The scenery of the St. Gothard Pass, at once after leaving Flüelen, is magnificent to a degree. At every turn of the railway is presented a scene of snow mountains, of roaring torrents, and of towering precipices, which are so characteristic of this superb country.
At Geschenen the train stopped for about half-an-hour, so we got out and looked about us, and found, to our delight, the whole of this superb gorge enveloped in snow. The novelty of the sight proved so tempting that we resolved to see more of it, and ascend to Andermatt, some miles from Geschenen, thus sacrificing our railway tickets to Lugano.
We ordered a carriage at the station, and wrapping ourselves up well—for it was very cold—commenced our drive in right good spirits. Before starting we were joined by a tall, handsome Englishman, who, like ourselves, had not been able to resist the temptation of breaking his journey at Geschenen.
Shortly after leaving the station we entered the dreary Schöllenen defile, certainly one of the finest in all Switzerland. The road here is cut in the sides of huge granite rocks. At the base of the gorge rushes the foaming Reuss, tearing madly against the rocks, which try in vain to arrest its course. All the way from Geschenen to Andermatt the ascent is very steep—the road in some places being almost suspended over the Reuss. Of course, our progress was slow, as, in addition to the steepness of the road, we had to pass by (and sometimes through) huge snow drifts from twelve to twenty feet high. When we crossed the famous Devil's bridge it was covered with mist, produced by the spray from the neighbouring cataracts. The old Devil's bridge, a few feet below the new one, has been disused for many years, and is now covered with moss and lichens. After leaving these the road passes through a long tunnel (covered with icicles in the early spring) into the valley of Unseren, which No. 2 said was fertile in summer—but how different when we saw it! The pastures were covered with snow and ice, and so altered was the scene, that the younger bachelor (No. 1) thought he was beholding a huge lake snowed over.
Andermatt looked very pretty with its ancient Romanesque church and funny little white-washed châlets, and how glad we were to get there! famished with hunger, and fearfully cold, notwithstanding all our wrapping up! We drove to a smart-looking hotel, where we were received pleasantly.
After dinner the younger bachelor, who is of rather a foolhardy temperament, and is, or rather was, very green, was seized with a desire to immortalise himself by climbing a mountain unattended, by sleeping out in the snow, or doing something perfectly ridiculous. So, promising his friend he would be back again in a couple of hours (a compact which he never intended to keep, by the way), he marched out of the hotel already thinking himself a kind of hero. Coming back again in about three hours and a half, he related that he had gone past Hospenthal to some place on the old St. Gothard road, where he was suddenly stopped by the path being so covered with snow that farther progress was absolutely impossible. So, humbled and disappointed, he came quickly home to find his friend in a terrible state of mind at his lengthened absence. In the evening we had some music—for both bachelors are musical—the older having a baritone voice, and the younger playing the piano. How cold that night was! and how welcome was the great eider-down pillow, which is generally such a nuisance in continental hotels.
The next morning, after a hearty breakfast, we commenced our return journey to Geschenen; the driver, after leaving the tunnel and the snowdrifts, tearing down the defile at a most dangerous pace. At the station we took fresh tickets to Lugano, travelling third-class to make up for the extravagance of abandoning our former tickets, and then waited for the train which was to take us to Italy. Yes, to Italy, that wonderful country of which we had read so much, about which we had acquired so much information, and had been so longing to see for the last six months! The train, with its huge powerful engine, came slowly into the station, looking very important, as if it knew that it was conveying its passengers to the most famous country the world has ever seen.
The entrance to the great tunnel is within a few yards of Geschenen Station. When we consider that this is the longest tunnel in the world (from Geschenen to Airolo, nearly nine and a half miles), and that the rock which is pierced consists of such hard material as quartz and granitic gneiss, the work may well claim to be one of the great engineering feats of the century. The difficulty of supplying the workmen engaged on the boring of the tunnel with air, necessitated the building of huge air reservoirs (just outside Geschenen Station), which, in addition, were used for setting the boring machines into motion. The air was forced into these reservoirs by water supplied from the Reuss. The operations were commenced at both ends in 1872, under the auspices of M. Louis Favre. This great contractor, to whose industry and genius so much of the final success of the scheme was due, died of apoplexy whilst inspecting the tunnel, after seven years of unremitting labour and anxiety. The difficulties which poor Favre had to contend against were terrible, not the least of which were the crushing of the masonry, the striking of springs, and a riot among the workmen, which took place in 1875.
We were a little disappointed with the length of the tunnel, especially as we had heard that the boring alone had taken nearly eight years to accomplish. But travelling through a tunnel is not a very agreeable sensation, as passengers by the Underground Railway will know, so we were glad when the train emerged from the darkness and slowly wended its way past Airolo, the first Italian village on the south side of the St. Gothard. The scenery changes its character almost immediately on leaving the tunnel; for though it is still, of course, mountainous, with a roaring torrent, the Ticino, almost equal to the Reuss in its impetuousness, yet it is much more luxuriant than the Swiss side. Mulberry trees and vines gradually begin to appear, and the little church towers (called in Italian, Campanili) becoming more frequent as one goes south, greatly add to the picturesqueness of the landscape.
Here it may be as well to remind our girls that the Canton Ticino, though Italian in language, in scenery, in architecture, and, in fact, in all its characteristics, yet politically belongs to Switzerland.