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Any one acquainted with the history of Switzerland knows what ties of relationship, of agreement in their manners and mode of living, and neighborly intercourse existed from the most ancient times, between the inhabitants of Obwalden and those of the Haslithal and a part of the Bernese Oberland.
When I came into view of Guttannen, the first village of any considerable extent that I passed after seeing the Rhone Glacier and the wildnesses of the Grimsel and Haslithal, where no houses except hotels, and in some places not even trees or grass abound, I felt glad once more to see a group of human habitations, and determined to count them, so that I might record their number.
The French invaded the country simultaneously on different sides, by water, across the lake of the four cantons, and across the Bruenig from the Haslithal; in the Kernwald they were victorious over the masses of peasantry, but a body of three or four thousand French, which had penetrated further down the vale, was picked off by the peasantry concealed in the woods and behind the rocks.
Copies of the treaties, by which they had come under the dominion of Bern, were sent to the inhabitants of the Haslithal, and appeals made to their duty of submission to the highest authorities of the Canton, even in ecclesiastical affairs. It was all in vain. The adherents of the old faith, stirred up by their new priests, determined to yield under no circumstances.
When the government tried to postpone investigation, a violent insurrection broke out, which found sympathy even in some parts of their own district. New hopes were excited among the friends of the Old Order by this uprising of the malcontents, with whom the inhabitants of the Haslithal and other Oberlanders also joined, at the instigation of their neighbors in Obwalden.
The occasion was given by a split among the Oberlanders themselves division in a matter, where no majority could decide. In the Haslithal the Reformation had found resolute adherents. They and the preachers sent hither from Bern were a source of daily vexation to their fellow-citizens of the old faith, who surpassed them in numbers.
Here a bitterness of spirit had been left behind by the unsuccessful inroad into the Haslithal, which was essentially increased by the claims of Bern for indemnification, the sojourn of fugitive Oberlanders and the execution of Hans im Sand, who had enjoyed special favor in Obwalden.
Ought not the wicked attempt of the innovators to commit them to the earth be prevented? Captain Schœnbrunner of Zug, asserted that he had concealed at least part of the relics in his cap and thus saved them. "Come to us in future," they now said, "as we heretofore made pilgrimages to you. St. Beatus lies with us." The public mind became more and more disturbed in the Haslithal.
The solitary tourist will ejaculate his exclamations without number; and it is under such circumstances that the unpoetical soul seeks some personification to whom it may do homage. It would not require a worshipper of images to kneel down, in the Grimsel or Ober Haslithal, before any emblem that embodied any adequate representation of the crushingly sublime scenery that one beholds there!
At the earnest request of those, who had remained faithful, part of their privileges were gradually restored, first to the inhabitants of the Haslithal and then to the people of the monastery. Most of the captives were set free through the prayers of friends or by giving bail.
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