United States or American Samoa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Bernese Oberland, the peasantry of Basel, Solothurn, Toggenburg, Appenzell, and Glarus rose in open insurrection, but were again reduced to submission by the military. The spirit of the mountaineers was, however, less easily tamed.
Remember the old saying, handed down from our forefathers: 'the men of Zurich will suffer loss rather than dishonor; the men of Bern dishonor rather than loss. When we of Zurich undertake anything, we stake our all upon it, and look for success or failure; but the Bernese are just the reverse, sharing the victory with us in every enterprise, without putting their own skins in danger.
"Sigismund is a Swiss, and of a family of Bernese burghers, I should think, though, to confess the truth, I know little more than that he has passed several years in foreign service, and that he saved my daughter's life from one of our mountain accidents, some two years since, as he has now saved thine and mine.
During the war of the League he served in the army of Henry the Third, but when Henry of Navarre was proclaimed King of France on the assassination of his predecessor, and abjured the Protestant faith of which he had previously been the champion, Champlain, like other Frenchmen, who had followed the Duke of Guise, became an ardent supporter of the new régime and eventually a favourite of the Bernese prince.
Then at last the father's carriage came, and they were carried away to Gloucester, where they were committed to the untender, commonplace, but much more comfortable mercies of the railway-carriage. There we will part with them, and encounter them again but for a few moments as, after a long day's ramble, they made their way back to a solitary but comfortable hotel among the Bernese Alps.
The Roche d'Or was a steep upward slope, culminating in a rocky promontory from which was visible the vast expanse of the Bernese Oberland. A railed-in platform capped the promontory, for it was a recognised viewpoint.
And the tune of it goes like this: "Toasted Corn-Flake Co.," "Seaboard Rice," "Chili Products," "Red Bloom Grape Juice Sales Office," "Porto Rico and Singapore Pineapple Co.," "Sunnyland Foodstuffs," "Importers of Fruit Pulps, Pimentos," "Sole Agents U.S.A. Italian Salad Oil," "Raisin Growers," "Log Cabin Syrups," "Jobbers in Beans, Peas," "Chocolate and Cocoa Preparations," "Ohio Evaporated Milk Co.," "Bernese Alps and Holland Condensed Milk Co.," "Brazilian Nuts Co.," "Brokers Pacific Coast Salmon," "California Tuna Co.," and thus on and on.
Then Zurich ordered those of her militia, who were already prepared for a return home, to stay, and called back others, who had marched off. The arbitrators begged. The Bernese threatened; the Banneret, Peter im Haag, said: "If the document be not produced immediately, we will fetch it in procession." At last, on the 25th of June, about 2 o'clock in the night, it was brought to Cappel.
So far from opposing, their Reformed neighbors frequently aided them in these attempts. Provisions were concealed in bales of goods, which were allowed to cross the line, and very often the Bernese authorities were deceived by their own subjects to the advantage of the needy.
It so fell that one dark evening in the month of June I was belated in the Bernese Oberland. Dusk overtook me toiling along the great Chamounix Road, and in the heart of a most desolate gorge, whose towering snow-flung walls seemed as the day sucked inwards to a point secret as a leech's mouth to close about me like a monstrous amphitheatre of ghosts.
Word Of The Day