich, and Lucerne are places possessing notable churches, museums, and monuments of the past, having a social life of their own and being distinguished in some special way, as centers of culture and education. Interlaken, however, has little life apart from that made by the throngs of visitors who gather here in the summer. There is little to see except a group of old monastic buildings, and in Unterseen and elsewhere some fine old carved chalets, but none of these receives much attention.
The attraction, on what one may call the natural side, centers in the softly beautiful panorama of woods and meadows, green hills and snow peaks which opens to the eye, and on the social side in the busy little promenade and park of the Höheweg, bordered with hotels, shops, and gardens. Here is ever a changing picture in the height of the season, in fact, quite kaleidoscopic as railways and steamboats at each end of Interlaken send their passengers to mingle in the passing crowd. All "sorts and conditions of men" are here, and representatives of antagonistic nations meet in friendly intercourse.
On the hotel terraces and in the little cafés and tea rooms, one hears a babel of voices, every nation of Europe seeming to speak in its own native tongue. Life goes easily. There is a gaiety in the little town that is infectious. It is a sort of busy idleness. "To trip or not to trip" is the question. If the affirmative, then a rush to the mountain trains and comfortable cabs. If the negative, then a turning to the shops, where pretty things worthy of Paris or London are seen side by side with Swiss carvings and Swiss embroidery and many little superficial souvenirs. As the contents of the shops are exhibited in the windows, so the character of the visitors is shown by the crowds, and the life of the place is seen in the constant ebb and flow of the people on the Höheweg.
Interlaken is undoubtedly a tourist center, for few trips to Switzerland overlook or omit this delightful spot. Thousands come here, who never go any nearer the High Alps. They are quite content to sit on the benches of the Höheweg, listening to the music and enjoying the view. There is a casino, most artistically planned, with plashing fountains, shady paths, and wonderful flowerbeds. Here many persons pass the day, and, contrary to what one might expect, it is quiet and restful, lounging in that parklike garden.