7,444 feet high. The Linth, its principal river, runs in a northern direction through the entire canton into the lake of Wallenstadt, which forms a part of its northern boundary. Besides this and the lake of the Klönthal, there are many other small lakes in the mountains. Glaciers also are very numerous, and the scenery is very striking.

Orchards of plum, pear, cherry, apricot, almond, and other trees, are sufficiently plentiful, and, in some parts, the vine is cultivated, but very little grain, or other agricultural produce, is obtained. The mountain sides supply fine pasturage for sheep and goats. This canton is the peculiar seat of the manufacture of Schabzieger, or green cheese. This is made of cows' milk, and not of goats', as its name might seem to imply. The peasants bring down from the mountains the curd in sacks. The cheese owes its peculiar appearance, smell, and flavour to the blue pansy. This herb is grown in small inclosures, beside most of the cottages; it is then dried, ground into powder, and in this state thrown into the mill along with the curd, in the proportion of three pounds of one, to a hundred pounds of the other. After being turned for about two hours and a half, the mixture is ready to be put into shapes, where it is kept until it dries sufficiently to be ready for use.

The Mouottathal is a valley of Switzerland, situated in the canton of Schwitz; it derives its name from the river Mouotta, by which it is watered, and which flows into the lake of Lucerne, or the Waldstätter See, between three and four miles, in a direct line to the westward of the town, or rather village, of Schwitz, the capital of the canton. The length of this valley is nine or ten miles, and its direction is pretty nearly from west to east. It has all the appearances of fertility, and its smiling landscape is set off by the contrast of a stupendous rampart of mountains which screen it, though not too closely, on almost every side. Towards its eastern extremity is the village of Mouotta, a small collection of cottages, possessing a church, which, for a long time, held the second rank in the canton, and used to be visited by numerous pilgrims from the neighbouring territories of Uri and Unterwalden. The eastern boundary of this valley is the lofty mount Praghel, which stretches also along a portion of its northern side; this mountain here forms the limit between the cantons of Schwitz and Glarus, sloping down upon the side of the latter into the Klönthal, or valley of the little river Klon.

The entrance to this valley is between two and three miles from the town of Schwitz; it begins near a little village bearing the name of Schönenbuch. The most direct communication between the towns of Schwitz and Glarus, is by the Mouottathal; the road passes through the whole length of the valley, then to the summit of the Praghel, and down its opposite slope into the Klönthal, traversing the whole length also of this latter valley, which extends to within a short distance of the Glarus. The difficulties of this route are very great; the passage of the mountain is an especially arduous task. Simond crossed it, and performed the whole journey between Glarus and Schwitz: he speaks in strong terms of the labour which attended its accomplishment. A considerable time was spent in the ascent of the Praghel, which rose from the Klönthal, "in all its pride, craggy, bare, and gray;" the summit was deserted by all living creatures except the birds of prey, "now hovering over its precipices, while their keen glance explored every secret recess; then gliding obliquely down on motionless wings, yet swift as thought, in pursuit of some imperceptible object." The descent of the opposite slope, towards the close of the Mouotta, is by a very steep winding path, or rather succession of slippery steps coarsely cut into the rock; down this precarious way, horses and mules, laden with a weight of more than two hundred pounds, will manage to find a passage, often with their hind feet above the level of their ears, and occasionally, indeed, placed in such situations as to need the driver to assist them, and hold them back by the tail.

Coxe mentions, in reference to this valley, a curious circumstance which was commu

nicated to him by General Pfyffer, the same patient ingenious old man, whose model in relief of a large portion of Switzerland we described in a notice of the town of Lucerne. As a proof of the astonishing confidence mutually entertained by the inhabitants, the General pointed out to him, "on each side of the road that runs through the valley of Mouotta, in the canton of Schwitz, several ranges of small shops, uninhabited, yet filled with various goods, of which the prices are marked; any passenger who wishes to become a purchaser, enters the shop, takes away the merchandise, and deposits the price, which the owners call for in the evening." We find no mention of this very comfortable mode of doing business in more recent writers; it passed away, probably, with those days of pastoral simplicity in which alone it could prevail, and which certainly did exist at no very remote period in some of the more retired among the Swiss valleys.

This valley, however, derives its chief interest from the sanguinary scenes of which it was the theatre at the close of the last century; like many other parts of Switzerland, till that time as little known, its peaceful retirement was then rudely disturbed by the fierce encounter of hostile armies. At the close of the year 1798, the ancient government of the Swiss was no longer in existence, and their territory was in the hands of the republican soldiers of France. Soon afterwards war was renewed between the French and Austrians; and the latter having gained the decisive victory of Stockach, in Suabia, on the 21st of March, 1799, passed on to the westward, and entered Switzerland in force, with the intention of following up their success and expelling their enemies from that country. Its poor inhabitants suffered severely in the struggle which ensued; their inclination in general led them to support the Austrians, but many were compelled by the French to take up arms against them. To use the words of a national historian, Zschokke, "Swiss fought against Swiss, under the banners both of Austria and France; tumults and revolts, sometimes occasioned by carrying into effect the act of conscription, sometimes from the desire of favouring the Austrian arms, prevailed in every direction. In the mean time, in the valleys in the highest Alps, and on the shores of the lakes, the din of foreign arms was heard; one field of battle was left reeking close to another, and men and horses were seen traversing mountain ridges known hitherto only to the chamois hunter. Never, since the occupation of the country by the Romans, the Allemanni, and Burgundians, had Switzerland experienced such overwhelming misery." The success of the contending armies was varied; the Grison country, and that mountain chain which includes the sources of the Rhine, were successively lost and won by both. In the month of June the Austrians, everywhere victorious, had advanced on the south to the pass of St. Gothard, and on the north to the town of Zurich and the borders of the Rhine. By the middle of August they were again driven back on the southern part of their line; and the French remained undisputed masters of the St. Gothard, and of nearly the whole of the cantons of Schwitz and Uri. The Mouottathal was one of the districts from which the Austrians were thus expelled, and their efforts to retain it were among the most strenuous which they displayed. They took post on the bridge at the village Mouotta, and bravely repulsed the body of French troops sent to attack them by the right hand of the river; of course when a second came up along the left bank, and placed them between two fires, they could hold their station no longer. Soon afterwards the mass of the Austrian forces quitted Switzerland, with the Archduke Charles, to take the field in Germany; their place was supplied by 30,000 Russians, who succeeded to the position which they had occupied in the town of Zurich, on the northern border of the lake of that name, and on the northern bank of the river Limmat. General Hotze, with the remainder of the Austrian force, 29,000 men, continued the line to the south, on the banks of the Linth. Immediately to the westward were the French under their able leader, Massena; their principal strength was gathered upon the Albis, and upon the high ground whence they could watch their opponents about Zurich.

For more than three weeks after the change had been effected, both armies remained in a state of inactivity; but, in the meanwhile, the allies had been occupied in the formation of a project, which they fondly hoped would lead to the expulsion, if not the annihilation, of the French force. The famous Suwarrow, the conqueror of the Poles and the Turks, was then, with nearly 30,000 Russians, in the north of Italy, where he had been reaping fresh laurels from his successes against the French; if he could be brought with his veteran troops into Switzerland, it was thought that the most sanguine results might fairly be anticipated. Accordingly it was arranged that he should cross the Alps by the pass of the St. Gothard, and march at once northward into Massena's rear; the troops in his front were to remain quiet until this manœuvre was executed, when the French would find themselves placed between two armies.

Suwarrow forced the St. Gothard, as already described, on the 24th of September, driving before him the French troops, who attempted to obstruct his passage; he arrived on the 26th at Altorf, and finding the banks of the Lucerne, or Waldstatten lake, to be impracticable, he boldly determined to force his way across the mountains into the valley of the Mouotta, which would lead him to the heart of the canton of Schwitz. There was no known route by which he could traverse the intervening tract of country; but the bold Russian was not to be deterred, and he resolved to explore one. He first penetrated through the Schachenthal, then through the Kientzigthal; next he crossed the mountain called the Kientzighoulm, and descended into a narrow valley, or rather water-course, which led him into the Mouottathal, through the opening which lies opposite to the village of the Mouotta.

Suwarrow reached the village of Mouatta with the main body of his army, on the 27th of September; and bitter must have been his mortification then, to learn that all his combinations had been ruined; that Massena, well apprised of the project of getting into his rear, had put 50,000 troops into motion on the very day the St. Gothard was forced, and attacked the armies in his front; that Hotze was killed, and his successor Petrarch in full flight to the Rhine; and that Korsakau, leaving Zurich, had been defeated in a murderous conflict, and was also retreating in the direction of that river. The defeat of this latter General was indeed complete, thousands of his Russians being slain; and so unexpected was it, that Massena and his staff are said to have sat down to a sumptuous dinner which had been prepared in Zurich at the house of the British minister, to celebrate the passage of the Alps by Suwarrow. Yet, in spite of this bad news, the boldness and energy of Suwarrow did not forsake him; he wrote to Korsakau and his generals, that they should answer with their heads for every further step that they retreated;"I am coming," he said, "to repair your faults." He marched quickly towards the opening of the Mouottathal with the intent of passing round towards the east, and doing something to retrieve the posture of affairs; but his active enemies met him at its very mouth, not far from the town of Schwitz.

A desperate battle ensued; the carnage was terrible, and the torrent was encumbered for several days with the bodies of the dead of both nations. The guide who conducted Simond to the top of the Mount Righi, gave him, as we have seen, an animating description of these conflicts; from that summit, the entrance to the Mouottathal, "a narrow gorge between high mountains, with a torrent issuing out of it," was distinctly visible. "The bridge was," he says, "taken and retaken many times; the mingled blood of the two nations crimsoned the stream which carried down their floating bodies." Suwarrow strove hard, and was very near forcing his way; at length he desisted, and turning round, sought a passage by the difficult route we have already described over the Praghel to Glarus, harassed all the while by his enemies, who kept his rear continually fighting. When he reached the outlet of the valley of Glarus, he found it already occupied by the French; and having, therefore, explored another mountain route, he managed to reach the town

of Coire in the Grisons, on the 4th of October, having lost one-fourth of his numbers in the eleven days which he had spent in marching and fighting since his departure from Italy.

The inhabitants of the Mouottathal were grievously injured by this war; Ebel tells us that at the commencement of the year 1800, between six and seven hundred of them— that is, three-fourths of their whole number-were reduced to such a state of indigence as to be obliged to inscribe their names on the list of the poor. The same was the case with one-fourth of the remaining population of the canton, so completely had its prosperity, "the work of 500 years of peace," been destroyed in two short years of warfare. Many resorted to emigration; and hundreds of children were dispersed into other parts of Switzerland, there to find the shelter of which they had been deprived in their native valleys. Yet all this misery has now passed away. "Time," says Simond, "and patient industry, have effaced all traces of calamities seemingly so recent, and Schwitz appears at present one of the most prosperous of the Swiss cantons."

66

Among the strange places," says Dr. James Johnson, "into which man has penetrated in search of treasure or health, there is probably not one on this earth, or under it, more wonderful than the baths of Pfeffers, situated in the country of the Grisons, a few miles distant from the Spulgen road, as it leads from Wallenstadt to Coire. They are little known to, and still less frequented by the English; for we could not learn that any of our countrymen had visited them during the summer of 1834.

"Having procured five small and steady horses accustomed to the locality, a party of three ladies and two gentlemen started from the little town of Ragatz on a beautiful morning in August, and commenced a steep and zig-zag ascent up the mountain, through a forest of majestic pines and other trees. In a quarter of an hour, we heard the roar of a torrent, but could see nothing of itself or even its bed. The path, however, soon approached the verge of a dark and tremendous ravine, the sides of which were composed of perpendicular rocks several hundred feet high, and at the bottom of which the Tamina, a rapid mountain torrent, foamed along in its course to the valley of Sargans, there to fall into the Upper Rhine. The stream itself, however, was far beyond our view, and was only known by its hollow and distant murmurs. The ascent, for the first three miles, is extremely fatiguing, so that the horses were obliged to take breath every ten minutes. The narrow path (for it is only a kind of mule-track) often winded along the very brink of the precipice, on our left, yet the eye could not penetrate to the bottom of the abyss. After more than an hour of toilsome climbing, we emerged from the wood, and found ourselves in one of the most picturesque and romantic spots that can well be imagined. The road now meanders horizontally through a high, but cultivated region, towards the village of Valentz, through fields, gardens, vineyards, and meadows, studded with chaumiers and châlets perched fantastically on projecting ledges of rock, or sheltered from the winds by tall and verdant pines. The prospect from Valentz, or rather from above the village, is one of the most beautiful and splendid I have anywhere seen in Switzerland. are there at a sufficient distance from the horrid ravine, to contemplate it without terror, and listen to the roaring torrent, thundering unseen, along its rugged and precipitous bed. Beyond the ravine we see the monastery and village of Pfeffers, perched on a high and apparently inaccessible promontory, over which rise Alpine mountains, their sides covered with woods, their summits with snow, and their gorges glittering with glaciers. But it is towards the east that the prospect is most magnificent and varied. The eye ranges, with equal pleasure and astonishment, over the valley of Sargans, through which rolls the infant Rhine, and beyond which the majestic ranges of the Rhetian Alps, ten thousand feet high, rise one over the other, till their summits mingle with the clouds. Among these ranges the Scesa-plana, the Angstenberg, the Flesch

We

(like a gigantic pyramid), and in the distance the Alps that tower round Feldkirck are the most prominent features. During our journey to the baths, the morning sun played on the snowy summits of the distant mountains, and marked their forms on the blue expanse behind them, in the most distinct outlines. But, on our return, in the afternoon, when the fleecy clouds had assembled, in fantastic groups, along the lofty barrier, the reflexions and refractions of the solar beams threw a splendid crown of glory round the icy heads of the Rhetian Alps-changing that "cold sublimity" with which the morning atmosphere had invested them, into a glow of illumination which no pen or pencil could portray. To enjoy the widest possible range of this matchless prospect, the tourist must climb the peaks that overhang the village, when his eye may wander over the whole of the Grison Alps and valleys, even to the lake of Constance.

"From Valentz we turned abruptly down towards the ravine, at the very bottom of which are the baths of Pfeffers. The descent is by a series of acute and precipitous tourniquets, requiring great caution, as the horses themselves could hardly keep on their legs, even when eased of their riders. At length we found ourselves in the area of a vast edifice, resembling an overgrown factory, with a thousand windows, and six or seven stories high. It is built on a ledge of rock that lies on the left bank of the Tamina torrent, which chafes along its foundation. The precipice on the opposite side of the Tamina, and distant about fifty paces from the mansion, or rather hospital, rises five or six hundred feet, as perpendicular as a wall, keeping the edifice in perpetual shade, except for a few hours in the middle of the day. The left bank of the ravine, on which the hospital stands, is less precipitous, as it admits of a zig-zag path to and from the baths. The locale, altogether, of such an establishment, at the very bottom of a frightful ravine, and for ever chafed by a roaring torrent, is the most singularly wild and picturesque I had ever beheld; but the wonders of Pfeffers are not yet even glanced at.

"From the western extremity of this vast asylum of invalids, a narrow wooden bridge spans the Tamina, and by it we gain footing on a small platform of a rock on the opposite side. Here a remarkable phenomenon presents itself. The deep ravine, which had hitherto preserved a width of some 150 feet, contracts, all at once, into a narrow cleft or crevasse, of less than twenty feet, whose marble sides shoot up from the bed of the torrent, to a height of four or five hundred feet, not merely perpendicular, but actually inclining towards each other, so that, at their summits, they almost touch, thus leaving a narrow fissure through which a faint glimmering of light descends, and just serves to render objects visible within this gloomy cavern. Out of this recess the Tamina darts in a sheet of foam, and with a deafening noise reverberated from the rocks within and without the crevasse. On approaching the entrance, the eye penetrates along a majestic vista of marble walls in close approximation, and terminating in obscurity, with a narrow waving line of sky above, and a roaring torrent below! Along the southern wall of this sombre gorge, a fragile scaffold, of only two planks in breadth, is seen to run, suspended as it were in air, fifty feet above the torrent, and three or four hundred feet beneath the crevice that admits air and light from heaven into the profound abyss. This frail and frightful foot-path is continued (will it be believed?) nearly a quarter of a mile into the marble womb of the mountain ! Its construction must have been a work of great difficulty and peril; for its transit cannot be made even by the most curious and adventurous travellers, without fear and trembling, amounting often to a sense of shuddering and horror. Along these two planks we crept or crawled, with faltering steps and palpitating hearts. It has been my fortune to visit most of the wonderful localities of this globe, but an equal to this I never beheld.

66 6

Imagination,' says an intelligent traveller, 'the most vivid, could not portray the portals of Tartarus under forms more hideous than those which nature has displayed in this place. We enter this gorge on a bridge of planks (pont de planches) sustained by