CHAPTER II
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“For pallid autumn once again Hath swell’d each torrent of the hill; Her clouds collect, her shadows sail, And watery winds that sweep the vale Grow loud and louder still.” _Campbell._
Churches of Basel--Storks--Rheinfelden--Frick--Baden--Zurich: the Cathedral--Fondness of the Swiss for Bright Colours--Lake of Zurich--Rapperswyl--Linth Canal--A Wayside Inn--Wesen.
At Basel we engaged a voiturier to take us to Baden, whence the only Swiss railway was to have the privilege of conveying us to Zurich. Our scheme for reaching Italy was to pass by the lakes of Zurich and Wallenstadt, and then, following the valley of the Rhine, to cross over the pass of the Splügen to Chiavenna, and so to reach Lake Como.
We left Basel at two o’clock in the afternoon, hoping to reach Baden by about nine; the weather looked threatening, but we took a cheerful view of this, as of everything else, as all good travellers should, and comforted ourselves with the thought that at any rate we could better afford to have a wet day between Basel and Baden than between Zurich and the Splügen.
The view of the city as you leave it is certainly very striking; the cathedral spires are picturesque in their outline, and the number of churches with turrets and steep roofs combine with them to produce a most ecclesiastical-looking town. Nor need any one interested in architecture despair of finding much pleasure in a more careful inspection of its buildings. They are full of interest, though generally passed too rapidly by people in a hurry to get on to enjoy the pleasures which await them beyond.
The roofing of the cathedral is worthy of notice as being composed of variously coloured tiles, arranged in diamond patterns over the surface of the roof, and giving a degree of richness to the colouring of this generally heavy part of the building which is very admirable.
In another fine church of the early part of the fourteenth century here, I remember being amused to see how quietly the storks possess themselves of all kinds of places for their nests, and think even the ridge of the steep roof of a church a proper place for their abode. The good people at Basel build their chimneys with flat tops for the express benefit of their long-legged friends; who, from their elevated and well-warmed abodes, look down sedately, and with a well-satisfied air upon their unfledged brethren below.
Why the people here love storks, the people of Venice pigeons, and the people of Berne bears, I leave to more industrious inquirers to decide, satisfied only to notice the fact that it is so, as each of these fancies adds one to the list of local peculiarities so valuable in the recollections of a journey.
The road from Basel to Baden is for the first half of the way very pretty; we came in, unfortunately, for rather drenching rain, and so lost all beyond the suggestion of some striking views. The towns through which we passed were not of much interest, though there were many picturesque and pleasant-looking subjects for the pencil. The most striking place on the road was Rheinfelden, a largish village (or perhaps I ought to say small town, as it rejoices in a Rath-haus of some pretension), surrounded by very high walls, and entered by tall stone gate-towers, pierced with pointed arches, and surmounted by upper stages of timber, with tiled roofs of quaint and effective character; and here and at Stein and Baden I noticed that almost all the houses were old and very little altered. I observed particularly the old shop-windows of very simple design, closed with folding shutters, and taking one back to old times most decidedly in their design.
[Illustration: SHOP-WINDOW, RHEINFELDEN.]
Beyond Rheinfelden the road, which so far has skirted the Rhine rather closely, leaves it again for a few miles until it touches it for the last time at the small town of Stein.
From Stein we saw an imposing-looking church on the other side of the river at Sekingen. It has a great western front with two bulbous-topped steeples, and is of very considerable length. The division between choir and nave is marked by a delicate turret, and the whole church, as far as one can judge by a distant view, looks as though it would well repay a visit. There are six bays in the nave, five and an apse in the choir. The former has very simple windows, whilst in the latter they are rather elaborate. There is no aisle to the choir and no transept.
The rain continued incessantly until we reached the long straggling village of Frick, a quaint and antique-looking place, where our voiturier stopped for an hour to bait his horses, who, however, at Rheinfelden had enjoyed a treat in the shape of a loaf of very brown bread, a kind of food second only, in the estimation of foreign steeds, to the precious _morceaux_ of lump sugar with which Swiss voituriers are so fond of encouraging and petting them.
We were nothing loth to stretch our legs; and finding that the church was worthless--one of those unhappy bulbous-spired and bulbous-roofed erections so common in some parts of the Continent, and the roof of even the eastern apse of which was twisted into a most ingenious and ugly compound curve--we took up our quarters in the respectable hostelry and “Bierbrauerei” of the Angel, and devoted ourselves to the consumption of coffee and beer of no bad quality. Our host wished sadly to see us located under his roof for the night, but we were resolute in our determination to reach Baden that night, and so persisted in going, though to our subsequent regret.
It was soon dark, and the new moon, which shone cheerfully upon us, gave us just a glimpse occasionally of the scenery, which about Brugg, where we crossed the Aar, and again at Königsfelden, seemed to be remarkably good.
At last, at about half-past ten o’clock, we reached what we fondly hoped was to be our resting-place. But Baden chose not to take us in, and to our horror, as we drove up to the chief and only available inn, we were met with the dismal announcement from the mouth of the civil landlord, that all the rooms were full.
However, we dismounted, and found that there was no other inn in Baden proper, but that at the Baths there were several; at them our landlord assured us that he knew we should find no room, and so we thought it useless to return and try. Our only course seemed to be to feed our horses again and then go on to Zurich; and as Swiss drivers and Swiss horses never seem to tire of trotting on slowly and drowsily along the road, there was no difficulty in at once coming to an arrangement with our coachman.
Accordingly, at midnight we started again, hoping at some early hour in the morning to reach Zurich. It was sufficiently provoking to be toiling on slowly and sleepily for nearly four hours almost alongside of a railroad which would have taken us early the next morning in three-quarters of an hour; but there was no help for it, and so we did the best we could, by sleeping whenever we were able, to pass the weary hours away.
At last, just as the day began to dawn, we came in sight of Zurich and its lake, and last, not least, we reached the great hotel. Here we pulled up, knocked desperately, awoke the slumbering porter--but, alas! only to hear again the unwelcome sounds which had greeted our ears at Baden! He suggested, however, that at the Hôtel Belle Vue we should probably find beds, and so on we drove, rather in despair at our prospects, though, happily, unnecessarily so, for the Belle Vue gladly opened its arms for our reception, and ere long we were, oblivious of all our toil, comfortably ensconced in bed. From our windows we had a pleasant view of our quarters; it was broad daylight, and the prospect was--as from such a position, looking up a lake, it always is--very fair and charming.
We were up again soon after eight, and were glad to find the morning fine, though the clouds were low, and we saw, consequently, nothing of the distant view of mountains which lends its greatest charms to Zurich. The town is, however, pretty and striking. The picturesque houses, with wooded hills on all sides beyond them, and very charming views of the lake, if they do not make its attractions first-rate, at any rate make them very considerable.
The main feature of interest for me was the cathedral, a fine Romanesque church, very fairly perfect, but mutilated in its interior arrangements by the Calvinists, in whose hands it now is. In plan, it has a nave with aisles of six bays, a
[Illustration: 2.--CLOISTER, ZURICH CATHEDRAL. Page 19]
short choir, and east of this a square-ended sanctuary, the aisles having apses, roofed with semi-domes. In the nave two of the aisle-arches make one groining bay. The transverse groining-ribs are of a simple square section, the diagonal ribs having in addition a large round member. The triforium is very large and fine, and is made use of for congregational purposes, being fitted up with seats, which, curiously enough, are all made to turn up as misereres. There are no transepts. The sanctuary arch is loftier than the choir arch, and seems to have been intended to be very distinctly marked. In the clerestory there are two simple round-headed lights in each bay; the choir is arcaded all round internally, and for frigidity of effect cannot be surpassed; the internal fittings comprise an immense pulpit, but, so far as I could see, not even an apology for an altar.
The exterior has two western steeples,[1] and a north doorway, each jamb of which has three detached shafts, standing considerably in advance of the wall, which is entirely covered with diapers. The arch itself is semi-circular, and very simple in its moulding; but this simplicity rather adds to than detracts from its general grandeur of effect. The whole is inserted in an additional thickness of wall, set on, as it were, against the original wall, and the extreme width of the doorway itself is no less than eighteen feet nine inches. The cloisters were remarkable, and very good of their kind; the arches rested on detached shafts, the capitals of which were elaborately carved in a very peculiar manner, but very effectively. The whole design was unlike any Northern Romanesque, and bore much more similarity to the best Lombard work. Unfortunately, the whole of this cloister was rebuilt in 1851, the carving having been re-worked, or renewed throughout in imitation of the original. It will be seen, however, that, in spite of alterations, this is a very fine church, of a very early type, and peculiarly valuable in a country which, like Switzerland, has comparatively little left that is really good in the way of architectural examples.
There are other churches in Zurich, but I believe not old, and at any rate I had no time to examine them. One of them is appropriated to the use of the Roman Catholics; and there is one desecrated, rising from the edge of the lake, and forming a prominent object in the general view of the town as you leave by the steamer; this is of good outline, but has no details remaining of any value. The point chiefly to be noticed in the churches of Zurich appears to be the way in which their spires are all painted red, looking in the full sunshine very bright and picturesque.
The Swiss have a great feeling for bright colour, and on our way from Basel to Baden we noticed one of the many instances of this in several turrets covered with brightly-coloured glazed tiles. A light green seems to be the favourite colour, and is commonly used without mixture with any other. They look best with their lower side rounded, and when of small size; and are constantly used in turrets rising out of roofs which are entirely covered with plain tiles. I remember, two years before, noticing with extreme pleasure the beauty of some dark green tiles used at Schaffhausen; and I have already had occasion to mention those on the cathedral at Basel with equal commendation. Unhappily, we have to lament that English people, in their insane hatred of bright colours, if they saw such tiles used in England, would be horrified at such a violation of the correct simplicity and uniformity of colour to which the cheapness of slate has made them accustomed. Some modern attempts, however, at introducing coloured tiles have not been so successful as could be wished; and of all, perhaps the least so is the roof of the new Maria Hilf church at Munich, on which tiles of light blue colour are used in such large masses, that at first sight it seems that half the roof is stripped, and that the pale blue sky is seen instead of roof.
At ten o’clock we left our hotel by the steamer for Schmerikon at the head of the Lake of Zurich. The weather still looked doubtful, though much better than on the previous day, and our host of the Belle Vue, taking a good view of this, as is a landlord’s duty, conducted us to the boat with smiling anticipations of fine days to come.
The shores of the lake are, for the greater part of its length, literally fringed with houses all painted white, and contrasting violently with the trees, vineyards, and green hills by which they are backed. On the north the shore is low and gradually shelving down to the water; on the south it is rather more precipitous, but after all not very striking. At the head of the lake heavy dark round clouds hung upon the hills, and left us in pleasant doubt as to whether or no we had fine mountains to discover when they cleared away; a doubt, as it happened, not settled, as far as we were concerned, save by certain lively and not too trustworthy representations which we afterwards met with, in the shape of advertisements of the Zurich hotels, and which showed a line of snow mountains as the ordinary horizon of their visitors.
The churches on the lake are very numerous and very similar. The steeples are almost always gabled, and from these gables rise spires painted red, and very thin and taper in their form. The gabled sides of the towers are generally made useful rather than ornamental by the introduction of enormous clock-dials. The only decidedly mediæval church which I saw between Zurich and Rapperswyl was at one of the villages on the north shore of the lake, I think at Meilen, but I am rather uncertain as to the name. Its design is both novel and very good; the pinnacles on the gable being unusual in saddle-backed steeples, and giving considerable picturesqueness of outline. The accompanying woodcut will show the general character of the design, and it will be seen that the tower is on the north side of the choir. The steeple roof is covered with greyish-red tiles, with a pattern marked on them with yellow tiles.
[Illustration: CHURCH ON THE LAKE OF ZURICH.]
The steamers on this, as on most Swiss lakes, are somewhat tedious in their journeys, as they take a most zigzag course, first calling on one side of the lake and then on the other, until one doubts whether one will ever reach the journey’s end. At Horgen of course we discharged a large proportion of our English passengers, who were all bound for the Rigi, but their places were soon occupied by the umbrella-loving natives, who flocked in and out of the boat in great numbers at every station, and by the time we reached Rapperswyl we had no more fellow-countrymen in the boat, and perhaps, like many Englishmen, to say the truth, we then first thoroughly realised that we were abroad. Much as one loves one’s country, certainly one source of pleasure when abroad is the not hearing too much English spoken or seeing too many English faces.
At Rapperswyl, famous for having the longest bridge in the world, there is a most conspicuous group of buildings on rising ground above the lake, very picturesquely thrown together; it consists of a church and a castle; the latter has several towers capped with pyramidal and saddle-backed roofs, and the former has two towers in the position of transepts, with saddle-back roofs gabled north and south, the southern tower being considerably the larger of the two. Altogether, the group is one of uncommon variety and picturesqueness of outline. Below, in the town, is a small church, with a most happily-conceived though very simple bell-turret rising out of the roof, square in its plan, but capped with an octagonal spirelet. This is a not uncommon plan in this part of Switzerland, and is always most agreeable in its effect. The views from the terrace by the side of this castle are of singular beauty. It is high enough above the lake to command a good view of its whole expanse, and to secure a not too distant view of some of the mountain peaks of Glarus. Rapperswyl is a good point to stop at, for the sake of a visit to the famous pilgrimage church at Einsiedeln, certainly one of the spots in Switzerland most curious and interesting, though its buildings have no claims to our regard on the score of architectural beauty.
Passing under, or rather through, the bridge, we found that it was very narrow and had no side railing of any kind, so that it appears to be far from a pleasant contrivance for crossing the mile or two of shallow water which here scarce serves to keep up the appearance even of a lake; and perhaps it is upon the score of the absence of real danger of drowning if one fell over that they dispense with any protection. At Schmerikon, which we reached in four hours from Zurich, we left our steamer, and immediately embarked on a barge in order to go by the Linth canal to Wesen; but we found that, however expeditious this might be in descending, it was a kind of conveyance not to be recommended highly to any one wishing to ascend the canal, inasmuch as--unlike ordinary canals--this is neither more nor less than the glacier-torrent of the Linth bringing down the melting snow from the Glärnitsch and Todi glaciers, and rushing along at a really tremendous pace; to those, however, who have time, it may be commended as affording magnificent views of the mountains of Glarus and of those which rise so grandly above the Lake of Wallenstadt.
As we entered the canal from the lake we were amused by the unsuccessful attempts of our crew to secure some wild-fowl, two of which they succeeded in shooting, and then, without any kind of regard for the feelings of passengers panting to arrive at Wesen in the promised two hours and a half, they deliberately proceeded--of course in vain--to chase the unhappy birds, which, though wounded, were quite able to dive much deeper than their enemies could reach, and so the only consequence of the chase was a hearty laugh at the expense of the baffled sportsmen, half an hour’s delay, and much lost ground to be made up.
The entrance to the canal was very striking; a low hill covered with larch and birch rose from the water’s edge, and above this, the mountains, gradually shelving upwards, were terminated in a line of rocky ridges of very grand and rugged character. Whilst we were admiring the view a slight shower passed over us, and the sun suddenly breaking out, produced one of those lovely effects of colour so peculiar to mountain scenery; a rainbow seemed exactly to fill up one of the great basins formed by the undulations of the mountains, and, after bathing a great sweep of mountain-side in the richest and most distinctly marked colours, gradually died away.
The canal, which at first looks more like a river, soon takes a bend to the S.W., and then, passing under a quaint wooden bridge, over which passes the road to Uznach, we found ourselves in what certainly looked sufficiently canal-like. The stream is so rapid that the walls built up on either side are preserved from being washed away by stone groins running out into the stream, and acting as so many breakwaters to keep the water in the centre. Slowly and steadily our horses pulled us up, whilst we, mounted on the top of the cabin, were able to see over the walled sides of the canal, and to enjoy the glorious prospect before us.
Before long our captain blandly informed us that he was going to stop for dinner at a wayside house, so we, anxious to make the same good use of our time, attempted to follow his example. Unfortunately the landlord, though very jolly-looking, had a very badly stocked larder, and we had to satisfy ourselves with bread, honey, and wine. It is true, indeed, that our host did produce some cold meat--portion, as I imagined, of a goat dressed some ten days back--but this was not eatable, and was valuable only as furnishing an opportunity to him of showing his perfect power of making the best of a bad thing. To season the goat he brought in vinegar and oil, and, putting them upon the table, exclaimed with some _empressement_, “Voilà, monsieur; mais le vinaigre n’est pas bon!” just as if this was the strongest recommendation he could give us! We laughed heartily, avoided the vinegar, and parted good friends with our host, thanking him from our hearts for having saved us the painful operation of making the discovery about its quality for ourselves!
Our not very satisfying repast finished, we embarked again upon our barge, and in the occasional intervals, when sudden and heavy storms of rain obliged us to seek shelter in the cabin, we were much amused in watching the proceedings of some men belonging to the boat, who spent the whole of the five hours consumed in the journey in an unceasing game of cards; I must do them the justice to say that they played very good-humouredly, and laughed without ceasing. Under no circumstances could we have seen the scenery more gloriously; occasional bright gleams of sunshine broke in upon and followed clouds of the most inky hue, and then came pelting down heavy showers, accompanied by howling wind and darkness; and as we reached the opening of the valley, looking up beyond Glarus to the great mountains which close in its upper end, I think the effect was really more grand and terrific than anything I have ever seen. The mountains are of very fine outline, and of great height, as we saw by the more than occasional glimpses which we had of snow about their summits. By the time we reached Wesen the wind was so violent that we found it difficult to keep our places upon the top of the cabin; and we disembarked just before dark, in time to see the fine mountains on each side of the Lake of Wallenstadt here and there through the storm-clouds, and its waters beaten by the wind into not insignificant waves. We had to walk through the entire length of the village--a picturesque, quaint little place, sheltered under the almost overhanging rocks at the side of the water--and arrived at last at the capital and thoroughly Swiss inn, the Hôtel de l’Epée, where we were to sleep.
Travellers now speed very differently along this country, and, I fear, see less than they ought of its beauties. Steamboats no longer attempt to pass beyond Rapperswyl, and the railway hurries one along by the beautiful Lake of Wallenstadt to the valley of the Rhine, only earning one’s gratitude when one is in violent haste, and because by a branch line it makes a détour to Glarus and Stachelberg much more possible than it was when first I made the journey. On the whole I fear, where railways pass through beautiful scenery, the tourist loses more than he can possibly gain, not only in the views of the country, but equally in the incidents of travel, which are becoming only too monotonous and similar everywhere.
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