Tourists who travel by coach and railway in Switzerland, have little conception of what real, Swiss, Alpine scenery or Alpine life is like. It is just judging the moon by looking through a telescope. Life in these almost unknown valleys, differs from all the rest of Switzerland. Here the commune is the government. Of national laws, or presidents and parliaments, the people know nothing. The village mayor is the king. Not many years ago, these mayors and their village advisers in the Vorder Rhine countries, could hang men and women of their own accord. The people are a species of Italian and speak an Italian dialect. Five hundred years ago, they had petty republics up here. Here were the “Gray League,” the “Ten Jurisdictions” and the “House of God.” In 1396, the liberty-loving people of the high Rhine valleys fought for liberty, and founded a little nation called Rhaetia, that lasted four hundred years, when it became united to Switzerland. Ilanz, their old capital, stands here still, a novel picture of past ages. The snow-capped mountains, the fine forests, the picturesque river Rhine, are there as they were then, and the sons and daughters of these old liberty athletes have changed almost as little as the scene of their fathers. We walked on to Selva and spent the night. I could have thought myself living among Roman peasants in the time of Julius Cæsar. Everything was antique, simple, different from the nineteenth century. Corn grows up there, but the people live mostly from their flocks. I noticed the men wore earrings, and men and women, with their ruddy, brown faces and black hair, look like a better class of Southern gipsies. They have almost no books, few schools, and only a single newspaper in the whole valley. No human being, outside of the Upper Rhine, would think of calling that journal a newspaper. The houses are built of hewn logs, turned brown as a Cincinnati ham, and the clapboard roofs are held on by big stones. Spite of their surroundings, these peasants and villagers are happy, and sing and dance as did their ancestors on the plains of Tuscany. They fear the avalanches every night. They call them “The White Death,” and look on them as sent by spirits. They know little, and care less, about what is going on in the world, and would give more to wake up any morning, and find a new kid or lamb born, than to hear of the discovery of a new continent. Their only ambition is to get their cribs full for the winter, and at last to mix their bones with the dust of their fathers, beyond the village church.