skirting its southern border, we crossed the Swiss frontier and bade
adieu to the Passport swindle for a season, crossed a ridge into the
valley of Lake Lugano, which we skirted for two-thirds its length,
crossing it by a fine stone bridge near its center. (All the Swiss lakes
I have seen are very narrow for a good part of their length, of a
greenish blue color, derived from the mountain snows, very irregular in
their form, being shut in, narrowed and distorted by the bold cliffs
which crowd them on one side or on both, often reducing them to a
crooked strait, resembling the passage of the Highlands by the Hudson.)
Threading the narrow streets of the pleasant village of Lugano, we
struck boldly up the hill to the east, and over it into the valley of
the little river Ticino, which we reached at Bellinzona, a smart town of
some five to ten thousand inhabitants, and followed the river thence to
its source in the eternal snows of Mount St. Gothard. All this is, I
believe, in the Canton of Ticino, in which Italian is the common
language, and of which Bellinzona is the chief town.

Although in Switzerland, shut in by steep mountains, often snow-crowned,
which leave it an average width of less than half a mile, this valley is
Italian in many of its natural characteristics. For two-thirds of its
length, Wheat, Indian Corn and the Vine are the chief objects of
attention, and every little patch of level ground, save the rocky bed of
the impetuous mountain torrent, is laboriously, carefully cultivated.
Such mere scraps of earth do not admit of efficient husbandry, but are
made to produce liberally by dint of patient effort. I should judge that
a peck of corn is about the average product of a day's work through all
this region. There is some pasturage, mainly on the less abrupt
declivities far up the mountains, but not one acre in fifty of the
Canton yields aught but it may be a little fuel for the sustenance of
man. Nature is here a rugged mother, exacting incessant toil of her
children as the price of the most frugal subsistence; but under such
skies, in the presence of so much magnificence, and in a land of
equality and freedom, mere life is _worth_ working for, and the
condition is accepted with a hearty alacrity. Men and women work
together, and almost equally, in the fields; and here, where the
necessity is so palpably of Nature's creation, not Man's, the spectacle
is far less revolting than on the fertile plains of Piedmont