Picturesque Tour through the Oberland; index
<10>
SOUTH-WEST VIEW OF THUN.
The valley, which leads from Berne to the banks of the lake of Thun, is one of the most delightful in Switzerland. The easy circumstances of the inhabitants, the neatness of their dwellings, the look of content and the generous pride expressed in their faces, are a high eulogy on the government of the canton of Berne, which was never equalled by any other in its paternal concern for the welfare of the husbandman.
Cheered
by the sight of the prosperity and content of the inhabitants of the beautiful
villages through which the traveller passes, after quitting Berne, he arrives
at Thun, to enjoy a spectacle of a different kind, bearing on all its parts
the striking impress of that mighty hand, which spreads it before us as if
to give us some idea of its power. It is impossible, especially on entering
the Oberland from the north, to suppress astonishment and admiration, when,
in a serene day, on issuing from the valleys which prevent the eye from ranging
beyond the nearest hills and a few distant peaks, it all at once discovers
the magnificent plain of Thun; the rocks, which, on the south and west, tower
perpendicularly to the height of nearly six thousand feet above its level;
the lake, which bathes it on the east, and reflects in its waters the heights
by which it is bordered; the amphitheatre, rising from its banks to everlasting
snows; the hills, on the north and west, with their numberless undulations,
covered with crops of every kind; habitations of all sizes and at all elevations,
amidst innumerable orchards, and adorned with every tint of green. The sun
itself seems to acquire new lustre for the purpose of enlivening this magic
scene, and the spectator feels encompassed by the presence of Him, who alone
could decorate it with such magnificence, who alone could raise the majestic
ramparts by which it is surrounded. <11> The Stockhorn and the Niesen,
two mountains rising to the height of seven or eight thousand feet above the
level of the sea, more particularly attract notice by their remarkable form.
The beautiful plain, bounded on the south by these colossal masses, gives
them a still more imposing appearance. They seem to be placed there to guard
the country: the Stockhorn looks like a giant supporting the vault of heaven;
and the pyramidal figure of the Niesen, on the border of the lake, and at
the point of junction between the secondary chains and the high Alps, seems
to belong to two different worlds, and to be stationed on their confines at
the entrance of the sanctuary of Nature.
The Stockhorn, which strikes the imagination most forcibly, is remarkable for its abrupt acclivity, to the height of more than five thousand feet above the lake of Thun. It overlooks the whole north of Switzerland, which beyond it grows more and more level, till its extreme branches subside on the banks of the Rhine in Alsace. Its summit, rounded into the form of a dome, rests upon ridges of rock, which run out to the right and left on the same line and at equal distances. The top and sides of the mountain being defined upon the azure firmament with not less boldness than regularity, and the section of them, presenting, by its resemblance to the neck and shoulders of a man, the image of an Atlas, the idea of a gigantic phantom involuntarily occurs. This circumstance, however, is not sufficient to explain the impression made by the sight of this mountain on the mind of the spectator. The Kamor in the Rheinthal, and the Tour d'Aï, above Vevay, have forms as striking as that of the Stockhorn, but not standing so much detached from surrounding objects, they are far from producing the same effect.
The majestic figure of the Stockhorn, and the beauty of the Niesen, do not strike the imaginations of persons of cultivated minds only. There are no mountains in Switzerland, the names of <12> which are more popular, and the picturesque beauties of which are more generally appreciated. If the inhabitants of the Oberland had been endowed with the imagination of the Greeks, they would no doubt have created a particular mythology for mountains of an elevation and forms infinitely more striking than the humble hills of Thessaly, piled up by the Titans against the gods of Olympus. All that exists of this kind, as far as the writer knows, is an absurd dialogue on the formation of the globe, in which the Stockhorn and the Niesen are the interlocutors. The author, whose name was Müller of Rellikon, lived in the sixteenth century. The names given to the mountains of Switzerland, and the popular traditions of their inhabitants, indicate not a spark of that exquisite imagination which has immortalized the meanest rocks of Arcadia and Phocis. Traces of the influence of the magnificent spectacle of the Alps upon the minds of their inhabitants are to be found only in a deep religious sentiment, and in an extraordinary attachment to their native country. The absolute failure of all traces of mythological ideas, relative to so august a spectacle, may perhaps be deemed a new proof of the correctness of the opinion of those historians, who suppose that the primitive race of the inhabitants of the central chain was exterminated, or that it was first peopled only by the Burgundians and the Germans, shortly before the period at which those barbarians adopted Christianity, the tenets of which are irreconcileable with the fictions of mythology.
The
annexed engraving exhibits a view of Thun from the south-west. The mountains
in the background are mere hillocks in comparison with those of which we have
been treating, and which are to be seen on all the other points of the horizon.
The hills on the right are covered with vineyards, and connected by a continued
chain with the shore of Oberhofen. In the centre appear the church and the
castle; and behind them is seen another range of hills, which communicates
with those of Emmenthal and Eriz, by means of intermediate <13> branches.
Steffisburg, and some other villages, remarkable for the beauty of their environs,
are situated at the foot of them, or in the valleys which separate the neighbouring
branches. On the left is the plain, which has been already mentioned, and
where M. Trallès measured, in 1788, the base which was to serve for
the principal geometrical operations undertaken in Switzerland to the present
time. On the same side, but at a greater distance, is seen part of the chain
of the Gurnigel: this chain connects the Stockhorn with the hills which extend
to the environs of Berne, (the Langenberg and the Belpberg,) and which have
accompanied the traveller to the gates of Thun. The foreground is occupied
by the river Aar, which has just issued from the lake, and which, after forming
a pretty little island covered with habitations and orchards, divides the
town into two parts, and pursues its course through the valleys situated between
Thun and the plains of Berne. Its current in these valleys, in which the traveller
rarely loses sight of it, its bed being nearly parallel with the high road,
is as calm and placid as it is impetuous in the Oberland. From Thun to Berne
its fall is only 219 feet, in a distance of eighteen miles; and it has no
appearance of that rapid torrent which forms the tremendous cascade of Handeck
in the valley of Guttannen.
The Aar, the basin of which, though inferior to that of the Rhine, occupies the greatest part of Switzerland, has its source in three magnificent glaciers situated at the foot of the Finsteraarhorn, not far from the Grimsel. Its waters are at first extremely turbid, and though on issuing from the lake of Thun they are more limpid, still they retain the coldness and sharpness which they owe to their primary origin, the melting of snows and ice.
Fredegaire, surnamed the Scholastic, in his Continuation of Gregory of Tours, makes mention of a singular phenomenon which occurred in the year 598-9, and which seems to have been a volcanic <14> eruption at the bottom of the valley covered by the lake of Thun. His words are: Eo anno (i.e. A. D. 598-9, quarto regni Theodorici) aqua calidissima in lacu Dunensi quem Arola fluvius influit, sic valide ebullivit, ut multitudinem piscium coxisset. "In that year, the water of the lake of Thun, into which the river Aar flows, became so hot as to boil a great quantity of the fish in it." This water, boiling and throwing on shore a multitude of fish, indicates the existence of a volcanic crater at a great depth below the lake, and reminds us of similar phenomena attending eruptions, the circumstances of which are recorded in history. Dion Cassius relates, that in the eruption which buried Herculaneum, A. D. 79, the birds were suffocated in the air, and the fish perished in the infected waters.
In the 17th century, the volcano of Gonapi, situated in one of the Banda islands, after burning for several successive years, burst, and ejected with a loud noise a great quantity of stones: the water bubbled round the shore and boiled, after which great numbers of fish were left floating on the surface. In the month of July, 1707, a range of black and calcined rocks suddenly appeared in the gulf of Santorin, between the island of Hiera, which rose from the sea in the year 197 before Christ, and the island of Little Carmeni, formed in the same way in 1573. These rocks, joining a bank of white earth cast up two months before, formed a new island; the neighbouring water became hot, boiled, and on the shore was found a great quantity of dead fish. We know also that Cotopaxi, one of the highest volcanoes of the Andes, a chain which probably has a communication with the sea, has frequently thrown out fish in similar commotions.
It were the more to be wished that we had some particulars concerning the event related by Fredegaire, as well as by a later historian, Aimoin, of Fleury sur Loire, because the environs of the lake of Thun still exhibit phenomena indicative of a volcanic origin. On <15> its southern shore, we find sulphureous springs near Leissigen; and on the opposite shore, near Beatenberg, soft bitumen is to be seen in the gypsum (sulphate of lime) close to strata of breccia, of which the rocks of the Wandfluh are composed. On the same coast also petroleum is found floating on the surface of the rivulets in the valley of Habcheren. M. de Choiseul Gouffier, who was at the pains to collect all the geological data of this kind, observes that the matters composing the island of Little Carmeni, in the gulf of Santorin, are a species of breccia: he conjectures, with great probability, that the oily substance of different colours, with which the gulf was covered at the time of the eruption of 1707, was bitumen, petroleum, naphtha, and melted sulphur, which the volcano projected from its abysses, either by its inflamed crater, or by clefts in its sides, through the boiling waters of the sea.
The mines of coal and the bituminous matters, found on the banks of the lake
of Thun, are well calculated to give us some idea of the dreadful revolutions
which have convulsed the surface of the globe, especially if we adopt the
hypothesis of Rouelle, as explained by the author of the " Tour in Greece."
"That able chemist," says M. de Choiseul, "has observed, that in all volcanoes,
as well those which are still burning as those that formerly burned, we meet
with nearly the same substances, and particularly inflammable ones, such as
sulphur, petroleum, bitumens, &c. The nature and uniformity of the matters
resulting from these conflagrations have furnished him with evidence of their
real origin. He attributes them to immense forests, the accumulation of ages,
which the revolutions of the sea have buried to a prodigious depth. There
subterraneous fires consume, or distil, and then throw them out upon the surface
of the globe, in the same state in which we see the oily matters extracted
from pit-coal. Every greasy and oily substance dug out from the bosom of the
earth must therefore be considered as an usurpation of the mineral upon the
vegetable kingdom, and it must of course belong to the latter." <16>
The learned Haüy has expressed the same opinion, but with somewhat
more reserve. The existence of strata of calcareous stones, covering substances
the origin of which might be ascribed to the ancient action of a volcano situated
at a great depth, would not affect the probability of our conjecture. It is
well known that Dolomieu found, in several places at the foot of Etna, a quantity
of lava and volcanic productions buried under horizontal strata of shelly
calcareous stones to the depth of more than 500 feet.
