"I lie forever at thy feet, Dear hill with lofty crown; My waters smile thy crags to greet, As they look proudly down.

The odor of thy wind-tossed pines

Is message sweet to me; It makes me dimple with delight,

Because it comes from thee.

Thou, lofty, grand, above the world;

Its lowly servant, I; Yet see, within my sunny depths

Is smiling thy blue sky.

Fluelen, On Lake Lucerne.

Thou art so far, and yet how near!

For though we are apart, I make myself a mirror clear,

And hold thee in my heart".

Above this lake itself extends for miles the famous Axen-strasse, - a splendid specimen of engineering skill, cut in the solid rock, hundreds of feet above the waves. Yet this is no exceptional thing in Switzerland, and nothing stamps itself more forcibly upon the tourist's mind within this region of the Alps than man's triumphant victory over obstacles, in the formation of its roads. Despite their great cost of construction these prove profitable investments; for the better the roads, the more people will travel over them. Referring to them, some one has prettily said, that by such means the Swiss transform the silver of their mountain peaks into five franc pieces, and change the golden glow of their sunrises and sunsets into napoleons.

The Axenstrasse.

In The Engadine.

How great the difference between the Switzerland of to-day and that of fifty years ago! Where formerly the solitary peasant and his mule picked their precarious way through mud or snow, luxurious landaus now roll easily along, on thoroughfares of rock, without a stone or obstruction of any kind to mar their surfaces. Nor is there danger of disaster. Walled in by massive parapets, an accident is here impossible; and in these mighty galleries, hewn from the mountain side itself, the traveler is perfectly secure, although an avalanche may fall or cyclones rage above him.

Mountain Galleries.

Engineering Skill.

The Axenstrasse may be said to form a part of that magnificent route from Switzerland to Italy, known as the St. Gotthard. It is, in truth, the king of Alpine roads; resembling a mighty chain which man, the victor, has imposed upon the vanquished Alps, - one end sunk deep in the Italian Lakes, the other guarded by the Lion of Lucerne, - and all the intervening links kept burnished brightly by the hands of trade. True, within the last few years, the carriage-road across the St. Gotthard has been comparatively neglected, since the longest tunnel in the world has to a great extent replaced it. Tranquil enough this tunnel frequently appears, but I have seen it when great clouds of smoke were pouring out of its huge throat, as from the crater of a great volcano. A strong wind blowing from the south was then, no doubt, clearing this subterranean flue; and I was glad that I had not to breathe its stifling atmosphere, but, on the contrary, seated in a carriage, could lose no portion of the glorious scenery, while drinking in great draughts of the pure mountain air.

Still, whether we travel by the railroad of the St. Gotthard or not, we must not underrate its usefulness, nor belittle the great engineering triumphs here displayed. Its length, too, amazes one, for not only is the principal tunnel nine and a half miles long, but there are fifty-five others on the line, the total length of which, cut inch by inch out of the solid granite, is more than twenty-five miles. When one drives over the mountain by the carriage-road, hour after hour, bewildered by its cliffs and gorges, it seems impossible that the engineer's calculations could have been made so perfectly as to enable labor on the tunnel to be carried on from both ends of it at the same time. Yet all was planned so well that, on the 28th of February, 1880, the Italian workmen and the Swiss both met at the designated spot, six thousand feet below the summit, and there pierced the last thin barrier that remained between the north and south.

St. Gotthard Tunnel.