Swiss frontier

“ Thus, both man and beast were blessed.
And it is, even yet, the flowers that, with vigilance and valor, guard Switzerland against the assaults of the ice giants and the frost army. These would make the Land of the Edelweiss like the regions of the North Pole, if it were not for the flowers and the grass. That is the reason why the Swiss people are not like Esquimaux. Their beautiful country holds the chamois, and [190] the ibex, and the birds, instead of walruses and polar bears; and the people have bread, and honey, and cream, instead of seal meat and blubber. ”

“ I would not leave the impression, by the way, that the Swiss are invariably prosperous. Indeed, some of them along the lake must have been very poor just then, for the grape crop had failed two years in succession, and with many of them their vineyard is their all. But there was no outward destitution, no rags, no dirt, no begging. Whatever his privation, the Swiss does not wear his poverty on his sleeve.
Switzerland has two other official languages besides French—German and Italian. ”

“ I am old"—he was seventy—"and my task is heavy, for the enemy is powerful, but I trust I shall carry on my mission in the name of the God of our Rütli, who has never ceased to protect our Fatherland." Such has ever been and ever will be the love of the Swiss for their native soil, a love [Pg 402] not based merely on the beauty of their land, nor on the perfection of its institutions, but on the knowledge that it is a stronghold of noble freedom, and one of their own rearing. ”

“ They are not idle, nor dissipated, nor away from home. They are at work, and in the house, not tending the baby, nor baking the bread, nor washing the clothes; but they are industrious, and what are they at? The Swiss are a frugal, saving, thriving people. The amount of arable land is not enough to meet their wants. ”

“ Their nation is in a sense an artificial one. Its cementing bond is an hereditary instinct, nourished among the peasants of these mountain pastures, to keep the mountain slopes free.
The town life of the Swiss, affected a good deal as it must be by the hotel life of the tourists, is not so admirable as the village life. It is in some aspects irritatingly petty-minded; in others invitingly well-educated. The Swiss are interested only in the Swiss, and (in a strictly commercial way) the strangers who come to visit and enrich Switzerland. ”

“ Thus, though every Swiss takes a pride in his schools, there is not one uniform standard throughout the state.
Every burgess is bound to perform military service, and at any time a force of 200,000 men of the élite, and first reserve, can be placed in the field, not including the Landsturm. Since the Franco-German war military matters are engaging the serious attention of the country, seeing the central position of Switzerland, and the unsettled state of Europe. ”

“ A larger Switzerland must be formed, which should contain as many as possible of the important tourists’ resorts, and must be organized on the Swiss model, to constitute a solid block of pacific influence, bound together by an indissoluble bond of common commercial interest, which should extend from the South of the Rhineland to the very gates of Galicia. ”

“ In later stages mountains interfere greatly with the development of the machinery of civilisation. Always, too, mountain air sharpens the appetite rather than the wits, and there are some diseases attacking particularly the brain which are almost peculiar to mountain districts.
The Swiss, then, have to be considered justly rather in the light of a handicapped than of a favoured people. Their one favouring national circumstance is that their central position in regard to the great plains of Europe has put them13 in the track of all the chief currents of civilisation. ”

“ After centuries, however, it will still be asked, whether Switzerland proved true to its name as the free Switzerland in these days, or renounced it. The question whether the Lest that we Swiss are capable of and have, can be preserved throughout the present crisis, will be decided only by opening our hearts and hands to these refugees, or by turning our backs upon them. The Humane reason. We see in these refugees the fate we have miraculously been spared. It is quite true that we also are not too well off to-day. ”

“ So great are the demands of the new factories that the emigration of the Swiss begins to dwindle and there is an immigration of artisans from abroad into the country. In the rural districts, away from the towns, among the Alpine villages, the chief industry is the rearing of sheep, goats, and cows. Swiss milk, in a preserved form, and Swiss cheese go all over the world.
The life of the Alpine villages rarely comes under the notice of the tourist unless he is a pedestrian without the craze for rock or glacier87 climbing, and willing to use his legs for the exploring of rough hill paths. ”

“ The Swiss are a stirring and business-like people, and had already in the first half of the present century carried their enterprises abroad, especially in the principal seaports. As early as 1812, Egg, a citizen of Zurich, took two hundred operatives, and started a cotton factory at Piedimonti, near Naples, notwithstanding the blockade, the machinery being taken by way of Trieste and the Adriatic. ”

“ VIII THE FROST GIANTS AND THE SUNBEAM FAIRIES
Many people think Switzerland the most beautiful country on earth. It is certainly the world’s playground. Every year, many hundreds of thousands of persons from various countries, go there to spend either the winter or the summer. They come to enjoy the good sleep that comes from the bracing air, to climb the high peaks, to see the flowers, to hear the echoes of the Alpine horn, to ride over the mountain roads, or to be whisked up, on electric railways, to summits among the clouds. ”

“ Switzerland has no small influence on the affairs of Europe, as well by its situation as by its warlike genius. There is much of history, but still more political anomaly, written in the very conglomerate map of Switzerland. It is a land of unfulfilled destiny. The eye traces its great water-courses into the most important countries of civilized Europe, and recognizes the lines down which potent influences, social and political, are to descend. ”

“ For many ages the poorest country in Europe, it is rapidly progressing towards becoming, in proportion to the amount of its population, one of the richest. The position taken to-day by Switzerland in the trade and commerce of the world is remarkable, when the various natural obstacles are considered,—such as absence of raw material for its industries, great distance from the sea-coast, with costly and difficult means of transportation, and restrictive customs established by neighboring countries. ”

“ With commercial and economic disadvantages difficult to overcome, it would appear the wiser policy for Switzerland to check the rapid transformation of the beautiful and the venerable into cheap and tasteless novelties, with their cast-iron uninterestingness. Nature has done all for Switzerland, from its pure and radiant air to its mountains, lakes, and wild flowers, which spring up as though Aphrodite were still there, “to sow them with her odorous feet.” ”

“ We children, even when big girls and boys, and ready for college, enjoyed the fun, the music, and the stories. It was from these dear old ladies that the story teller learned to love the mountains, and to climb them, in America and Japan, and, for weeks at a time, to tramp among them in glorious Switzerland.
The ancestral Swiss home was in a valley of the Bernese Oberland, under the shadow of a high mountain. In winter, which usually lasted seven months or more, the people, the boys, and the girls, the cows, goats, donkeys, horses, chickens, and all living things were shut in by heavy snows. ”

“ And now New Switzerland is flourishing and will soon be too small to receive all those who are attracted to her. Her commerce is finding outlets in Europe as well as in Asia, thanks to the proximity of Australia, India, and the Netherlands possessions. Most fortunately the nuggets found in the gorge by the Montrose River proved to be very rare, and the colony was not invaded by gold-seekers, who usually leave nothing but disorder and misery in their train! ”

“ Cut off from the rest of Europe by frowning mountains, having no sea-coast and removed therefore from all the fruits of maritime enterprise, having no coal or other sources of mineral wealth, Switzerland might have degenerated into a brave semi-civilized nation like Montenegro. ”

“ The sublime works of nature are equally calculated to arouse sentiments of patriotism; they are capable of a companionship with man, full of expression of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse. No race of men can dwell in Switzerland, amidst its mountains, its precipices, its rocks, glaciers, avalanches, and torrents, without being strong, brave, and resolute. ”

“ In the same spirit wrote the Council of Bern, “A handful of Swiss is a match for an army; on our own soil, with our mountains behind us, we can defy the world.” The Helvetic Confederacy made the greatest and most powerful nations of Europe tremble in the fifteenth century; but Switzerland is no longer defended by natural frontiers; its two great cities, that of Geneva on the one side, and Basel upon the other, lie open to the invader, and the occupation of two or three points upon its railway system (which but for its army could be easily reached) would paralyze its defence ”

“ When one remembered that the banks of Pearl Bay had been no more than skimmed, that coral was to be found on many parts of the coast, that nutmegs and vanilla could be produced in large quantities, and that there were many other treasures in New Switzerland, one had to acknowledge that the colony was destined for a height of prosperity which set it in the foremost of the over-sea dominions of Great Britain. ”

“ Let me express the hope that the time will come when, from the excess of the evil, good will result; that the people will realize that such a condition leads to general poverty, while liberty of exchange is the surest foundation of general prosperity.”
With these great natural and artificial obstacles to contend with, Switzerland is nevertheless a commercial and manufacturing state. Its industries are prosperous and show a constantly-increasing vitality and importance, and its citizens are growing rich and famous in the commerce of Europe. ”

“ Man may enormously modify its surface, but its original conditions remain dominant, forcing a stern recognition of their supremacy; mountain-ranges may be passed or surmounted; they have never yet been lowered or removed; Switzerland will ever be mastered by its sublime physical features. ”

“ Switzerland—or at least that portion of it which is the chief scene of the rambles of tourists and travellers—consists substantially of a long and deep valley, extending from east to west through the centre, and bordered by a range of mountains on each side. The range of mountains on the northern side of this valley is, [Pg 56] of course, towards Germany; the one on the southern side is towards Italy. On the north side of the northern range of mountains is a broad slope of land, extending a hundred miles towards the German frontier. ”

“ But once having taken a bite, the calf never [189] again wanted to eat anything else. It tasted as good as candy to a little girl. So Switzerland became one of the greatest countries in the world for butter and cheese. The fairies rejoiced, too, for the Poa, with its pretty blossom, made the meadows, which were their dancing hall, more beautiful, and for them, it was like waltzing on a cloth of gold.
And to this day, the Alpine Poa is as wonderful, among plants and grasses, as the opossum and kangaroo are among quadrupeds. ”

“ Fortunately, the grandeur of Alpine scenery cannot be altogether destroyed, though seriously injured, by the spade, the pickaxe, and the blasting-powder. There is a poetry of science, even of practical science, and the invaluable and ubiquitous engineer cannot after all do much to the everlasting hills, except here and there a simple climb may be made simpler still, and an opening effected through what looks like one of the permanent barriers of the world. The physical geography of Switzerland is still a stupendous unit. ”

“ The governments of the Sonderbund have acted contrary to their duty towards the Swiss Confederation in breaking with it, and in taking up arms. Thus, such citizens of the separate alliance as shall openly declare for the Confederation, shall enjoy full protection. Soldiers of all arms and grades! Switzerland and the world have their eyes fixed on you. The nation places unlimited confidence in your courage, devotedness, and discipline. ”

“ Switzerland is a microcosm. In these five and twenty little states we have a miniature resemblance of all the phases of social and political life; every Canton contributes with friendly emulation to improve the domestic policy and strengthen the political relations of the Confederation; if they present no example worthy to be followed as a whole, there is still much in their detail that will most abundantly repay our study. ”

“ He who holds it, if strong and resolute, can determine the fortunes of North Italy, Eastern France, South Germany, and the West of the Hapsburg domains. Further, by closing the passes over the Alps he can derange the commerce of Europe; and the sturdy mountaineers will either overbear the plain-dwellers, or will serve as mercenaries in their forces. Accordingly Switzerland, like her Asiatic counterpart, Afghanistan, has either controlled her neighbours, or has been fought for by them. As commerce-controller, provider of troops, and warden of the passes, she holds a most important position. ”