Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/166

182 Antiquarian Museum, and those Celtic antiquities which have been found in the Swiss lakes. All these ancient articles, whether arms, domestic implements, or personal ornaments, belonging to the primeval inhabitants of the country, have been fished up from these lakes, thus strengthening the view which Swiss antiquarians began to entertain, that the most ancient inhabitants of Switzerland built their dwellings upon piles in the lakes. The librarian, M. Weise, who showed me these interesting antiquities, which, in many respects, resembled those of the primeval inhabitants of Sweden, showed me also a document regarding William Tell, which he had lately discovered in the so-called “White Books,” in the archives of Unterwalden. In this ancient book, of the fifteenth century, William Tell's history is related simply and fully, and in all its main features, is identical with that of the popular tradition. The language and style of the narrative prove its age and its originality.

I must now leave the lively, and in many respects, very interesting Zürich, for the details of two days which I spent at Einsiedeln, the Delphi of Switzerland, whither annually a hundred thousand pilgrims proceed from every part of Catholic Switzerland, and even from Germany, and where, at this very time, a great festival is to be celebrated. I have a wish to see life in the Swiss republic, under all its various forms.

, September 10th.—We were sitting, Penchaud and I, upon the steamer, on the shore of the lake of Zürich, waiting till it should set out and convey us to Bapperschwyl, on our way to Einsiedeln,