[24] The story runs that Peter allowed the town to ask a favour in return for past services, and the witty men of Bern at once begged for the restitution of their lost liberty. Henceforth Peter was regarded as the benefactor and second founder of the city. [25] Tradition says that one of their ancestors, Radbot, hunting in the Aargau, lost his favourite hawk, and found it sitting on the ridge of the Wülpelsberg. Being delighted with the view, Radbot built a castle there, and called it _Hawk Castle_, Habichtsburg, or Habsburg. X. THE CONFEDERATION, OR EIDGENOSSENSCHAFT. (1231-1291.) In the present chapter we have to attempt the task of separating truth from fiction, at all times, perhaps, a difficult, and often an impossible, undertaking, in matters of history. This chapter indeed splits itself naturally into _Wahrheit_ and _Dichtung_. Fortunately the stories of Tell and the three Eidgenossen are everywhere well known, and will need but little description at our hands. A lake of exquisite beauty extends between the Forest Cantons, and, so to speak, links them together, the whole forming a singularly picturesque stretch of country. Separated from the sister cantons and from the outside world, each of these little states formed a world of its own. The lake was the common outlet, and the rallying-point for the peoples of the secluded valleys. The various armlets into which it branches, like the districts which lie about them, have each their peculiar charm. Of these cantons Unterwalden has a pastoral character, and attracts attention by its beautiful verdure--velvety slopes, green meads, clusters of nut-trees in the lower parts, orchards of fruit trees, the country dotted everywhere with sunburnt huts, forming a _tout ensemble_ truly idyllic. Schwyz is a canton of similar natural appearance, with green pastures and somewhat gentler slopes, but broad terraces with their red cottages line the valley. Above the chief town of the same name, which nestles at the head of the dale it commands, shining, dazzlingly white with its snug whitewashed houses, rise to the sky the torn but imposing pyramids of the two Myten. Uri is _par excellence_ the highland district amongst the three little states. Towering mountains and inaccessible rocks hem in a strip of water, and give that wondrous hue which makes the charm of Uri lake.