CHAPTER III.

THE PASS OF ST. GOTHARD.

THE St. Gothard is one of the grandest of the great Swiss passes, those gigantic arteries which send the life-blood through her whole frame, and vitalize her otherwise lifeless and dreary existence. It is these which give her people the means of frequent intercourse with each other and with foreign nations, and thus introduce into her secluded valleys the comforts, and not unfrequently the refinements, of more favored lands. It is these which improve their minds, soften their manners, and give them a certain knowledge of the world. It is these that temper their rugged hospitalities with the courtesies of society. Without these the greater part of Switzerland would be a wilderness, inhabited only by a race as rude and fierce as Cæsar found the ancient Helvetii. Of course, the difficulties of constructing roads through these gorges have been enormous, and so are always the labor and skill required to keep them in repair. Yet the very obstacles in the way seem to have developed the talents requisite to overcome them; and in nearly every case, except the great road built by Napoleon over the Simplon, the engineers have

been Swiss. They have been born and brought up among the crags and peaks over and through which their genius was to lead the way.

The first Napoleon (whose entire want of all kindly fellow-feeling for or with mankind made him hesitate at no sacrifice of blood, of treasure, or of life) had but to stamp upon the ground, and the Simplon road was begun. Thousands of men and millions of money completed the work in five years, and another" Napoleonic idea" became a pregnant fact. But with the road of St. Gothard it was far different. This was begun and finished by the manual labor and small contributions of the poor. It was the work chiefly of the poverty-stricken cantons through which it passed. It was their vigor, and the abilities of their engineer, named Müller, which carried it to completion, and that in spite of every possible impediment which nature could place in their way. But this was not all. The year it was finished the most terrific storm ever known in Switzerland burst upon the pass, and in a few hours made a perfect wreck of everything they had done. Yet they rallied and again completed the work, though few but themselves can appreciate at what an enormous expenditure of labor and suffering.

Nothing can be more admirable than the manner in which it was done. Bridges were thrown over mountain-torrents, now flowing gently at the bottom of some deep ravine, but which, swollen in a few hours by floods of rain, rush on with a force

that would sweep away everything but the strongest and most skilfully built structures. Rocks were tunnelled, and the road conducted along the base of gigantic cliffs, where only the talent of man could find a way between their base and the river. Whole miles were excavated in the solid rock. Enormous galleries were built at different points for protection from avalanches. Great buttresses were thrown out from the face of precipices so lofty that their summits are lost in the clouds, and so inaccessible that the screams of the eagle and the track of the chamois are the only signs of animated nature. Thus every kind of engineering talent was necessary for these structures, and no public works in Europe show greater skill in overcoming serious obstacles. To have been the engineer of the St. Gothard Pass is glory enough for any man. Both Müller and Tell were born in the same vicinity, near its entrance, and one may well doubt which of them is the greater honor to his birthplace. The heroic patriotism of the one delivered his countrymen from crushing tyranny; the genius of the other guided into his native valley the streams of wealth, of thrift, and of mental cultivation, and thus dignified and ennobled the liberty acquired with so much bravery.

This is without doubt the most interesting of all the Swiss passes, from the union it presents of grand and beautiful scenery with repeated evidences of man's success in overcoming great natural impediments. It is by far the most attrac

tive route into Italy, and nowhere else can SO many of the grand aspects of nature be seen with so little discomfort to the traveller. From Lucerne to Flüelen is a sail of thirty miles; from the latter, by way of Bellinzona to Locarno, is a distance of about ninety. This latter town is situated on the Lago Maggiore, and from thence one enjoys another sail of thirty miles, nearly the whole length of the lake, to Arona. The Lake of Lucerne offers the most sublime water-scenery in the world; that of the Lago Maggiore is the most charming. The route between them abounds in every variety of both mountain and watery beauty.

The grandeur of the former lake culminates in the Bay of Uri, at the upper end of which Flüelen is placed. This gulf is entered only by one narrow and rocky gateway, the Thermopyla of the scene; and its waters are confined on every side by trackless precipices, against whose base they ever fret and dash. Only near Flüelen do the mountains withdraw from the shore, that the River Reuss, which flows down the pass, may find a reservoir for its rapid torrent. Nothing can be more picturesque or majestic than this scenery. The calm surface of the water seems at one time but a mirror to redouble the snow-covered Alps and gloomy crags which overhang it. At another the wind (called Föhn) rushes down from the mountains, and lashes the waves into a raging ocean, over which not even the steamboats can pass. At the left hand, on a little shelf of rock

at the base of the precipice, is the chapel of Tell. It is a small building, rudely adorned with paintings illustrating the early struggles of the Swiss. It was built but a few years after the hero's death, upon the spot where he leaped ashore from Gessler's boat. Opposite this is Grütli, a small plot of green pasture, where the three patriots met at midnight to confirm by a solemn oath their determination to free their country from the thraldom of Austria. Here they swore "to be true to each other," and, with a noble forbearance under the wrongs they had suffered, added to their oath that they would "do no wrong to the Count of Hapsburg, nor injure his bailiffs." Tradition reports, that, as they raised their hands to heaven and uttered their vow, "earth felt 'the shock," and three fountains burst forth, bearing from mysterious sources their unsullied waters to this cradle of a new-born nation, even as the Magi of old, from the uncertain regions of the East, came with precious gifts to the manger of Him who was to lead forth his people into the broad domain of religious liberty.

These fountains are yet shown. However skeptical one may feel as to their origin, he may well shed tears of genuine sympathy over the sufferings of these simple-minded patriots, while he strongly admires their magnanimity of soul. A feeling of deep regret may well spring up, that at the present day we so rarely find a piety so sincere, a patriotism so liberal, a wisdom so far-sighted.