Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867», sayfa 14
For most of the places from ten to fourteen candidates were named, and when these were reduced to two, nearly equally balanced in popular favor, the voting became very spirited. The apparitor, who was chosen on account of his strength of voice (the candidates for that office must be tested in this respect), had hard work that day. The same formula must be repeated before every vote, in this wise: "Herr Landamman, gentlemen, faithful and beloved fellow-citizens and brethren of the Union, if it seems good to you to choose so-and-so as your treasurer for the coming year, so lift up your hands!" Then, all over the dark mass, thousands of hands flew into the sunshine, rested a moment, and gradually sank with a fluttering motion, which made me think of leaves flying from a hillside forest in the autumn winds. As each election was decided, and the choice was announced, swords were lifted to show the location of the new official in the crowd, and he was then brought upon the platform with fife and drum. Nearly two hours elapsed before the gaps were filled, and the government was again complete.
Then followed the election of judges for the judicial districts, which, in most cases, were almost unanimous re-elections. These are repeated from year to year, so long as the people are satisfied. Nearly all the citizens of Outer-Rhoden were before me; I could distinctly see three fourths of their faces, and I detected no expression except that of a grave, conscientious interest in the proceedings. Their patience was remarkable. Closely packed, man against man, in the hot, still sunshine, they stood quietly for nearly three hours, and voted upwards of two hundred and seven times before the business of the day was completed. A few old men on the edges of the crowd slipped away for a quarter of an hour, in order, as one of them told me, "to keep their stomachs from giving way entirely," and some of the younger fellows took a schoppin of Most for the same purpose; but they generally returned and resumed their places as soon as refreshed.
The close of the Landsgemeinde was one of the most impressive spectacles I ever witnessed. When the elections were over, and no further duty remained, the Parson Etter of Hundwyl ascended the platform. The governing Landamman assumed his black mantle of office, and, after a brief prayer, took the oath of inauguration from the clergyman. He swore to further the prosperity and honor of the land, to ward off misfortune from it, to uphold the Constitution and laws, to protect the widows and orphans, and to secure the equal rights of all, nor through favor, hostility, gifts, or promises to be turned aside from doing the same. The clergyman repeated the oath sentence by sentence, both holding up the oath-fingers of the right hand, the people looking on silent and uncovered.
The governing Landamman now turned to the assembly, and read them their oath, that they likewise should further the honor and prosperity of the land, preserve its freedom and its equal rights, obey the laws, protect the Council and the judges, take no gift or favor from any prince or potentate, and that each one should accept and perform, to the best of his ability, any service to which he might be chosen. After this had been read, the Landamman lifted his right hand, with the oath-fingers extended; his colleagues on the platform, and every man of the ten or eleven thousand present, did the same. The silence was so profound that the chirp of a bird on the hillside took entire possession of the air. Then the Landamman slowly and solemnly spoke these words: "I have well understood that—which has been read to me;—I will always and exactly observe it,—faithfully and without reservation,—so truly as I wish and pray—that God help me!" At each pause, the same words were repeated by every man, in a low, subdued tone. The hush was else so complete, the words were spoken with such measured firmness, that I caught each as it came, not as from the lips of men, but from a vast, supernatural murmur in the air. The effect was indescribable. Far off on the horizon was the white vision of an Alp, but all the hidden majesty of those supreme mountains was nothing to the scene before me. When the last words had been spoken, the hands sank slowly, and the crowd stood a moment locked together, with grave faces and gleaming eyes, until the spirit that had descended upon them passed. Then they dissolved; the Landsgemeinde was over.
In my inn, I should think more than the expected six hundred had found place. From garret to cellar, every corner was occupied; bread, wine, and steamy dishes passed in a steady whirl from kitchen and tap-room into all the roaring chambers. In the other inns it was the same, and many took their drink and provender in the open air. I met my philosopher of the previous evening, who said, "Now, what do you think of our Landsgemeinde?" and followed my answer with his three Ja's, the last a more desponding sigh than ever. Since the business was over, I judged that the people would be less reserved,—which, indeed, was the case. Nearly all with whom I spoke expressed their satisfaction with the day's work. I walked through the crowds in all directions, vainly seeking for personal beauty. There were few women present, but a handsome man is only less beautiful than a beautiful woman, and I like to look at the former when the latter is absent. I was surprised at the great proportion of under-sized men; only weaving, in close rooms, for several generations, could have produced so many squat bodies and short legs. The Appenzellers are neither a handsome nor a picturesque race, and their language harmonizes with their features; but I learned, during that day at Hundwyl, to like and to respect them.
Pastor Etter insisted on my dining with him; two younger clergymen were also guests, and my friend the Chancellor Engwiller came to make further kind offers of service. The people of each parish, I learned, elect their own pastor, and pay him his salary. In municipal matters the same democratic system prevails as in the cantonal government. Education is well provided for, and the morals of the community are watched and guarded by a committee consisting of the pastor and two officials elected by the people. Outer-Rhoden is almost exclusively Protestant, while Inner-Rhoden—the mountain region around the Sentis—is Catholic. Although thus geographically and politically connected, there was formerly little intercourse between the inhabitants of the two parts of the Canton, owing to their religious differences; but now they come together in a friendly way, and are beginning to intermarry.
After dinner, the officials departed in carriages, to the sound of trumpets, and thousands of the people followed. Again the roads and paths leading away over the green hills were dark with lines of pedestrians; but a number of those whose homes lay nearest to Hundwyl lingered to drink and gossip out the day. A group of herdsmen, over whose brown faces the high stove-pipe hat looked doubly absurd, gathered in a ring, and while one of them yodelled the Ranz des Vaches of Appenzell, the others made an accompaniment with their voices, imitating the sound of cow-bells. They were lusty, jolly fellows, and their songs hardly came to an end. I saw one man who might be considered as positively drunk, but no other who was more than affectionately and socially excited. Towards sunset they all dropped off, and when the twilight settled down heavy, and threatening rain, there was no stranger but myself in the little village. "I have done tolerably well," said the landlord, "but I can't count my gains until day after to-morrow, when the scores run up to-day must be paid off." Considering that in my own bill lodging was set down at six, and breakfast at twelve cents, even the fifteen hundred guests whom he entertained during the day could not have given him a very splendid profit.
Taking a weaver of the place as guide, I set off early the next morning for the village of Appenzell, the capital of Inner-Rhoden. The way led me back into the valley of the Sitter, thence up towards the Sentis Alp, winding around and over a multitude of hills. The same smooth, even, velvety carpet of grass was spread upon the landscape, covering every undulation of the surface, except where the rocks had frayed themselves through. There is no greener land upon the earth. The grass, from centuries of cultivation, has become so rich and nutritious, that the inhabitants can no longer spare even a little patch of ground for a vegetable garden, for the reason that the same space produces more profit in hay. The green comes up to their very doors, and they grudge even the foot-paths which connect them with their neighbors. Their vegetables are brought up from the lower valleys of Thurgau. The first mowing had commenced at the time of my visit, and the farmers were employing irrigation and manure to bring on the second crop. By this means they are enabled to mow the same fields every five or six weeks. The process gives the whole region a smoothness, a mellow splendor of color, such as I never saw elsewhere, not even in England.
A walk of two hours through such scenery brought me out of the Sitter Tobel, and in sight of the little Alpine basin in which lies Appenzell. It was raining slowly and dismally, and the broken, snow-crowned peaks of the Kamor and the Hohe Kasten stood like livid spectres of mountains against the stormy sky. I made haste to reach the compact, picturesque little town, and shelter myself in an inn, where a landlady with rippled golden hair and features like one of Dante Rossetti's women, offered me trout for dinner. Out of the back window I looked for the shattered summits of the Sentis, which rise five thousand feet above the valley, but they were invisible. The vertical walls of the Ebenalp, in which are the grotto and chapel of Wildkirchli, towered over the nearer hills, and I saw with regret that they were still above the snow line. It was impossible to penetrate much farther without better weather; but I decided, while enjoying my trout, to make another trial,—to take the road to Urnäsch, and thence pass westward into the renowned valley of the Toggenburg.
The people of Inner-Rhoden are the most picturesque of the Appenzellers. The men wear a round skull-cap of leather, sometimes brilliantly embroidered, a jacket of coarse drilling, drawn on over the head, and occasionally knee-breeches. Early in May the herdsmen leave their winter homes in the valleys and go with their cattle to the Matten, or lofty mountain pastures. The most intelligent cows, selected as leaders for the herd, march in advance, with enormous bells, sometimes a foot in diameter, suspended to their necks by bands of embroidered leather; then follow the others, and the bull, who, singularly enough, carries the milking-pail, garlanded with flowers, between his horns, brings up the rear. The Alpadores are in their finest Sunday costume, and the sound of yodel-songs—the very voice of Alpine landscapes—echoes from every hill. Such a picture as this, under the cloudless blue of a fortunate May day, makes the heart of the Appenzeller light. He goes joyously up to his summer labor, and makes his herb-cheese on the heights, while his wife weaves and embroiders muslin in the valley until his return.
In the afternoon I set out for Urnäsch, with a bright boy as guide. Hot gleams of sunshine now and then struck like fire across the green mountains, and the Sentis partly unveiled his stubborn forehead of rock. Behind him, however, lowered inky thunder-clouds, and long before the afternoon's journey was made it was raining below and snowing aloft. The scenery grew more broken and abrupt the farther I penetrated into the country, but it was everywhere as thickly peopled and as wonderfully cultivated. At Gonten, there is a large building for the whey-cure of overfed people of the world. A great many such, I was told, come to Appenzell for the summer. Many of the persons we met not only said, "God greet you!" but immediately added, "Adieu!"—like the Salve et vale! of classical times.
Beyond Gonten the road dropped into a wild ravine, the continual windings of which rendered it very attractive. I found enough to admire in every farm-house by the wayside, with its warm wood-color, its quaint projecting balconies, and coat of shingle mail. When the ravine opened, and the deep valley of Urnäsch, before me, appeared between cloven heights of snow, disclosing six or eight square miles of perfect emerald, over which the village is scattered, I was fully repaid for having pressed farther into the heart of the land. There were still two hours until night, and I might have gone on to the Rossfall,—a cascade three or four miles higher up the valley,—but the clouds were threatening, and the distant mountain-sides already dim under the rain.
At the village inn I found several herdsmen and mechanics, each with a bottle of Rheinthaler wine before him. They were ready and willing to give me all the information I needed. In order to reach the Toggenburg, they said, I must go over the Krätzernwald. It was sometimes a dangerous journey; the snow was many cubits deep, and at this time of the year it was frequently so soft that a man would sink to his hips. To-day, however, there had been thunder, and after thunder the snow is always hard-packed, so that you can walk on it; but to cross the Krätzernwald without a guide,—never! For two hours you were in a wild forest, not a house, nor even a 'Sennhütt' (herdsman's cabin) to be seen, and no proper path, but a clambering hither and thither, in snow and mud; with this weather,—yes, one could get into Toggenburg that way, they said, but not alone, and only because there had been thunder on the mountains.
But all night the rain beat against my chamber window, and in the morning the lower slopes of the mountains were gray with new snow, which no thunder had packed. Indigo-colored clouds lay heavily on all the Alpine peaks; the air was raw and chilly, and the roads slippery. In such weather the scenery is not only shrouded, but the people are shut up in their homes,—wherefore further travel would not have been repaid. I had already seen the greater part of the little land, and so gave up my thwarted plans the more cheerfully. When the post-omnibus for Herisau came to the inn door, I took my seat therein, saying, like Schiller's Sennbub', "Ihr Matten, lebtwohl, Ihr sonnigen Weiden!"
The country became softer and lovelier as the road gradually fell towards Herisau, which is the richest and stateliest town of the Canton. I saw little of it except the hospitable home of my friend the Chancellor, for we had brought the Alpine weather with us. The architecture of the place, nevertheless, is charming, the town being composed of country-houses, balconied and shingled, and set down together in the most irregular way, every street shooting off at a different angle. A mile beyond, I reached the edge of the mountain region, and again looked down upon the prosperous valley of St. Gall. Below me was the railway, and as I sped towards Zurich that afternoon, the top of the Sentis, piercing through a mass of dark rain-clouds, was my last glimpse of the Little Land of Appenzell.
THE LOST GENIUS
A giant came to me, when I was young,
My instant will to ask,—
My earthly Servant, from the earth he sprung
Eager for any task!
"What wilt thou, O my Master?" he began;
"Whatever can be," I.
"Say but thy wish,—whate'er thou wilt I can,"
The strong Slave made reply.
"Enter the earth and bring its riches forth,
For pearls explore the sea.'
He brought from East and West, and South and North,
All treasures back to me!
"Build me a palace wherein I may dwell."
"Awake, and see it done,"
Spake his great voice at dawn. O miracle,
That glittered in the sun!
"Find me the princess fit for my embrace,
The vision of my breast,—
For her search every clime and every race."
My yearning arms were blessed!
"Get me all knowledge." Sages with their lore,
And poets with their songs,
Crowded my palace halls at every door,
In mute obedient throngs!
"Now bring me wisdom." Long ago he went;
(The cold task harder seems;)
He did not hasten with the last content,—
The rest, meanwhile, were dreams!
Houseless and poor, on many a trackless road,
Without a guide, I found
A white-haired phantom with the world his load
Bending him to the ground!
"I bring thee wisdom, Master." Is it he,
I marvelled then, in sooth?
"Thy palace-builder, beauty-seeker see!"
I saw the Ghost of Youth!
CINCINNATI
The French possessors of the Western country used to call the Ohio the Beautiful River; and they might well think it beautiful who came into it from the flat-shored, mountainous Mississippi, and found themselves winding about among lofty, steep, and picturesque hills, covered with foliage, and fringed at the bottom with a strip of brilliant grass. But travellers from the Atlantic States, accustomed as they are to the clear, sparkling waters and to the brimming fulness of such rivers as the James, the Delaware, and the Hudson, do not at once perceive the fitness of the old French name, La Belle Rivière. The water of the Ohio is yellow, and there is usually a wide slope of yellow earth on each side of the stream, from which the water has receded, and over which it will flow again at the next "rise." It is always rising or falling. As at the South the item of most interest in the newspapers is the price of cotton, and in New York the price of gold, so in the West the special duty of the news-gatherer is to keep the public advised of the depth of the rivers. The Ohio, during the rainy seasons, is forty feet deeper than it is during the dry. Between the notch which marks the lowest point to which the river has ever fallen at Cincinnati and that which records the point of its highest rise, the distance is sixty-four feet. If our Eastern rivers were capable of such vacillation as this, our large cities would go under once or twice a year.
In truth, those great and famous Western rivers are ditches dug by Nature as part of the drainage system of the continent,—mere means of carrying off the surplus water when it rains. At the East, the water plays a part in the life, in the pleasures, in the imagination and memories of the people. We go down to Coney Island of a hot afternoon; we take a trip to Cape May; we sail in Boston Harbor; we go upon moonlight excursions, attended by a cotillon band; we spend a day at the fishing banks; we go up the Erie Railroad for a week's trout-fishing; we own a share in a small schooner; we have yacht clubs and boat races; we build villas which command a water view. There is little of this in the Western country; for the rivers are not very inviting, and the great lakes are dangerous. They tried yachting at Chicago a few years ago, but on the experimental trip a squall capsized the vessel, and the crew had the ignominy of spending several hours upon the keel, from which a passing craft rescued them. Then, as to excursions, there is upon the lakes the deadly peril of sea-sickness; upon the rivers there is no great relief from the heat; and upon neither are there convenient places to visit. All you can do is, to go a certain distance, turn round, and come back; which is a flat, uncheering, pointless sort of thing. Upon the whole, therefore, the Western waters contribute little to the relief and enjoyment of the people who live near them. We noticed at the large town of Erie, some years ago, that not one house had been placed so as to afford its inmates a view of the lake, though the shores offered most convenient sites; nor did the people ever come down to see the lake, apparently, as there was no path worn upon the grassy bluff overlooking it.
The Ohio River has another inconvenience. The bottom-land, as it is called, between the water's edge and the hills, is generally low and narrow. Nowhere is there room for a large city; nor can the hills be dug away except by paring down a great part of Ohio and Kentucky. When the traveller has climbed to the top of those winding mountains, he has only reached the average summit of the country; for it is not the banks of the river that are high, but the river itself which is low. It is an error to say that the Ohio is a river with lofty banks. Those continuous hills, around which this river winds and curls and bends and loops, are simply the hills of the country through which the river had to find its way. We were astonished, in getting to the top of Cincinnati, after a panting walk up a zigzag road, to discover that we had only mounted to the summit of one billow in an ocean of hills.
There is always a reason why a city is just where it is. Nothing is more controlled by law than the planting, the growth, and the decline of cities. Even the particular site is not a thing of chance, as we can see in the sites of Paris, London, Constantinople, and every other great city of the world. A town exists by supplying to the country about it the commodities which the country cannot procure for itself. In the infancy of the Ohio settlements, when it was still to be determined which of them would take the lead, the commodity most in request and hardest to be obtained was safety; and it was Cincinnati that was soonest able to supply this most universal object of desire. In December, 1788, fifteen or twenty men floated down the Ohio among the masses of moving ice, and, landing upon the site of Cincinnati, built cabins, and marked out a town. Matthias Denman of New Jersey had bought eight hundred acres of land there, at fifteen-pence an acre, and this party of adventurers planted themselves upon it with his assistance and in his interest. Jerseymen and Pennsylvanians were finding their way down the Ohio, and founding settlements here and there, whenever a sufficient number of pioneers could be gathered to defend themselves against the Indians. President Washington sent a few companies of troops for their protection, and the great question was where those troops should be posted. The major in command was at first disposed to establish them at North Bend; but while he was selecting a place there for his fort, he fell in with a pair of brilliant black eyes,—the property of one of the settler's wives. He paid such assiduous court to the lady, that her husband deemed it best to remove his family to another settlement, and pitched upon Cincinnati. The major then began to doubt whether, after all, North Bend was the proper place for a military work, and deemed it best to examine Cincinnati first. He was delighted with Cincinnati. He removed the troops thither, built a fort, and thus rendered the neighborhood the safest spot below Pittsburg. This event was decisive: Cincinnati took the lead of the Ohio towns, and kept it.
In all the history of Cincinnati, this is the only incident we have found that savors of the romantic.
Those black eyes lured Major Doughty to the only site on the Ohio upon which one hundred thousand people could conveniently live without climbing a very steep and high hill. It is also about midway between the source of the river and its mouth; the Ohio being nine hundred and fifty-nine miles long, and Cincinnati five hundred and one miles from the Mississippi. The city is nearly the centre of the great valley of the Ohio; it is, indeed, exactly where it should be, and exactly where the metropolis of the valley might have been even if Major Doughty had not been susceptible to the charms of lovely woman. It is superfluous to say that Cincinnati is situated on a "bend" of the Ohio, since the Ohio is nothing but bends, and anything that is situated upon it must be upon a bend. This river employs itself continually in writing the letter S upon the surface of the earth. At Cincinnati, the hills recede from the shore on each side of the river about a mile and a half, leaving space enough for a large town, but not for the great city of two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants to which it has grown.
Cincinnati is an odd name for a town, whether we regard it as a genitive singular, or as a nominative plural. The story goes, that the first settlers appointed a committee of one to name the place. The gentleman selected for this duty had been a schoolmaster, and he brought to bear upon the task all the learning appertaining to his former vocation. He desired to express in the name of the future city the fact that it was situated opposite the mouth of the Licking River. He was aware that ville was French for "city," that os was Latin for "mouth"; that anti in composition could mean "opposite to"; and that the first letter of Licking was L. By combining these various fragments of knowledge, he produced at length the word Losantiville, which his comrades accepted as the name of their little cluster of log huts, and by this name it appears on some of the earliest maps of the Ohio. But the glory of the schoolmaster was short-lived. When the village had attained the respectable age of fifteen months, General St. Clair visited it on a tour of inspection, and laughed the name to scorn. Having laid out a county of which this village was the only inhabited spot, he named the county Hamilton, and insisted upon calling the village Cincinnati, after the society of which both himself and Colonel Hamilton were members. In that summer of 1790 Cincinnati consisted of forty log cabins, two small frame houses, and a fort garrisoned by a company or two of troops.
We sometimes speak of "the Western cities," as though the word "Western" was sufficiently descriptive, and as though the cities west of the Alleghany Mountains were all alike. This is far from being the case. Every city in the Western country, as well as every State, county, and neighborhood, has a character of its own, derived chiefly from the people who settled it. Berlin is not more different from Vienna, Lyons is not more different from Marseilles, Birmingham is not more different from Liverpool, than Cincinnati is from Chicago or St. Louis; and all these differences date back to the origin of those cities. The Ohio, formed by the junction of two Pennsylvania rivers, is the natural western outlet for the redundant population of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and consequently the first twenty thousand inhabitants of Cincinnati were chiefly from those States,—honest, plodding, saving Protestants, with less knowledge and less public spirit than the people of New England. The Swedes, the Danes, the Germans, the Protestant Irish, who poured into Pennsylvania and New Jersey in Franklin's time, attracted by the perfect toleration established by William Penn, were excellent people; but they had not the activity of mind nor the spiritual life of the English Puritans. Shrewd calculators and of indomitable industry, they were more able to accumulate property than disposed to risk it in bold, far-reaching enterprises, and took more pride in possessing than in displaying wealth,—in having a large barn than an attractive residence. They were more certain to build a church than a school-house, and few of them wanted anything of the book-pedler except an almanac. The descendants of such men founded Cincinnati, and made it a thriving, bustling, dull, unintellectual place. Then came in a spice of Yankees to enliven the mass, to introduce some quickening heresies, to promote schools, to found libraries, to establish new manufactures and stimulate public improvements. That wondrous tide of Germans followed that has made in each of the cities of the West a populous German quarter,—a town within a town. Meanwhile, young men from the Southern States, in considerable numbers, settled in Cincinnati, between whom and the daughters of the rich "Hunkers" of the town marriages were frequent, and the families thus created were, from 1830 to 1861, the reigning power in the city.
Perhaps there was no town of its size and wealth in Christendom which had less of the higher intellectual life and less of an enlightened public spirit than Cincinnati before the war. It had become exceedingly rich. Early in its career the great difficulty and expense of transporting goods across the mountains and down the winding Ohio had forced the people into manufacturing, and Cincinnati became the great workshop, as well as the exchange, of the vast and populous valley of the Ohio. Its wealth was legitimately earned. It was Cincinnati which originated and perfected the system which packs fifteen bushels of corn into a pig, and packs that pig into a barrel, and sends him over the mountains and over the ocean to feed mankind. Cincinnati imported or made nearly all that the people of three or four States could afford to buy, and received from them nearly all that they could spare in return, and made a profit on both transactions. This business, upon the whole, was done honestly and well. Immense fortunes were made. Nicholas Longworth died worth twelve millions, and there are now in that young city sixty-four persons whose estate is rated at a million dollars or more. But, with all this wealth and this talent for business, the people of Cincinnati displayed little of that spirit of improvement which has converted Chicago, in thirty years, from a quagmire into a beautiful city, and made it accessible to all the people of the prairies. There was too much ballast, as it were, for so little sail. People were intent on their own affairs, and were satisfied if their own business prospered. Such a thing even as a popular lecture was rare, and a well-sustained course of lectures was felt to be out of the question. Books of the higher kind were in little demand (that is, little, considering the size and great wealth of the place); there was little taste for art; few concerts were given, and there was no drama fit to entertain intellectual persons. Cincinnati was the Old Hunkers' paradise. Separated from a Slave State only by a river one third of a mile wide, with her leading families connected by marriage with those of Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland, and her business men having important relations with the South, there was no city—not even Baltimore—that was more saturated with the spirit of Hunkerism,—that horrid blending of vanity and avarice which made the Northern people equal sharers in the guilt of slavery, while taking the lion's share of the profit. It was at Cincinnati, in 1836, that a mob of most respectable citizens, having first "resolved" in public meeting that "Abolition papers" should neither be "published nor distributed" in the town, broke into the office of James G. Birney's "Philanthropist," and scattered the types, and threw the press into the river. It was at Cincinnati, in 1841, that the authorities were compelled to fill the prisons with negroes to protect them from massacre. Similar scenes have occurred in other cities, but violence of this kind meant more at Cincinnati than in most places, for the people here have always been noted for their orderly habits and their regard for law.
