Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1874-10-17
w hole Number 1898

A new employment was quickly fur
nished for the frugal German an6
quick-wited Celt of those hills and
dales, who saw golden showers IN
their snow-clad peaks, and mines OF
silver in their fruitful valleys, which
they have since been
CATCHING AND EXTRACTING TO SOME
PURPOSE.
The surplus population were nc
longer obliged to wander abroad In
search of work and subsistence;
there was abudance of employment
found at home, in guiding, convoy
ing, and entertaining the tens of
thousands-who have now swollen
to hundreds of thousands-of annu-
al visitors. The inhabitants of the
poorest and most inaccessible val
leys, overhung by stupendous noun
tains, and threatening with ava
lanches of snow, ice, and rocks, now
find a ready market at high prices
at their doors, for all their fruit,
flesh, poultry, trout, milk, butter,
and eggs, they can produce; while
their sons can earn, with a mule, or
as guides and carriers, two, three, OF
four gold dollars per day; from
May to October, in helping foreign
tourists up and down their noun
tains, and over their dangerous pass
es and crevassed glaciers. 1t is no
longer necessary for the hardy stol-
id, fearless Swiss to offer his merce-
nary service as body-guard to any
Prince or potentate, to fight for a
cause for which he knows nothing
and cares less. The only foreign mil
itary service in which any Swiss are
now found in Europe is that of the
Pope, in Rome, who employs a bat
TALON of them around the Vatican-
not being willing to intrust his sa-
cred and infallible person to the
keeping of his suspected Italian
brethren. 1t is estimated that the
tourist who visited Switzerland last
year left behind them
THIRTY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS,
and the amount this year is still
greater; and next year it will prob
ably be greater than this; and each
succeeding year it must increase,
for, great as the number of people
who have visited Switzerland, it is a
mere drop in the bucket compared
with the millions who wish some day
to make the tour. Be it remem-
bered that Switzerland is surround
ed by civilized nations, aggregating
OO,0OO,OOO souls. And, this, too,
without including the tens of mil
lions in transatlantic countries.
The golden shower will then con-
tinue to fall on this attractive and
land for ages to come,
perhaps for all time, while man re-
tains love for the beautiful, grand,
and wonderful in Nature, and needs
pure, wholesome air, and vigorous,
exhilarating exercise, to recruit bro
ken health and recuperate wasted
People flock to Paris
for sensuous indulgence and to rev
ell into the NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. of the
h our; they visit Italy to study and
enjoy the great works of the ancient
Masters of Art; but they swarm
over Switzerland to contemplate
the works of Nature in her limitless
diversity and 5ublimest grandeur,
and to return home better, and. wiser,
and healthier men.
THE LATITUDE OF SWITZERLAND
imparts to the valleys and lower
slopes of its mountains the climate
and productions of Southern Ger
many, Central France, and Northern
Italy. While its higher mountains
are covered with perpetual snow
and ice, its valleys bear the wine
grape, fig. silk mulberry tree, orange
and peach; and, in most of them,
corn and tobacco grow as luxuri-
antly as wheat and grass, or sugar
beets, and barley. Before travers-
ing Switzerland, l had greatly un-
derrated its agricultural capabilities,
and the proportionate extent of Its
arabic and fertile land. Like many
Others who had obtained their in
formation from books and unob-
servant travellers letters, Ihaye sup
posed that Switzerland consisted
mainly of snow-covered mountains
and desert wastes of granite rocks,
a few narrow valleys and
deep glens, from which the poverty
stricken peasants, with goitre necks,
a miserable subsistence
under the shadows of overhanging
cliffs; and that those not employed
eked out a scanty existence by the
manufacture of watches and jewelry,
and carvings in wood.
Judge, then, of my surprise when,
after entering Switzerland at Basle,
a few weeks ago, 1 passed through a
for ten hours ride of the
train to Geneva, literally flowing
with
CORN AND WINE, MILK AND HONEY
It was rich as well as a beautiful
farming country, highly cultivated,
very productive, finely improved,
and thickly inhabited. The train
scores of beautiful, rapid
aowing streams, as it ran along up
the Valley of the River Aare for $50
miles, and passed by or through a
of villages and towns.
-Tbe country, as a whole, was neither
level nor mountainous, but presented |
every imaginable variety of surface, |
from broad, level valleys to ranges
Of hills and low mountains. The |
landscape was continually changing
but was always charming. Away off |
20 the westward as far as one could |
see, was the long range of Jura
whose sides and tops |
were densely covered with pine for |
ests, except few of the highest |
peaks, on which the snow glistened
under the rays of the sun. On the |
other side, to the east and southeast,
the snow-peaks of the high Alps, so |
to go miles distant, could be seen
looming over the intervening lower
ranges. Towards the mid
die of the afternoon, the train LETT
the Valley of the Asrc, and, plnng-
ing through long tunnel nnder