The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-13 00:00:00

ALPINE TOURISTS.

(From the Times Correspondent.)
LUCERNE, Sept. 11.
Sic ad Alpes perventuni. Only an eight hours'
pull from • Baden to Lucerne—from the main
- entrance to the Black Forest to that great gap of
the Lake of the Four Cantons which lets you at
once into the heart of the Alps. Let rival railway
companies manage ever so craftily, they will never
turn' the main tide of Alpine travellers from that
route of the -Rhine, Basle, and Lucerne which is
by far the most direct and pleasant—indeed, tle
most natural. By travelling about in Germany you
may come to the Lake of Constance, on the eastern
corner of Switzerland, and hence make your way to
Zurich, to St. Gall, to the upper valleys of the
Rhine. Coming from France to Geneva, at the
western extremity you have the Leman Lake and
all the course of the Rhone, along the Valais, be-
tween those two great mountain jaws, the Alps on
your right and the Bernese Oberland on the left.
But both the courses of these valleys are long and
winding and weary, and the locomotive engine
which now takes you all the way up to Coire and
Sion has not yet been able altogether to do away
with their tediousness ; but by following the central
line by Basle and Lucerne you make straight for
the great mountain mass of the St.. Gotthard, that
mass near which not only have both the Rhine and
the Rhone their sources, but from which also the
main chains of the Bernese and Rhaetian Alps take
their start. A drop of water let fall from the sum-
mit of the St. Gotthard will hardly flow in any other
direction than down the narrow and rugged but
straight valley of the Reuss on the north, and the
Ticino on the south ; and a shorter line than that
of the Reuss, from the spot where it springs to the
point where it mingles its waters with those of the
Aar of Berne*and the Limmat of Zurich, a few
miles before they are all lost in the Rhine above
Basle, could hardly be drawn by mathematical pre-
cision. The valleys of the Reuss and the Ticino
are the only two that ran in one straight line north
and south ; the only two upon which the great
mountains do not cast their perpetual shadows. They
are the highway between Germany and Italy, and
the Teutonic hordes of the dark ages only followed
the unerring instinct of all migratory beings when they
struck their path across the St. Gotthard to those
southern plains where figs and grapes so powerfully ,
attracted them. In obedience to the same impulse,
the flight of those birds of passage whom we call
Alpine tourists, and who have a whole net of roads
and railroads to lead and mislead them, irresistibly
bears hitherward. And not without good reason,
for it is from Lucerne, and from no other place so
conveniently, that the traveller has his choice of
excursions, whether his fancy inclines him to follow
the track of Sarnen and Lungern, over the Brenner
to Brienz, Interlachen, Thun, and Berne to the
west ; or to pursue his way by Kussnacht, or
Schwytz, Zug, and Zurich to the east ; whether, by
ascending the Reuss to Andermatt, he wishes to
cross over the Furka into the valley of the Rhone ;
or whether he prefers to strike across the Oberalp,
over Dissentis, into the valley of the Rhine.
As a first pied a terre in Helvetian territory,
Lucerne is also unmatched in beauty and interest.
No city on a lake can so emphatically be called the
queen of the lake. Though, like Zurich and Geneva,
it only lies in a corner, on the lowest corner of its
sheet of water, at the outflow of its tide Lucerne
has as wide, close, and unimpeded a view of moun-
tains as many of the loftiest summits can boast ;
and I know no other place so near the lowlands
where two such glorious landmarks as the Righi and
the Pilatus bound the view. Nor, again, is any
other city to compare with Lucerne, in spite of her
comparative social insignificance, for the pic-
turesqueness of her battlemented walls, her grim
grey towers, her historic and artistic bridges, her
general look of mediaeval quaintness and primitive-
ness.

There is something inexpressively delightful in
the transition from Germany, or from any other
European country, into Switzerland at this season.
We had a trying hot season at Baden ; a cruel broil-
ing day all along the Baden Railway up to Basle ;
but at the latter place the mere rushing of the
waters as they flowed past my windows, bearing in
one channel the tribute of a thousand melting
glaciers, had already a cooling, soothing effect on
our exhausted frames. From Basle upwards along
the Liesthal everything looked moist, and fresh, and
luxuriant ; no trace here of parched herbage, of
withered foliage ; and although the sun was still
burning with almost tropical fury as we alighted
from the train, and came to land on the quay before
the hotel door, yet we had the refuge at hand ;
we took to water forthwith, to the emerald green,
crystal pure waters of this Vierwaldstatter See, this
king of all lakes, and by steaming under awning up
to Weggis, Gersau, Brunnen, and Fluellen, and
back again by Brunnen, Gersau, and Weggis to
Lucerne, we called to our aid the sweet breezes
wafted from the open bays of Uri, Alpnach and
Kussnacht, and battled with the scorching enemy
from our start at 10 o'clock in the forenoon till we
were brought back to our dinner at 5 in the evening.
My German guide-book, excellent in all other
respects, is not free from prepossessions on the sub-
ject of inn accommodation, and characterises the
Schweizerhof, the hotel he is compelled to place at
the head of all others at Lucerne, as " sehr grosser
Gasthof, gerauschvoll, viel Englander," &c. The
same remarks apply to the Three Kings at Basle, the
Three Crowns at Vevey, &c., those palatial hotels by
which Switzerland by so many years forestalled the
Louvre and Grand Hotel in France, the Grosvenor
and Laugh= in England. I was struck by the
repetition of these remarks :—" Big hotel, full of
noise, full of English people." I wonder if the good
German meant those words as a caution to his
countrymen to whom the company of the English
might be as great a nuisance as the din and racket
inseparable from a large house of accommodation ;
or whether he simply wished to warn travellers of
limited means against inns spoilt by English prices ;
or finally, whether by his description." full of noise,
and English," he wished to lay upon English tourists
the charge of excessive fussiness and obstreperous-
ness ? Whatever he may say or think on this sub-
ject, the fact is that the Schweizerhof at Lucerne,
the two others I havementioned at Basle and Vevey,
the comparativelynew ones, the Bernerhof at Berne,
and the Beau-rivage at Ouchy, are not only full of
English, but are English houses, creations, and con-
trivances, for which travellers from all parts of the
Continent are under the greatest obligations to that
much abused and much-abusing gentleman, John
Bull. Why, I remember the time when the Swan
was the best, almost the only, hotel at Lucerne.
The Swan terminated the city on the lake side, and
I have not forgotten the day in September, 1846,
when I was landed at its flooded door in a boat.
All these, Schweizerhof, Hotel d'Angleterre, Hotel
du Righi, the many others that have risen up or are
rising, and make up a cluster of buildings amount-
ing to a little town or suburb on the lake—all these
are owing to the English ; to the taste for pleasure
travelling they alone originated
Oauoci;dsiltei:eaanddthrough
out Europe ; to their habits t
cleanli-
ness ; to those fussy, fault-finding,
grumbling,
blowing-up propensities, that love of ,plivino,_
baths and fresh linen, which coaxed, bribed, or bul-
lied all Europe into a compliance with their manners
and customs. It is to the English alone that we are
indebted, if here, as at Geneva, at Zurich, every..
where in Switzerland, on the Rhine, on the Italian
lakes, the towns have been turned out of town, and
the wretched inns which were once grovelling
among the filth and stench of narrow, crowded
streets, are now laid out, converted into lofty pa-
laces on those choice spots by the river, on the hill,
on the lake—on those choice spots which entitle
them to their much-affected appellations of Belle-
,
vues, Beaux-rivages, &c.
At all events the Schweizerhof at Lucerne,
whether in a good or evil sense, may properly be
said at the present moment to be "full of English,"
to be English. Not that French, Germans, or
Italians are turned from its doors ; not that many
of them do not obtain daily admittance ; but, some-
how or other, the tyranny of English manners keeps
them under constraint. They dare not puff the
clouds of their cigars into the faces of ladies who
dislike smoke ; the spotless whiteness of the par-
quets overawes their expectorating propensities ; the