Lucerne, July 12, 1851.

I left Milan at 5 o'clock, on the morning of the 10th, via Railroad to Como, at the foot of the Lake of like name, which we reached in an hour and a half, thence taking the Swiss Government Diligence for this place, via the pass of St. Gothard. Even before reaching Como (only some twenty miles from Milan), the spurs of the Alps had begun to gather around us, and the little Lake itself is completely embosomed by them. Barely skirting its southern border, we crossed the Swiss frontier and bade adieu to the Passport swindle for a season, crossed a ridge into the valley of Lake Lugano, which we skirted for two-thirds its length, crossing it by a fine stone bridge near its center. (All the Swiss lakes I have seen are very narrow for a good part of their length, of a greenish blue color, derived from the mountain snows, very irregular in their form, being shut in, narrowed and distorted by the bold cliffs which crowd them on one side or on both, often reducing them to a crooked strait, resembling the passage of the Highlands by the Hudson.) Threading the narrow streets of the pleasant village of Lugano, we struck boldly up the hill to the east, and over it into the valley of the little river Ticino, which we reached at Bellinzona, a smart town of some five to ten thousand inhabitants, and followed the river thence to its source in the eternal snows of Mount St. Gothard. All this is, I believe, in the Canton of Ticino, in which Italian is the common language, and of which Bellinzona is the chief town.

Although in Switzerland, shut in by steep mountains, often snow-crowned, which leave it an average width of less than half a mile, this valley is Italian in many of its natural characteristics. For two-thirds of its length, Wheat, Indian Corn and the Vine are the chief objects of attention, and every little patch of level ground, save the rocky bed of the impetuous mountain torrent, is laboriously, carefully cultivated. Such mere scraps of earth do not admit of efficient husbandry, but are made to produce liberally by dint of patient effort. I should judge that a peck of corn is about the average product of a day's work through all this region. There is some pasturage, mainly on the less abrupt declivities far up the mountains, but not one acre in fifty of the Canton yields aught but it may be a little fuel for the sustenance of man. Nature is here a rugged mother, exacting incessant toil of her children as the price of the most frugal subsistence; but under such skies, in the presence of so much magnificence, and in a land of equality and freedom, mere life is worth working for, and the condition is accepted with a hearty alacrity. Men and women work together, and almost equally, in the fields; and here, where the necessity is so palpably of Nature's creation, not Man's, the spectacle is far less revolting than on the fertile plains of Piedmont or Lombardy. The little patch of Wheat is so carefully reaped that scarcely a grain is left, and children bear the sheaves on their backs to the allotted shelter, while mothers and maidens are digging up the soil with the spade, and often pulling up the stubble with their hands, preparatory to another crop. Switzerland could not afford to be a Kingdom,—the expense of a Court and Royal Family would famish half her people. Yet everywhere are the signs of frugal thrift and homely content. I met only two beggars in that long day's ride through sterile Switzerland, while in a similar ride through the fertile plains of Italy I should have encountered hundreds, though there each day's labor produces as much as three days' do here. If the Swiss only could live at home, by the utmost industry and economy, I think they would very seldom be found elsewhere; but in truth the land has long been peopled to the extent of its capacity for subsisting, and the steady increase which their pure morals and simple habits ensure must drive off thousands in search of the bread of honest toil. Hence their presence elsewhere, in spite of their passionate attachment to their free native hills.

Most of the dwellings through all this region are built of stone—those of the poor very rudely, of the roughest boulders, commonly laid up with little or no mortar. The roofs are often of split stone. The houses of the more fortunate class are generally of hewn or at least tolerably square-edged stone, laid up in mortar, often plastered and whitened on the outside, so as to present a very neat appearance. Barns are few, and generally of stone also. The Vine is quite extensively cultivated, and often trained on a rude frame-work of stakes and poles, so as completely to cover the ground and forbid all other cultivation. Elsewhere it is trained to stakes—rarely to dwarf trees as in Italy. The Mulberry holds its ground for two-thirds of the way up the valley, giving out a little after the Vine and before Indian Corn does so. Wheat gives place to Rye about the same time, and the Potato, at first comparatively rare, becomes universal. As the Mulberry gives out the Chestnut comes in, and flourishes nobly for some ten or twenty miles about midway from Bellinzona to Airolo. I suspect, from the evident care taken of it, that its product is considerably relied on for food. Finally, as we gradually ascend, this also disappears, leaving Rye and the Potato to struggle a while longer, until at Airolo, at the foot of St. Gothard, where we stopped at 10 o'clock for the night, though the valley forks and is consequently of some width, there remain only a few slender potato-stalks, in shivering expectation of untimely frost, a patch or two of headless oats, with grass on the slopes, still tender and green from the lately sheltering snows, and a dwarfish hemlock clinging to the steep acclivities and hiding from the fierce winds in the deep ravines which run up the mountains. Snow is in sight on every side, and seems but a mile or so distant. Yet here are two petty villages and thirty or forty scattered dwellings, whose inhabitants keep as many small cows and goats as they can find grass for, and for the rest must live mainly by serving in the hotels, or as postillions, road-makers, &c. Yet no hand was held out to me in beggary at or around Airolo.

ST. GOTHARD.

We did not start till after 9 next morning, and meantime some more Diligences had come up, so that we formed a procession of one large and heavy, followed by three smaller and more fit carriages, when we moved out of the little village, and, leaving the larger branch of our creek, now a scanty mill-stream at best, to bend away to the left, we followed the smaller and charged boldly up the mountain. The ascent is of course made by zig-zags, no other mode being practicable for carriages, so that, when we had traveled three toilsome miles, Airolo still lay in sight, hardly a mile below us. I judge the whole ascent, which with a light carriage and three hard-driven horses occupied two hours and a half, was about eight miles, though a straight line might have taken us to the summit in three miles. The rise in this distance must have been near five thousand feet.

For a time, the Hemlocks held on, but at length they gave up, before we reached any snow, and only a little weak young Grass,—nourished rather by the perpetual mists or rains than by the cold, sour earth which clung to the less precipitous rocks,—remained to keep us company. Soon the snow began to appear beside us, at first timidly, on the north side of cliffs, and in deep chasms, where it was doubtless drifted to the depth of thirty feet during the Winter, and has been gradually thawing out since May. At length it stood forth unabashed beside our road, often a solid mass six or seven feet thick, on either side of the narrow pass which had been cut and worn through it for and by the passage of travelers. Meantime, the drizzling rain, which had commenced soon after we started, had changed to a spitting, watery sleet, and at length to snow, a little before we reached the summit of the pass, where we found a young Nova Zembla. An extensive cloud-manufactory was in full blast all around us, shutting out from view even the nearest cliffs, while the snow and wind—I being on the outside and somewhat wet already—made our short halt there anything but comfortable. The ground was covered with snow to an average depth of two or three feet; the brooks ran over beds of ice and under large heaps of drifted and frozen snow, and all was sullen and cheerless. Here were the sources (in part) of the Po and of the Rhine, but I was rather in haste to bid the former good-bye.

We reduced our three-horse establishment to two, and began to descend the Rhineward zig-zags at a rattling pace, our driver (and all the drivers) hurrying all the way. We reached the first village (where there was considerable Grass again, and some Hemlock, but scarcely any attempts at cultivation), in fifty minutes, and I think the distance was nearly five miles. "Jehu, the son of Nimshi," could not have done the distance in five minutes less.

We changed horses and drivers at this village, but proceeded at a similar pace down through the most hideous chasm for the next two or three miles that I ever saw. I doubt whether a night-mare ever beat it. The descent of the stream must have been fully 1,500 feet to the mile for a good part of this distance, while the mountains rose naked and almost perpendicular on each side from its very bed to hights of one to two thousand feet, without a shrub, and hardly a resting-place even for snow. Down this chasm our road wound, first on one side of the rivulet, then on the other, crossing by narrow stone bridges, often at the sharpest angle with the road, making zig-zags wherever space could be found or made for them, now passing through a tunnel cut through the solid rock, and then under a long archway built over it to protect it from avalanches at the crossing of a raving cataract down the mountain side. And still the staving pace at which we started was kept up by those on the lead, and imitated by the boy driving our carriage, which was hindmost of all. I was just thinking that, though every one should know his own business best, yet if I were to drive down a steep mountain in that way I should expect to break my neck, and suspect I deserved it, when, as we turned a sharp zig-zag on a steep grade at a stiff trot, our carriage tilted, and over she went in a twinkling.

Our horses behaved admirably, which in an upset is always half the battle. Had they started, the Diligence managers could only have rendered a Flemish account of that load. As it was, they stopped, and the driver, barely scratched, had them in hand in a minute.

I was on the box-seat with him, and fell under him, catching a bad sprain of the left wrist, on which I came down, which disables that hand for a few days—nothing broken and no great harm done—only a few liberal rents and trifling bruises. But I should judge that our heads lay about three feet from the side of the road, which was a precipice of not more than twenty feet, but the rocks below looked particularly jagged and uninviting.

Our four inside passengers had been a good deal mixed up, in the concussion, but soon began to emerge seriatim from the side door which in the fall came uppermost—only one of them much hurt, and he by a bruise or gash on the head nowise dangerous. Each, as his or her head protruded through the aperture, began to "let in" on the driver, whose real fault was that of following bad examples. I was a little riled at first myself, but the second and last lady who came out put me in excellent humor. She was not hurt, but had her new silk umbrella broken square in two, and she flashed the pieces before the delinquent's eyes and reeled off the High Dutch to him with vehement volubility. I wished I could have understood her more precisely. Though not more than eighteen, she developed a tongue that would have done credit to forty.

The drivers ahead stopped and came back, helped right the stage, and each took a shy at the unlucky charioteer, though in fact they were as much in fault as he, only more fortunate. I suspected before that this trotting down zig-zags was not the thing, and now I know it, and shall remember it, at least for one week. And I have given this tedious detail to urge and embolden others to remonstrate against it. The vice is universal—at least it was just as bad at Mount Cenis as here, and here were four carriages all going at the same reckless pace. The truth is, it is not safe to trot down such mountains and hardly to ride down them at all. We passed scores of places where any such unavoidable accident as the breaking of a reach or a hold-back must have sent the whole concern over a precipice where all that reached the bottom would hardly be worth picking up. Who has a right to risk his life in this fool-hardy manner?

The next time I cross the Alps, I will take my seat for the stopping-place at the nearer foot, and thence walk leisurely over, with a long staff and a water-proof coat, sending on my baggage by the coach to the hotel on the other side. If I can get an hour's start, I can (by straightening the zig-zags) nearly double it going up; if not, I will wait on the other side for the next stage. If it were not for the cowardly fear of being thought timid, there would be more care used in such matters. Hitherto, I have not given the subject much consideration, but I turn over a new leaf from the date of this adventure.

We came down the rest of the mountain more carefully, though still a great deal too fast. A girl of twelve or thirteen breaking stone by the road-side in a lonely place was among the note-worthy features of the wilder upper region. Trees, Potato-patches, Grain-fields were welcome sights as we neared them successively, though the Vine and the Chestnut did not and Indian Corn barely did reÄppear on this side, which is much colder than the other and grows little but Grass. At the foot of the pass, the valley widened a little, though still with steep, snow-capped cliffs crowding it on either side. Five hours from the summit and less than two from the base, we reached the pretty town of Altorf, having perhaps five thousand inhabitants, with a mile width of valley and grassy slopes on the surrounding mountains. A few minutes more brought us to the petty port of Fluellen on Lake Lucerne, where a little steamboat was waiting to bring us to this city. I would not just then have traded off that steamboat for several square miles of snow-capped sublimity.

Lake Lucerne is a mere cleft in the mountains, narrow and most irregular in form, with square cliffs like our Palisades, only many times higher, rising sheer out of its depths and hardly a stone's throw apart. Mount Pilatte and The Rhigi are the most celebrated of those seen from its breast. After making two or three short turns among the hights, it finally opens to a width of some miles on a softer scene, with green pastures and pleasant woods sweeping down the hills nearly or quite to its verge. Lucerne City lies at or near its outlet, and seems a pleasant place, though I have had no time to spend upon it, as I arrived at 8½ P. M. too weary even to write if I had been able to sleep. I leave for Basle by Diligence at eight this morning.