Cloverdale Union High School - Spectator Yearbook (Cloverdale, CA)

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gentle dun colored breed. During the summer, when the snows have melted, they are pastured with the goats high up on the mountains. At all hours of the day boys and men come long distances down the mountain paths carrying cans of milk on their backs. In the villages this milk is made into butter or cheese. Much of it is also used in the manufacture of milk- chocolate which has recently become one of the leading pro¬ ducts of the country. The first of August is the Fete Nationale of the Swiss. At eight in the evening bells are rung in all the villages. We were just finishing dinner that evening when they began to ring and we went out on our balcony to listen to them. They marked the opening of the celebration. A few mornings later we made the ascension of “La Dent de Vanlion,” one of the highest peaks in the Juras. It was a per¬ fect day, clear as a jewel. “La Bise, ,, the wind from the east always brought two or three days of perfect weather when the whole line of the Alps would shine out startingly clear and near at hand. The route up the mountain was marked by dabs of red paint on rocks and trees, just enough leaves had fallen on the paths to make them slippery. Half way up we came out on a tiny plateau, and sighted the “Lac de Joux,” a blue 20

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an, and in the west French. The country is divided into can¬ tons, similar to our counties. The capital of the confederation is situated at Berne where there are magnificent government buildinges. I spent the summer of 1908 in Switzerland. The first three months of it in the Jura Mountains, the western range. Be¬ tween it and the Alps lies a plain, the Swiss plateau. Here are the famous lakes, Neufchatel, Geneva, etc. Lovers of Switzer¬ land know the shapes of all her mountains, and the best places for making ascents. In fact many of them get to know the country like a book, for they form the habit of going year after year to spend their vacations there. We rented a chalet in Ballaigues, a tiny village hung on the side of a steep valley thro’ which trains rush back and forth. This valley was one of the famous old passes between Italy and Gaul, and in one part of it may be seen the remnants of an old Roman road—deep ruts worn in the solid rocky bottom by wheels of carts and chariots. We lived very sim¬ ply at Ballaigues, in the same style as one would in a cottage at a California seaside resort. The village ought to have been named Bellaigues for there is an eternal tinkling of cow-bells about it day and night. The Swiss cattle are a 19

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splurge away below us, on the plateau were some cows, and a chalet, with a man, some cheeses, and a smell in it. But talk about smells! Most Swiss villages can hold their own in that particular with any in the world. For in spring the dung and straw from the cow-houses is stacked up in various places along the streets. When it has got thro’ being soaked by the rains, it dries, and when hard is used for fuel. Were it not for the beautifully pure mountain air, it would be a source of unhelthiness. From the summit of 4 ' La Dent” we had a fine view of western Switzerland. All around us snowy peaks, and below forest covered slopes, mountain meadows, each with its toy dun-colored herd and tiny grey chalet, then, still lower, glimpses of villages with their red-roofed cottages, and dotted here and there with misty blue lakes. One evening, shortly after our trip up “La Dent” we experienced our first thunder storm. It swept up sudden and furious from the west, across and past us and on to the Alps, calm and clear in the east. We sat at the windows watching and listening to the bang and roll of the thunder like cannons echoing all over the heavens. The storm was a succession of gusts. When the lightning was bad the electric plant people shut off the cur¬ rent and in intervals of comparative calm they turned it on again. This made rather an amusing variety. Later we were to learn how frequent these mountain storms are. They suddenly spring to life in a clear sky and spread all over it in a few minutes. Everyone rushes for shelter, as open¬ ing-with rumblings of thunder, the storm bursts fortn in a perfect passion of fury which lasts from fifteen minutes to half an hour. Then all is serene again. A few clouds rest in the sky and the ground and everything is dripping wet, as out from houses and sheds come the village people to resume their ordinary occupations, so unceremoniously interrupted. Before the summer was past we had experienced many more of the surprises which this glorious land of Switzerland holds in store for nature lovers, and which have made her a Mecca for travelers from all parts of the globe. Katharine M. Douglas. 21