Part 7

Cattle-raising in the Alps is done in small herds and is mostly on the Swiss side. The stock looks smooth and fine. Along with a drove of cows are always a few goats. In the early summer the herdsmen drive the animals up the paths and trails to the little patches of rich pasture, where they feed until fall, neither man nor beast coming down until driven by the cold. I saw cattle pasturing on the mountain-side where it was so steep it seemed they must have feet like flies or they would tumble down. Of course the animals inherit the mountain knowledge, and I suppose they don’t know there is such a thing as a level meadow. Here and there men and women would be cutting grass with a scythe, spreading the hay out to dry, and then actually rolling it down the mountain-side. Like all people who live in mountainous countries, the Swiss herdsmen along the Simplon looked intelligent, cheerful and poor.

And that brings me to another broken idol. I had always heard of a Swiss “chalet,” and had supposed it was an artistic, smart-looking house perched up on a peak for everybody to see. A real Swiss chalet is a half dugout in a valley, built of stone and whitewashed once, in which the family lives upstairs and the cattle spend the winter in the basement, never going out until the springtime comes. Now I can see the economy, the advantages and the necessity of a Swiss “chalet,” but I can’t see anything beautiful or poetic, for such qualities are not present. I had the same experience with an Italian “villa,” which I found by observation was usually a plain-appearing stone house built around a court, inhabited by Italians, goats and chickens, and principally remembered by the noisome odor.

I have done some touring in the Rocky Mountains, and I was curious to see what difference there would be between the Rockies and the Alps,—both having peaks of about the same height, and each forming the backbone of a continent. The Alps have more snow than the Rockies. All of the peaks are snow-covered and the gulches of snow run far down the mountain-side here in July. Only an occasional peak in Colorado has snow, and then only a little, not enough to call it “snow-covered.” To my mind the Rockies are more grandly picturesque. The sides of the Alps are cultivated and covered with vines, dotted with pasture and cattle nearly up to the timber-line. The Rockies are still as nature left them, more stern and desolate, awe-inspiring and effective. The Alps do not look like the Rockies, except in height and steepness. The foliage of the trees is not the same, and the Alps have a tamer appearance than the American range. A town in the Rockies is out of harmony with the scenery. A village in the Alps adds to the beauty. Perhaps I do not make myself clear, but there is a great difference, and I think the Rockies are far ahead from a mountain standpoint.

Switzerland has no language of its own. The Swiss have four distinct languages, and the people of one part of the country do not understand the other. In some of the cantons (corresponding to our states) the language is French, in some German, in some Italian, and in some a composite speech based on the Latin and called “the Romance language.” Remember, this is a country of about the same area (15,000 miles) as the Seventh Congressional district of Kansas, but also remember it is cut up by the mountains into natural divisions which are hard to overcome. I am getting used to hearing one language in one town and another in the next across an imaginary line. But four kinds of talk within a little country like Switzerland is going to be hard to contend with.

Right at the top of the Simplon Pass among the snows that never entirely melt is a “hospice,” maintained for generations by an order of monks and devoted to taking care of poor travelers or relieving those in distress or who lose their way. On every pass between Switzerland and Italy there is such a hospice. The monks have the great St. Bernard dogs (named from the St. Bernard Pass, a little distance away), and when the snows get deep the dogs do much of the work of rescue. I had heard of these great institutions since boyhood, and wondered if they would turn out badly when actually seen. But they are all right, and their good work has not been exaggerated in the thrilling stories in which they have figured.

There are many very large and very picturesque waterfalls, many more than in the Rockies. The constantly melting snow keeps them running, and it is not uncommon to see the water tumbling or jumping down a sheer descent of two hundred to five hundred feet. I would like to take a few waterfalls of that kind back to Kansas and put them up in the sand-hills. I offered an Italian gentleman on the coach who spoke some English to trade him 160 acres of western Kansas land for a good first-class waterfall. Almost fifteen minutes after I made the proposition he laughed. It doesn’t do any good to be funny with people who don’t know your language.

GENEVA AND CHILLON.

GENEVA, July 9, 1905.

This little city, now containing nearly 100,000 inhabitants, has been a storm-center in Europe for 2000 years. Cæsar mentions it, and during the early centuries when Rome was conquering and governing most of the known world, Geneva was an important place, both from a strategic standpoint as a gate to Helvetia and as a prosperous and loyal town. It was either the capital of the country or a ruling city during all of the Dark and Medieval ages, and was one of the first where people learned popular sovereignty and applied it to the detriment of the reigning king or duke. By playing one side against another in the struggle for sovereignty the popular leaders fought for freedom of conscience, and about the year 1500 secured practical independence. Then the Reformation commenced, and Calvin fled from Paris to Geneva. The people there were naturally “agin the government,” and they took up Calvin’s doctrine, and during the years of fighting over religion Geneva was the center from which Protestantism drew most of its leadership and inspiration. They fought for freedom of conscience and worship, and if anybody disagreed with them they killed him promptly to convince him of his error. Calvin ruled Geneva during his life, and after his death his cause went marching on. During the last century Geneva has made a reputation for manufacturing watches, jewelry and musical instruments. It is only fair to say that the best Geneva watches are now made in America. The work here is nearly all done by hand in the home of the workman, and the watchmakers of Geneva have had a hard time competing with Yankee machinery and ingenuity.

The surroundings of Geneva are peaceful and beautiful. The big lake of blue water comes to an end at the Geneva quay and rushes out into the world as the river Rhone, clear and sparkling. Mont Blanc, a quiet old stager of a mountain, whose head is always covered with snow, looks over the city like a stately sentinel at his post. Mountains rise all around the lake and are covered with vineyards, almost the only product of the soil, stretching far up the heights connecting the blue of the lake with the blue of the sky and the snowy peaks and white clouds which watch over them. Amid such surroundings we had decided to rest a few days from our travel, and I found it the best place in the world just to sit in the hotel garden from which the lake, Mont Blanc and the entire picture are visible, and just loaf and loaf and loaf.

The great amusement of tourists who come to Switzerland is mountain-climbing. I have learned the game. Men and women come in at night recounting the wonderful feats they have accomplished and the dangers they have escaped. Everybody carries an “alpenstock,” which is a sharp-pointed cane with a chamois handle, and whenever he climbs a peak he has a ring burned around the stick, and shows it as proudly as the Indian once did the notches which meant deaths of enemies. I am a little skeptical, and listen to the climbing stories as I do to fish stories at home. It is too much like golf where you keep your own count. Perhaps I shall yield to the demands of environment enough to get me an alpenstock and have a few rings burned in it so I can have a few chips in the game, as it were. The men run to knickerbockers, wear feathers in their hats and carry packs on their shoulders. The women wear short skirts which don’t hang well and big shoes with nails in the soles—I am speaking now of people who do the thing right, and not those who sit on the porch and loaf.

The Swiss themselves are degenerating from the simple-hearted people they were. They have fallen before the temptations of the tourists. They see the American and the Englishman with lots of money to spend, and they find it easier to separate the stranger from his cash than they do to hunt chamois and herd cattle. It is a cause of much regret to the intelligent Swiss that this is so, but I do not notice the intelligent mourners going out into the mountains and setting an example of industry. They sell the jewelry, the souvenirs, the milk and the wine at advanced prices, and they have the greatest number of hotels and boarding-houses of any country on earth. If you enjoy handsome little shops with trinkets and gew-gaws, jewelry and picture cards, carved wood and imitation stones, as I do, you would thoroughly enjoy wandering through Geneva. The Geneva artisan will take a chair-leg and make a musical instrument. Sit down on a sofa and you will be startled to hear a piece of Wagner’s played by the concealed music-box.

The language spoken in Geneva is French. I do not think it is good French, for the people here do not understand the French with the fine Parisian accent I brought from Paris. But a large proportion of the people understand English. I am of the opinion that in spite of the fact that French is still the international language in Europe, the one you can use with educated people nearly anywhere, the English-American is the coming language. Very few people in Europe travel. The Germans do so more than others, but the French seldom do, the Italians rarely, and the Spanish and the Russians practically never. The English come to the continent in great numbers, and the Americans are in droves. In a place like Geneva in the principal shops and on the promenades you would say that fully half the people were English-speaking. In order to take care of these profitable guests the Swiss and others are learning enough of the language to sell them cheap goods at high prices, and they will learn more. It is not an uncommon experience to go into a store and after laboriously constructing a question in alleged French to get an answer in very fair English.

I am told that up to a few years ago the American traveler was regarded with a little contempt by the people of continental Europe, and considered as only so much soil from which to gather wealth. But Americans of experience tell me that since the war with Spain all this has changed. As for myself, these Europeans have always spoken in the friendliest way of America, even when they did not know there were any Yankees around. The theory that we were only a commercial people and would not fight (the world loves a fighter) was disproven so thoroughly that they have rather gone to the other extreme, and Americans are now very popular as Americans and not merely for their money. Europe also has the highest opinion of McKinley and Roosevelt. With a great deal of pride in my heart I read a leading editorial in the London Times saying that Roosevelt’s letter to Russia and Japan urging peace was one of the greatest of state papers. The Times added that it was “straightforward, frank and clear—the American idea of diplomacy.” All of Europe now regards America as a great and friendly power, and an American swells up considerably more over his country when he is in other nations than he does at home, where he is apt to get fussy and cynical. The English are not popular on the continent, though England is feared and respected. The Americans are liked because they are believed to be fair and square.

At the other end of Lake Geneva is the castle of Chillon. It is about as big as the court-house in Hutchinson, and looks like the old sugar-mill, only more so. Byron did a great deal for the people in that neck of the woods, for his poem made the castle famous, and tourists come by the hundreds and buy. In return they have named the big hotel the Byron, which shows they are not ungrateful. Byron’s poem had the poor prisoner confined in a dungeon with two brothers, and he had the torture of seeing them die. The facts are that there never was any “prisoner of Chillon” except in the brilliant imagination of Lord Byron. Of course many prisoners were confined in the dungeon. Every castle in Europe has a dungeon, and none of them were constructed with an idea of sanitary conditions or the health of the prisoners. But the dungeon at Chillon is the lightest and airiest dungeon I have seen. It is as comfortable as a good many hotel rooms in the United States. The only prisoner of note that had any such experience was a preacher named Bonnivard, who was kept there for two years because he believed or didn’t believe in Calvin,—I have forgotten which it was. Bonnivard had no brothers, and lived a number of years afterward and said he enjoyed his confinement at Chillon because he had so much time to think. Our guide showed our party the pathway the prisoner’s feet had worn in the rock where he had walked back and forth within the limit of his chains. I couldn’t see the path, although everybody else did. The rest of the castle of Chillon is very interesting, as it was the residence of a fine line of dukes who were always fighting either for or against the king. Our guide, who spoke only French, told us all about it, but I shall not repeat what she said. The people of Hutchinson would not understand her remarks any better than I did.

My idea of a good joke is to have a guide who can only talk French tell an American who can’t understand French something very important or serious. The Frenchman tells his story with rapidity, earnestness and gestures. The American listens with frank impatience and punctuates the French sentences with American ejaculations which have no connection with the subject. The Frenchman acts mad, but he isn’t at all. The American acts pleasant, but he is really mad.

The castle of Chillon is in the lake, about sixty feet from the shore. You reach the entrance over a bridge after fighting your way through the sellers of souvenirs. That is one thing the old dukes did not have to contend with. If they were still doing business I think they would fill up the dungeon with the salesmen and salesladies.

SOMETHING OF SWITZERLAND.

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, July 12, 1905.

Switzerland is a succession of beautiful lakes, mountains and big hotels, dotted here and there with manufacturing towns and vineyards. It has been said that you cannot get too much of a good thing, but that is a mistake. Even the man who loves pie must admit that after he has had all the pie he can consume three times a day for a week, he would want to change the subject. After one has been traveling through Swiss scenery for seven days he is almost satisfied. We no longer chase across the car to see a big mountain-peak, or hurry out of the hotel soon after our arrival to behold the lake. And men and women with feathers in their hats and alpenstocks in their hands do not make us turn our heads. The sight of a little level country would look mighty good, and a comfortable seat on the porch comes nearer to filling the longing in my heart than the sight of a waterfall or an old castle several minutes’ walk distant.

Lucerne is the center of the tourist travel. All roads into Switzerland lead to Lucerne, and the scenery is more varied than at any other of the show places. The town is on the lake and the mountains are around it. From my hotel I could see Mount Pilatus, the place where they say Pontius Pilate finally found a resting-place. At the other end of the view is the snow-covered Rigi, and there are all kinds of Alps in the background. Lucerne looks like an American summer resort. It is made up of hotels and souvenir shops, and elegantly dressed women parade up and down the promenade walks, while rich old gentlemen sit uncomfortably around the piazzas and wish the women-folks had let them stay at home. It is astonishing how many men act as if they would give a good deal to be at work somewhere rather than in Switzerland “enjoying themselves.” A lot of people do not know how to have a good time or how to see a strange and delightful place. I meet many people who do not care for Europe, or Italy, or Switzerland,—the people who bring a stack of trunks and good clothes and have to put in their time dressing up only to be out-dressed by somebody else.

But Lucerne has one thing different. It is the “Lion of Lucerne,” the monument erected in honor of the Swiss soldiers who died in the French palace defending the rotten Bourbon dynasty when the revolutionists broke in and captured the king and queen. The lion (twenty-eight feet in length) is carved out of a sandstone ledge, and is the finest monument or statue I ever saw. The king of beasts is dying, agony on his face, a broken lance in his side, and his huge paw resting on a shield of the lilies of France. The more I looked at the great work of Thorwaldsen the more I felt it, and I went back again and again to see it,—the real test of effect. Nearly everyone has seen copies or pictures of this work, but it is one of the things that no copy can do justice to, for the size and substance of the stone, the pathos and power of the subject and the skill and the genius of the sculptor have met most perfectly and impressively.

Near Lucerne is the scene of the early struggle for Swiss liberty. Around the lake of Lucerne are the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, whose representatives met some 500 years ago and entered into the compact to stand together for freedom, a compact which has never been broken. Here William Tell refused to take off his hat to the hat the tyrant Gessler had set up and ordered all to salute. To punish Tell the governor ordered him to take his bow and arrow and shoot an apple from the head of his son. Tell’s aim was true, but as he turned away another arrow dropped from his coat. When asked why he had that, he said it was for Gessler if the boy had been hurt. Gessler took Tell in a boat and was carrying him to a dungeon, when a storm arose and Tell was released in order to use his skill as a boatman. He knew that the world wasn’t big enough for both himself and Gessler, so he soon after inserted an arrow into the tyrant’s ribs, and the Austrians had to get a new governor.

Some cynical historians doubt this Tell story, but I do not. It is just as good a story as a lot which appear in history and it is good enough to be true.

After the Tell revolution, which was in the thirteenth century, those Swiss cantons never lost their freedom, although they had to fight for it about every generation. The Hapsburg family, which reigned in Austria, was always trying to conquer the Swiss, and although its power was great enough to overcome any army they could collect, it could not cope with the mountains and gulches in which the Swiss were at home, and where one man who knew the land was equal in fighting value to a dozen knights in armor or on horseback. On that account the Swiss, especially the people of these “forest cantons,” have been a free people through all the changes in the world during more than 500 years. Sometimes they have been selfish and narrow in their ideas of freedom, considering that they were the only people on earth, and they have until the last century held serfs and domineered despotically over weak neighbors. But they were always far in advance of the rest of the world in their ideas of personal liberty. Switzerland is the one country which has always been a refuge to exiled patriots, rebels, conspirators and pretenders. Switzerland will not surrender a fugitive from another country on a political charge. The judges who sentenced Charles I. of England to death sought refuge in Switzerland when Charles II. came to the throne. Charles demanded that the judges be given up to him, and brought every influence to bear, but the Swiss stood by their law of refuge. To-day the anarchists and nihilists of Russia and the revolutionists of every country from Roumania to Spain have their headquarters in Geneva or some other Swiss town.

It will be noticed that I think a good deal of the Swiss, and that I have written some criticism of the Italians. I went through Italy without ever being overcharged, “held up,” or worked by cab-drivers, hotel-keepers, or anyone at all. But in Switzerland, the land of freedom and education, I have had all these things done to me. I have been surprised and pleased by the way the people of Europe treat strangers, even if they do want tips. I had not been meanly treated from the time I left Boston until I reached Switzerland. The last man I did business with in my native land was a Boston hackman, who charged me twice what he should when he brought us to the ship. I did not meet his equal until I got to Lucerne. I hope there is no connection between personal liberty, republican government, and the swindling of strangers.

Yesterday we went to St. Gallen, a little industrial town near Constance. The women will recognize the name of this town if the men do not, for it is the place Swiss embroideries come from. I found out one thing there: Most of the Swiss hand embroidery is made by machinery. The Swiss are called the Yankees of Europe. They are up to almost all the tricks of the trade. They are changing from a pastoral and agricultural people, except right in the mountains, and are making money out of manufactories and tourists. The men and women do not wear the ridiculous and charming peasant costumes, except in beer-gardens and summer-resort hotels. In fact, I am impressed with the sameness of people’s clothes everywhere. There is no longer any such thing as characteristic costume. I saw the men’s clothes in Italy all cut and made just as in France, England, or America. The women have the same styles in the country districts of Switzerland that they do in Kansas or in Paris. Of course some people know how to wear their clothes better than others, and there is a difference in fit and make, but the styles are the same from Hutchinson to St. Gallen.

I am learning some things in geography. Mont Blanc, the biggest mountain in Switzerland, is in France. Constance, one of the best Swiss resorts, is in Germany. Switzerland is such a busy little country that it bulges out all around.

SWISS AND SWITZERLAND.

NEUHAUSEN, SWITZERLAND, July 13, 1905.