114 PRÆTERITA-I

you have tunnelled Gothard, and filled, it may be, the Bay of Uri;-and it was all for you and your sake that the grapes dropped blood from the press of St. Jacob,¹ and the pine club struck down horse and helm in Morgarten Glen?²

132. Difficult enough for you to imagine, that old travellers’ time when Switzerland was yet the land of the Swiss, and the Alps had never been trod by foot of man. Steam, never heard of yet, but for short fair weather crossing at sea (were there paddle-packets across Atlantic? I forget³). Any way, the roads by land were safe; and entered once into this mountain Paradise, we wound on through its balmy glens, past cottage after cottage on their lawns, still glistering in the dew.

The road got into more barren heights by the mid-day, the hills arduous; once or twice we had to wait for horses, and we were still twenty miles from Schaffhausen at sunset; it was past midnight when we reached her closed gates. The disturbed porter had the grace to open them -not quite wide enough; we carried away one of our lamps in collision with the slanting bar as we drove through the arch. How much happier the privilege of dreamily entering a mediæval city, though with the loss of a lamp, than the free ingress of being jammed between a dray and a tramcar at a railroad station!

133. It is strange that I but dimly recollect the following morning; I fancy we must have gone to some sort of church or other; and certainly, part of the day went in admiring the bow-windows projecting into the clean streets. None of us seem to have thought the Alps would be visible without profane exertion in climbing hills. We

¹ [For another reference to “the Swiss Thermopylæ”-the battle of St. Jacob, near Bâle, where on August 26, 1444, twelve hundred Swiss attacked and defeated a French army twenty-fold more numerous-see Sir Joshua and Holbein, § 14 (Vol. XIX. p. 12). The vineyards near the place produce a red wine, called “Schweizer Blut.”]

² [For other references to the battle of Morgarten, see Vol. XVIII. p. 538 n.]

³ [A steamship first crossed the Atlantic in 1816, but there was no regular line till 1838. Paddles were first superseded by screws in 1843.]

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