It Is Poetic Foolishness To Hunt
It With A Gun; Very Few People Do That; There Is Not
One Man
In a million who can hit it with a gun.
It is much easier to catch it than it is
To shoot it,
and only the experienced chamois-hunter can do either.
Another common piece of exaggeration is that about the
"scarcity" of the chamois. It is the reverse of scarce.
Droves of one hundred million chamois are not unusual
in the Swiss hotels. Indeed, they are so numerous
as to be a great pest. The romancers always dress up
the chamois-hunter in a fanciful and picturesque costume,
whereas the best way to hunt this game is to do it without
any costume at all. The article of commerce called
chamois-skin is another fraud; nobody could skin a chamois,
it is too small. The creature is a humbug in every way,
and everything which has been written about it is
sentimental exaggeration. It was no pleasure to me to find
the chamois out, for he had been one of my pet illusions;
all my life it had been my dream to see him in his native
wilds some day, and engage in the adventurous sport
of chasing him from cliff to cliff. It is no pleasure
to me to expose him, now, and destroy the reader's delight
in him and respect for him, but still it must be done,
for when an honest writer discovers an imposition it
is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down
from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it;
any other course would render him unworthy of the public
confidence.
Lucerne is a charming place. It begins at the water's edge,
with a fringe of hotels, and scrambles up and spreads
itself over two or three sharp hills in a crowded,
disorderly, but picturesque way, offering to the eye
a heaped-up confusion of red roofs, quaint gables,
dormer windows, toothpick steeples, with here and there
a bit of ancient embattled wall bending itself over
the ridges, worm-fashion, and here and there an old square
tower of heavy masonry. And also here and there a town
clock with only one hand - a hand which stretches across
the dial and has no joint in it; such a clock helps out
the picture, but you cannot tell the time of day by it.
Between the curving line of hotels and the lake is a broad
avenue with lamps and a double rank of low shade trees.
The lake-front is walled with masonry like a pier,
and has a railing, to keep people from walking overboard.
All day long the vehicles dash along the avenue, and nurses,
children, and tourists sit in the shade of the trees,
or lean on the railing and watch the schools of fishes
darting about in the clear water, or gaze out over the lake
at the stately border of snow-hooded mountains peaks.
Little pleasure steamers, black with people, are coming
and going all the time; and everywhere one sees young
girls and young men paddling about in fanciful rowboats,
or skimming along by the help of sails when there is any wind.
The front rooms of the hotels have little railed balconies,
where one may take his private luncheon in calm,
cool comfort and look down upon this busy and pretty
scene and enjoy it without having to do any of the work
connected with it.
Most of the people, both male and female, are in walking
costume, and carry alpenstocks. Evidently, it is not
considered safe to go about in Switzerland, even in town,
without an alpenstock. If the tourist forgets and
comes down to breakfast without his alpenstock he goes
back and gets it, and stands it up in the corner.
When his touring in Switzerland is finished, he does not
throw that broomstick away, but lugs it home with him,
to the far corners of the earth, although this costs him
more trouble and bother than a baby or a courier could.
You see, the alpenstock is his trophy; his name
is burned upon it; and if he has climbed a hill,
or jumped a brook, or traversed a brickyard with it,
he has the names of those places burned upon it, too.
Thus it is his regimental flag, so to speak, and bears
the record of his achievements. It is worth three francs
when he buys it, but a bonanza could not purchase it
after his great deeds have been inscribed upon it.
There are artisans all about Switzerland whose trade it is
to burn these things upon the alpenstock of the tourist.
And observe, a man is respected in Switzerland according
to his alpenstock. I found I could get no attention there,
while I carried an unbranded one. However, branding is
not expected, so I soon remedied that. The effect
upon the next detachment of tourists was very marked.
I felt repaid for my trouble.
Half of the summer horde in Switzerland is made up of
English people; the other half is made up of many nationalities,
the Germans leading and the Americans coming next.
The Americans were not as numerous as I had expected
they would be.
The seven-thirty table d'ho^te at the great Schweitzerhof
furnished a mighty array and variety of nationalities,
but it offered a better opportunity to observe costumes
than people, for the multitude sat at immensely long tables,
and therefore the faces were mainly seen in perspective;
but the breakfasts were served at small round tables,
and then if one had the fortune to get a table in the
midst of the assemblage he could have as many faces
to study as he could desire. We used to try to guess out
the nationalities, and generally succeeded tolerably well.
Sometimes we tried to guess people's names; but that was
a failure; that is a thing which probably requires a good
deal of practice.
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