valley; and you meet corded brown friars walking, and women working on the roads. The variety and contrast of colours offered to the eye such a scene, the azure of the sky, the violet mountains, of a hue as deep as the heartsease, the grisly grey rocks, the black firs, the deep blue gorges, the pale verdure of the trees, the deeper green of the grassy slopes and meadow patches, the white snow, the dim mists, the silvery clouds, the opal of the morn, the golden lights of evening, make up a delightful intermingling of hues and shades. At some distance below Wasen the mountains are singularly grand. Far down the valley a pyramidal peak of bare granite guards the way to the region of Tell; and now the green and flowery mottled slopes, with the thick luxuriant foliage and fruits of the walnut, chestnut, pear, and other trees, begin to spread out more largely. In the hay-harvest are seen women with their heads and shoulders buried beneath enormous bundles of the short grass, labouring along the path at the brink of precipices, where a single step would plunge bundle and carrier into the gulf below. AM-STEG (inns, Hirsch and Stern) lies at the foot of the mountains called the Bristen and Windguelle. To the east the valley of the Maderan opens, and is prolonged as far as to the glaciers of Uri, Glarus, and the Grisons. From AmSteg to Altorf is three stunde. The valley now opens out, and the way no longer descends, but winds through a well-wooded and cultivated region: it leaves shortly the margin of the Reuss, and conducts by the ruins of an old tower, said by some to be identical with the Zwing Uri (Bridle for Uri), constructed by the infamous Gessler to overawe the Swiss, and by them demolished at the commencement of their revolt: by others it is stated to have been nothing more than the ancestral seats of the lords of Silchlinen. At BOTZLINGEN, two stunde from Arn Steg, the public officers and members of the parliament of the canton are elected every year. The constitution of Uri is very simple. Nearly all power is reserved in the hands of the "gentlemen," i.e. the descendants of the oldest families. The cantonal council consists of forty-four members elected for life, who both make and administer the laws without appeal. In Uri a citizen is not allowed to marry a stranger without paying to his village a fine of 300 florins, and a citizeness marrying a stranger loses her rights in the common property of her canton. Just before reaching Altorf the road reaches the Schachen valley to the right of the road, celebrated as containing the village of Burglen, where William Tell was born. It is a beautiful rural hamlet, of most magnificent verdure, higher up among the mountains than Altorf, and commanding a rich leafy view of the valley below. The church is in front, and in sight is the village of Attighausen, where Walter Furst, Tell's wife's father, and a Swiss liberator, was born. A little chapel stands on the spot formerly occupied by the house in which Tell long resided as Mayor of Burglen. It is covered with very rude paintings, descriptive of various scenes in Tell's life, accompanied with sentences from Scripture. On the front of the chapel is the text, "We are called unto liberty, but by love serve one another." The valley is about four miles in length, rich in Alpine pasturage, and is inhabited by one of the finest races in Switzerland. It was through this vale that Suwarrow, in 1799, led his army into the canton of Glarus. Before coming to Altorf you cross the rapid stream of the Schachen, in which it is said that William Tell lost his life in his old age by endeavouring to save a child from drowning, when the waters were high. This was in 1350. He was born about the year 1280. The traditions respecting Tell are highly prized in Uri, and the public authorities of the canton ordered to be burned a book by the son of the celebrated Haller, criticising the story of Tell so as to injure the popular version. On a clear moonlight night, it is said, you can even now sometimes see the stalwart form of Tell in his native valley, bending his great cross-bow, and trying the strength of his arrows. ALTORF is from Burglen less than half-an-hour's walk (inns, Adler and Clef-d'Or, best; Aigle and Clef-d'Or). It is the capital of Uri, and stands nearly on the confine of the canton. It is small, not having above 1700 inhabitants, but clean, beautifully situated, and surrounded by gardens and orchards. The town has no manufactures, and is poor; a conflagration occurred here in 1799, when nearly all the houses then forming the little capital were burned down, and a loss of 4,500,000 francs was sustained. It was in the square of Altorf that the celebrated boy-andapple scene was enacted, and an old tower is shown, said to have been built upon the site where once grew the linden to which the tyrant Gessler bound the noble child as the mark for his father's archery. Wordsworth's lines were suggested by contemplating this tower: "How blest the souls, who, when their trials come, But face, like that sweet boy, their mortal doom, Figures of the heroes stand above the fountain, and are dearly cherished in spite of the rudeness of their execution. From Altorf a walk of about half an hour brings the traveller to Fluellen, a mere village in the low unhealthy part of the valley of the Reuss, but of some importance, as being the place of embarkation for Lucerne, on whose lake it stands. LAKE AND TOWN OF LUCERNE. From Fluellen a steamer starts for Lucerne morning and evening, at hours which are fixed at the commencement of every season. On its way it calls at Brunnen, the port of the canton of Schwytz; at Gersau and Weggis, to disembark passengers for the Rhigi; and at Beckenried, the nearest landing-place to Buochs and Stanz. Distance from Fluellen to Lucerne, 25 miles. Fares: 1 fr. 60 rap. and 3 fr. 20 rap. The Lake of Lucerne, also called the Vierwaldstadter Sea, or Lake of the Four Cantons, (Uri, Schwytz, Unterwalden, and Lucerne, which it laves, having during the middle ages borne the name of the Four Cantons), is the geographical and historical centre of Switzerland, since the heroic scenes which introduced its modern history were enacted on its banks. Its surface is 1430 feet above the level of the sea. In form it is most irregular, presenting at no point an expanse of water at all proportioned to its real capacity, and being for the most part made up of a number of narrow channels disposed at various angles to each other. The first of these straits lies between the southern extremity of the lake near Fluellen and Brunnen, where the Muotta pours down its waters. At Brunnen the lake narrows and suddenly bends, forming a wider channel, the north bank of which ends at Gersau, while its southern side is prolonged in a bay to Buochs. Above Gersau the lake expands somewhat, and permits its north-western extremity at Lucerne to be reached from that point in a straight line. About midway be. tween Gersau and Lucerne it thrusts out two arms, one of which extends on the right to Kussnach and the other to Alpnach. Lucerne is allowed on all hands to be the finest of Swiss lakes, its three reaches presenting every variety of lake scenery. No other presents such a magnificent variety of light and shade: snowy peaks and silvery glaciers, deep green ravines, dark wood and naked rock, and lovely fertile spots of cultivation, sunny, warm, and rich. Along the bay of Uri, between Fluellen and Brunnen, the banks are precipitous, and the rocky shore, wild scenery, and crags crowned with pines, remind a northern traveller of the fiords of Norway. The rocks dip perpendicularly into the water, and a landing in case of a storm would be almost impossible. In the middle branch, grandeur gives place to pieturesqueness of scenery; while the characteristic of the lower branch, which joins Lucerne, and is surrounded by countryhouses, and orchards, and wooded knolls, is its beauty. The Swiss boats are coarse and clumsy in construction; keeled-boats are never seen; the oars are crossed, and used standing, the rower pressing against them with arms and breast. Some of the larger vessels carry a square sail, but this demands great caution and skill; sudden gusts of wind often rush through the ravines and lash up the waters to a wild tumult, making it needful to seek immediate shelter. Accidents, however, are comparatively rare, owing to the caution, perhaps the timidity, of the boatmen, who have a very justifiable distrust of their abilities in an emergency. About two miles from Fluellen, on the east side of the lake, at the foot of the Achsen mountain, are the Tellenplatte, G and Tell's chapel. William Tell having been taken prisoner at Altorf, was to be taken for greater security to the fortress at Kussnach. For this purpose he was put into a boat at Fluellen, and the boat set sail; but one of those sudden and violent storms to which the lake is so subject having arisen, the bont was driven close to the shore. Tell, who was a powerful man, was released, that he might assist in saving the boat, which contained Gessler. He saw and seized his opportunity, leaped on shore at this spot, and well knowing all the mountains, fled over to Kussnach to await the tyrant. It was on the 28th November, 1307, that Tell's arrow slow Gessler on the cross-road of Kussnach. On the 1st of January following, the deputies of the cantons which had entered the league of liberation expelled the Austrian bailiffs from Uri, Schwytz, and Unterwalden, and seized all the forts. Tell fought at Morgarten in the ranks of the 1300 Confederates, who won the first victory over the Austrian power. He lived until the middle of the fourteenth century, and had the happiness to see the cantons of Lucerne, Zurich, Zug, Glarus, and Berne included in the Confederation. At an advanced age he perished in the Schachen, near the bridge by which the traveller enters Altorf, in attempting to save a child which had fallen into the torrent. His race became extinct by the death of Verena Tell, who died in 1720. At the death of William Tell the inhabitants of Uri ordained a yearly meeting of the canton at Burglen in honour of their illustrious fellow-citizen. The Cantonal Council decreed, moreover, that every year a sermon should be preached in the place "where stands the house of our dear fellow-citizen, the first restorer of our liberties, to the eternal memory of the mercy of God and the sure aim of the hero." In 1880, about thirty years after his death, this chapel was built, and 114 persons met there who had known him during his life. The prospect on the ledge near Tell's chapel is very magnificent. About three miles from the Tellenplatte the west shore has subsided, and a beautifully green meadow opens out, called the Grutli-matte. It was here that Werner Staffaucher of Steinen, in Schwytz, Erni (or Arnold) der Halden of Melchthal, in Unterwalden, and Walter Furst of Attinghausen, in Uri, met in the moonlight, and swore to break the fetters of their country's slavery, expel the tyrants, and |