The day after arriving in Basle, we see a hundred and twenty-five German and Swiss emigrants starting for America. At the request of the emigration agent, who was possessed of much intelligence and good information, I make a speech to the emigrants the hour before their departure. I tell them not to stop around New York and Boston, but to go West. After speaking briefly of the advantages of the country, I tell them that America is not an Eden, but a wilderness; not a wilderness, either, where people are miraculously fed with manna, as were the Israelites of old, but one where the horny-handed sons of toil have to dig their bread out of the ground; yet it is a wilderness which, when watered by the sweat of the brow, is transformed into a waving harvest field. I tell them that we invite immigration, not that we want foreigners to fill easy places and control political affairs; that a few years ago there were some men in Chicago, who went there with this false idea in their brains, and, in trying to run the government, they made a mistake and ran their heads into a halter. I insist that earnest, honest, persistent, and intelligent laborers are the kind of men we want; that such men are protected by law, and rewarded with a comfortable living. After expressing the wish that they might be freed from sea-sickness while crossing the ocean, and from home-sickness after landing on the other side, I bid them adieu. A few days suffice to show us the parks, monuments, and public buildings of the city. Among the latter, is the time-honored cathedral in which rest the bones of Erasmus, the scholar of the Reformation. It was two hours after leaving Basle, before we could realize that we were in Switzerland. Now, however, a great mountain rose up before us. It was too long to surround, and too high to surmount; hence, we had either to stand still, retreat, go under, or else go through the mountain. After boring our way through the solid rock for two miles, we come into the light on the opposite side. We find that this tunnel is only a gateway admitting us into the land of wonders, and to the heart of the Alps, a description of which will occupy the next chapter. We are now wild with delight, running first to one side of the car, and then to the other, to catch a momentary glimpse of the mountains as they dash by us. The snowy peaks now burst upon our vision, and, just as Johnson is getting ready to stand on his head, the brakesman shouts, “Lucerne! All out for Lucerne!” This announcement, of course, interrupts the proceedings of my traveling companion; hence, leather does not “go up,” as I expected. We find Lucerne to be the general rendezvous of thousands of tourists who, in the search of health or pleasure, have come hither from Russia, Turkey, Greece, Hungary, and Asia Minor, from Germany, France, Italy, England and America. Sometimes, at the evening hour the different nationalities are represented in one room, and there follows a Babel of confusion.