- The regular guides are paid five or six batzen per hour or stunde, when engaged for less than a day their return pay is included in this payment. The traveller requiring a guide for only a few days should exhibit bis luggage, and then demand of the guide for how much he will conduct him, and carry his articles—say from A, by B to C-maintenance, return pay, and every other expense included, whether the journey occupy more or fewer days. In this way one avoids disputes, which would otherwise arise upon numerous occasions; e. g. detention for half a day or more by rain, when the guide would not fail to charge for the time during which he had been hindered; or again, in the case that a journey is made in two days, which had been estimated at a three-days' march, when the guide would expect three days' wages. A fair-dealing guide will soon come to an understanding with a reasonable traveller upon such a footing as this; one who will not should be avoided. In selecting a guide a stranger will, as a rule, do well to consult the opinion of the landlord, whose good fame is, to a certain extent, pledged not to deliver up his customer to a rapacious plunderer. To be sure, host and guide have, for the most part, common interests, and judge that one good turn deserves another. Usually, moreover, the guide pays nothing in the inn. Where everything is charged by a fixed tariff, such an arrangement is the business only of the host, but in smaller houses, or in places where only a breakfast or luncheon is taken, the traveller, whether he know it or not, will pay for his attendant.

CHARTS.

An accurate map is, before all things, indispensable to the pedestrian. Keller's "Road Map of Switzerland," which has borne away the palm of renown for the last thirty years, is still the most accurate and minute of general maps. The Zürich edition of the map should be procured, as

worthless imitations are printed at Paris and Milan. Gall's Map, published by Faesli and Co., at Zurich, is on the same scale (1: 600,000). That by Worl, published at Freiburg by Herder, in twenty sheets, is on a much larger scale (1: 200,000); and the glaciers, snowy mountains, roads and paths, having their distinctive colourings, present a very picturesque view of the Swiss country. It wants, however, that exactness which one has a right to look for in a chart of its size. A fine map is now in course of construction by the Ordnance engineers of the Confederation, but only a few sheets have appeared. The establishment of Faesli and Co., of Zurich, is particularly rich in a choice of maps, views, &c., of Switzerland.

If you have a companion, so much the better, supposing that your views in travelling, your tastes and strength, are tolerably matched without this, better that each pursue his own path. Two companions are enough for a journey of this description; three present at least this recommendation, that there is always a casting vote; four may travel together, but are apt to fall into two distinct parties; five is out of the question."-LATROBE.

Ebel says, "In Switzerland every circumstance combines to give the advantage to the pedestrian tourist. The traveller a-foot is dependent on no one's convenience or caprice, but enjoys a freedom in harmony with the scenes and country visited. His equipment permits him to use a conveyance for shortening a dull route; while it leaves him free to climb whither neither car nor mule can reach. The magnificent views to be enjoyed in Alpine regions are not to be reckoned up, labelled, and examined like the pictures or minerals in a museum: they are innumerable, and, through the changes of the atmosphere, ever shifting; thus he who is not at full liberty at any moment to make the most of his opportunities will be continually losing the objects of his journey. All tourists have not the health or time to travel in this free and healthful

manner, but to those who have both, a noble and inexhaustible field of recreation is open."

Fair weather is the first condition of a pleasant visit to Switzerland, whose celebrities and attractions all lie under the open heavens. "The months in which fair weather is most to be depended on," says Ebel," are July, August, and September; and from these, therefore, should the period be selected for traversing the Alpine routes; which, moreover, are scarcely free from snow before June." On the 13th of July, 1843, a fall of snow took place which rendered the routes of the Rigi and the Bernese Oberland impassable for six or eight days; and on the 23d of August, 1845, a heavy fall occurred on the Scheideck. These, however, are exceptional instances. As a rule, the snow has vanished from the Rigi and the Bernese Oberland by the beginning of June. The choicest season for a tour in Switzerland lies between the middle of July and the middle of September. In Southwestern Switzerland, the Pays du Vaud, and the canton of Geneva, the months of September and October are often the finest of the year; the purity of the air and serenity of the sky then combine to render the autumn a delightful season.

MONEY.

The currency of Switzerland is in a state of complication and confusion to the traveller, more hopelessly unintelligible and entangling than even that of Germany. It were in vain to enter into the multifarious modes of reckoning of the several cantons, and it is the more unnecessary, as in nearly all the districts visited by travellers the stranger is, or may be at his request, charged in French francs, which will be received in payment of his bill. Should he, however, come into possession of any of the cantonal coins, he will do well to employ them all before proceeding to the next little state, where they may not be found current.

In the western half of Switzerland, Geneva excepted, calculations are made in Swiss francs, divided into ten batzen, or 100 rappen. It must be impressed on the memory that the Swiss franc has a value equal to one franc forty-eight cents, or, more practically, one franc and a-half French currency; oversight of this distinction leads to perpetual mistakes and surprises in bargains and agreements, very amusing except to the losing party. The Swiss franc is equivalent to about 1s. 2d. English, and the batz to three halfpence. The common Swiss coins are the half franc, or five-batz piece, the batz, half-batz, and rappen. The half and whole batzen are very difficult to distinguish, on account of their almost equal weight; the first have usually a stroke drawn under the lettering.

In the north-easterly parts of Switzerland, the cantons of Appenzell, St. Gall, and the Grisons, the twenty-four gulden currency of Southern Germany, namely, the Bavarian florin of 20d. divided into sixty kreutzers, constitutes the circulating medium. The zwanziger belongs to this system of coinage; it represents twenty-four kreutzers, and is therefore of about fourfifths the value of the French franc, and equal to six batzen. It will be found very useful in trinkgeld (drink-money, the name of a common gratuity), where a franc must otherwise be given, and is, moreover, current throughout German Switzerland. For the sake of completeness, notices of the peculiar coinage of Ticino and the smaller cantons will be given in the body of this work where those localities are particularly described.

The French gold coins of twenty francs, Napoleons, are gladly seen by innkeepers and tradesmen throughout Switzerland; they are exchanged for fourteen Swiss francs, and constitute the most convenient and advantageous money which the traveller can carry, whether in Switzerland or Upper Italy. A Table showing the relative value of coins may be found useful for purposes of reference.

NAMES OF COINS.- France, francs and centimes.— Germany, florins and kreutzers.—Prussia, thalers, silbergroschen, and pfennings.-Austria, in silver, florins and kreutzers. -Holland, gulders and cents. Switzerland, francs, batzen, and rappen.

GLACIERS.-M. Ebel's work states that there may be in Switzerland at least 400 glaciers, ranging from three or four to between twenty and thirty miles in length. The depth, he says, is in some only 100 feet, but in many it is 600 or 700 feet. It is difficult to form an estimate of the ground actually covered by all the glaciers in Switzerland. M. Ebel computed that the aggregate area could not be much less than 130 square leagues, or about 1400 square miles. The origin, structure, and movement of these enormous masses of ice have engaged very much of the attention of scientific men during the last twenty years, and opinion is yet divided,

C