The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard TaylorConwell, Russell H.
General
The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor
Conwell, Russell H.
Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878
August 1, 1845, Bayard again started from Frankfort on his pedestrian
wanderings, having made up his mind to visit Switzerland, Florence,
Venice, Rome, and perhaps Athens. On this trip his cousin Frank was
again his companion. With their knapsacks on their shoulders and staffs
in hand they began another pilgrimage, confident and strong. With but
a small supply of money, and with but shadowy probabilities of more,
they launched out into a world to them untried and unknown. With excited
imaginations and the keenest anticipations they rose above every
difficulty and faced boldly the probabilities of fatigue and want. They
made a short stay at Freiburg and entered the Black Forest, passing the
Titi Lake and the Feldberg peak. Bayard’s disposition for ascending
mountains, which inclined him to see the top of everything, led him to go
up the cragged side of the Feldberg, from the summit of which he could
just make out the white crests of the Alps. On the nearer approach to
them, and when from the last ranges of the hills of the Black Forest,
they beheld the white Alps in all their indescribable grandeur looming
up at the other side of the vast plain, Bayard spoke of the patriotic
feelings which such a sight must excite in the mind and heart of a Swiss
returning after a long absence to his native land. He thought of his old
nurse and her tales of the Alpine scenery, and of the knolls and vales
of his own home. It is no wonder that the Swiss are free and brave and
strong. The waterfalls, cliffs, and cloud-piercing mountains fill the
soul with a sense of grandeur and glory which tends toward great deeds
and fervent patriotism. Who can recall the eternal snows, the towering
shafts of rock, the roaring caverns, and sweetest of blue lakes, without
the most thrilling emotions! If there are any travellers upon whom the
memory of Switzerland brings no such feelings, they are the exceptions.
Bayard’s nature was such as to enjoy to the full, and sometimes with an
intensity that was almost pain, all those sublime exhibitions of the
power and majesty of the great Creator.
The fall of the Rhine near Schaffhausen hardly met the expectations of
these travellers, who had heard their German friends speak in such strong
terms of its greatness. It is a most beautiful waterfall, and when viewed
from the platform at the base of the cliff beneath the castle, startles
the spectator with its thundering plunges and foaming whirlpools. To a
native of the same land with Niagara, the Yosemite, and the Yellowstone,
its size is insignificant. But its beauty as a picturesque scene, when
the high banks, the long rapids, the surging pools beneath, and the
jagged rocks that rise through and above the spray and rainbows, are
included in the panorama, can be described only in the strongest language.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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