AFTER SUNRISE.

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and the gloomy Pilatus, and finally leaves the western horizon on the Jura mountains. On the south spring up into heaven the whole glorious chain of the high Alps of Berne, Unterwalden and Uri in one unbroken ridge of peaks and glaciers. On the east still stretches away the Alpine chain, folding in the cantons of Glarus and Appenzel, and the Muotta Thal, that wild valley where Suwarrow and Massena fought their bloody battles on ground that even the chamois hunter scarce dared to tread. Nearer by rises the mass of the Rossberg, with the black chasm made by its terrible avalanche of earth, as it rolled down on Goldau, plainly in view. To the north peeps out Lake Zurich, with here and there a white roof of the town; and the spire of the chapel where Zwingli fell in battle. The towns of Arth and Zug are also visible, and a bare hand's breadth of Lake Egeri, on whose shores the Swiss fought and gained the battle of Mortgarten. The Black Forest hills shut in the view. It is a glorious panorama, changing from grand to beautiful and back again, till the heart staggers under the emotions that crowd it, asking in vain for utterance. But the eye will turn again and again to that wondrous chain of white peaks, resting so clear and pure and cold against the morning sky, and the lips will murmur

"The hills, the everlasting hills,

How peerlessly they rise,
Like earth's gigantic sentinels
Discoursing in the skies.”

XIV.

GOLDAU-FALL OF THE ROSSBERG.

As I descended the Righi towards Goldau I had a clear and distinct view of the whole side of the Rossberg. This mountain, so renowned in history, is about 5,000 feet high, with an unbroken slope reaching down to Goldau. The top of the mountain is composed of pudding stone, called by the Germans Nagelflue, or nail head, from the knobs on the surface. The whole strata of this mountain are tilted from Lake Zug towards Goldau, and slope, like the roof of a house, down to the village. The frightful land slide, which buried the village and inhabitants of Goldau, was about three miles long, a thousand feet broad, and a hundred feet thick. The fissure runs up and down the mountain, and the mass slid away from its bed, till acquiring momentum and velocity, it broke into fragments, and rolled and thundered down the mountain, burying the village a hundred feet deep. The afternoon of the catastrophe, the Rossberg gave ominous signs of some approaching convulsion. Rocks started spontaneously from its bosom, and thundered down its sides; the springs of water suddenly ceased to flow; birds flew screaming through the air; the pine trees of the forest rocked and swayed without any blast, and the whole surface of the mountain seemed gradually sliding towards the plain. A party of eleven travellers from Berne was on its way to the Righi at the time. Seven of them happened to be ahead, and the other four saw them enter the village of Goldau just as they observed a strange commotion on the summit of the Rossberg. As they raised their glass to notice this more definitely, a shower of stones shot off from the top and whirled like cannon balls through the air above their heads. The next moment a

OVERTHROW OF GOLDAU.

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cloud of dust filled the valley, while from its bosom came a wild uproar, as if nature was breaking up from her deep foundations. The Rossberg was on the march for Goldau with the strength and terror of an earthquake. The cloud cleared away and nothing but a wild waste of rocks and earth was above where the smiling villages of Goldau, Bussingen and Rothen stood before. One hundred and eleven houses, and more than two hundred stables and chalets had disappeared; carrying down with them in their dark burial nearly five hundred human beings. The Lake of Lowertz was half filled with mud, while the immense rocks traversed the valley. its entire width, and were hurled far up the Righi, mowing down the trees like cannon shot. The inhabitants of the neighbouring villages heard the grinding crushing sound, as of mountains falling together, and beheld the cloud of dust that darkened the air. Five minutes after, and all was hushed, and the quiet rain came down as before, and as it had done during the day, but no longer on human dwellings. It fell on the grave of nearly 500 men, women and children, crushed and mangled, and pressed uncoffined into their mother earth. Nothing was left of the villages and pasturages that stood in the valley but the bell of the church of Goldau, which was carried a mile and a half from the steeple in which it hung. When the Lake of Lowertz, five miles off, received the torrent of earth into its bosom, it threw a wave seventy feet high clear over the island of Schwanau, and rolled up on the opposite shore, bringing back, in its reflux, houses with their inhabitants. The friends whom their fellow travellers had seen enter the village of Goldau just as the mountain started on its march, were never seen more.

It was a beautiful day, as I sat and looked over this chaos of rocks and earth. The Lake of Lowertz slept quietly under the summer sun, and the bell of Goldau was ringing out its merry peal in the very face of the Rossberg, that seemed to look down with a stern and savage aspect on the ruin at his feet. The deep gash in his forehead and his riven side still remain as fresh as if made but yesterday. I wandered over the ground all ridged and broken, just as it was at the close of that terrible day, with feelings of the profoundest melancholy. A few scattered houses had been built on the debris of rocks and stone, and here and there

was a mockery of a garden, which the unconscious husbandman was endeavouring to till above the bones of his father. A gloom rests on all the valley, and Rossberg seems sole monarch here.

"Mountains have fallen

Leaving a gap in the clouds, and with the shock
Rocking their Alpine brethren, filling up

The ripe green vallies with destruction's splinters,
Damming the rivers with a sudden dash,
Which crushed the waters into mist, and made
Their fountains find another channel: thus-
Thus, in its old age, did Mount Rossberg."

Jt

On the island of Schwanau, in Lake Lowertz, is the ruin of a castle destroyed by the Swiss to revenge the violence done by its owner to a young woman. There is a tradition attached to it wild enough to form the ground-work of half a dozen novels. is said that once a year shrieks are heard to ring from it, and immediately after, the ghost of the old villain shoots by, pressed hard after by the spirit of the pale, wronged girl, bearing a torch in her hand, and screaming terrifically on his flying traces. For a while he escapes his frail pursuer, but at length she forces him into the lake, where he sinks with hideous groans. A wild chaos of tones and fearful yells rings up from the shore as the waves close over him, and the scene is ended. The good people need not be so anxious to insure the doom of the old wretch. The spirit of that pale girl is avenged without all this trouble, and the waves that close over him are more terrible than the waters of Lowertz.

I walked from Goldau to Arth all alone, and amused myself with watching the groups of peasantry that constantly passed me with curious looks. It was some fête day, and they were all clad in their holiday dresses, and went smiling on, as cheerful as the bright day about them. They would accost me in the most pleasant manner, and I was constantly greeted with "guten morgen" or gut Tag," that made me feel as if I were among friends. As I entered the hotel at Arth, the first thing that met my eye was my trunk. Its familiar look was as welcome as the face of a friend; and, childish as it may seem, I felt less solitary than when sad and alone I entered the quiet inn.

There is an excellent arrangement in Switzerland, by which one can mail his baggage as he can a letter, to any town on the mail route in the whole country. The traveller enters his different articles, takes his ticket, and then starts off into the Alps, and is gone for two months without the least concern. My cork sole boots, with which I had climbed every pass, gave out at GolJau, but by dint of strings, etc., I made them do till I reached Arth, where I was compelled to abandon the trustiest companions of all my travels; and left them standing in the inn, with their tops leaning over one side, in the most dolorous, reproachful manner imaginable. It is curious how one becomes attached to every thing he carries about him in the Alps. I have known the most unsentimental men carry their Alpine stock across the Atlantic with them.

The ride through the canton of Zug to Zurich was one of the pleasantest I took in Switzerland, and I verily believe this is one of the most beautiful cantons in it. There was a neatness in the dwellings and costumes of the inhabitants I had not noticed before. I passed by the spot where Zwingli the Reformer fell, in the midst of his flock, transfixed by a sword; and by the monument` erected to commemorate the place where Henry Von Hunenberg shot an arrow from the Austrian lines into the Swiss camp bearing the sentence "Beware of Mortgarten." The Swiss took the advice, and won the battle, and their descendants have reared this memento of the bold young patriot. Before entering Zurich, as we came in sight of the lake almost its entire length, I had one of the finest lake views I ever beheld. The beautiful shores sprinkled with white dwellings; the town itself, and its gardens, and the distant mountains, combined to render it a perfect picture. Zurich is a pleasant town, and reminded me more of home than any place on the continent. Its white dwellings surrounded with gardens and grounds, carried me back in a moment to New England. I spent the Sabbath here, and was surprised to find in this home of Zwingli—this Protestant canton-so little respect paid to its sanctity. Towards evening the military were reviewed on the public square, while on one side was a public exhibition of rope-dancers and tumblers, and among the tumblers two rosycheeked peasant girls. This is a Protestant canton indeed.