Arizona republican., 1894-10-23
HAZARDOUS HAVING.
On Alpine Heights Where Goats
 and Sheep Fear to Tread.
Brawny Swiss Maids-CompeEled to Mow Grass in Masculine Attire-Weird, Rocky Region and Plucky Folk,
 Who Inspired Schiller.

The hay makers on our western prairies, and for that matter on the hilly and mountainous. meadows of America, can form no conception of the hardships that the Alpine wildheuer of Switzerland have to brave in order to gather the winters provender for their cattle.
 Wildheuer, says the Chicago Inter Ocean, is the name given to small peasants - men and women -w who climb the rocky peaks of the alps during the months of August and September and gather the wild hay that grows on almost perpendicular, isolated grass plots, over yawning precipices and near threatening glaciers. The reader is reminded of Schiller's graphic description of this fraternity in William Tell. It occurs in the third scene of the fourth act. Gessler, the governor of Switz and Uri, approaches down the sloping Kuessnacht pass with rocks on either side. Before him is projecting cliff overgrown with brushwood. Armgard, the poor wife of a wildheuer falls with her children in front of the governors horse and begs for the release of her husband, who is perishing behind prison bars, and when Rudolph der Harras, the adjutant, asks her: 'Who are you, woman, and who is your hus- band?" he receives the following words in reply:
 A poor wild-hay man of the Rigiberg Kind sir, who on the brow of the abyss
 Mows down the grass from steep and rocky shelves
 To which the very cattle dare not climb. Harras, the horseman, is conscience stricken, and thus intercedes for the petitioner:
 By Heaven! A sad and miserable lifel prithee, give the wretched man his freedom; How great soevcr his offense may be His horrid trade is punishment enough. To the woman:
 | You shall have justice; to the castle bring | Your suit this is no place to deal with it.
 And, indeed, no more dangerous oc- cupation can be imagined. The work is laborious and the harvest poor. The mowers and rakers ascend with ropes and Alpine shoes the dizzy steepnesses, where goats and sheep do not venture to graze, much less the larger cattle. | The mountaineers here are, of course, never assailed by vertigo and kindred | troubles, which must be accounted for | by heredity and constant climbing of perilous heights. But for this work only such men and women can be hired who can find no other means where with to keep the wolf from the door, l These are the folks who work during the balance of the year at ridiculously low wages by day in villages and inns, or as wood-choppers and weavers dur ing the winter. Hundreds of house. holders in this vicinity rely for their ! whole years supply of milk, butter and cheese on a single COW, and must make hay on the mountains while the sun shines-during August and September. Every canton in Switzerland has it's hay laws which set apart two months during the year for hay gathering and which appoint the very day on which the work may be commenced, besides imposing many other oppressive ordi- nances and regulations. As soon as the hay day has come these complacent, easily contented, semi-Roman Teutons gather in convivial companies and be- gin their climbing marches amid the yodling of popular ditties and the sing ing of religious hymns. All carry al penstocks, scythes, rakes and ropes and a small knapsack of food and drink, | sufficient for several days
 Often places are encountered where the grass is especially rich and lux uriant, but which can only be reached by dangling a mower down over the rocks and thus enabling him to gather a few sackfuls of hay at time, when another man is let down to finish the plot. It is generally found most ex- pedient to select some accessible spot near the mountain road and then to throw the hay bundles from the va rious little meadows along the paths And it is marvellous with what dex- terity the rakers have learned to throw their bundles.
 Sometimes, however, no such con- venient place can be found; then the poor people are compelled to carry their heavy, compact bundles on their shoulders down the steep, dangerous mountain path or to let them down with ropes from one to another some what like the water carriers of ancient Egypt.
 In the Canton Switz many young women are employed for this work