Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1878-08-29
EUROPEAN LETTER.
d our regular Correspondent.

From our regular Correspondent.
sIUcERNE, SWITZERLAND, August 10.
Ithink 1 ought to know something
abo mountains, having lived among them
thebetter half of my life. Not until 1
was sizsRen years of age was L out of sight
of some of the boldest scenery of the Ap-
pa1ae IAN range. came to Switzerland
determined to look critically at the Alps,
andsto see if they had been as much over
done by gushing tourists as some other
European scenery; the Rhine for instance,
but confess with humiliation that the
Alps far surpass any mountains of our
Eastern range, and that they are the
greatest cumulations of earth and rock l
ever saw. The management of the wealth
er did not see fit to lift the curtain of
cloud during my stay at Geneva, so 1
missed a view of Mount Blanc, but saw
the Jungfrau at Interlaken, which is
more than twice the height of Mount
Washington, and many other mountains
that would make the peaks of Otter in
Virginia look tame. But with all its wild,
sublime grandeur, and sequestered beau
ty, Switzerland does not leave pleasant
impression, like the smiling plains of
Normandy. There is too much emphasis,
theseenes are strained and fatigue; varie-
ty isaspice, but one eyenIprefers platatude
to eternal hyperbO1e.
Mature is here too pretentious. Her mein
Is too naughty One likes to be not compelled
To the homage such beauty resents if withheld.
She seems to be saying too plainly, admire me!
And answer, yes madam, do, but you tire me-
i L.
at nature in her relations to human life
and it is not the high snowy peaks, cas-
tellated rocks, and foaming mountain tor
rent that suggest plenty and content.
The Swiss are the homeliest people that l
have seen in Europe. They are industri-
Gus, and perhaps happy, but their
faces and limbs reflect the frown of the
mountains and are tragic with genera
tions of desperate battles for subsistence.
They are very frugal people. In econ
omy they are inferior only to the French,
who are stingy, miserly, denying them
selves comforts and living in miserable
little chambers, all that they may make a
dazzling appearance on the Boulevards
and in the cafes.
Away up on the mountain side, on the
edge of the precipes or under them, at an
elevation of five thousand or six thousand
feet, may be seen the Swiss chalets, or
even villages, the roofs weighted down
with large stones to prevent the hurri-
cane from sweeping them away. Here
| they have their little farms and gardens,
every inch of which has been made pro-
ductive,. On these extreme heights goats,
sheep, and few cows-but no horses
are to be found. The principal industry
of Switzerland is no longer, it would ap-
pear, in watch making, wood carving, or
the manufacture of musical boxes, but in
hotel keeping. No part of Europe is so
tourist-haunted, and hotels are to be found
everywhere, and of every class, from the
little exteriorly unprepossessing, but in
teriorly clean and comfortable, inn, to the
grand hotel, with marble floor and spike
coat-tailed waiter. Iprefer the little inns.
At them you will get as good a room, as
cleana bed, and better table, at about
half the price charged by the more fash
ionable houses, though the price
charged by the fashionable houses is not
large, not often more than two dollars
and a half per day. 1 do not know but
that those walters in white cravats and
black swallow tail coats may be very
agreeable to some people, but upon me
they have funeral and depressing effect.
Then too, at the grand hotel they have too
much system, they have got it down too
fine, know too accurately just how much
is required to keep soul and body togeth-
A. eAo -
most too close. All of them teed on the
theory that every man wants just as much
as, and no more than, another. The table
d'hOteL in Europe is very different from
ours. There is a great flourish of courses
and plate, too much plate and too few
victuals; l have often left the table hun
CRY to finish off at restaurant. l do not
remember ever to have left quite satisfied,
though their stereotyped nsenW of soup,
fish, veal, chicken, green beans, fruit,
dessert and coffee, each in seperate course
with long interval between, and admins
tered hom9pathically, gives, for the mo-
ment deceitful sense Offullness. AprO-
pos of this subject [ must tell you that
while in Paris l ordered horsesteak one
morning for breakfast, breakfast at ho-
tells in Europe is not table d'hoteL and one
can order one kind of meat and eggs,) and
it tasted so much like the peculiar soggy
beefsteak we had been eating all the time,
that it set me rejecting. The guests at
the hotel (most of whom are Americans
did not have stomach for my practical test,
but were curious to know how it tasted
and since have told them it tasted pre-
cisely like beefsteak, that staple has been
at a discount, they order mutton chops in
order that they may haye the evidence OF