Volume 74 — BRUTE LIFE IN THE ALPINE REGIONS.[2]

BRUTE LIFE IN THE ALPINE REGIONS.^[2]

Switzerland has latterly become one of the most commonplace countries in Europe. No matter that its lakes are as lovely, its mountains as magnificent, its landscapes as beautiful, and its cascades as sparkling as they were thirty years ago; it has the grievous misfortune of being too well known. Familiarity has begot indifference. Switzerland is now little more than a baiting place on the road to Italy or the East. Everybody has visited it, and professes to know it by heart. If a railway were accomplished, people would dart through it in a day, as they do through monotonous Belgium on their way to the Rhine—caring to see no more of it than they can spy from the carriage windows. As to Mont Blanc, its ascent is becoming quite an ordinary occurrence; men scramble up and down it like conies on a sandhill, and one thinks of the Grands Mulets pretty much as one used to think, in the dear departed days of four-horse teams and many-coated jehus, of the Halfway House on the Great North Road. Switzerland is now visited (for its own sake) only by persons who are stinted for time—who cannot afford a tour, but merely “a run,” and who accordingly scamper off to the Alps (as they might do to the Westmoreland lakes or Welsh hills), the journey thither being performable, thanks to steam, in somewhere about thirty hours from London Bridge. Rapid gentlemen, who glory in the quantity of ground they get over, who estimate the interest of a tour by the number of leagues accomplished, who have passed a day at Chamouni, climbed the Rhigi, visited the convent of St Bernard, written nonsense in visitors’ books, and satisfactorily settled in their minds the comparative merits of the many excellent tables-d’hôte that British gulosity and guineas have caused to replace Helvetia’s once simple and unsophisticated hospitality,—gentlemen of this class, who have done thus much, declare they know the country thoroughly, consider it rather slow, and pack their portmanteaus for a trip to the Antipodes or a stroll amidst Nineveh’s ruins.

From the Andes to the Alps, the flight is a far one. When first we fell in with that agreeable writer and accomplished naturalist, Dr Frederick Tschudi, he was fresh from Peru, and it was the meritorious book his South American wanderings suggested that brought us acquainted with him. Since that expedition, and probably during many years previously to it, he has studied and observed nearer home. The mountains of his native Switzerland have supplied him a theme for one of those massive octavos which indefatigable Germany loves to produce, and whose close print and countless pages deter foreign readers, unless the author’s name be one that invites and encourages them to proceed. That of Dr Tschudi was associated in our memory with so much valuable information, most pleasantly imparted, that we at once and willingly plunged into his formidable volume.

However well acquainted frequent visits or long residence may have made us with one of the most picturesque and delightful of European lands, a summer’s ramble amidst its mountains will assuredly possess much of the charm of novelty, if performed after an attentive perusal of Dr Tschudi’s recent publication. A summer’s ramble—not for ever along high-roads and beaten tracks, with a luxurious hotel for the goal of each day’s journey, but—away in the mountains, with a change or two of linen, and Dr Tschudi’s book for sole baggage, and with a cheerful resolution to be content with hard beds and shepherd’s fare. We are much mistaken, or Dr Tschudi must have passed many such summers, and less clement seasons too—must long have been a lodger in huts and chalets, and have bivouacked for months together amidst Alpine peaks—as he once did in Peruvian forests—in order to accumulate the country thoroughly, consider it rather slow, and pack their portmanteaus for a trip to the Antipodes or a stroll amidst Nineveh’s ruins.

From the Andes to the Alps, the flight is a far one. When first we fell in with that agreeable writer and accomplished naturalist, Dr Frederick Tschudi, he was fresh from Peru, and it was the meritorious book his South American wanderings suggested that brought us acquainted with him. Since that expedition, and probably during many years previously to it, he has studied and observed nearer home. The mountains of his native Switzerland have supplied him a theme for one of those massive octavos which indefatigable Germany loves to produce, and whose close print and countless pages deter foreign readers, unless the author’s name be one that invites and encourages them to proceed. That of Dr Tschudi was associated in our memory with so much valuable information, most pleasantly imparted, that we at once and willingly plunged into his formidable volume.

However well acquainted frequent visits or long residence may have made us with one of the most picturesque and delightful of European lands, a summer’s ramble amidst its mountains will assuredly possess much of the charm of novelty, if performed after an attentive perusal of Dr Tschudi’s recent publication. A summer’s ramble—not for ever along high-roads and beaten tracks, with a luxurious hotel for the goal of each day’s journey, but—away in the mountains, with a change or two of linen, and Dr Tschudi’s book for sole baggage, and with a cheerful resolution to be content with hard beds and shepherd’s fare. We are much mistaken, or Dr Tschudi must have passed many such summers, and less clement seasons too—must long have been a lodger in huts and chalets, and have bivouacked for months together amidst Alpine peaks—as he once did in Peruvian forests—in order to accumulate the great store and variety of curious information he has brought together in this volume. Some aid he may have derived from the numerous admirable books which Swiss naturalists have devoted to the beauties and wonders of their native land. But his pages bear the stamp of originality, and abound in unmistakable evidence of an enthusiastic love of science, and of keen and intelligent personal observation. One of their most striking features is the minute knowledge displayed of the ways and habits of creatures of whose existence many persons are barely aware—a knowledge which can only have been acquired by long frequentation of their haunts, and by the most cautious watchfulness. The author of a book like this must, one would think, have led the life of an Indian on the war-path—have exercised the craft, and patience, and vigilance, the silence and self-denial of Leatherstocking on a Sioux trail—whilst watching the furred and feathered and scaly denizens of the forests, as eager to note their aspect and peculiarities as the wild warrior could be to surprise foes and add fresh scalps to his savage trophies.

Dr Tschudi has made a Dantesque arrangement of his work, dividing it into “circles,” whose denizens he describes in turn. The circles are the Mountain Region, the Alpine Region, the Snow Region. The first chapter of each circle is devoted to the general characteristics of the region described, its formation, geology, climate, streams and lakes. A botanical chapter follows; then one is given to the lower animals—fish, insects, reptiles—and others to birds and quadrupeds. Each circle is terminated by a series of biographies and delineations of particular animals, and these are some of the most pleasing portions of the book, which, far from being dry or abstruse, contains few scientific terms that are not intelligible to all tolerably educated persons, and maybe ranked in the same class to which belongs White’s delightful Natural History of Selborne. The general reader might be little attracted by so extensive a work devoted entirely to natural history, but Dr Tschudi is capable of imparting attraction and interest to a much drier subject.

“The Alps,” says Dr Tschudi, in his few preliminary pages of general reflections, “are the pride of the Switzer, who has planted his home at their foot. Their vicinity exercises an indescribable and extensive influence on his whole existence. They are in some sort the condition of his natural and spiritual, his social and political life. He loves them almost instinctively; the most secret fibres of his heart are intertwined with them; when absent from them, his longing is incessant to return to his beloved mountains. His love for them is perhaps greater than his knowledge of their nature. Even at the present day, when the furrow is sought in which the locomotive may most easily wind its way over the lowest saddle of the Central Alps, and the galvanic stream glides along the copper wire, where beautiful roads have long intersected them, and thousands of tourists from every part of the world have visited them—even now that the indefatigable spirit of inquiry of our numerous great naturalists has stimulated to a thousand fruitful expeditions to their lofty and glittering summits, a deep mystery still envelopes them.” They compose an almost unknown land, in the midst of thickly peopled and highly civilised countries. Refined and prosperous nations have occupied their valleys, and pushed their way up those lower steeps which form the step of transition from plain to mountain. But at a certain elevation they stop, and go no farther. Above is the domain of bird and beast, rarely intruded upon, save by a stray hunter or by an ardent and adventurous seeker after knowledge. In those lofty regions are immense tracts of mountain, which have never echoed to a human voice, or received the print of human foot, and whose animal and vegetable life are still totally uninvestigated. “Many a valley in the rugged recesses of the Upper Alps is less known than the coasts of the remotest group of islands, or than the banks of the Nile and the Mississippi. And not only this: even the districts which we have before our eyes, and under our feet, have but lately become known to us; we still are but at the threshold of knowledge, and few are there who earnestly knock, and are admitted.”

Dr Tschudi’s first circle, the mountain region, consists of the whole of those parts of Switzerland which are between 2500 and 4000 feet above the level of the sea. Below the former elevation he does not consider the mountains to have begun; above the latter heights we get into the second or Alpine circle. The first region is made up partly of independent mountains, whose height does not exceed the stipulated 4000 feet, partly of the broad flanks and slopes of loftier mountains. It is the region of waterfalls. The Jura is the most important of the independent chains it comprises. Many of the most charming parts of Switzerland are in the horizontal zone, thus established between 2500 and 4000 feet above the sea. It contains beautiful valleys, some manufacturing places; the high-roads to Italy traverse it; small villages, shepherds’ cottages, cow and sheep stables, are found in even its most elevated valleys. In summer it is overrun by travellers, wandering in quest of cascades and glaciers; in winter its fashionable baths and elegant hotels are closed or deserted, and it is enlivened only by the passage of strings of mules laden with merchandise.

To us the most attractive parts of this book are those where we find the author wandering in the woodlands, communing with the brute creation, and unostentatiously displaying his rare familiarity with sylvan sights and sounds. It is with reference to those chapters, and not to his geological and meteorological dissertations, that we have more particularly taken up his work; but before walking with him into the woods, we are tempted to abridge two curious and interesting pages, relating to the hollows and caverns frequently found in the Alps. The worthy naturalist’s German is occasionally as rugged as the rocks he writes about, and we must aim rather at giving its spirit than at rigidly rendering its letter.

“Throughout the whole Alpine land,” he says, “hollows are numerous, and often of very interesting appearance. They assume the most various forms—gentle recesses of cliffs, with overhanging roofs, regular closed grottoes or caves, which the Bernese Oberlanders call ‘Balm;’ ravine-like hollows ending in rocky vaults, or communicating with yet deeper clefts and crevices; and finally, passages broken through the mountains from daylight to daylight. With these hollows tradition associates many pious reminiscences of saints and missionaries, and here and there a chapel or hermitage is still to be found in their vicinity. The interior of these rocky dwellings is often of singular conformation, including narrow galleries, deep and gloomy pools of water, and unexplored precipices, sinking more than a thousand feet into the bowels of the mountain. In some are found, as signs that in former times they were used as hiding-places by fugitives, or as dwellings by banditti, Roman and ancient German coins; in others, petrified bones or shell-fish; in others, again, rounded fragments of serpentine and of other descriptions of stone not proper to the mountain; remains of beasts of prey, which for centuries have been extinct in those regions; and finally—this especially in the Jura—masses of snow and ice that never melt. Most of them have an internal coating of stalactites. Almost more remarkable than these caverns are the wind-holes, everywhere found in the mountains—deep narrow clefts in the rock, which sometimes have, and sometimes have not, an upper exit. In fine summer weather, a strong and very cold wind issues from them; in winter, on the contrary, the air rushes into them, and their temperature is higher than that without. Such wind-holes are very numerous in the Alps.... The cow-keepers use them as dairies. They are not without influence upon animal and vegetable life. When not taken possession of by man, they are frequently taken advantage of by a fox or marmot, for one of the several entrances to his earth. Plants will not thrive at their entrance or in their vicinity, with the exception of some few dark mosses and lichens. Upon the same natural laws with these wind-holes, depends the existence of the vast and wonderful ice-caverns which are found in the mountains far below the snow-line, and which contain, for many months together, sometimes the whole year through, huge masses of ice. We may cite the icecavern of St George, situate near Rolle, 2562 feet above the lake of Geneva, on a shelf of the foremost range of the Jura, which contains some 2000 hundredweight of ice, and where it freezes even in summer; also the greatest and most magnificent of all known ice-caverns, the sheep-hole on the lake of Thun, in a cliff 1500 feet high, 5604 above the level of the sea, penetrating deep into the mountain, and containing the strangest formations of ice. Notwithstanding its uninviting aspect, shepherds and cowherds take refuge within it in stormy or very hot weather, and it not unfrequently affords shelter to a thousand head of sheep.”

Quitting inanimate for animate objects, Dr Tschudi enumerates the vertebrals found in Switzerland. Besides domestic animals, he estimates them at about 430 kinds, of which fifty are mammalia, thirty-two amphibia, forty-two fish, and no less than 310 different kinds of birds. The position of Switzerland, midway between the north and south of Europe, makes it a place of rendezvous for many foreign birds, seen but rarely, or for short seasons. “Strange guests often come to us,” says the doctor, “now from the icebergs of the North Sea, then from the hot plains of Egypt. Ducks and divers, geese and sea-mews, from the polar regions, meet the African flamingo, the Egyptian ibis, the purple heron from the Black Sea, the sea-swallow from the Caspian. Many of these are merely casual visitors—birds that have been scared, disturbed when brooding, or that have lost their way, as in the case of the flock of 2130 pelicans that appeared on the Bodensee in the year 1768.” Upon the other hand, in autumn occur regular and systematic changes of quarters, numbers of birds flying south, to seek the warmer climates of Italy and Africa, whilst others come from the north, well pleased to winter in Switzerland. Spring dismisses the strangers, and brings back the emigrants. Of these, however, but few return to their old accustomed copses, woods, and valleys. Some have sunk under the fatigues of the journey, more have been carried off by birds of prey; the greatest number have fallen victims to man. Dr Tschudi is indignant at the furious war waged in Italy upon his feathered songsters and favourites. “Not only snipes, quails, thrushes, pigeons, and suchlike birds, are taken, but the friendly swallow, so respected in our country; linnets, nightingales, little singing-birds of all kinds, are unceasingly assailed, during their passage through the land of citrons, with net and gun, by young and old of all classes—tradesmen, mechanics, priests, and nobles. At Bergamo, Verona, Chiavenna, Brescia, millions of birds are annually taken—for the most part creatures which no one in Switzerland would dream of injuring, but which we rather cherish for the sake of their beautiful notes. Therefore is it that Italy, the land of music and song, is so extraordinarily poor in singing-birds. The same is the case in the canton of Tessin, which has long been infected with the Italian bloodthirstiness, and where even sparrows are scarce. From Tessin and the Valteline the birdcatchers advance to the St Gothard, and to the mountains of the Grisons, to intercept the friendly little creatures upon the very frontier with their treacherous nets. Therefore has there been for some time remarked in Switzerland, a growing and alarming diminution in the numbers of the insectivorous birds. The canton of Tessin is much more injured than benefited by its birdcatchers. Fifteen hundred shooting licenses (which there cost but a franc a-piece) are annually issued; but birdcatching with nets, snares, lime, traps, owls, and even with great fowling-floors (Rocoli), is free to all. Beyond the Monte Cenere, a single rocoladore will often take, upon a fine October day, 1500 small birds. It is easy to understand how great is the loss of time and labour for a country which, in many branches of industry, is so far behindhand, and how prejudicial an influence this wholesale slaughter must have upon the character of the people. In German Switzerland, upon the other hand, birdcatching is very little practised, and only against a few sorts of finches and thrushes; and shooting is confined almost exclusively to large game,—pigeons, fieldfares, and birds of prey. Small birds are left tolerably unmolested; the swallows are guarded by the popular piety, and only the other day (1852) a law for their protection was published in the canton of Vaud.”

The doctor’s disgust at the wholesale bird-slaughter on the Italian frontier of Switzerland, is not to be attributed merely to a naturalist’s sympathy with the sweet-throated objects of his study, and companions of his solitary rambles. Of all animals, birds are those which most contribute to the cheerfulness of nature. How strongly one feels this during a long walk through a lonely country! Quadrupeds fly and hide themselves at our approach; only now and then we see a hare scudding away in the distance, or a saucy squirrel perched upon a bough high over our head; as we walk by the river-side, the trout plashes out of the water, fly-catching intent. But all these creatures are mute, shy, and rarely seen, whilst birds are all around us, twittering in the bushes by our side, flashing their plumage in the sunbeams, warbling in the trees we walk under, and carolling high aloft in the clouds. How deadly dull the forest and mountain would be without them! Such, doubtless, have often been Dr Tschudi’s thoughts when he walked forth alone to gather knowledge on nature’s page, and they would suffice to explain his vexation with the birdcatchers. We turn, for another and more practical reason, to his chapter on the lower animals, and to his interesting account of the myriads of insects which the first breath of the Fön^[3] calls into existence. Many of these insects are extremely hurtful to vegetation, and do great damage to fields and gardens, even when decimated by the birds whose nourishment they compose. The May-bug, especially, appears in the northern valleys of the central Alps in prodigious swarms, resembling, and as noxious as, the flights of locusts that afflict more southerly lands. And if the purveyors of Italian epicures, whom, it appears, nothing less than roast linnets and nightingale ragout will satisfy, are allowed to continue their work of devastation amongst the small birds of Switzerland, the times are likely soon to become good for beetle and caterpillar, and extremely unfavourable to Helvetian gardeners and farmers. One of the modes of birdcatching referred to by Dr Tschudi—namely, by means of owls—is curious and peculiar. He describes it in another place. The sort of owl most used by the fowler (Strix passerina) is found in the woods of Tessin, where it bears the name of civetta piccola. He is domesticated in the houses, catches mice, eats fruit and polenta. The birdcatchers take him out into the fields, and set him upon a one-legged stool, with a padded top. A long string is fastened to his leg, and occasionally pulled, which makes him jump about and play all manner of comical antics. Round about are decoy-birds, and sticks spread with bird-lime. The small birds come in flocks to see the fun, settle on the sticks, and are caught—redbreasts, yellow-hammers, wrens, wagtails, hedge-sparrows, thrushes of various kinds, &c. &c. The finch family alone are said to be too knowing to be thus entrapped. They keep up a great noise, but at a prudent distance. This mode of bird-snaring is followed from July to November, and the Tessinees, who seem to be a community of birdcatchers, travel into other cantons to practise it. In Germany the large screech-owl (Strix bubo)—which in Switzerland is carried about in a box, and shown as a pretext to beg for batzen—is used as a decoy for carrion birds. The sportsman ties him to a peg in the ground, and hides himself near at hand in a low hut, covered with turf and provided with loopholes. Soon there is a great gathering of crows, magpies, hawks, kites, &c., which come croaking and screaming around, and are easily shot.

“The mountain region of Switzerland,” says Dr Tschudi, in one of the many pleasing passages of this volume, “possesses no kinds of birds quite peculiar to itself, and which do not also appear in the corresponding regions of adjacent lands, and not many kinds that do not, at least occasionally, show themselves in the plain.^[4] The greater number, especially of the smaller birds, alternate between the hill and the mountain regions, and in winter gladly seek the fields, forests, and bushes of the lowlands and of the mild valleys. But their sweetest song, their summer joys, their merriest time, are in the mountains. There they live like rich gentlemen, who, in the fine season, repair to their country-houses. Their table is ever spread, and their perch ready; their friends are ever at hand to sport and rejoice with them. There is a peculiarity about their jubilation in their mountain forests. No nightingale pipes her melodious notes, seldom a linnet is heard, rarely that capital singer, the black-headed titmouse—and yet wood and rock resound again with the joyous concert. True it is that good-will, and joyous, gushing vitality, often atone for the absence of natural harmony and artistic skill. Before the rosy mists of morning have announced the sun’s approach—often before even a light tint in the east has indicated its point of rising, and whilst the stars still glitter brightly in the dark-blue sky—a low rumbling noise is heard, issuing from a tall old fir; then follow chattering clapping notes, growing quicker and quicker; and finally, a long string of hissing sounds, like the whetting or sharpening of a blade. It is the heathcock’s coupling time. With distorted eyes he trips and dances about upon his bough, whilst in the bushes below the hens quietly repose, and respectfully behold the foolish capers of their lord and master. He is not long left to enliven the forest alone. Some marsh-birds in the neighbouring reeds have been piping ever since midnight, and become zealous in their song, now that the sun approaches. Then the blackbird awakes, shakes the dew from the glossy sable of his plumage, whets his bill against the bough, and hops higher up in the maple-tree, almost wondering to find that twilight is becoming daylight, and that the forest still sleeps. Twice, thrice, he sends a summons, over the tree tops, across to the opposite mountain, and down into the valley, on whose brooks thin banks of vapour rest. Then he puts forth, with might and fire, his magnificent notes, alternately gay and plaintive, and rouses the whole woodland region into life. The cuckoo’s musical call resounds afar in the forest. Thin blue columns of smoke issue from the cottage chimneys in the valley; there is barking of dogs in the farmyards, and the tinkling of a cow-bell; the birds rise from bushes, grass, and rocks, and soar upon the wing, to see the sun, and to praise kind Mother Nature, who has once more sent them the cheerful light. Many a poor little flutterer rejoices that the anxious, dangerous night is past. He sat upon a twig, his head buried in his feathers, when by the starlight he saw a forest-owl fly noiselessly through the trees in search of prey. The rock-marten came from the valley, the ermine from the cliff, the pine-martin descended from his squirrel’s nest, the fox prowled amongst the bushes. All these the bird had seen. On the tree, in the air, on the ground—destruction was all around him. Many weary hours had he sat out, not daring to stir, protected and concealed by a few young beech-leaves. How gladly he now leaps forth, and extols the safety of life, and the protection of light! The chaffinch sounds his clear and powerful notes, the redbreast sings on the summit of the larch, the greenfinch in the alder-bush, the yellow-hammer and redfinch in the underwood. The flaxfinch, the titmouse, the golden-crested and the common wren, exert their various voices; the ringdove coos, the woodpecker taps at his tree. But above all these cheerful sounds are heard the potent voice of the mistle-bird, the melodious notes of the tree-lark, and the inimitable chant of the thrush. What a morning concert in those green glades!”

And what a pretty bit of sylvan description is this, showing a hearty love of nature, and close observation of her ways! Dr Tschudi has invited himself to pass the day with the birds, and he avails himself of the opportunity to observe and note down the details of their domestic life, like some impertinent foreigner whom a hospitable country gentleman has invited to pass a week at “The Grange,” and who requites the courtesy by printing the minutest particulars of his host’s housekeeping. But the most susceptible bird could find nothing offensive in the doctor’s revelations. It is hard to say how he managed to observe, without alarming, his feathered entertainers. He must have covered himself with leaves, or lain, for hours, perdu beneath a bush, suppressing his breath till his presence was forgotten, or till he was taken for part of the landscape, for a log or a fossil—for he had to do with a timorous race, easily panic-stricken and silenced. Suddenly chirping and piping, singing, cooing, and hammering, all ceased at once. They were replaced by the hoarse and hungry cry of the pigeon-hawk, hovering ominously over the wood, whose melodious denizens buried themselves, mute and trembling, in its deepest foliage. The peril past, they again emerged, recommenced roulades and trills that a Grisi might envy, and industriously sought their breakfast—berries, insects, seeds. Thus passes the morning, in song and banqueting; hot noon is the silent time in the forest, when its denizens take their siesta, with the exception of a few indefatigable warblers, whom nothing will silence. Towards evening the choir is again active, but the concert lacks somewhat of the vigour and freshness of the morning’s performance. It is a farewell to light—which the other welcomed. Night falls, and once more the stillness is only broken by the hooting of owls, and the heavy circling of the bat.

Of this last-named singular animal, the link between bird and beast, Dr Tschudi discourses at some length, giving curious results of his observations of their habits, and taking occasion to animadvert on the unaccountable repugnance entertained by men for certain animals, which they persecute as foes, when they ought to favour and foster them as useful friends. He had already touched on this point when talking of the Swiss snakes. On the subject of bats he writes as follows: “They are the owls amongst mammalia; like them they are dismal, nocturnal, carnivorous creatures, unamiable and shy. Our naturalists are probably still far from a thorough knowledge of them, their secret abodes and nocturnal habits rendering this very difficult to attain. And in this respect natural history receives small aid from man, who loathes the bat, because he does not know that it is his benefactor; kills it when he can, and throws it away. Strange it is that man has such a profound aversion and almost invincible horror for many animals which are positively useful and no way injurious! He shuns and persecutes toads and lizards, which destroy so many locusts, worms, spiders, flies, and snails; blind worms and snakes, which rid him of vermin and of mice; moles, owls, and bats, which are his true benefactors, and should be carefully protected. The last named are, like swallows, active destroyers of insects, and devour millions of beetles, injurious water insects, tree-caterpillars, cabbage-butterflies, night-moths, and May-bugs, and crunch, with their numerous and extremely sharp teeth, even the hard-winged dung-beetle. Certainly they have not the agreeable aspect or the amiable manners of canaries or goldfinches; they are wild and fierce, and ready enough to open their wide red gullets against the head of man. They are hard to tame, and, when held captive, usually refuse all nourishment. Their musky smell, the thin oily skin of their wings, their tawny hair, their hissing and grumbling, their little tail and their claws, are not particularly attractive; but one might forgive them all that, and leave them in peace, inasmuch as they do great and good service. Popular superstition classes them as venomous, with toads, frogs, and snakes. They are just as little so as any of these, and have not the absurd passion attributed to them of flying into people’s hair. Weasels and polecats, martens and dogs, and especially owls, their sworn foes, persecute them sufficiently, to prevent their numbers ever becoming troublesome to man, though he should leave them unmolested.

“In winter we see no bats, unless by chance upon extraordinarily warm evenings, and people often ask what becomes of them in the cold season. Were they birds, they would fly southwards; were they proper quadrupeds, they would dig holes to shelter themselves from the cold: as it is, their only resource is to seek warm hiding-places. Moreover, insects, their habitual food, disappear in winter time. So, as soon as frost sets in, they look for caves, sheltered clefts in the rocks, old chimneys, and other shelter of the same kind, hook themselves on to the wall with the thumbs of their fore-feet, one over the other, and sleep until the warmth of spring again awakes them. The blood circulates slowly through their little bodies; stabbing, burning, or cutting occasions them convulsions, but does not awaken them from their winter torpidity. Taken into a warm place, they gradually awaken. Their vitality is in some respects very tenacious, in others easily destroyed: thus the slightest bodily injury kills them, but they resist for a very long time the action of electricity and of the air-pump, and can endure hunger longer than any other of the mammalia.”

Dr Tschudi gives some other curious details of these animals, but we omit them, in order to ascend with him into the Alpine region, and observe a class of birds very different from any as yet referred to. In the Oberland, some thousand feet higher than we have hitherto been, we come upon the eagle and the vulture. There the osprey soars over summits twelve thousand feet high, or is seen, at a less elevation, bearing away a lamb or a hare to his hungry eaglets in their inaccessible eyrie. Scarcely anything that runs or flies is safe from his clutches. He overtakes the swiftest birds, snatches their prey from hawk and falcon, and will carry off a dog, a fox, or a badger, as readily as a kid or a barn-door fowl. It has been sometimes denied that this kind of eagle carries off children, but he is unquestionably strong enough and courageous enough to do so, and Dr Tschudi vouches for one painful case of the kind as having occurred in the Grisons. “In a mountain village, an osprey darted upon a child of two years old, and bore it off. The father came running up at the cries of the infant, and followed the robber into the rocks. The burthen being rather a heavy one, he succeeded, after great exertions, in making the eagle resign its prey. But the poor child’s eyes had been hacked out, and it soon died. Long did the father lie in wait for the murderer, which was continually hovering about that neighbourhood, and at last he caught him alive in a fox-trap. In his eagerness and fury he laid hold of his prize so imprudently that the bird wounded him severely with his beak and with the foot that was free. Some neighbours came up and killed the eagle with sticks.” The village of Eblingen, by the lake of Brienz in the Bernese Oberland, is celebrated for its eagle hunts. About a league from it, in a very wild and beautiful part of the mountains, is a favourite abiding-place of the ospreys, where they love to sit upon the sunny side of inaccessible peaks, and look out over the great valley of the lakes. The Eblinger hunters wage perpetual war against them, and attract them to the neighbourhood, as an angler ground-baits for fish, by hanging dead cattle and other carrion to the trees. This is in summer; and as the eagle can then usually get better food, he often disdains the garbage. In winter the hunters place their baits upon the ground, securing them with wooden pegs. Roasted cats are the best bait. The eagle cannot rise from the flat ground so rapidly as he can fly off a more elevated perch; and moreover, when he once settles down to a repast, he often remains for hours at it. The baits are so placed as to be visible, through field-glasses, from the village below. The hunters, with whom this kind of sport is a passion, are continually at their windows, watching the snare. When they see an eagle settle down to his food, they set out, and although they have a full league to climb through bushes and over rocks, the bird seldom escapes them. The highly picturesque vicinity of Eblingen is disfigured, in the eyes of the traveller who wanders thither, by such unpleasing sights as a putrid goat hanging from a tree and dangling in the wind; here a horse’s head, partially picked, and there a half-eaten cat. The strength of this kind of eagle is very considerable. One was known to fly away with a fox-trap, weighing eight pounds, in which he had been caught. But a more powerful and formidable, although a less intelligent and kingly bird, is the lämmergeier or vulture—the condor of European mountains, and unquestionably the most remarkable feathered inhabitant of the Alps. With the exception of the chapters relating to the chamois and chamois-hunters, the one allotted to the vulture is the most interesting of Dr Tschudi’s book. Concerning this largest of European birds of prey naturalists knew little until very recently. The great Buffon himself confounded it with the condor. The Swiss naturalist Steinmüller was the first who gave a good account of it; others followed, and extended their researches farther, but much yet remains to be ascertained. In the book before us Dr Tschudi has made a valuable addition to the natural history of this obscene and dangerous bird, of which he relates numerous anecdotes, partly the result of personal observation, partly derived from experienced hunters and scientific friends. We will give the cream of two or three pages.

“The internal construction of this gigantic bird is most peculiar. The muscles of the breast are extraordinarily large and strong; the long bones, hollow as in other birds, become filled, by the action of the lungs, with air, which, being warm, is specifically lighter than the external atmosphere, and facilitates the bird’s flight. His digestive organs are singularly powerful. His acrid gastric juice corrodes and disposes of the largest bones. When one of these birds is killed, the contents of the stomach astounds everybody. Thus in one vulture was found a fox’s rib, 15 inches long, the entire tail of a fox, the hind leg of a hare, several shoulder-blade bones, and a ball of hair. The greatest discovery of this kind, however, was in the stomach of a vulture killed by Dr Schinz: it contained the large hip-bone of a cow, a chamois’ shin-bone 6½ inches long, and a half-digested rib of the same animal, numerous smaller bones, a quantity of hair, and a heathcock’s claws. The gastric juice decomposes the bones by strata or layers, so as to get from them the nutritive gelatine, whilst the dead chalky part passes away. By this organisation, Nature, in her wisdom, has restricted the mischief the vulture might otherwise do. For if his great need of nourishment had to be satisfied by masses of flesh, not only would the bird often die of hunger, but he would exterminate all the game in the upper Alps. He digests the thick hoofs of calves and cows; and the gastric juice continues its operation even after death.” Thus, in a vulture shot in the act of devouring a fox, and opened three days afterwards, the fox’s head was found in the usual state of digestive fermentation—a remarkable example, says Dr Tschudi, of independence of action between heart and stomach.

The habits of the Alpine vulture are not such as to render their observation an easy or a very safe occupation. In the morning he usually flies off to the place where he last found a meal, and, suspending himself at a great height, examines his hunting-ground. His scent and sight are alike excellent, and he detects his prey a league off. Below him the Alpine animals graze and repose, unsuspicious of the fatal cloud overhanging them. Suddenly the vulture folds his wings, and falls like a shot upon his victim. If this be a small animal—a dog, a lamb, a badger, a hare—he perhaps carries it off; larger prey he is fain to devour upon the spot; for this bird’s strength lies less in his feet and claws than in his wings and beak. “If he descries a large animal, a heavy sheep, an old chamois or goat, grazing in the neighbourhood of a precipice, he circles round and round it, trying to torment and terrify it, until it runs to the edge of the precipice; then he plumps upon it with a rushing flight, and not unfrequently succeeds in knocking it over the cliff. He flies down after it, and settles upon his prey, killed by the fall. First he pecks out the eyes, then eats the entrails, then the bones. He crushes the skull of living cats, and bolts them at a mouthful. He has often been known to attempt to throw hunters down a precipice, when he found them in a dangerous position on a narrow mountain-path or rocky promontory; and those who have been thus assailed declare that the rush, the swiftness, and the power of the enormous pinions are almost irresistible, even by a man. In like manner a vulture was seen to attempt to throw an ox down a steep cliff close to which it had strayed. The bird obstinately persisted in his daring attacks; but the quadruped was not easy to scare out of his natural tranquillity. Lowering his head, he planted himself firmly on his solid legs and waited quietly, until the vulture became satisfied that the case was hopeless.”

In Piedmont, the country people decoy the vulture into a narrow pit, by means of a roast cat or some other carrion. He eats his fill, has difficulty in rising, and is beaten to death with sticks. The Indians in the Andes kill condors by dozens in the same manner. It is hard to get near enough to the vulture to shoot him: he is caught in fox-traps; and there is a price upon his head in Switzerland. In the Grisons, the successful hunter carries his prize from house to house, to claim reward, and the peasants are generally willing to bestow a little wool and many thanks upon the captor of the sheep-destroyer. Now and then the vulture catches a Tartar. Dr Tschudi tells an instance of this, of his own knowledge. Near Alpnach, in Unterwalden, hard by the place called the Dragon’s Hole, a vulture picked up a fox and flew away with it. But Reynard managed to seize the spoiler by the neck, and bit it right through. The bird came tumbling dead to the ground, and the fox limped away, after an aerial excursion he was not likely soon to forget. One has heard of weasels playing a similar trick to hawks; but a fight in the air between a full-grown fox and the largest European bird of prey must be a sight worth seeing.

Dr Tschudi relates several instances of children being carried off by vultures, and one of the almost miraculous recovery of a little girl thus abducted, and who thereafter went by the name of Geier-Anne. The remarkable event was noted in the church-register of the village in the Bernese Oberland, near which it occurred, and its heroine was alive a few years ago. The only case in which the vulture will fight, to the very death, against adult men, is when these attempt to rob its nest. Thus, one day, in the canton of Glarus, a resin-gatherer saw a nest high up in the rocks, climbed to it with prodigious labour, found two young fledged vultures (breakfasting on a squirrel, which they had not taken the trouble to skin), tied their feet, threw them over his shoulder, and had begun his descent, when the young birds’ cries brought back the old ones, who furiously attacked him. It was only by continually swinging his axe round his head that he kept them off; and they continued to follow and rage around him till he reached the village of Schwanden, four leagues off. “The celebrated chamois-hunter, Joseph Scherrer, of Ammon, on the Wallensee, once climbed, barefoot and with a gun on his back, to a nest in which he suspected there were young. Before he reached it, the male eagle flew by and was shot. Scherrer reloaded and continued his ascent. But on reaching the nest the female bird fell furiously upon him, seized him by the hips with her claws, endeavoured to hurl him from the rock, and dealt him severe blows with her beak. The man’s position was desperate. He was compelled to cling with all his strength to the precipice, and could not use his gun. His extraordinary presence of mind saved him. With one hand he directed the muzzle of his weapon against the breast of the bird that grappled him, and with his naked toe he cocked the piece and pulled the trigger. The eagle fell dead amongst the rocks. For the two old and the two young birds the hunter received five florins and a-half reward; but he kept the deep scars upon his arm as long as he lived.

“Quite as frightful was the position of a Sardinian, who went with two of his brothers to rob a vulture’s nest in the mountains of Eglesias. His companions let him down by a rope, as is often done in our country, to get at places inaccessible by climbing. Suspended over a tremendous precipice, he took the young birds from the nest. At that moment the two old ones attacked him like furies. The young Sardinian had a sword, and kept them off by unceasingly brandishing it round his head. Suddenly he felt a violent shaking of the rope, and perceived, to his horror, that, in the ardour of his defence, he had cut it three parts through. Each moment he expected the remaining strands to sever; each movement he made might hurl him into the abyss below. He was slowly and cautiously drawn up and rescued.”

These striking anecdotes are followed by an extremely curious account of the habits of a vulture captured when full grown (young birds are easily reared and tamed), by the Swiss Professor Scheitlin, and kept in a room until his death. But it is time to quit the Swiss birds for the Swiss beasts, if we are to say anything about the latter, which, although fewer in number, occupy very considerable space in the doctor’s book.

“Upon the whole,” says Dr Tschudi, “our country, and especially our beloved mountain-land, seems by no means unfavourable to the propagation of mammalia—great forests, extensive wastes, almost inaccessible mountain-districts—but on nearer examination their advantage greatly dwindles. Everywhere cultivation strides victoriously forward; our woods are thinned and frequented; the herd and the hunter intrude into the wild mountain-valleys!” And the enthusiastic naturalist seems disposed to lament such cultivation and intrusion. He has rambled in Alpine solitude and Peruvian puñas, until he has acquired somewhat of the feeling with which Cooper’s Pioneer beheld law and ploughshares encroaching upon his beloved forest, where the only law and the best breadwinner had long been a long rifle and a sure aim. “Where man comes tormenting (mit seiner Qual),” says the worthy Tschudi, whom we expect to hear of next from the Far West, if Californian discoveries have not made that too cultivated and populous a country for him, “not only does nature cease to breed new animals, but those long since bred diminish and disappear.... Once the beaver built his wonderful dwelling upon our rivers; the wild ox stamped down the bushes in our woods; the wild boar grubbed holes at the foot of our venerable oaks. Every trace of these animals has disappeared. But a century since, the fallow-deer was a native of our forests. How seldom now does a wild boar make its way hither from Alsatia, affording a noble mark to our rifle-bullets; how rarely does one hear that a hunted stag, hard beset in the Black Forest, has swam the Rhine, and shown himself in our woods! On the other hand, not all the efforts that have been made have rid us of dangerous beasts of prey, and for scores of years to come, although we may lessen their numbers, we shall not succeed in exterminating them. The mountains favour and shelter them, and our lynxes, bears, and wolves will long continue their nocturnal expeditions through the Alps, whilst in adjacent Germany they have for many years been exterminated.” Although cherishing succulent and savoury reminiscences of the rich black meat—a sort of pig-venison—on which we have so often banqueted when abiding hard by the forests of “adjacent Germany,” we still must question the desirableness of wild boars as habitual residents in an agricultural country, or even as casual visitors from neighbouring mountains. Dr Tschudi has drawn quite a Druidical picture of Tusky rooting at the foot of oaks which were probably already saplings in days when bread was hardly deemed a necessary of life, and when robber-knights washed down with quarts of Rhenish the meat they that morning had speared. Doubtless these were fine carnivorous times, and if a husbandman dared complain of ravaged fields, the whip—perhaps the halter—was ready for the scurvy knave. But we would beg Dr Tschudi to descend from the mountain’s summit into the valley below, and to inquire the wine and corn grower’s private opinion on the subject of wild pigs. We are convinced it would be strongly in favour of the total extermination of an animal which, although not quite as dangerous to man as some of the ferocious quadrupeds so prettily designed upon the ornamental cover of the doctor’s book, is about as bad an enemy as the farmer can have. As to bears, wildcats, and the other Carnivora, whose permanence in the mountains of Switzerland the doctor deplores, it is not likely they will ever be entirely got rid of; but, upon the whole, the damage they do is decidedly inconsiderable, and their descent into the plain of rare occurrence. One might certainly encounter pleasanter-looking creatures in a morning’s walk than this flat-headed, big-clawed lynx, that snarls so fiercely at a bear, covetous of the chamois Bruin holds beneath his paw; or than the fierce wild-cat—no bad imitation of a panther—which, when assailed, makes such good fight against dog and man. This beast loves to lie all day upon the bough of a tree, whence she springs upon her prey: there the hunter often spies her, and then, if he chooses to meddle with her, he does well to take good aim. If she be but wounded, down she comes, foaming and snorting, with a high back and a perpendicular tail, and springs upon her assailant. She strikes her sharp claws so deep into the flesh, especially on the breast, that it is very difficult to tear her off, and such wounds are hard to heal. She fears dogs so little, that she often, before perceiving the hunter, comes down from the tree to encounter them. Then terrible fights ensue. The furious cat tears deep rents with her claws, aiming by preference at the dog’s eyes, and defends herself with ferocious obstinacy, so long as a spark of her very tenacious life remains. Thus did a wild-cat, one day in the Jura, contend victoriously with three dogs. She struck her claws deep into the nose of two of them, and her teeth firmly into the throat of the third—a mode of defence evincing not only prodigious courage and inconceivable dexterity, but also great sagacity, since only in that manner could she avoid being bitten by the dogs. The hunter hurried up, and, by a shot through the body, killed her, and rescued his dogs, whom she otherwise would assuredly have defeated. This really formidable beast is getting daily scarcer in Switzerland, but is said to be still pretty common in the Black Forest, where Dr Tschudi recently saw a very fine specimen, weighing upwards of sixteen pounds. The lynx—still found, although rarely, in various of the Alpine regions of Switzerland (where he abides, not from any particular love of a cool temperature, but to avoid the persecution he is exposed to on descending towards the plain)—attains a much larger size, weighing from thirty to sixty pounds, and standing two and a half feet high. He is peculiar in his feeding, and wasteful in his ways—not a large eater, but very partial to warm fresh blood. “When he falls in with a flock of sheep or goats, he creeps up to them, writhing like a snake upon his belly, and suddenly springs upon the back of a victim, bites it in the nape, or through an artery, and so kills it instantly. After lapping the blood, he tears open the animal’s belly, eats the entrails and a little from the head, neck, and shoulders, and leaves the rest. It is not proved that he hides the remains of his repast; at least such is not the case in our Alps. His peculiar manner of tearing his prey leaves the shepherds no doubt as to whether or not it is a lynx that has diminished their flock. He not unfrequently kills three or four sheep or goats at one onslaught, and when very hungry will attack calves and cows. In the summer of 1814, three or four lynxes killed more than 160 sheep and goats in the mountains of the Simmenthal.” If, however, the lynx can get enough game, he keeps to it, and seems averse to betray his presence by preying on tame animals. The chamois is his favourite meat, but difficult to catch, even when he lies in ambush for them at their salt licks and places of passage. So he puts up with badgers and marmots, hares, heathcocks, and other large birds, and, when driven to straits, condescends even to squirrels and mice. In the winter, when he is obliged to venture down amongst the hills and into the valleys, his plan is to burrow a way underground into the stables where the flocks are kept; and Dr Tschudi relates that upon one occasion a sturdy he-goat, noting the arrival of the subterranean foe, dealt him, just as he got his head out of the ground, such severe blows that the robber lay dead in his mine.

Owing to the scarcity of the animal, there is no regular lynx-hunting in Switzerland, and before a lynx’s presence is discovered by his ravages, he is usually far enough away, and, if pursued, quits the neighbourhood altogether. If a hunter comes upon him by accident, he does not run away, but lies quietly on his branch, gazing fixedly at the man, and is easily shot. “If the hunter be unarmed, he has only to stick up part of his clothes, and to leave them there whilst he goes home to fetch his gun. The lynx continues to stare at the clothes until his return.” Like the wild-cat, if the lynx is only wounded, he springs upon the hunter, and bites savagely. Sometimes, however, his attack is made upon the dog, and the man gets time for a second shot. This fierce beast is more than a match for two or three ordinary hounds. In various Swiss cantons, high rewards are paid by the authorities for a lynx’s head: in Friburg, 125 Swiss francs; in Glarus, 15 florins; in Tessin, a louis-d’or.

In Switzerland, as in all countries where forest and mountain abound, where living is cheap, and where any man may acquire, by a payment so trifling as to be almost nominal, the right to carry rifle or fowling-piece, the usual consequences ensue. The game becomes scarcer every year, and the labouring classes are tempted to idleness and evil courses. It is lighter work and pleasanter pastime to brush the morning gossamer from the grass with gun on shoulder and game-bag on hip, than to drive cattle to pasture, or urge the plough along the stubborn furrow. So thinks many a stout Switzer, and quits the paths of honest industry for the hunter’s precarious and unprofitable trade. In the chapter he devotes to squirrels and mountain hares, Dr Tschudi digresses to lecture his countrymen on this score. “When the hopeful young woodman,” he says, “has achieved his first heroic deed, and, by the aid of a quarter of a pound of small-shot, has picked off, at five paces distance, a brace of sparrows from the heavy-laden cherry-tree, he cleans his gun with unusual care, lays aside, half-exultingly and half-contemptuously, the fragments of his small victims, and muses on better booty. He has visions of a stray lynx or a fat chamois falling before his unerring barrels, and makes preparations to start for the mountains early upon the next Sunday morning, confident of bringing home at least a hare or a squirrel. Often, when in the valley the clear church-bells resound from village to village, and the Sabbath morn, fresh with dew and bright with blossoms, extends its hallowed peacefulness over the hearts of men weary of working days, a rolling file-fire is heard in the woods, directed at the tapping woodpecker, the melodious thrush, the gracefully sportive squirrel—a heathenish battue against His cheerful creatures, which can hardly be very pleasing to God Almighty. It is a real pity and a shame for the long-legged fools, who know not how better to employ the Lord’s Day than in this bloody sport, in which is displayed neither bravery nor woodcraft, but mere idleness and cruelty.” After which very proper animadversion upon the wanton bloodthirstiness of his younger countrymen, the worthy doctor makes us acquainted with sundry curious facts in natural history and peculiarities of Swiss sport; telling us that squirrels are great lovers of truffles, hunt for them by scent, dig them up and devour them—a proof of refined taste, which will cause us to look henceforward with much increased respect upon that harmless and rotatory quadruped—the ape, as Dr Tschudi calls it, of European woods. Two pages farther on, we find described a most barbarous mode of extracting that poor old grey hermit, the badger, from the depths of his earth. In the canton of Glarus badgers are drawn like corks—with a screw. A long pole, having a sort of double corkscrew affixed to its extremity, is thrust into the den, whose unfortunate tenant is dragged slowly out and knocked on the head, for the sake of hide, hair, fat, and flesh, all of which are made profitable in Switzerland; the meat being excellent pork. Fox flesh, as we learn with some surprise—in the course of a most amusing chapter devoted to the tricks and stratagems of the Alpine foxes, whose wits are evidently sharpened by the keenness of the atmosphere—is very good food, if sufficiently washed and properly prepared. Then we come to the otter. Who does not remember Isaac Walton’s brief but animated description of an otter-hunt, in the stream at the bottom of “that meadow, chequered with water-lilies and lady-smocks,” and his “pleasant question” to the huntsman, whether he hunts a beast or a fish?—a question resolved by Dr Tschudi, so far as the custom of the Swiss Catholic cantons may be said to settle it, for there it is eaten in fast-time as fish. “I am glad these otters were killed,” said Walton, and, as a lover of the angle, well he might be, for Dr Tschudi positively affirms that, in the shallow mountain-streams, a single otter kills many dozen trouts in a night. But it is time to turn from animals whose habits we have opportunities of observing in our own country, to one peculiar to the land to which the volume before us refers.

The chamois—the reindeer of the Alps, as Dr Tschudi calls it—is the animal of all others that is most completely and popularly identified with the Swiss mountains, whose cliffs and crags not a traveller approaches without straining his eyes in quest of its graceful form. He strains them, most often, in vain—unless, indeed, he has sufficient confidence in the steadiness of his head, and the sureness of his foot, to accept the practical hunter’s guidance, and ascend amidst the glaciers and precipices which are the home of the Alpine antelope. Even then he may wander long before getting sight of a herd. They are believed by many to be much less numerous than is really the case, because even summer travellers see little or nothing of them. One may repeatedly visit hunting-grounds in which a score of head or more are known constantly to dwell, and see not one. They lie for the greater part of the day behind stones and bushes, and are difficult to detect. In wooded districts, they conceal themselves in great herds in the innermost depths of the forest. Dr Tschudi denies that there are any grounds for the apprehensions that have been expressed of their approaching extinction, and believes that as long as the Alps stand they will shelter chamois. The nature of their retreats and favourite haunts, the perils of the chase, its unprofitable nature, the protection afforded them by the game-laws, which restrict chamois-hunting to the twelve weeks comprised between the 1st September and the 25th November,^[5] combine to persuade him that sooner might hares, foxes, and martens, dwellers in the immediate vicinity of man, become extinct, than the keen-scented, wary, and extraordinarily agile animal, whose hunter risks his neck every time that he goes in its pursuit.

“There—where that good climber, the Alpine goat, dares not ascend, on the most inaccessible grass plots of the steepest peaks, on the narrow stripes of turf, scarcely a foot wide, which run like ribbons from cliff to cliff—the chamois comfortably grazes, getting fat upon the scanty but strong and nourishing vegetation of the Alps, until in autumn he weighs sixty, eighty, and even a hundred pounds. An instance is known to us when a Glarus hunter shot a beast that weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds. It was the great “Rufelibock,” long celebrated in those mountains, which for many years had been in the habit of coming low down towards the valley, mocking all the efforts of the hunters, until at last the cunning Bläsi proved more than his match.”

Besides the hunter’s bullets, the bear, and the lynx, the chamois has to fear birds of prey (at least when it is young, and even when it is old, if the geier catches it in some convenient spot for throwing it over a precipice); and it sometimes—but this is only a very occasional occurrence—gets its horns inextricably entangled in the branches of fir trees, when cropping from them in winter the long green lichens, remains hanging there, and starves. Dr Tschudi once found a skeleton of a chamois that had thus perished, in an erect attitude. Excepting under such circumstances, he does not believe that chamois die of hunger, although a Bernese hunter told him that he had once, in the spring, found, under a great fir-tree, the bodies of five, which had been snowed up and starved. They had eaten all the leaves and bark within their reach, but the snow had lasted longer than the provender. An avalanche sometimes sweeps away a whole herd; and loose stones, which in spring and summer are constantly falling from the heights, take their proportion of victims. Finally, it now and then happens—but this is very rare—that a chamois, pursued by the hunter, leaps upon some ledge or pinnacle, whence it is impossible for it either to advance or retreat. In such cases, the courageous animal does not stand helpless and hopeless—like goats, which often remain in such a position until their herd rescues them at risk of his own life—but dares a desperate leap at the nearest landing-place, and is dashed to pieces in the ravine. A chamois clears, without hesitation, a chasm sixteen or eighteen feet wide, and leaps with impunity down a height of twenty-four feet.

Chamois-hunting, once an imperial sport in the Tyrol, is rather too dangerous and fatiguing for gentlemen sportsmen of the present day, and is not very often followed in Switzerland by any but poor men, who, adopting the pursuit for the sake of profit, soon become enthusiastically addicted to it. They are usually tough, hardy, sober people, sharp-sighted, able to look down a thousand feet of precipice without feeling dizzy, daring, and especially cool, and possessed of good lungs and iron muscles. They need to be first-rate shots, and better climbers than any mountain goat; for the goat is free and unencumbered in its movements, whilst the hunter is loaded with gun, provisions, and ammunition, and often, on his return from the chase, with a couple of chamois weighing something like a hundredweight and a half. He disembowels them, ties their hind legs together, and slings them over his head in such a manner that their feet lie forward upon his forehead, and their hind quarters rest against his shoulders. Thus burthened, he performs leagues over the most perilous paths. The profits of the severe labour and hourly risk are wretchedly small. The chamois, when shot, is worth but from three to six dollars; the meat is sold at fivepence to sevenpence a pound; the skin for from seven to fourteen shillings; the horns fetch a florin. Now and then a hunter accumulates what may be considered a large fortune in the Swiss mountains; but this is only by dint of rigid economy. These men are very temperate, and seldom touch wine. Thus did David Zwicky, a renowned chamois-hunter in the canton of Glarus, leave, at his death (a violent one, like that of most of those Helvetian Nimrods), seven thousand florins and twelve fowling-pieces. This, however, was a rare instance. It is less the gain than the excitement that fetters the hunter to his hazardous trade. How eagerly he pursues it may be judged from the following anecdote: “A hunter, who had his leg amputated at Zurich, sent to his surgeon, two years later, as a mark of gratitude, the half of a chamois he himself had shot, observing, at the same time, that the sport was not so good, now that he had a wooden leg, but that he hoped still to knock over many a chamois. At the time of the amputation this man was seventy-one years of age.” A strong testimony in favour of the healthfulness of mountain air, frugal fare, and hard exercise.

Dr Tschudi devotes a chapter to a selection from the most authentic of the innumerable tales current in Switzerland concerning chamois-hunters’ perils and adventures. He receives most of such stories with caution, because, in the course of repetition, they are apt to become interwoven with romance—the more so, as the heroes of many of them did not survive to tell their own tale. “An abbot of Engelberg considered himself fortunate when he did not lose in one year more than five of the inhabitants of his valley—killed while chamois-hunting; and at the present day every year claims more than one or two victims. Before the end of October 1852, three Swiss chamois-hunters had lost their lives—amongst them Hans Laumer, the well-known guide, who fell off the Jungfrau over a precipice two thousand feet deep.” Dr Tschudi assures his readers that they may rely on the truth of the sketches of celebrated hunters, with which he pleasantly fills a section of his second circle. The most striking of these sketches, whose incidents were supplied to the doctor by an eyewitness—a friend and brother naturalist—relates to Colani, the most famous chamois-hunter of the present century, who dwelt above the village of Pontresina, not far from the Reseggio glacier and from the colossal Bernina, in the south-eastern nook of the Grisons that borders upon Lombardy and the Tyrol. This Colani was a desperate bandit, who had attained the exclusive right to many square leagues of mountain, and suffered none to encroach upon his hunting-ground. He had a sort of Far-West morality, by which he perfectly justified himself in planting a bullet in the body of any intruder on his usurped domain. In the mountains near his cottage he had about two hundred half-tame chamois, which he calculated to yield him annually sixty young ones, and of which he annually shot a like number of old bucks. It was very unsafe to carry a gun over his ground. The story went that a room in his house was adorned exclusively with the arms and equipments of the strange hunters he had shot (mostly Tyrolese); and the people of Bevers and Campogask believed he had thirty men’s lives upon his soul, which nobody doubted would ultimately become the property of the Evil One. Dr Tschudi does not attempt to decide how much or how little of these reports was true, contenting himself with remarking that in a more extensive circle Colani was much esteemed, and that his relatives were of the best repute; but he was choleric, and violent almost to madness when in anger. He dwelt in his mountain retreat like some dreaded chieftain, and seemed to stand, in a manner, above the law. He waylaid a physician, who had summoned him before a tribunal on a charge of illegal practice of medicine, and dealt him a blow in the face with his fist which smashed his spectacles and left him senseless.

“The well-known naturalist, Dr Lenz, hunted in the year 1837 with Colani, and has communicated to us an authentic account of the last expedition of the prince of hunters; an account highly characteristic of the nature of the mountains, and of the hunters’ life in that wildest part of Switzerland. Accompanied by his friend, A. von Planta, Dr Lenz called upon Colani, and requested to be allowed to go out with him chamois-hunting, promising him two dollars for every day they were out, the same sum for every chamois he shot in their presence, and four dollars and the game for every one they themselves should shoot. The hunter accepted the offer. He was then a man of sixty-six, broad-shouldered, sturdy, deep-breasted, with rather a long face, a dark complexion, black hair, an aquiline nose, and brown, bold, wary eyes, whose expression betrayed his passionate character. He lived on bread, milk, and whey. Before or during the hunting-time he never drank wine. The meat of chamois and marmots was his favourite food. He spoke Italian, German, and French, and was skilled in the manufacture of sun-dials, surgical bandages, and fire-arms. He domineered over his neighbours with very little ceremony. They must let his two tame chamois feed in their gardens, and when a woman would not submit to this, and poisoned the animals—she very soon died, Colani was accustomed smilingly to relate.

“In vain had Dr Lenz and Planta been warned not to have anything to do with Colani. Their desire for sport was too strong, and the prospect of accompanying him too alluring. They started the next morning—a store of salt, and of smoked chamois and marmot meat, in the hunter’s game-bag. They had gone but a short way, when, in a deep ravine, closed in rear by the Reseggio glacier, they came upon five chamois, and the friends were about to open the campaign, when Colani said: ‘All very fine, but this is my salt-lick, where I allow no chamois to be shot.’ Then he desired to see ‘whether the gentlemen could shoot,’ and placed a stone, the size of a man’s fist, at a distance of a hundred and fifty paces, as a mark, which both hit.”

Despising the marmots that darted about amongst the rocks, the party continued their ascent of the vast icefield, occasionally catching sight of large and small herds of chamois, until, after an hour’s further march, they came upon a group of thirteen, grazing on a bit of turf hard by the rocks. But Colani again forbade them to fire, his object being rather to earn his handsome day’s wage than to destroy his game, so that the two friends had the pleasure of seeing forty beautiful chamois trot by in file—the young always behind the old ones—without being allowed to fire a shot. Without a single head of game, they betook themselves to a cowherd’s hut to pass the night. Amongst their provisions was a small wine-keg, the bung of which, driven hard in, they all in turn endeavoured to extract, with their fingers, and by the help of stones, &c. “I will get it out!” cried Colani; and griping the hard wooden stopper with his sixty-six-year-old teeth, turned the keg in his hands, and had uncorked it in an instant.

“The next morning the mountaineer took his companions to the Brüneberg, set one to watch, and led the other along a steep narrow crest of rock, whence they discerned several distant herds of chamois. Colani amused himself by taking Dr Lenz into several places of deadly peril. Once, when both lay looking over a cliff a thousand feet deep, endeavouring to spy out game, Lenz suddenly heard a violent rustling noise, and at the same moment a tremendous yell from Colani. Lenz drew himself back in a fright, and saw an enormous vulture sweeping, with the swiftness of an arrow, close over his head. Colani had observed the vulture’s premeditated attack, and by his shout had saved his companion from certain destruction. Before the hunters could use their guns, the bird had disappeared. Lenz thanked the mountaineer for his rescue, but at the same time observed to him, that he had not come into the mountains to be served up for breakfast to a nestful of young vultures, but to shoot chamois, whereupon Colani promised to take him, the next day, to the Bernina, where they abound.”

The next day was lost, however, in the fruitless pursuit of two bears, of which they could not get even a sight. The morning after, they were on foot at four o’clock, ascending a mountain. After breakfasting on milk and cheese in a shepherd’s hut, they separated, Planta remaining behind, Colani and Lenz pushing forward, through wind and snow showers, until the sun, rising above the mountains, gave promise of a fine day. Lenz got impatient, and told Colani that if he did not get a shot that day he would give up the chase. Colani replied that he would have taken them to the Bernina, but they had preferred coming to the Campogask mountains in quest of bears. There were few chamois where they then were, and those hard to get at, nevertheless he would take him to some, if he had courage to follow. In another half-hour he came in sight of the spot where he expected to find game, and saw five head. “There they are,” he cried; “at nine o’clock they will lie down; we may wait half an hour here;—but the road to yonder place is frightful. I have been over it only once in my life.”

“Colani went in front, his gun slung over his shoulder, came to a huge perpendicular wall of rock, and stepped upon a narrow ledge which ran along it. The path was hideously dangerous. The loose earth crumbled away at every step; in the incalculable depth below them the loftiest trees appeared no bigger than a man’s finger; in their front the shelf grew narrower, and seemed at last quite to disappear; they passed over several crevices, through which they looked down into the valley. With his face half-covered, Lenz followed Colani. On reaching the end of the line of precipice: ‘Have a care!’ cried the hunter, as he grasped, there where the path ceased, a rocky point, planted his foot firmly, and swung himself over the chasm to the farther side of the rock, leaving his companion to follow his example. With the courage of despair, Lenz did so, without accident, and almost to the astonishment of Colani, who remarked, with great naïveté, ‘I hardly thought we should have got as far as this together—but now to the chamois; we have circumvented them finely!’ In another half-hour they were on the top of the mountain on which they had seen the chamois, and at last they discerned a large and a small one lying amongst the Alpine roses at their feet, on the brink of a deep precipice. With a beating heart Lenz fired over Colani’s shoulder. The large chamois sprang to the height of a man from the ground, turned over, and fell backwards over the precipice. Colani, resting his gun on an unsteady block of stone, fired at the small one, and missed. Lenz was for going down into the ravine, to fetch his game, but Colani opposed this, and, with looks that told of a conscience ill at ease,—‘What lies in that grave,’ he said, ‘lies safely buried!’ Several years before, a Grison hunter had disappeared at that place, and no trace of him had ever been found. Lenz fancied a smell of human blood.”

Continuing their walk, or rather their scramble, the two men reached a dismal valley, strewn with blocks of stone, and surrounded by cloud-capped peaks. Suddenly Colani threw himself behind a stone, and made a sign to Lenz to do the same.

“‘What’s the matter?’ inquired Lenz, surprised.

“Colani answered not, but gazed hard through his field-glass, clenched his fist violently, and muttered an execration. At last Lenz discovered, high up amongst the rocks, a diminutive human figure. Colani, almost mad with fury, continued to grind out his ‘Verdamms!’ ‘I do not know the fellow,’ he at last exclaimed; ‘but, thank God, he has not seen us yet! Now he looks down through his glass.’ As he spoke, the hunter’s clenched teeth and savage glances justified apprehensions of the worst kind.

“‘As soon as yonder man moves off,’ he whispered, ‘we must circumvent him.’

“‘Nothing of the sort, Colani,’ said Lenz, gravely. ‘I came to shoot chamois, not men.’ Meanwhile the strange hunter disappeared. Colani sprang up. ‘Follow me,’ he cried: ‘in a quarter of an hour the man will be on yonder ridge; we must be there in ten minutes.’ They ran themselves out of breath, and in ten minutes got over a distance which, under ordinary circumstances, they would have taken half an hour to perform. On reaching the summit they sank, utterly exhausted, behind a mass of rock. But the strange hunter was near at hand. His approach revived them.

“Colani cocked his piece and took aim at the man. Quietly, but resolutely, Lenz seized the barrel, changed its direction, and said, in an authoritative tone,

“‘Stop; I will suffer no murder in my presence.’

“Colani cast a dangerous glance at him; but then he held out his hand and said, ‘We will not quarrel.’ Meanwhile the hunter had disappeared amongst the rocks. With a malicious laugh, Colani crept round, bidding Lenz remain where he was. The stranger had sat down rather lower, on the edge of a rock, and was gazing through his glass into the valley. ‘I do not know the fellow,’ said Colani; ‘but I will go down and pay him a visit. Hold yourself ready to fire.’

“‘I will have nothing to do with your quarrels,’ replied Lenz; ‘but I shoot down the first man who meddles with me.’

“With triggers cocked, Colani crept down like a cat. When only at three paces from the inoffensive stranger, he stepped suddenly from behind the rocks, and raised his fist against him. But he silently let it fall again. The pair gazed at each other for a moment; then Colani leant his gun against the rock, and sat down beside the hunter, took his gun from his hands and examined it, whilst they took snuff together. Lenz expected he would next ask for the game-bag, and then treacherously push the man over the precipice; but they remained friends.

“The strange hunter, a stout old man, about sixty-five years old, was a native of the village of Bevers, and a particular friend of Colani’s; but nevertheless, knowing how spiteful he was, he never risked himself on his hunting-ground. He had heard that Colani was gone to the Bernina, and seized the opportunity of shooting a chamois. But he had disguised himself, so that no one might betray him to Colani.”

Soon after this the hunting party was broken up, for it appeared to Lenz as if Colani would not have been much grieved to see him fall over a precipice, and as if he did all in his power to disgust him with his mountains and chamois. The next day Lenz left the Engadine with Planta; but for the next month he felt in every limb the consequences of his unusual fatigues. Colani fell ill in consequence of them, and died five days afterwards. This remarkable hunter had shot, since his twentieth year, at which period he usurped the sovereignty of the mountains, no less than two thousand seven hundred chamois (to say nothing of the many he had killed before attaining that age)—a number which no other hunter ever nearly approached.

The second part of Dr Tschudi’s book—which might rather be called a brief appendix, since it comprises but one-fifteenth part of the volume—is allotted to the domestic animals of the Alpine country—to cattle, goats and sheep, horses and dogs. It contains particulars interesting to the farmer as well as to the naturalist; but the length to which this paper has already extended forbids its further prolongation.

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