Switzerland Part 8

Very often a number of hunters go together, and close upon the chamois from every side. Then the swift creatures are in a ring, and, as they rush away down-wind, they are bound to come within shot of those posted on the side towards which they flee. Sometimes the chamois are turned back by long stretches of cord set upon sticks, and drawn across places where they could escape from the ring of hunters and drivers. From the cord flutter bright pieces of cotton cloth--red, blue, or yellow--and at sight of these the chamois face about and try another path. But when driven to the extremity of terror, chamois have been known to dash upon the line of flags, some clearing the obstacle with a flying leap, others bodily charging the rope, and bursting a way through. Very often the latter entangle their horns in the rope, and go whirling through the air in a double somersault. But they are on their legs again in a moment, and off at tremendous speed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUNTING THE CHAMOIS.]

Apart from the national sports of the Swiss, the national sports of Switzerland--in which, since they were acclimatised, the Swiss take part and frequently excel--are skating, hockey, tobogganing, bob-sleighing, curling, and ski-ing. Skating is, I suppose, common to all lands where there is much ice. Tobogganing was introduced to Switzerland from America, and ski-ing from Norway. Another interesting recent sport is a modification of skating, and is known as ice-sailing. The skater rigs up a sail which he holds with his arms stretched out as yards--himself the ship. Skimming the ice one can keep thus up only till the arms are tired, but a most exhilarating speed is possible. Ice-sailing with yachts has been recently imported to the Swiss lakes from America. For ice-yachting, an expert says, "Dress as if you were going through the Arctic Circle on a fast motor-car in the worst of snow-storms. Goggles, leathers, and furs are indispensable. Use your eyes like a lynx, your rudder like a silk rein on a blood-mare--and you will quite enjoy it." It has enough of the element of danger as well as of speed to be attractive to the adventurous.

Tobogganing strictly is a Red Indian sport, and the name is Red Indian. But it is so closely related to sleighing that the germ of the sport can be discovered in almost all ice-covered countries. It was natural that in cold climates the wheels of waggons should be replaced, when the earth was frozen, with runners, and thus the sleigh came. The toboggan is a sporting variety of sleigh. Early traces of it can be found in Switzerland. An English visitor to the Alps noticed that the local postman used a rough sleigh to slide down the hills which he had to descend; was intrigued by the idea of the swift gliding; and there thus began to be cultivated the sport which has its culminating glory in the Cresta Run at St. Moritz--said, by the way, to have been planned by an Australian. Tobogganing has the charm of a great bicycle "coast" many times multiplied. Artificial difficulties have been developed to add to its risks and its excitement. The simple toboggan slide, the dragging of a toboggan up a smooth snow slope, and then sliding down at a pace reaching to thirty miles an hour, is old-fashioned and tame. Nowadays, the slide must be so arranged as to secure a much higher speed, and to give awkward turnings which need cool courage to negotiate. A speed of sixty miles an hour has been reached tobogganing.

Perhaps a charm of the toboggan is that it is not very useful. The flat board, set on runners, can only slide down hill, and you must draw it up first. The ski, on the other hand, has a very definite use.

It enables snow-covered country to be traversed with safety at great speed, and a proof of its practical value is that the Swiss army is trained to march on ski. Down a steep slope a pace of forty miles an hour can be reached by the expert ski-runner, and he can leap great heights and great distances with the aid of the momentum of that speed. But to become an expert ski-runner calls for some trouble and pain.

With ski the exploration of the Alps in all kinds of weather has become possible. A recent _Journal de Geneve_ gave the account of an extraordinary adventure of two Swiss ski-runners. On Easter Sunday, 1913, these two set out with a companion from Saas Fee for the Britannia Hut. This hut was reached at 8 A.M., and the three ski-runners went on to the Allalin Pa.s.s, but were compelled by mist to return to the hut, which they reached about 5 P.M. On the Sunday evening three Genevese climbers came to the hut, and one of the party of three ski-runners went home, leaving two. These two intended to go to Zermatt over the Adler Pa.s.s, but the weather was so bad that it was Sat.u.r.day before they could start. They were seen to reach the Allalin Pa.s.s, and no more was seen or heard of them for a very long time. But it seems that the ski-ers went down to the Findelen Glacier, up to the Stockjoch, and down _via_ the Monte Rosa Glacier to the Gorner Glacier; thence up again to the Betemps Hut, where they spent the night. The following day, Sunday, in uncertain weather, they went down on to the glacier again, meaning to go to Zermatt. One of the two, named Dehns, was going on ahead. The wind had blown away all trace of the track made by them the previous day, and the man who had remained behind noticed that Dehns was going too much to the left, and called out to him that he was not taking the right way, but too late. He had not gone more than about sixty yards on to the glacier before he disappeared into a creva.s.se, hidden beneath a quant.i.ty of fresh snow.

"I advanced," says the narrator, "cautiously to the brink of the creva.s.se, and called to Dehns, who replied that he was all right, only he had torn one ear and broken the point off one of his ski. I must use his rope to help him out, he said. I tied the ends of my puttees to my ski-sticks, my bootlaces, and anything else which could possibly serve the purpose of string, and I let everything down to him so that he could tie the rope to it. Dehns could understand what I said, but I could hear nothing that he said owing to the wind and the snowstorm which had begun."

Finally Dehns cut his way out of the creva.s.se in which he had been for four hours. He was a little frost-bitten and much bruised; and his ski were lost. They made their way to the Betemps Hut, and there they remained for twelve days. They had very little in the way of provisions, half of what they had had with them being down the creva.s.se. Eventually the uninjured man contrived to burst open the door of the hut cellar, where he found food and wine.

Without ski it was impossible for the prisoners to leave, for eight or ten feet of fresh snow had fallen. Moreover, the condition of Dehns, who was badly bruised and in much pain, was sufficient to prevent him reaching Zermatt even with ski. On the twelfth day Dehns was better, and they made an expedition to attempt to recover the lost ski, but in vain. Next they attempted to make a pair of ski out of planks. But that was not successful. The next day they were rescued by a search party. The facts ill.u.s.trate the value of ski for travelling in the snow and the helplessness of the voyager without them.

Skating, of course, is excellent in Switzerland in the winter. Most of the hotels catering for the tourist have set up rinks which are "artificial" to the extent that Nature is a.s.sisted a little to produce a clear smooth surface of ice. But the skating, like the tobogganing, is limited in its area. The visitor who would have the keys of the Alpine snows must learn the use of the ski.

It will be of interest to chronicle the chief winter sports centres.

Good tobogganing, bob-sleighing, skating, ski-ing, ice-hockey, and curling are to be enjoyed at Arosa, Celerina, Davos, Klosters, Lenzerheide, Maloja, Pontresina, and at St. Moritz in the Canton Grisons; at Andermatt, at Engelberg, at Adelboden, Beatenberg, Grindwald, Gstaad and Wengen in the Bernese Oberland; at Les Brenets, at Caux, Chateau-d'-Oex, Chesieres, Diablerets, Les Avants, St.

Cergue, Villars-Ollon in the Canton de Vaud; at Champery and Loeche-les-Bains in the Canton de Valais; and at Chamonix and le Planet in the Chamonix Valley.

As for summer sports, there are golf links at Aigle, Axen-Fels, Campfer, Celerina, Geneva, Gottschalkenberg, Interlaken, Les Ra.s.ses (near St. Croix), Lucerne, Lugano, Lugano-Paradiso, Maloja, Menaggio, Montana, Mont-Pelerin, Montreux, Pontresina, Ragaz, Samaden, St.

Moritz-Dorf, Territet, Villeneuve, and Zurich-Dolder.

Tennis courts are almost everywhere attached to the hotels. Certainly no large village is without them, and they exist in plenty at Adelboden, Chamonix, Engelberg, Grindwald, Interlaken, Lucerne, Berne, St. Moritz, Wengen, and other cities.

The spring season in the Alps begins as early as March in some places, but more generally in April. It is the chief season around Lake Leman. The summer season begins with June, and is the chief season in eastern Switzerland, the Bernese Oberland, Lake Neuchatel, Zurich, St. Gothard, and many other parts. Indeed, there is a summer season in all Switzerland. For the autumn, many favour the Lake of Lucerne and the Lake of Leman. The winter season begins usually with December, and again embraces almost all of Switzerland, but the chief centres for this season correspond with the list of the towns (already given) which make special provision for winter sports.

I do not know whether bath-resorts can be described fittingly as sport centres; but it is well to chronicle somewhere the fact that Switzerland is well off for thermal and medicinal baths. Baden is the chief of the bath centres. Owing to its excellent climate and to its hot springs Baden was, in Roman times, the most important watering-place and health-resort to the north of the Alps. Numerous excavations, inscriptions, remains of temples, statues, coins and surgical instruments confirm this fact. In Roman times the princ.i.p.al military road of Helvetia led through Baden, connecting the watering-place with Vindonissa, the great Helvetian fortress, six miles away. In the year 1892, beyond the Roman road in Baden, in the direction of Vindonissa, there were discovered the foundations of a large connected block of buildings, which, when fully excavated, revealed fourteen apartments of various sizes, from 10 to 88 feet in length. The architecture of this building, the medical and surgical instruments and utensils found there, and the proximity of the Helvetian fortress of Vindonissa, where Roman legions were stationed, and the thermal springs show without much doubt that this was the site of a Roman military hospital. Besides those at Baden there are medicinal springs at Ragaz, Champery, Lavey-les-Bains, Pa.s.sagg, Aigle, St. Moritz-Bad, Grinel-les-Bains, and many other centres. They will provide entertainment for those whose life is not happy without some devotion to a more or less real ailment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CORNER OF AIGLE SKATING RINK.]

CHAPTER XIV

SWISS SCHOOLS

Coming to the end of the limits set for this volume, the writer finds that many aspects of Swiss life have been perforce neglected. No s.p.a.ce could be found, for example, to deal with the educational system, which both in its primary and secondary forms and in its devotion to technical instruction has aroused the admiration of experts in many countries. This Swiss educational system is at once generous and practical, with compulsory attendance enforced and gratuitous instruction, books, and materials provided. Teaching begins in the national schools, called the Primarschule, which are attended by children of all ranks and at which attendance is compulsory from the age of nine until the completion of the fifteenth year, unless children pa.s.s from these to higher schools. The cla.s.ses are mixed and contain from 40 to 44 children, who are taught by both men and women teachers. The school course ensures the boys and girls a general elementary education, including a knowledge of French--so essential in a country with three national languages--which is taken during the last two years at school. Considerable time is also devoted to physical exercise, carpentry, needlework, and cookery. The plan of studies in the secondary schools, which scholars may enter after four years in the primary schools, and where they remain until the age of fifteen, is much more extensive, and includes a more profound study of French (five years' course) and an advanced course of the sciences, geometry, and drawing. The instruction is gratuitous, and the pa.s.sing of a preliminary examination the only condition of entry. From the secondary schools scholars have the option of ultimately entering the Gymnasium or the industrial and commercial schools.

The secondary school is succeeded by the higher schools. The _Munic.i.p.al Gymnasium_ (grammar school) accepts all boys and girls above the age of ten who pa.s.s the entrance examination. In the _Progymnasium_, which corresponds to the secondary school in its course of studies, instruction is gratuitous up to the age of fifteen; after that the annual fees amount to sixty francs. There are great Universities in the chief cities, which are much favoured by foreign pupils.

It is a sign of the practical side of the Swiss character that very special attention should be given to technical schools: the Swiss technical schools are said to be the most thorough in the world, and they will teach anything, from waiting to watch-making. Another sign of the practical is the Swiss custom to keep the schools in mountain villages open only during the long Alpine winter--from the beginning of October till the following Easter. All through the summer, lads and boys tend sheep or cows in the fields, help their fathers to make hay, roam in the woods, and get their fill of air and sunshine. The schoolmasters have gone to their own villages, where they mow and gather in the crops like the other peasants to whose households they belong. This is good from the point of view of health, and also from that of domestic economy.

Leaving their schools strong in body because of the organised system of gymnastic training; strong in national pride because of the attention which has been paid by their teachers in impressing the glorious story of the past; with well-balanced, sane, practical minds the Swiss are ready to face the tasks of life with a fearless confidence. Their pride does not teach them to despise labour, even in forms which may appear contemptible. Their sense of thrift, which almost verges on a sense of greed, does not make them inhospitable.

They show their virtues in the sphere of the commonplace, as servants, traders, petty masters. But they are heroic in the sphere of commonplace; and no one, looking back on their history, can dare to doubt that if great occasion arose in the future they would respond to it as courageously as in the past, and hold their hills against any attempt at conquest.

In every respect they seem to preserve their historic national character. Since the earliest of the Middle Ages, Switzerland was accustomed to find asylum for the saint fleeing from a monarch's anger, the reformer dreading the persecution of a church, the thinker seeking a safe corner from which he could invite mankind to consider some daring hypothesis. There was a complaint in the European newspapers only this year (1913) that:

Geneva has for a long time past been a centre for eccentric and ill-regulated individuals of every description, a certain proportion being in addition idle and generally undesirable characters. Her University is, of course, the main cause of a condition of things far from pleasing to the responsible authorities. It has long attracted, and still continues to attract, students from all parts of the world--crop-haired Russians, wild-looking Bulgarians, Greeks, Levantines, and Egyptians.

The chief cause of dissatisfaction at the moment, it seems, was that Geneva University had become the headquarters of the so-called Permanent Committee of the Young Egyptian Party:

These young Egyptians (often not really Egyptians at all, but Levantines) loom largely in the public eye. Throughout the present summer, for instance, more than a fortnight or three weeks have never elapsed without their meeting in Geneva, ostensibly to pa.s.s some resolution or to appeal to England to keep her engagements regarding the eventual evacuation of Egypt, or, it might be, to draft some letter of protest to be sent to Sir Edward Grey. These resolutions are invariably transmitted without delay to the foreign Press agencies established in Geneva, and by them telegraphed right and left throughout Europe. It frequently happens, of course, that the more serious and better-informed newspapers treat these resolutions for what they are worth, but far more frequently, especially by German newspapers or journals, which for some reason or other are not friendly disposed to Great Britain, or are wholly ignorant of British administration in Egypt, they are published _in extenso_, as if they were the decisions arrived at by the British a.s.sociation, the French Academy, or some other society of long-established reputation and recognised standing. It must be admitted that the "Young Egyptians" in Geneva are very clever in hoodwinking a large number of foreign editors, and in causing themselves to be taken far more seriously than they deserve.

But it is not likely that the "Young Egyptians" will find their stay in Geneva interfered with by the Swiss authorities. The tradition of the "right of asylum" is too strong; and provided that the line is drawn at actual criminality, no Power will successfully ask for their expulsion from Switzerland. Yet the presence of these futile conspirators must be of annoyance to the Swiss Government, which wishes to live at peace with all the world, and finds sometimes a threat of interference with its tourist traffic in foreign resentment at Swiss-sheltered disloyalists. But in this matter historic sentiment defeats the practical. The Swiss are determined to be hospitable, even to their own loss. And Europe generally is inclined to sympathise with, and respect, this little mountain people set in the midst of great Powers, from whose disputes they rigorously hold aloof, seeking to maintain their liberty by a st.u.r.dily pacific policy, but keeping in reserve for national defence a great military organisation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BERNE.]

CHAPTER XV

SOME STATISTICAL FACTS

Switzerland is not all scenery and hotels. The little nation has a prosperous life apart from the tourists who make of its mountains a playground. There is interesting matter to be gleaned from the facts given in the publications of the Swiss Federal Statistical Bureau.

The residential population of Switzerland is 3,753,293, and the area 4,129,827 square kilometres, of which 3,203,089 are counted as productive, and 926,738 as unproductive. Thus three-quarters of the land is capable of being put to some use. There are over 120 lakes within the Swiss area.

The population of Switzerland lately has grown steadily. The marriage-rate (73) is low; the birth-rate (250) fairly high; the death-rate (151) a little above the average. All three rates show a tendency to dwindle, following the rule of the western European countries. The death-rate from infectious diseases is high, representing one-fifth of the total. Emigration to foreign lands is not large now, Switzerland losing about 5000 people a year from this cause, the great majority of whom go to the United States and the Argentine.

The chief agricultural and pastoral products of Switzerland are milk, cheese, cream, cereals, vines, fruits, and tobacco. The vintage is worth 600,000 a year. The forests are made to pay well, and are very carefully safeguarded. On an average about 500,000 a year is devoted to re-planting and to protecting woods. The woods are divided into two cla.s.ses, protective and non-protective. The former are treated as safe-guards against avalanches, and are exploited only with a due consideration for their primary purpose as bulwarks. Altogether 21 per cent of Switzerland is forest land, and three-quarters of this area is treated as "protective forest." The Governments of the United States and of Canada, which are disturbed regarding the de-forestation of their areas and the consequent deterioration of soil and climate, should make a careful study of the admirable Swiss system of forestry.

The Swiss lake and river fisheries are very carefully preserved and cultivated. There are in all 188 fish nurseries maintained within the country, and during a year over 100,000,000 fish of various sorts (trout chiefly) are hatched out and released in the rivers and lakes.

Incidentally a steady war is carried on against crows, herons, and other birds destructive to fish. In this, as in every other respect when the life of the Swiss people is examined, there will be found a steady, thrifty, scientific effort to make the most of every available resource of the country. There is probably less waste and more utilisation of natural opportunities in Switzerland than in any other country of the world.

Swiss industries are in some cases Government monopolies, and help the national revenue considerably. The salt monopoly brings in about 1,500,000 a year, of which a great part is profit. The total trade of Switzerland reaches 120,000,000 value a year, of which the exports represent about 50,000,000 and the imports about 70,000,000. That is exclusive of coin, on which there is a balance in favour of Switzerland of about 600,000 annually. The tourist traffic is mainly responsible for the balance of imports in favour of Switzerland, for there is practically no foreign borrowing. The Swiss have a flourishing export trade in various manufactures, such as watches (export worth nearly 6,000,000 a year). In all 75 per cent of the Swiss export trade is in manufactured goods. Of the imports into Switzerland 40 per cent are of raw materials, 26 per cent of food supplies, and the balance of manufactured goods. Germany claims the largest share of the import trade into Switzerland, with France, Italy, and Great Britain next in that order. Of the export trade also Germany takes the largest share, but that of Great Britain is very nearly equal. The United States comes third in the list of customers for Swiss exports.

The public services in Switzerland are excellent, and show a high power of organisation. The postal, telegraph, and telephone system has been, in particular, wonderfully organised in Switzerland, as the visitor soon finds and the inhabitant fully realises. You may use the post office for almost anything and telephone almost anywhere in Switzerland. Some 2,500,000 has been sunk in the telegraph and telephone lines in Switzerland, and the annual revenue is about 700,000. The articles carried by post in Switzerland total in a year about 360,000,000. The number of telegrams sent per inhabitant in Switzerland is greater than in any other European country except Great Britain. The Swiss railways are very well developed, too well developed for some lovers of the Alps. Each year there are constructed new funicular railways and tramways, until soon it will be hard to find a ten-miles' square in all Switzerland which has not a railway of some sort. Counting in all the mountain railways, the total length of Swiss lines runs to the astonishing total of over 5,250,000 metres, and additions go on at the rate of over 250,000 metres a year. These railways bring in about 9,000,000 a year, on which a good profit is realised--about 3,000,000 a year--representing 332 per cent on the capital invested. The Federal Government controls the chief lines and manages them very well, making a good profit out of providing reasonably cheap facilities to the public. Tourists are able to buy circular tickets, which frank over all the Swiss lines under the control of the Federal Government. The funicular railways up the mountain sides are usually privately owned. Over 1,000,000 of capital has been sunk in these enterprises, and they pay well on the average by the strength of their appeal to the arm-chair Alpinist.

Education, as already observed, has been brought to a high pitch of organisation in Switzerland. From the primary schools to the seven Universities there are splendid facilities for learning. In the 4690 primary schools there are about 530,000 pupils yearly under 12,023 teachers. The cost of this primary education is a little over 2,000,000 a year. In the 642 secondary (higher) schools there are about 55,000 pupils yearly under 2000 teachers, and the cost of these schools is about 300,000 a year. There are, in addition, schools of agriculture, of dairying, of commerce, and other technical schools. In the various agricultural colleges about 1250 pupils are trained each year, in the schools of commerce about 4000 pupils. In addition, continuation commercial schools give further instruction to some 10,000 pupils yearly, who attend holiday and evening cla.s.ses. But that does not exhaust the list of educational facilities. In all, Switzerland spends 3,200,000 a year on State education, nearly 1 a year per inhabitant. Since salaries are on an extraordinarily thrifty scale in all branches of the Swiss public service--the President of the Republic getting a salary which would be scorned by the manager of a small business house in London or New York--this appropriation allows for a very large number of teachers. In the seven universities of Switzerland (Bale, Zurich, Berne, Geneva, Lausanne, Fribourg, and Neuchatel) there is an average of 8500 students a year, of whom fully a third are foreigners.

Correctional schools and schools for the feeble-minded are integral parts of the Swiss social system. An average of 1500 children a year are treated in the correctional schools, and of 1300 a year in the schools for the feeble-minded (of which there are 28 in all). There are 14 special schools for deaf mutes, treating an average of 700 pupils a year.

Switzerland gathers in for Federal purposes a public revenue of nearly 6,500,000 a year, about half from the Customs, almost all the rest from the posts, telegraphs, and railways. Outgoings are on a thrifty scale. The whole of the "general administration" absorbs only 55,000 a year. The excellent army costs barely 1,700,000 a year. The Federal receipts and expenses are, of course, apart from the Canton revenues.

The Cantons separately raise and spend about 5,500,000 a year. That makes the total taxation in Switzerland some 12,000,000 a year.

The production and sale of alcohol is a Federal monopoly in Switzerland. The Regie makes about 400,000 a year profit, the bulk of which is returned to the Canton governments.

Some further indications of Swiss social life will be given by these facts: there are in Switzerland 385 savings banks with 446,247 depositors and 63,000,000 in deposits. The gaol population is about 4170, of whom about one-fourth are serious criminals. Capital punishment is not allowed in Switzerland, nor is imprisonment for debt.

The Swiss army stands to-day at an effective strength of 142,000 for the _elite_ and 7000 for the _Landwehr_. The efficiency of the _Landwehr_ (reserve) is helped much by the general popularity of rifle shooting as a sport. The Federation has 3958 rifle clubs with 232,225 members. The Government encourages these clubs with subsidies, and spends about 25,000 a year in that way. Since there are 839,114 male voters in Switzerland, it will seem that more than a fourth of the total male population belongs to rifle clubs.