Part 5 (2/2)
Gothard Pa.s.s, Lucerne offers at once the opportunity to explore one of the most wonderful paths of the world, and to pa.s.s quickly through to the Italian lakes when the time that can be given to Switzerland has been exhausted.
The St. Gothard Pa.s.s was a Middle Ages' track across the Alps. It was not known to the Romans, who used the pa.s.ses of the Valais and the Rhaetian Alps. From the oldest doc.u.ment in which the Gothard is mentioned, it seems that in the middle of the thirteenth century the pa.s.s was already frequented by pilgrims. Following the pilgrims came merchants from Lucerne, Zurich, and Basel, to trade with the rich towns of fertile Lombardy. Originally the St. Gothard Pa.s.s was a narrow mountain-path gradually widening into a mule-track. It was not until the early part of the nineteenth century that the pa.s.s was made accessible to carriages, and the highway constructed which still is a fine example of a mountain road. Under the most favourable conditions four days was the time required to pa.s.s from Lucerne to Milan, and inclement weather would often force the traveller to take shelter for days. Now the pa.s.s is traversed in a few hours by the St. Gothard railway built jointly by Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. After tedious conferences, a treaty was signed by these three countries in 1871, providing that subsidies to the work should be granted by the contracting parties. The share of Germany and Switzerland was fixed at 800,000 each, and that of Italy at 1,800,000. During the process of construction, however, a material increase was necessary, so that Germany in the end contributed 1,200,000 to the cost, Switzerland 1,240,000, and Italy 2,320,000.
In September 1872 work was begun, and on February 29, 1880, after nearly eight years of dangerous work, the piercing of the tunnel was accomplished. The courageous chief engineer, Louis Favre, eight months before the completion of the tunnel, fell a victim to its close, heavy air, and died of heart failure whilst in the workings. The line was opened in June 1882 and is still a great highway of railway traffic, though the Simplon railway and the new Loetschberg railway have come as rival trans-Alpine routes.
The oldest pa.s.s of the Alps is that which is now called the Great St.
Bernard, the _Summus Penninus_ of the Romans. Mr. Coolidge, in _Swiss Travel and Swiss Guide-Books_, states that the first known guide-book was written for the crowd of pilgrims crossing this pa.s.s, by the Abbot of Thingor in Iceland, about 1154. There was a shelter building on the pa.s.s before the year 812. A century later the Little St. Bernard was similarly provided. The Simplon was equipped with a shelter before 1235, the St. Gothard before 1331, and the Grimsel before 1479.
But before leaving Lucerne by the St. Gothard Pa.s.s, the traveller with any claim to historic imagination will visit Schwyz, the cradle of Swiss independence and the various shrines of the heroes of the Forest Cantons. Zurich, too, is easily accessible from Lucerne; also the battlefield of St. Jacob on the Birse, where, in the year 1444, 1500 valiant Swiss held their ground against a force of French more than twenty times as great. When night fell, this band, defying death with the cry, ”Our souls to G.o.d, our bodies to the Armagnacs,” was almost annihilated. Along the St. Gothard Pa.s.s are the records of another great military exploit, Suwarow's pa.s.sage of the Alps. At the Devil's Bridge, over the Reuss, a Russian cross records the desperate fight between the French and Suwarow's army in 1799.
For the tourist who would mingle with his enjoyment of natural beauty visits to famous literary centres, Geneva of course will be the Swiss headquarters. From there stretch right and left the storied sh.o.r.es of Lake Leman. He may visit in turn Ferney, Coppet, and Lausanne, where the gloomy austerity of Genevan Calvinism seemed to take on something of a comic spirit. There the use of tobacco and snuff was forbidden under the Seventh Commandment! ”Here,” said a preacher, ”we snuff only the Word of G.o.d.” Montreux can be visited, or can be made the headquarters of a stay by the Lake of Leman if economy is a consideration, for it has the reputation of being the cheapest Swiss place to live in.
Near Montreux is the Castle of Chillon, which Byron made famous in his ”Prisoner of Chillon” with more regard for sentimentality than for truth. His Prisoner of Chillon was in truth no stainless patriot imprisoned by a tyrant's rage, but a rather rowdy layman prior, Francois Bonivard. He conspired against the Duke of Savoy, entered into a rather undignified kind of civil war, and was imprisoned in the Castle of Chillon. For some time he was treated fairly well, but afterwards thrust into a dungeon below the level of the lake where he was kept four years. In 1536 he was released, and was appointed Historian to the Genevan Republic. He did not get on well with Calvin and was frequently before the Genevan Consistory on various charges of moral wrongdoing. (That argues nothing serious against his character.) He seems to have been an average human man. But Byron's poem thrust him on to a pedestal which he did not deserve. The Castle of Chillon did not end its history as a prison with Bonivard's release. It was used as a jail in the days of the French Revolution, and its last notable prisoners were some members of the Salvation Army, accused of causing street disorders by their ministrations. It was a picturesque incident this ”persecution” by Calvin's Lake of Leman of a new form of Protestantism. But the persecution was not savage. The Salvationists (English la.s.ses chiefly) were very well treated in Chillon.
To mingle a study of modern Swiss history with wors.h.i.+p of the Alps, Berne would be the best centre for the tourist. Berne dates its foundation back to Berchtold V., who in the year 1191 erected a stronghold on a rocky promontory on the Aare, which was to serve as a rampart against the attacks of the Burgundian n.o.bles. The town takes its name from a bear which was killed whilst the building was in course of construction. To safeguard the western part of the city, Agrippa d'Aubigne, the Huguenot leader, commenced the erection of a circle of ramparts, completed in 1646, parts of which still remain and are known as the ”greater” and ”lesser” ramparts. In 1218, after the Zaeringer dynasty had died out, Berne became independent, subject only to the German Emperor, and remained faithful to the House of Hohenstaufen. During the Interregnum, Berne was forced to place herself under the protection of the Duke of Savoy, in order to be able to resist her numerous enemies. In the Burgundian war of 1474-77, Berne was victorious at Grandson, Morat, and Nancy, and obtained a strong foothold in Vaud, which entered entirely into her possession in 1536, so that her dominion extended from the Lake of Geneva to the Reuss, and from the source of the Aare up to its juncture with the Rhine. The upheaval caused by the French Revolution brought about the fall of the Bernese Republic. In 1798, after the battles of Neuenegg and Grauholz, the French entered the town under General Schauenburg, and Berne lost her independence.
Since the Const.i.tution of 1848, Berne has been the capital of the new Confederation, the seat of the Federal Council and of Parliament. It is also the headquarters of many international organisations.
Switzerland excites no jealousy among the European Powers and is usually chosen as the summoning nation for conferences in which international agreements are discussed.
Berne has some fine old monuments; and its medieval fountains are particularly interesting. The bear-pit, which has been kept up for centuries in record of the city's ancient a.s.sociation with the bear, is worth a visit. From the Bernese public gardens and from the Gurten (2800 feet high--reached by a funicular railway) there are marvellous views of the Alps. There ”soul of man has fronting him earth's utmost majesty.”
Lucerne, Geneva, Berne--these are the three centres I would recommend to the traveller with but a short time available for a Swiss tour and seeking to get a general impression of the country: and of the three Lucerne is the best centre. But with a month to spare all three may be visited and a very good idea of Switzerland obtained. The best time for such a sight-seeing trip is the late spring or the summer, preferably the spring, for with the summer often come dust and flies.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CASTLE OF CHILLON.]
CHAPTER X
AVALANCHES AND GLACIERS
The avalanche is chiefly a.s.sociated in the mind of the visitor to Switzerland with thoughts of peril and destruction, the glacier with the idea of a permanent field of ice set decoratively to adorn a mountain-side. Neither impression represents all of the truth.
Avalanches are destructive, and glaciers decorative. But the avalanche is normally, to the dweller in the Alps, the welcome harbinger of spring; the glacier the hard-working labourer which brings down soil from the mountain rocks for the enrichment of the plains.
The first avalanche is the sign to the Swiss that
_Solvitur acris hiems_,
and though he will not ”draw his fis.h.i.+ng boats down by rollers to the sea,” in all other respects he will share the song of joy in which Horace records for the Italian husbandman the welcome due to the spring. The avalanche may be sometimes terrible in its destruction, as in lower lands a flood may sometimes be; but on their record, year by year, they do not cause any appalling loss of life or of property.
Some deaths, some destruction, can be set to their account, but Nature exacts a penalty from man everywhere, on plain, on mountain, and on sea. Inundations of plains, storms at sea, cause probably a much greater proportionate loss of life and property than avalanches.
In Switzerland, spring is the great time for avalanches. They fall all the year round, chiefly from high levels, but it is in the spring that the greatest avalanches come adrift. Certain spring avalanches descend with remarkable regularity in particular places, one every year. An avalanche falls at a recognised spot in the neighbourhood of almost every village, which dates from its advent the opening of the spring.
This spring avalanche is no sudden freak of Nature, but an inevitable affair, slowly engendered. The snow that piles up during the winter months, on what in summer are the gra.s.s slopes below the snow-line, gradually becomes unstable as spring melting advances. The ma.s.s loses its cohesion, ceases to bind firmly together, and tends to flow downwards. The trend of the ground decides the way of its fall. If the fields upon which it lies are of small area and slope conveniently, the avalanche will slide gently down to its appointed place. But if the disposition of the ground is such that a great ma.s.s of snow is collected in a basin which has a narrow outlet, from this a great avalanche will rush like a cataract down the mountain-side until it reaches a barrier sufficiently strong to put a stop to its current.
It is this type of avalanche which is the most likely to do great mischief; but even this pours down rather than falls down the hill slope. Sir Martin Conway recalls his observations of avalanches in their actual progress along the Simplon Road one spring:
Near Berisal I crossed one which had recently come to rest, traversing the road. By its rugged white surface, broken into great protuberances, its solidity, and its general form, it resembled a small glacier. To climb on to it one had to cut steps, so steep were the sides. Higher up I crossed several more such fallen ma.s.ses, through which gangs of workmen were cutting out the road. Towards the top of the pa.s.s the snow was tumbling in smaller ma.s.ses. Over a hundred little avalanches crossed the road within a couple of hours. Then they stopped.
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