Switzerland

ry tourist. There are railways and diligence routes almost everywhere; and in places, too, there are still retreats for the quiet pedestrian who wish

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reciate the value of the patronage of this class of tourist. The roads and paths are wonderfully well sign-posted, and in places where there is a great tangle of paths the device has been adopted of putting vari-coloured marks to indicate different routes. Thus going out from a centre, one walk will be marked by black marks on trees, rocks, and

s walk with very little impedimenta. The happy experience of one tourist was that he walked right across Switzerland, never carried mor

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xcellent people! What bright expressions on their faces! What charming views! When one returns from Italy one almost melts into tears at the sight of this corner of the world, in which so m

paths have not been broadened into roads and spoilt in the process, and old-fashioned inns have not been replaced by palace hotels. Summer, of course, is the chief walking season, but there are many paths in some of the lower districts possible in the winter. Certainly those who go to

amber of the distant sunlight through glittering white into pale grey and brighter blues and deep ethereal azure. The pines stand in black platoons upon the hillsides, with a tinge of red or orange on their sable. Some carry masses of snow. Others have shaken their plumes free. The chalets are like fairy houses or toys; waist-deep in stores of winter fuel, with their mellow tones of madder and umber relieved against the white, with the fantastic icicles and folds of snow depending from their eaves, or curled like coverlids from roof and window-sill, they are far more picturesque than in the summer. Colour, wherever it is found, whether in these cottages

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eadows, and orchards stretching up from the blue waters to the hills, the great mountains of Rigi, Pilatus (said by an ancient myth to have been the refuge of the despairing Pontius Pilate), and the Stansenhorn. There, too, may be found the delight of the Alpine pine forests and of the Alpine flowers. There, too, are spl

ath gradually widening into a mule-track. It was not until the early part of the nineteenth century that the pass was made accessible to carriages, and the highway constructed which still is a fine example of a mountain road. Under the most favourable conditions four days was the time required to pass from Lucerne to Milan, and inclement weather would often force the traveller to take shelter for days. Now the pass is traversed in a few hours by the St. Gothard railway built jointly

engineer, Louis Favre, eight months before the completion of the tunnel, fell a victim to its close, heavy air, and died of heart failure whilst in the workings. The line

first known guide-book was written for the crowd of pilgrims crossing this pass, by the Abbot of Thing?r in Iceland, about 1154. There was a shelter building on the pass before the

lso the battlefield of St. Jacob on the Birse, where, in the year 1444, 1500 valiant Swiss held their ground against a force of French more than twenty times as great. When night fell, this band, defying death with the cry, "Our souls to God, our bodies to the Armagn

it in turn Ferney, Coppet, and Lausanne, where the gloomy austerity of Genevan Calvinism seemed to take on something of a comic spirit. There the use of tobacco and snuff was forbidden under the Seventh Commandment! "Here," said a p

wards thrust into a dungeon below the level of the lake where he was kept four years. In 1536 he was released, and was appointed Historian to the Genevan Republic. He did not get on well with Calvin and was frequently before the Genevan Consistory on various charges of moral wrongdoing. (That argues nothing serious against his character.) He seems to have been an average human man. But Byron's poem thrust him on to a pedestal which he did not deserve. The Castle of Chill

commenced the erection of a circle of ramparts, completed in 1646, parts of which still remain and are known as the "greater" and "lesser" ramparts. In 1218, after the Zaeringer dynasty had died out, Berne became independent, subject only to the German Emperor, and remained faithful to the House of Hohenstaufen. During the Interregnum, Berne was forced to place herself under the protection of the Duke of Savoy, in order to be able to resist her numerous enemies. In the Burgundian war of 1474-77, Bern

Parliament. It is also the headquarters of many international organisations. Switzerland excites no jealousy among the Eur

es in record of the city's ancient association with the bear, is worth a visit. From the Bernese public gardens and from the Gurten (2800 fe

eral impression of the country: and of the three Lucerne is the best centre. But with a month to spare all three may be visited and a very good idea of Switzer

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