Rollo in Geneva

After seeing all these things, the boys returned towards the entrance of the castle. They met several parties of ladies and gentlemen coming in; and just as they got to the door again, the carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Holiday drove up. So Rollo bade the teacher and all the boys good by, after accompanying them a few minutes, as they walked along the road towards the place where they were to go. By this time his father and mother had descended from their carriage, and were ready to go in. So Rollo joined them, and went through the castle again, and saw all the places a second time.

When they came out, and were getting into the carriage, Mr. Holiday said that it was a very interesting place.

"Yes," said Mrs. Holiday; "and we have seen all that Byron speaks of in his poem, except the little island. Where is the little island?"

Mr. Holiday pointed out over the water of the lake, where a group of three tall trees seemed to be growing directly out of the water, only that there was a little wall around them below. They looked like three flowers growing in a flower pot set in the water.

"Yes," said Mrs. Holiday, "that must certainly be it. It corresponds exactly." So she repeated the following lines from Byron's poem, which describes the island in the language of one of the prisoners, who saw it from his dungeon window,

"And then there was a little isle,Which in my very face did smile—The only one in view;A small green isle, it seemed no more,Scarce broader than my dungeon floor;But in it there were three tall trees,And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,And by it there were waters flowing,And on it there were young flowers growing,Of gentle breath and hue."

"That's pretty poetry," said Rollo.

"Very pretty indeed," said his father.

The horse now began to trot along the road. The little island continued in view for a while, and then disappeared, and afterwards came into view again, as the road went turning and winding around, following the indentations of the shore.

At length, after a short but very pleasant ride, the party arrived safely at the inn again at Villeneuve.

Chapter XIII.

Plan Formed

The reason why the Lake of Geneva is of a crescent form is, that that is the shape of the space in the bottom of the valley which it fills. There are two ranges of mountains running in a curved direction almost parallel to each other, and the space between them, for a certain distance, is filled with water, owing to the spreading out of the waters of the Rhone in flowing through. Thus the lake is produced by the valley, and takes its form from it.

The valley does not come to an end when you reach the head of the lake, but continues for more than a hundred miles beyond, the two mountain ranges continuing to border it all that distance, and the River Rhone to flow through the centre of it. Thus at Villeneuve you look in one direction, and you have a winding valley filled with water, extending for fifty miles, to Geneva; while in the other direction, the same valley—though now the floor of it is a green and fertile plain—continues, with the same stupendous walls of mountain bordering the sides of it, for a hundred miles or more, to the sources of the Rhone.

There is another thing that is very curious in respect to this valley, and that is, that the floor of it is as flat, and smooth, and level, almost, where it is formed of land, as where it is formed of water.

Geologists suppose that the reason why the bottom of the valley, when it consists of land, is so perfectly level, is because the land has been formed by deposits from the river, in the course of a long succession of ages. Of course the river could never build the land any higher, in any part, than it rises itself in the highest inundations. Indeed, land formed by river deposits is almost always nearly level, and the surface of it is but little raised above the ordinary level of the stream, and never above that of the highest inundations.

It must, however, by no means be supposed that because the surface of the valley above the head of the lake is flat and level, that it is on that account monotonous and uninteresting. Indeed, it is quite the reverse. It forms one of the richest and most enchanting landscapes that can be conceived. It is abundantly shaded with trees, some planted in avenues along the roadside, some bearing fruit in orchards and gardens, and some standing in picturesque groups about the houses, or in pretty groves by the margin of the fields. The land is laid out in a very charming manner, in gardens, orchards, meadows, and fields of corn and grain, with no fences to separate them either from each other or from the road; so that in walking along the public highway you seem to walk in one of the broad alleys of an immense and most beautiful garden.

Besides all these beauties of the scene itself, the pleasure of walking through it is greatly increased by the number and variety of groups and figures of peasant girls and boys, and women and men, that you meet coming along the road, or see working in the fields, all dressed in the pretty Swiss costume, and each performing some curious operation, which is either in itself, or in the manner of performing it, entirely different from what is seen in any other land.

Rollo followed the main road leading up the valley a little way one evening, while his father and mother were at Villeneuve, in order, as he said, to see where the diligences went to. He was so much pleased with what he saw that he went back to the hotel, and began studying the guide book, in order to find how far it was to the next town, and what objects of interest there were to be seen on the way. He was so well satisfied with the result of his investigations that he resolved to propose to his father and mother to make a pedestrian excursion up the valley.

"Now, mother," said he, "I have a plan to propose, and that is, that we all set out to-morrow morning, and make a pedestrian excursion up the valley, to the next town, or the next town but one."

"How far is it?" asked Mrs. Holiday.

"Why, the best place to go to," said Rollo, "is Aigle, which is the second town, and that is only six miles from here."

"O Rollo!" said Mrs. Holiday; "I could not possibly walk six miles."

"O, yes, mother," said Rollo. "The road is as smooth, and level, and hard as a floor. Besides, you said that you meant to make a pedestrian excursion somewhere while you were in Switzerland, and there could not be a better place than this."

"I know I said so," replied Mrs. Holiday, "but I was not really in earnest. Besides, I don't think I could possibly walk six miles. But we will take a carriage and ride there, if your father is willing."

"But, mother, it is not so pleasant to ride You can't see so well, for the top of the carriage, or else the driver on his high seat before, will be more or less in the way. Then when you are walking you can stop so easily any minute, and look around. But if you are in a carriage, it makes a fuss and trouble to be calling continually upon the coachman to stop; and then, besides, half of the time, before he gets the carriage stopped you have got by the place you wanted to see."

What Rollo said is very true. We can see a country containing a series of fine landscapes much more thoroughly by walking through it, or riding on horseback, than by going in a carriage. I do not think, however, that, after all, this advantage constituted the real inducement in Rollo's mind which made him so desirous of walking to Aigle. The truth was, that the little walk which he had taken to Chillon with the party of pedestrian boys had quite filled his imagination with the pleasures and the independent dignity of this mode of travelling, and he was very ambitious of making an experiment of it himself.

"And, mother," continued Rollo, "after all, it is only about two hours and a half or three hours, at two or three miles an hour. Now, you are often gone as much as that, making calls; and when you are making calls you generally go, I am sure, as much as two or three miles an hour."

"But I generally ride, making calls," said Mrs. Holiday.

"Yes, mother, but sometimes you walk; and I think when you walk you are often gone more than three hours."

"That is true," said Mrs. Holiday, "I admit; but then, you know, when I am making calls I am resting a great deal of the time at the houses where I call."

"I know that," said Rollo; "and so we will rest, sitting down by the road side."

Mrs. Holiday admitted that Rollo had rather the best of the argument; but she was still quite unwilling to believe that she could really walk six miles.

"And back again, too," she added. "You must consider that we shall have to come back again."

"Ah, but I don't wish to have you walk back again," said Rollo. "We will come back by the diligence. There are several diligences and omnibuses that come by Aigle, on the way here, in the course of the day."

Mrs. Holiday was still undecided. She was very desirous of gratifying Rollo, but yet she had not courage to undertake quite so great a feat as to walk six miles. At length Mr. Holiday proposed that they should at least set out and go a little way.

"We can try it for half an hour," said he, "and then go on or turn back, just as we feel inclined. Or if we go on several miles, and then get tired, we shall soon come to a village, where we shall be able to get some sort of vehicle or other to bring us back; and at all events we shall have an adventure."

Mrs. Holiday consented to this plan, and it was settled that the party should breakfast at eight o'clock the next morning, and set out immediately afterwards.

Rollo had a sort of haversack which he used to carry sometimes on his walks, and he always kept it with him in the steamboat or carriage, when he travelled in those conveyances. This haversack he got ready, supplying it with all that he thought would be required for the excursion. He put in it his drinking cup,—the one which he had bought in Scotland,—a little spy glass, which he used for viewing the scenery, a book that his mother was reading, a little portfolio containing some drawing paper and a pencil, a guide book and map, and, lastly, a paper of small cakes and sugar plums, to give to any children that he might chance to meet on the way.

Rollo made all these preparations the evening before, so that every thing might be ready in the morning, when the hour for setting out should arrive.

Chapter XIV.

Walk To Aigle

"Now, Rollo," said Mr. Holiday, as the party sallied forth from the inn to commence their walk up the valley, "we depend entirely on you. This is your excursion, and we expect you will take care and see that every thing goes right."

"Well, sir," said Rollo. "Come with me. I'll show you the way."

On the borders of the village they passed to a high stone bridge which crossed a small stream. This stream came in a slow and meandering course through the meadows, and here emptied into the lake. Farther back it was a torrent leaping from rock to rock and crag to crag, for many thousand feet down the mountain side; but here it flowed so gently, and lay so quietly in its bed, that pond lilies grew and bloomed in its waters.

Just above the bridge there was a square enclosure in the margin of the water, with a solid stone wall all around it. A man stood on the wall with a net in his hand. The net was attached to a pole. The man was just dipping the net into the water when Rollo, with his father and mother, came upon the bridge.

"Let us stop a minute, and see what that man is going to do," said Rollo. "I saw that square wall yesterday, and I could not imagine what it was for."

The man put his net down to the bottom of the reservoir, and after drawing it along on the bottom, he took it out again. There was nothing in it. He then repeated the operation, and this time he brought up two large fishes that looked like trout. They were both more than a foot long.

The man uttered a slight exclamation of satisfaction, and then lifting the net over the wall, he let the fish fall into a basket which he had placed outside. He then went away, carrying the basket with one hand, and the net on his shoulder with the other.

"That's a very curious plan," said Rollo. "I suppose they catch the fish in the lake, and then put them in that pen and keep them there till they are ready to eat them."

So they walked on.

Presently Rollo saw some of the pond lilies growing in the stream, the course of which was here, for a short distance, near the road.

"I wish very much, mother," said he, "that I could get one of those pond lilies for you, but I cannot. I tried yesterday, but they are too far from the shore, and it is so finished, and smooth, and nice about here that there is no such thing as a pole or a stick to be found any where to reach with."

Presently, however, Rollo came to a boy who was fishing on the bank of the stream, and he asked him if he would be good enough to hook in one of those lilies for him with his pole and line. The boy was very willing to do it. He threw a loop of his line over one of the pond lilies, and drew it in. Rollo thanked the boy for his kindness, and gave the pond lily to his mother.

Perhaps there are no flowers that give a higher pleasure to the possessors than those which a boy of Rollo's age gathers for his mother.

The party walked on. Mrs. Holiday's attention was soon strongly attracted to the various groups of peasants which she saw working in the fields, or walking along the road. First came a young girl, with a broad-brimmed straw hat on her head, driving a donkey cart loaded with sheaves of grain. Next an old and decrepit-looking woman, with a great bundle of sticks on her head. It seemed impossible that she could carry so great a load in such a manner. As our party went by, she turned her head slowly round a little way, to look at them; and it was curious to see the great bundle of sticks—which was two feet in diameter, and four or five feet long—slowly turn round with her head, and then slowly turn back again as she went on her way.

Next Mrs. Holiday paused a moment to look at some girls who were hoeing in the field. The girls looked smilingly upon the strangers, and bade them good morning.

"Ask them," said Mrs. Holiday to Rollo, "if their work is not very hard."

So Rollo asked them the question. Mrs. Holiday requested him to do it because she did not speak French very well, and so she did not like to try.

The girls said that the work was not hard at all. They laughed, and went on working faster than ever.

Next they came to a poor wayfaring woman, who was sitting by the roadside with an infant in her arms. Rollo immediately took out one of the little cakes from the parcel in his knapsack, and handed it to the child. The mother seemed very much pleased. She bowed to Rollo, and said,—

"She thanks you infinitely, sir."

Thus they went on for about three quarters of an hour. During all this time Mrs. Holiday's attention was so much taken up with what she saw,—sometimes with the groups of peasants and the pretty little views of gardens, cottages, and fields which attracted her notice by the road side, ever and anon by the glimpses which she obtained of the stupendous mountain ranges that bordered the valley on either hand, and that were continually presenting their towering crags and dizzy precipices to view through the opening of the trees on the plain,—that she had not time to think of being fatigued. At length Rollo asked her how she liked the walk.

"Very well," said she; "only I think now I have walked full as far as I should ever have to go at home, when making calls, before coming to the first house. So as soon as you can you may find me a place to sit down and rest a little while."

"Well," said Rollo, "I see a grove of trees by the roadside, on ahead a little way. When we get there we will sit down in the shade and rest."

So they went on till they came to the grove. The grove proved to be a very pretty one, though it consisted of only four or five trees; but unfortunately there was no place to sit down in it. Rollo looked about for some time in vain, and seemed quite disappointed.

"Never mind," said his mother; "sometimes, when I make a call, I find that the lady I have called to see is not at home; and then, even if I am tired and want to rest, I have to go on to the next house. We will suppose that at this place the lady is not at home."

Rollo laughed and walked on. It was not long before they reached a place where there was a kind of granary, or some other farm building of that sort, near the road, with a little yard where some logs were lying. Rollo found excellent seats for his father and mother on these logs. They sat on one of them, and leaned their backs against another that was a little higher up. They were in the shade of the building, too, so that the place was very cool.

"This is a very nice place to rest," said Mrs. Holiday; "and while we are sitting, we can amuse ourselves in looking at the people that go by."

The first person that came was a pretty-looking peasant girl of about seventeen, who had a tub upon her head. What was in the tub Rollo could not see. With such a burden on her head, however, it is plain that the girl could not wear her hat in the ordinary manner, and so she carried it tied to the back of her neck, with its broad brim covering her shoulders. This, Mr. Holiday said, seemed to him to be carrying the modern fashion of wearing the bonnet quite to an extreme.

THE BASKET RIDE.

The Swiss women have other ways of bearing burdens, besides loading them upon their heads. They carry them upon their backs, sometimes, in baskets fitted to their shoulders. A woman came by, while Rollo and his father and mother were sitting upon the logs, with her child taking a ride in such a basket on her back. As soon as this woman was past, Rollo was so much struck with the comical appearance that the child made, sitting upright in the basket, and looking around, that he took out some paper and a pencil immediately from his portfolio, and asked his mother to make a drawing of the woman, with the child in the basket on her back. This Mrs. Holiday could easily do, even from the brief glimpse which she had of the woman as she went by; for the outlines of the figure and dress of the woman and of the basket and child were very simple. Mrs. Holiday afterwards put in some of the scenery for a background.

When the drawing was finished, Rollo told his mother that he calculated that they had come one third of the way, and asked her if she felt tired; and she said she did not feel tired at all, and so they rose and went on.

In a short time they came to a village. It consisted of a narrow street, with stone houses on each side of it. The houses were close together and close to the street. In one place several people were sitting out before the door, and among them was a poor, sickly child, such as are found very often in the low valleys of Switzerland, of the kind called cretins. These children are entirely helpless, and they have no reason, or at least very little. The one which Rollo saw was a girl, and appeared to be about ten years old; but it did not seem to have strength enough to sit up in its chair. It was continually lolling and falling about on this side and that, and trying to look up. The mother of the child sat by her, and kept her from falling out of the chair. She was talking, the mean while, with the neighbors, who were sitting there on a bench, knitting or sewing.

The face of the child was deformed, and had scarcely a human expression. Both Rollo and his mother were much shocked at the spectacle.

"It is a cretin—is it not?" said Mrs. Holiday to her husband, in a whisper, as soon as they had passed by.

"Yes," said Mr. Holiday.

"Mother," said Rollo, "would you give that poor little thing a cake?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Holiday; "I would."

"Do you think she will understand?" asked Rollo.

"Yes," said Mrs. Holiday; "I think she will; and at any rate her mother will."

Rollo had by this time taken out his cake. He went back with it to the place where the women were sitting, and held it out, half, as it were, to the mother, and half to the child, so that either of them might take it, saying, at the same time, to the mother, in French,—

"For this poor little child."

The mother smiled, and looked very much pleased. The cretin, whose eyes caught a glimpse of the cake, laughed, and began to try to reach out her hand to take it. It seemed hard for her to guide her hand to the place, and she fell over from side to side all the time while attempting to do so. She would have fallen entirely if her mother had not held her up. At length she succeeded in getting hold of the cake, which she carried directly to her mouth, and then laughed again with a laugh that seemed scarcely human, and was hideous to see.

"Does she understand?" asked Rollo.

"Yes," said the mother; "she understands, but she can't speak, poor thing. But she is very much obliged to you indeed."

So Rollo bowed to the mother of the child, and to the other women, and then went on and rejoined his father and mother.

They passed through the village, and then came into the open country again. Sometimes the mountains that bordered the valley receded to some distance; at other times they came very near; and there was one place where they formed a range of lofty precipices a thousand feet high, that seemed almost to overhang the road. Here Rollo stopped to look up. He saw, near a rounded mass of rock, half way up the mountain, two young eagles that had apparently just left their nest, and were trying to learn to fly. The old eagles were soaring around them, screaming. They seemed to be afraid that their young ones would fall down the rocks and get killed. Rollo wished that they would fall down, or at least fly down, to where he was, in order that he might catch one of them. But they did not. They took only short flights from rock to rock and from thicket to thicket, but they did not come down. So, after watching them for a time, Rollo went on.

Next they came to a place where the valley took a turn so as to expose the mountain side to the sun in such a manner as to make a good place there for grapes to grow and ripen. The people had accordingly terraced the whole declivity by building walls, one above another, to support the earth for the vineyards; and when Rollo was going by the place he looked up and saw a man standing on the wall of one of the terraces, with the tool which he had been working with in his hand. He seemed suspended in mid air, and looked down on the road and on the people walking along it as a man would look down upon a street in London from the gallery under the dome of St. Paul's.

"That's a pleasant place to work," said Rollo, "away up there, between the heavens and the earth."

"Yes," said his mother; "and I should think that taking care of vines and gathering the grapes would be very pretty work to do."

There was a little building on the corner of one of the terraces, which Mr. Holiday said was a watch tower. There were windows on all the sides of it.

"When the grapes begin to ripen," said he, "there is a man stationed there to watch all the vineyards around, in order to prevent people from stealing the grapes."

"I should think there would be danger of their stealing the grapes," said Rollo.

After going on a little way beyond this, they began to approach the town of Aigle. Mrs. Holiday was surprised that she could have come so far with so little fatigue. Rollo told her that it was because she had walked along so slowly.

"Yes," said Mr. Holiday; "and because there have been so many things to take up our attention by the way."

When they arrived at the village they went directly to the inn. The inns in these country towns in Switzerland are the largest and most conspicuous looking buildings to be seen. Rollo went first, and led the way. He went directly to the dining room.

The dining rooms in these inns, as I have already said, are the public rooms, where the company always go, whether they wish for any thing to eat or not. There is usually one large table, for dinner, in the centre of the room, and several smaller tables at the sides or at the windows, for breakfasts and luncheons, and also for small dinner parties of two or three. Besides these tables, there is often one with a pen and ink upon it for writing, and another for knapsacks and carpet bags; and there are sofas for the company to repose upon while the waiter is setting the table for them.