Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/147

Rh But does not the Creator indeed permit destruction? Yes: and had he not a more beautiful Goldau valley beyond that, in which bride and bridegroom might complete their marriage procession, and enter into indestructible habitations, then the Creator would be—not a good, not a fatherly God. But what does Nature tell us about that other Goldau, about that realm beyond the fall of mountains, or any destruction whatever?

30th August.—Early this beautiful morning we set out in a little, open carriage, along the lake Lowertz, out of the Canton of Schwytz into that of Lucerne. The country resembled a vast orchard; in the meadows the people were busy with their second hay harvest. The people here have carried cultivation as high as possible up the mountains, combating with the mountain and the severity of the cold for a foot-breadth of cultivatable land. Amongst and by means of large stones, they collect and keep together the soil, and in it plant a few potatoes or flowering plants. It touches and it rejoices the heart to see this solicitude about the food-bearing earth. In the so-called “Hohle Gasse,” or Hollow Way, by Küssnacht, a deep road which winds amongst trees and bush-covered, lofty headlands, we were shown the place where Tell concealed himself when he had shot Gessler—an action which was scarcely honorable—and a chapel has been erected on the shore, with images and paintings to his memory. The steamboat journey on the lake of Lucerne from Küssnacht was splendid between the vast mountains. Pilatus, Rhigi, and others, towards Lucerne, which, at the upper end of the lake, extends