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TRAVELLING APPRENTICES.

dead persons who had perished in the snows of the Arlberg, whose eyes and bodies the birds had eaten, affected the boy so deeply that he began with the help of God and St. Christopher (as he himself recorded) and with no other pecuniary means than about eight dollars, the earnings of ten years' service, to devote himself exclusively to the preservation of wayfarers, and saved the first winter, seven men's lives. Henry Findelkind from this time devoted himself to this charitable object, and before his death had saved no less than fifty lives, traversing Europe to obtain alms to carry on this good work, and enrolled among the brotherhood of St. Christopher the names of many princes and nobles, who I believe, still continue it."

The Austrian Government does more for the education of her subjects, and the establishment of schools than any other government in Europe except Prussia, and for the last century has been ceaselessly employed in establishing schools throughout its extensive dominions; and the number of persons who understand the common branches of education is beyond comparision greater than in France or England. No person can marry, or set up a trade, without producing a certificate of having attended school a certain number of years, and even after they have learned a trade, they are required before they establish themselves, to travel three years to gain experience in the world, as well asthe ways and inventions appertaining to their different trades. All through the countrywe have met these travelling apprentices, with a pack on their backs, footing it along, sometimes coming up to the carriage, holding their caps for a gratuity, though they never beg-if not given readily they depart.

MOUNT RIGHI.

95

LETTER X.

ASCENT OF MOUNT-RIGHI---TELL'S

CHAPEL-LAGO MAG

GIORE---CATHOLIC FUNERAL-FRUITS-THE PASS OF THE

SIMPLON.

MY DEAR M-:

Switzerland, September.

I have given you an account of our journeyings to the lovely lake of Zurich, along the banks of the Zug Lake, to where we last took horses to ascend Mount Righi, "the observatory," as it is called, of Switzerland. The ascent is made, most of the way, by stairs formed by placing logs up the side of the mountain; and "such a gittin' up stairs," on horseback, I never before attempted. Where it was too steep, or too stony to fix the logs, our poor beasts had to scramble up the face of the rocks as they best could; and as I sat on the back of one, as he was thus clinging, as it were, to the face of the mountain, it really seemed as if he must fall backwards. I could not see myself, nor dared I turn to look at those behind, but fancied there was a resemblance to the pictures that represent Bonaparte in his passage up the Alps; and though the horses were as used to it as mill horses to their daily round, they were almost drowned in their own perspiration, and shook and trembled as if in an ague, either from fear or fatigue-perhaps both.

Near the foot of the mountain we passed the buried town of Goldau, which in 1806 was destroyed by a land-slide from the top of a summit named Gniepen, which formed part of Mount Righi. Four hundred and fifty-seven persons were

killed by it, and the whole valley was covered with earth and blocks of stone to the depth of some hundred feet, besides filling up a part of the Lake Laverne. The grass has now grown over the ruins, and a road passes through the valley to Schwiz; where Goldau was, they have built a chapel, a parsonage, and an inn. The view, as you ascend, is finely varied; at different turns you see the beautiful, the picturesque, and the sublime. Mount Righi stands almost apart and separated on all sides from the peaks that surround it. It is washed at its base by three lakes-the Zug, Laverne, and Lucerne the two first you view alternately as you follow the windings of the zig-zag path from Art or rather Goldau. Near the summit is a bit of table-land on the edge of a precipice, from whence you look down, and immediately under you, at an immense depth below, lies the lake of Lucerne; and at the foot of the mountain, on the banks of the lake, in a little bay, is the berg of Kussnacht. There are two or three inns at different stations as you ascend, a convent occupied by some monks of the Capuchins, and a convent of "Notre Dame de Niege," (Our Lady of the Snow.) When we had accomplished two-thirds of the ascent it commenced raining, and ere we reached the top we were enveloped in a thick mist, in which there was really danger of losing our way, or each other. At the summit, near seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, is a good hotel, and this we reached at a late hour--cold, wet, and hungry.

In the morning we were awakened by the rain and sleet pattering against the panes, and on looking out, found the ground covered with snow. On descending to the salle-amanger, we found every one preparing for his departure, in spite of wind and weather, from a dread of the threatened embargo. I am sorry to disappoint you by depriving you of my observations from the "observatory" of Switzerland, but

were influenced by the motions of the rest, and by eight o'clock we were winding our way down again : P— with his long mountain pole, with a sharp pike in one end, to help him in the steep descents, and I seated in a sedanchair, well wrapped up, with two hardy mountaineers as bearers-horses not being deemed safe in descending. We descended by a path leading to Kussnacht, near which place is Tell's Chapel, erected on the spot where Tell killed Gesler; a road winds past it, and it was by this road he was passing when he fell: and on a grassy bank by the road. side, is a clump of trees in which Tell was concealed when he sent the fatal shaft. It is a pretty little chapel, in a picturesque situation, and, with all its associations of tale and history, calculated to please the most fastidiously romantic. I remained in the porch of the chapel, gazing upon the painting above the door, illustrative of the incidents the chapel was built to commemorate, until my bearers were rested. We then resumed our way along a level road, and in a short time my good conductors set me down within the door of the inn at Kussnacht, where, after taking a schnap and re-, ceiving their pay, they wished us bon voyage and left us.

On the morning we left Lucerne, we cast many a lingering look behind; but soon found new and beautiful objects for all our glances, in the grand and imposing scenery of this lovely lake. The morning was chilly, owing to the rain that had lately fallen, and which had covered the mountain tops in the vicinity with snow; and owing to its being a little cloudy, this last, with the height and grandeur of the mountains on every side, gave to the lake an air of stillness and solemnity very imposing. We were shown, in passing, the spot where Tell leaped from the boat in which he was a prisoner, and thus escaped his captors. On this spot, too, a chapel is built, though not so pretty a one as that at the foot of Righi. Near this, at Grutz, is the place where

98

TELL'S COUNTRY-DEVIL'S BRIDGE.

the three confederates, Walther, Uri, and Werner, held their meetings and took their oaths.

The scenery of this lake is very varied, and exceeds, I think, all the others that I have seen, and which I thought impossible to be surpassed: it is like a moving panorama of the beautiful, the lovely, the picturesque, and the magnificently grand and imposing. We landed at Fuellan, and at Altorf took coach for the ascent of Mount St. Gothard, which commences soon after leaving the village of Altorf. Both these last places are interesting from their association with many incidents in the life of William Tell. It was at Altorf that the scene took place of his shooting the apple from the head of his child, and they have in the public squares one or two statues and paintings illustrative of the event; indeed, the whole country through which we have lately passed is called "Tell's Country." The commencement of this wonderful mountain-road is comparatively easy. We followed the course of the Ruisse, all the way up the mountain, first on one side, then on the other, crossing it by five bridges; and I think we did not lose sight or sound of it all the way to the summit, where it has its course with the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Tercino. The Ruisse, like all rivers fed by the snows of the mountains, is a rushing torrent, forming a number of whirling rapids and cascades; over one of the largest of these is the Devil's Bridge, around which the scenery is grand and horrific. There are still seen the remains of the old bridge, blown up by the French, in 1799, causing such havoc of human life. Notwithstanding its dilapidated condition, Suwarrow contrived to pass over it shortly after, by means of beams of wood fastened together with the officers' scarfs, though at the cost of many lives. The bridge seems to connect the stupendous mountains rising abruptly from a gorge, through which thunders a roaring, rushing and rapid waterfall, forming a scene of wild and savage gran