F. Barham Zincke

“ All the might and all the glory of Egypt are there; all the discipline and all the forethought. These Egyptians, who are so fond of colour and of flags at home, have not gone forth to show themselves to the world without this bravery. The desert cannot be seen for the myriads of men and animals that cover it. It has become as gay as a flower-garden. ”

“ As I walked along, looking down precipices between lofty pine stems, as straight and round as if they had been turned in a lathe, to the broken foamy thread of the Hinter Rhein in the bottom, and then up 1,600 feet of opposite black precipice, on the summit of which, here and there, a lofty pine broke the sky-line, but showing at that height no bigger than a hop-pole, the circumnavigator, understanding how my mind was engaged, and perhaps himself a little touched by the scene, propounded the only remark he made on the scenery during the eight days he was with me. ”

“ In this wide, verdureless field, there is no suggestion of life. The midday sun, which is shining brightly upon it, brings out nothing but the gray of the summits of rock, which, when not in the shade, show of a pale ash colour, and the white of the summits of snow, which gleams and dazzles in its purity. This dark gray, pale ash, and gleamy white are the only colouring. The gray and pale ash predominate in an endless variety of forms—mountain walls, ridges, battlements, bastions, and escarpments. ”

“ Black granite rises in sheer cliffs, mountain-high above you. The Reuss thunders seventy-five feet below the arch on which you are standing. You are wet with the spray. A sense of personal nothingness, of annihilation, comes over you. You feel as a shrimp might between the jaws of a whale.
The granite appears absolutely naked; but a closer inspection shows you a few humble Alpine plants in such crannies and crevices as their roots could find a hold in, together with a little mould from decayed lichens to feed upon. ”

“ But though perfect equality is the first principle of Western life, yet the superiority of refinement and mental cultivation is fully recognised, and everybody readily defers to them. This, however, is only done on the condition that there is no assumption on the part of the person himself. To pretend to a superiority to others,—what we call, to give yourself airs,—is in American society, whether it be in the East or the West, an unpardonable offence; it is the sin against equality, which is never forgiven in this world, and which every true American trusts will not be forgotten in the next. ”

“ It was this that built the thousand mighty temples in which the living might learn those virtues, and practise that piety, which would be their passport to the better world to come. It was this that embalmed the bodies of the dead, whose souls were still alive. Without it the religion of old Egypt could never have been a living force, nor anything but the merest mummy of a religion. ”

“ This is the head-water of the Saltine, which joins the Rhone at Brieg. As you pass along this part of the road you have before you the terrific forces, and savagery, of Alpine nature; but you reflect that civilised man has been able, if not to overcome them, yet at all events to protect himself from them. You think that it is something to be a man; or, with less of personal feeling, that civilisation has endowed him with much power. These scenes stir the mind. They enlarge thought, and strengthen will. ”

“ When history begins to dawn, the first object the light strikes upon, and which for a long time alone rears its form above the general gloom, is the civilization of Egypt. It stands in isolation, like a solitary palm by the side of a desert spring. It is also like that palm in being a complete organism, and in producing abundance of good fruit. All around is absolute desert, or the desert sparsely marked with the useless forms of desert life. ”

“ As the herd is driven by, through the village, with bells tinkling, and joyous at the prospect of returning at last to the fresh, thymy, mountain herbage, he looks on in silence, with his mouth open, as if his hopes, and his wits, too, were departing from him, through the passage he is providing for their exit.
He cannot understand how things have come to be as they are. He worked hard all the summer. ”

“ But from the observations and enquiries I made, I came to the conclusion that there is no country in which the proportion of those whose destiny it is to suffer complete eclipse of happiness is so great as in the United States. Among men one chief cause of this appeared to me to be the irresistible attraction a life of heartless dissipation has for multitudes of young Americans. Why is this so? I believe their theory of social equality is responsible for some of it. They have a fatal craving to appear as fashionable, and to enjoy life as much as their wealthy neighbours. ”

“ When they are completely opened, a public, free, inexhaustible supply of the purest possible water will be the first care of every community, great and small; and drinking-fountains will, everywhere, offer an alternative to the gin-palace and public-house, and in winter as well as in summer.
To the reflecting mind, the overflowing sparkling fountains of the Swiss towns are very pleasing objects. So, too, to the natural eye, and ear, are the brawling stream in every valley, and the trickling rills on every hill-side. There is water, water, everywhere; and every drop to drink. ”

“ Now the climate had been changed as well as the scene, for I was seated on the spacious verandah of the Trafoi inn, with the scattered village, its little church, and garden plots around me, not dazzled, nor scorched, but only so quickened by the flood of light and warmth the sun was pouring down on the spot, as to feel that they were life to myself, as I saw that they were to all organized nature around me.
The view from this verandah is food, and, too, very pleasant food, for the eye. The point of central attraction is the Ortler, with its smooth, massive, dome-shaped cap of snow. ”

“ The winged insect bursting from the cerements of its suspended, into the happy freedom of its new aërial life, was a type, addressed by nature to the eye, and through the eye to the understanding, to prefigure the soul of man, at last emancipated from all earthly and fleshly hindrances, soaring to the empyrean regions of eternal day, for the full enjoyment of its predestined glory, for which—all that had gone before having been the long and troublous discipline—it is now completely equipped. ”

“ Memphis is on a bluff of the Mississippi. How strange does this juxtaposition of the names of hoar antiquity and of yesterday sound in the ears of a European! And it will also seem strange to many that this city, whose name they had never heard mentioned, except as being that of a great city of the Pharaohs, has already a population of 84,000 inhabitants, and is so well situated that it is destined to become, under the reign of freedom, one of the largest of the second-class cities of the Union. A bluff is a river-cliff. ”

“ The worst bit is on the last descent towards Muotta. There you have a long, broken-up staircase of glass-smooth (and, if there has been any rain, lubricated) blocks of stone. From the summit to Muotta is not impressive as Alpine scenery. But variety is pleasant; and to be passing through these mountain pastures among herds of cows, and cowherds, with somewhat mountainous barriers left and right, over short, smooth turf, and beside clear, lively streams, on a sunny day, with fresh, breezy air, will satisfy many. For those whom it does not satisfy we can only have—well—but imperfect sympathy. ”

“ Man is the child of Nature, in whose bosom he is brought up. It is true that there are some who cannot see that it is his duty and his happiness to acquaint himself with nature; but no one who had made any progress in the study of nature, ever thought lightly of what he had attained to. And this is true of the knowledge, not only of the grander objects of nature, such as the starry firmament and the great and deep sea, but equally of the most inconspicuous, and, as they appear to our senses, the most insignificant objects in nature. ”

“ What dreary confinement to the small comfortless house, with the snow piled up to the windows of the first floor, month after month! How must the returning warmth of the sun, and the first glimpses of the green grass be hailed! How must every hour of the few days of their little summer be prized! In that brief space they have to provision the garrison of each home for the ensuing nine months. Their chief care is for their hay, the one store upon which ultimately the lives of all, both man and beast, depend. We may be sure they do not lose an hour of daylight. ”

“ You do not go through Egypt without comparing the village Achmed, who is so often at your side, with poor Hodge, whom you left at home, but who, nevertheless, is often in your thoughts. You ask which of the two is better off; and which is, after all, the better man? And you ask yourself these questions not without some misgivings, for you are pleased with Achmed, and now that you are free from work and care, and with the glorious world unfolding itself before you, you are disposed, when you are reminded of him, to feel more pity than usual for poor Hodge. ”

“ Sarnen is a quaint, quiet place. Ammer would have me go to the Hotel de Ville to see a model in relief of Switzerland, and the portraits of some score, or more, of landammans, enriched and sanctified, of course, by that of Nicholas Von der Flüe, for he is everywhere in Unterwalden. The preternatural ugliness, the out-of-the-world expression, ‘the abominable imitation of humanity’ of these old local celebrities seemed, somehow or other, in keeping with the place. The expression of the features is the expression of the mind: that, sometimes perhaps its absence, is what they express. ”

“ There is, however, another way of looking at this charming lake, with the green forest that descends to it from the opposite mountain, and beyond the lake the valley opening up to Pontresina, and with the long varied vistas up and down the main valley, and with the little town of St. Moritz, perched on its niche on the mountain side, close before you. There is so much variety, so many objects, so much colour, and everything is so clear and fresh, and so bright in the sunshine, that you can hardly think the scene belongs to the same world as you are accustomed to at home. ”

“ Yet the feeble community in the valley, by their stout hearts and virtuous lives, continue to make it smile on the frowning mountains. How pleasing to the eye and to the thought, is the sight! And what enhances the charm it possesses is the sense of its thorough naturalness. There is nothing artificial about it; and so there is nothing that can to the people themselves suggest discontent. Their condition, in every particular, is the direct result of the unobstructed working of natural causes, such as they exist in man himself, and in environing circumstances. ”

“ They even recurred to the worship of the bull Mnevis, the divinity of Heliopolis—Joseph’s On—at the very foot of Sinai. Everything, therefore, that could recall Egypt and its religion, everything that might present a point of contact between the thoughts, the worship, the lives of the new people and of their old masters, was to be studiously avoided. The dividing lines must everywhere be deep and sharp—there must be no bridges from one to the other. So it must be. But the doctrine of the future life was the very kernel—the heart itself—of the religion of Egypt. ”

“ No more grand views of snow-fields and ice-rivers. No more of nature’s battlemented and pinnacled ramparts and castles far above us while the storm was raging far below us. No more pleasant halts at mountain châlets, or on the turf by the huddling streamlet, in such haste to get down to the valley. ”