128 LECTURE ON SWITZERLAND. 



of the German cliaracter, simplicity, enthusiasm, rationalism, and its 

 opposite, mysticism. As a practical teacher he has been surpassed by 

 many of his followers, but he was undoubtedly the founder of a new 

 school in education. Eestless, and always dissatisfied with the results 

 of his efforts, he began many times afresh, and to the last, with 

 renewed hoi)e of entire success. Unqualified to manage pecuniary 

 matters, his mind was always oppressed with the details of the economy 

 of his schools as soon as they became large. Prussia owes the present 

 improved condition of her burgher or citizen schools — for her " schools 

 for the poor" — are poor indeed to the precepts and examples of those 

 who drew both from Pestalozzi. A school nominally conducted upon 

 his principles is still kept up in the old castle, but resembles much 

 the deformed copies from the same model which we have seen in this 

 country. 



Before leaving the southern part of Switzerland, let us pass for a few 

 minutes into the canton of the Valais and among the Alps, not to ad- 

 mire scenery but to observe Swiss enterprise. Eailroads are out of the 

 question in such a country, and places for canals are rarely to be found, 

 but improvements peculiar to the country take their places, and requii^e 

 both skill and originality. 



In one of the narrow valleys of the Valais, a tributary to the Dranse 

 (itself a branch of the Ehone) takes its rise in the melting snows of 

 the glacier of Getroz. This mass of snow and ice is formed by the 

 accumulation of snow upon two mountain flanks, which, descending and 

 uniting in the gorge, are slowly pushed forward into the valley, melting 

 as they advance, and feeding with innumerable rills the turbid Dranse. 

 In the spring of 1818 the waters of the stream were very low, and as 

 this circumstance had preceded a dreadful inundation of the valley of 

 Bagnes in 1595, the peasants taking alarm moved up the valley to 

 ascertain the present cause. They found that the fall of large blocks of 

 ice from the glacier of Getroz, and of avalanches from the mountain 

 sides, had completely dammed up the waters of the Dranse. The icy 

 barrier is described to have been four hundred feet high, six hundred 

 feet wide at the top, and three thousand feet at its base 5 the lake 

 behind it was a mile and a quarter long, and at the barrier some fifty 

 fathoms deep. The waters in this basin rose at the rate of two feet per 

 day, and it was almost certain that finally, rising to a height capable of 

 bursting the wall of ice which held them in, they would in their mighty 

 rash sweep the valley to the very banks of the Ehone. The engineer 

 of the canton, M. Yenetz, made a bold attempt to prevent this disaster, 

 which, if it did not entirely succeed, gTcatly diminished the dreaded 

 devastation. A tunnel through the ice was commenced at a sufficient 

 height above the swelling waters to prevent their reaching the laborers 

 before its completion. Two sets of workmen labored day and night for 

 nearly a month in its formation. When first finished it was not of suf- 

 ficient size to prevent the rise of the lake, but widening and deepening 



