fire, turning night into day and revealing a hundred snow-capped peaks around. CHAPTER XX. SWITZERLAND AS SEEN ON FOOT. Alpine Fever—Flags of Truce—Schiller and the Swiss Hero—Tell’s Statue and Chapel—Ascent of the Rigi—Beautiful Scenery—Famous Falls—Rambles in the Mountains—Glaciers—The Matterhorn—Yung Frau—Ascent of Mount Blanc—An Eagle in the Clouds—Switzerland and her People—The Oldest Republic in the World—”Home, Sweet Home”—High Living—Land Owners—Alpine Folk—Night Spent in a Swiss Chalet—Johnson in Trouble—Walk of Six Hundred Miles—Famous Alpine Pass—A Night above the Clouds—Saint Bernard Hospice—Overtaken in a Snow-Storm—Hunting Dead Men—The Alps as a Monument—Geneva—Prison of Chilon—How Time was Spent—Tongue of Praise. I HAVE been in Switzerland only a few days before I take what the people here call the Alpine fever. It affects my blood; it gets into my very bones. I can feel it in every limb at every breath. I consult no physician—I need none. I know full well that the only cure for my disease is to get out among the mountains and there commune with Nature and Nature’s God. I did not come to Switzerland to hear fine music, or to be initiated into the mysteries of fashionable hotel life. I came to enjoy the wild and rugged scenery of the Alps. It seems, too, that it takes more to satisfy me than it does most people. They tell me they came here for the same purpose that I did, and yet they are quite content to remain in the cities and behold the mountains afar off. Not so with me. The moment I behold the gleaming snow on the uplifted mountains, I see that it is not a scarlet ensign indicative of wrath, war, and bloodshed. No, the signal is white, the flag of truce, the emblem of peace, of innocence and purity. Hence, I am not repelled but wonderfully drawn by the mountains. I can but repeat the language that Schiller put into the mouth of his Swiss hero, William Tell: “There is a charm about them, that is certain— Seest thou yon mountains with their snowy peaks Melting into and mingling with the sky?” I think, too, of the wifely warning that Hedwige gave Tell: “Thou never leav’st me but my heart grows cold And shrinks, as though each farewell were the last— I see thee midst the frozen wilderness, Missing, perchance, thy leap o’er some dark gulf, Or whirl’d down headlong with the struggling chamois; “I see the avalanche close o’er thy head, The treacherous ice give way beneath thy feet— And thee—the victim of a living grave! Death, in a thousand varying shapes, waylays The Alpine traveler. ‘Tis a hazardous and fearful trade!” The husband’s reply was: “He who trusts in God, and to those powers which God hath given him, May guard himself from almost every danger. These mountains have no terrors for their children.” [Illustration: GIESSBACH FALLS.]