Lake Lucerne

“ The lake of Lucerne is encompassed on all sides by high mountains that rise abruptly from the water;—sometimes their bare fronts descend perpendicularly and cast a black shade upon the waves;—sometimes they are covered with thick wood, whose dark foliage is interspersed by the brown bare crags on which the trees have taken root. In every part where a glade shews itself in the forest it appears cultivated, and cottages peep from among the woods. The most luxuriant islands, rocky and covered with moss, and bending trees, are sprinkled over the lake. ”

“ Old Jacobeans, ghostly, innumerable, whose desks like tombstones would bear for a little while the perishable ink of their own idle epitaphs.
Lucerne was airless; the avenue of pollarded limes sheltered a depressed bulk of dusty tourists; the atmosphere was impregnated with bourgeois exclamations; the very surface of the lake was swarming with humanity, noisy with the click of rowlocks, and with the gutturals that seemed to praise fitly such a theatrical setting. ”

“ Yet when, at length, the clouds begin to break away, and disclose the deep valleys and blue lakes,—places made immortal by the deeds of such patriots and reformers as Tell and Zuinglius,—we feel again the attractions of earth; and as we descend to Lake Lucerne, we have before us such scenery as scarcely any other part of the world can furnish. And these scenes continue, in ever-changing aspects, wherever we wander along this enchanting lake; and though the exhausted brain fails at length, the objects of interest do not. ”

“ The lake is sixty miles long, and reminded us of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.
"We spent the night at Queenstown, a mining and agricultural town about twenty miles from Kingston, and on the next day completed our journey to the head of the lake. The scenery is magnificent, and I can no more describe it adequately in words than I can tell how a nightingale sings or a mangosteen tastes. All around us are the mountains, the highest peaks covered with perpetual snow that seems to flash back the rays of the sun, before whose heat it refuses to melt. ”

“ The most immediately mountainous in character, because no other big Swiss lake, as already intimated,7 extends itself so deeply into the heart of giant hills, or is bordered so immediately by steep and rugged mountains. Thus Lucerne gains in surprise and mystery what it loses in simple graciousness; is dramatic and startling where other lakes are tranquil and merely soothing; and is certainly, to sum up, the most splendid and magnificent lake in the Alps, if not the most dignified and beautiful. ”

“ And along the banks of this wonderful lake is a whole town of hotels, gay with many colored flags, their terraces and balconies rising tier above tier, like the galleries of a grand theater whose scenery is the mighty Alps....
In summer Lucerne is the Hyde Park of Switzerland. Its quays are thronged by people of every nation. There you meet pale women from the lands of snow, and dark women from the lands of the sun; tall, six-foot English women, and lively, alert, trim Parisian women, with the light and graceful carriage of a bird on the bough. ”

“ Does he come down the chimneys in America? It is well for children to know him.’ And this woman of sentiment and feeling worked daily out of doors. The scenery from Lake Lucerne is indeed beautiful and is full of glorious associations, for it was about here that the struggle was made for the liberty and freedom of Switzerland and her people. The mountains all about us, the stately chateaux, the pretty chalets, old watch towers, castle ruins, and the green foliage about them, the beautiful lake,{170} and the steamers going and coming, make a peaceful, restful scene. ”

“ Of the five great primary divisions of the Vierwaldstättersee—and one is driven, however anxious to preserve the configuration of the cross, to recognize a fifth, and separate, division in the Bay, or Lake, of Uri—of the five great divisions of the Lake of Lucerne, that which extends to the quays of Lucerne itself is the most placid and domestic in respect of actual shore-line. True, there is always a background of lofty mountain, sufficiently magnificent and sufficiently near at hand to impress itself on the landscape as a component, and even dominant, feature ”

“ One cannot bear too much exaltation. After having dwelt awhile among the sublimities of Nature, it is a relief to come down to her more common and familiar aspects; the sunshine is doubly grateful after the gloom of Alpine passes; meadows and groves are more pleasant to the eye than snow-clad peaks; and more sweet to the ear than the roar of mountain torrents, is the murmur of softly-flowing streams. From Lucerne, our way lies over that undulating country which we had surveyed the day before from the summit of the Righi, winding around the Lake of Zug, and ending at the Lake of Zurich. ”

“ WHEN we forget the scene before our dazzled eyes as we stepped out upon the balcony of the hotel Bellevue at Lucerne, earth will have passed away. There lay the fair lake, the emerald hills rising from its blue depths on every side, save where the queer old town sweeps around its curve, or beyond Pilatus, where the chain is broken, and a strip of level land lies along the water's edge, sprinkled with red-roofed farm-houses set in the midst of grain-fields, and with rows of tall, straight poplars extending to the water. ”

“ The first lake which stood out, blue and bright, was the little mountain-lake, Egeri, the lake of Lucerne, Zug, Sarnen, and others. By degrees, the whole region was unvailed, and it was an enchanting scene. But now, lying there in its whole extent, in the full blaze of daylight, the beautiful, affluent earth, it was no longer remarkable for the attractiveness of its beauty. Every object seemed so miserably small, and human beings as mere nothings. The landscape lay there, immovable and lifeless, like a map. ”

“ Sempach itself, like Sursee, is a picturesque old town, with another quaint old gateway. The lake, though five miles long, is quite outside the mountains, though the splintered crags of Pilatus give a distant hint of Alpine splendour. The remaining nine miles or so to Lucerne are perhaps a trifle dull, and the entrance to the city is through the usual straggling suburb—out of all reasonable proportion to the place itself—that conducts us too frequently to a town in Switzerland. ”

“ The attraction here, of course, is the majestic Bay of Uri, which comes into view with startling suddenness, in a few revolutions of the paddles, as the steamer approaches the quay at Brunnen; and whose splendour, luckily, neither monster hotel, nor monster crowd, nor the presence of the great St. Gothard railway (here first insistently apparent on the margin of the lake) ,
"nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy." ”

“ It takes its name from the town of Lucerne, which is situated at its west end, just where the Reuss issues from the lake, after having entered it at Flüelen at the east end and so practically formed it; the Muota enters the lake at Brunnen (northern shore) and the two mountain streams called the Engelberg and the Sarnen Aa at Buochs and Alpnachstad respectively (S.) . The lake is generally supposed to be, on the whole, the most beautiful in Switzerland. ”

“ But the importance of Lucerne consists not in its greatness, but in its glorious situation and its life. To the outward and grand features of this belongs the Reuss, which is hurled like a cascade out of the lake, and across the rapid smaragdus-green waters, pouring onward into the country, are thrown three bridges, one very peculiar with its number of paintings from Swiss history. To the outer life belongs also the number of steamboats which arrive here all the day through, and the multitude of travelers who transform the beautiful quay, with its hotels and cafés, into a Parisian boulevard. ”

“ Those36 who visit Lucerne only in the deadly oppression of the high season, when every lake-side quay swarms like an ant-hill, and every village rings like Babel, are apt to carry away wrong impressions of this still absolutely unimpaired lake. The playground at seasons is densely packed, but the place has received no permanent wrong; those who can reconcile Nature and a crowd will be happy here even in August, when ”

“ Then we come to low shaggy rocks, forming pretty little bays, and a singular rock appears before us in the water, the terminating point of the promontory. That point passed, the Kusnach branch opening out on our left hand, we are soon on the body of the lake, from which the four smaller branches of Lucerne, Winkel, Alpnach, and Kusnach may be said to proceed. The lake is full and stately; the mountains are magnificent. The town of Lucerne, its red roofs softened (even in the sunshine of this bright day) by distance, is an elegant termination of its own compartment, backed by low hills. ”

“ We do not care if they do....
The great quay of Lucerne is delightful; as good as the seashore at Dieppe or Trouville. Before you, limpid and blue, lies the lake, which from the character of its shores, at once stern and graceful, is the finest in Switzerland. In front rises the snow-clad peaks of Uri, to the left the Rigi, to the right the austere Pilatus, almost always wearing his high cap of clouds. ”

“ PILATUS ABOVE A SEA OF CLOUDS.
9 This first view, then, of the Vierwaldstättersee from the quays at Lucerne—far more than the first view of Lake Leman from the bridges of Geneva, or of Zurich from the quays of Zurich city—is dramatic in its complete and abrupt transformation, in its turning upside-down, and twisting inside-out, of all our previous conceptions of our commonplace, workaday world! The thing in a way is sensational, but sensational within the modesty of nature, and certainly to be enjoyed at least once in a lifetime, and especially if one happen to be young. ”

“ The Reuss has many cascades and torrent gorges as it runs among the rough crags, and it falls nearly 6,000 feet before it reaches the Lake of Lucerne, this lake itself being still 1,400 feet above the sea.
A gradual current towards the end of the lake entices you under the bridge where the river starts again on its course, at first gently enough, and as if it never could get fierce and hoarse-voiced when it has taken you miles away into the woods and can deal with you all alone. ”

“ But where the lower ledges of calcareous rock were broken by the inlets of the Lake Lucerne, and bracing winds penetrating from the north forbade the growth of the vine, compelling the peasantry to adopt an entirely pastoral life, was reared another race of men. ”

“ The Lake of Lucerne, just peeping through the trees, and the mountain ranges beyond, peak above peak covered with their snow white mantle made the scene entrancing. After we had tired our eyes with looking on the lovely landscape we went to enjoy our dejeuner of fish, fowl, bacon, eggs and coffee. We left our hotel for the first visit into the lovely town of Lucerne. It is not a large town but well built and kept very clean. The accommodation for getting about is good, by tram or ’bus or cab, and not too expensive. ”

“ Oh that our American people would send a commissioner of their country pathmasters over here! Within the last four years two of these cantons have built a road along the eastern side of Lake Lucerne that would do honor to Napoleon in the days of his mightiest power. For miles it is cut into the edge of solid rock, which makes the bed of the road, and a parapet; sometimes it is a tunnel, and once a tunnel with windows looking out on the lake. All are made by the voluntary, self-imposed taxation of a hard-working people. ”

“ Do what we will, however, there remains in all deeply agreeable impressions a charming something we can't analyse. I found it agreeable even, given the rest of my case, to turn out of bed, at Lucerne, by four o'clock, into the chilly autumn darkness. The thick-starred sky was cloudless, and there was as yet no flush of dawn; but the lake was wrapped in a ghostly white mist which crept halfway up the mountains and made them look as if they too had been lying down for the night and were casting away the vaporous tissues of their bedclothes. ”

“ THEY tell you over here that the Alps have the robust beauty of the Alleghanies combined with the scenic grandeur of the Rockies; but there is not the slightest duplicate of the Rocky Mountains that we discovered. Surely nothing could exceed in loveliness Lucerne. As we wound down the hillside near the foot of the lake, backed by precipitous mountains running away to where their peaks lift up their snows, we saw below us, and around a beautifully colored bay, Lucerne. ”

“ Lucerne, 30th August.—Early this beautiful morning we set out in a little, open carriage, along the lake Lowertz, out of the Canton of Schwytz into that of Lucerne. The country resembled a vast orchard; in the meadows the people were busy with their second hay harvest. The people here have carried cultivation as high as possible up the mountains, combating with the mountain and the severity of the cold for a foot-breadth of cultivatable land. Amongst and by means of large stones, they collect and keep together the soil, and in it plant a few potatoes or flowering plants. ”

“ High above the little mountain town, on a green pedestal of hill, is the stately, Classical parish church, commanding sweeping views across the wide sub-Alpine vale. Here, in the crowded burial-ground, I searched in vain in the early months of 1914 for memorials of any age—almost every cross or stone had been erected since I had last passed along this valley, in driving in the diligence from Meiringen to Lucerne, not quite a quarter of a century earlier. The old bone-houses stand nowadays mostly empty ”