No. 144.] 81 



to be kept for their own family consumption. There is much 

 poor skimmed-milk cheese made and consumed by the poorer 

 classes. The Schobzieger cheese is prepared from skimmed-milk 

 powdered in a mill, and mixed with salt and the leaves of Mellilof 

 trefoil. The canton of Glarus produces this very fine article. 

 Switzerlands exports annually over 110,000 cwt. of different kinds 

 of cheese. 



The butter of the country has a fine flavor when made by clean 

 hands, and the utensils employed are sweet and free from foreign 

 matter; and I am happy to say, that in the plains the Swiss house- 

 keepers are very tidy, and will serve you up some delicate and 

 nice dishes. 



It is in vain to look for good luscious butchers' meat in this 

 quarter; they work their oxen, and even cows. Their meat is 

 always tough and unsavory. Veal is their best meat, but not 

 white fat and juicy, like that we see at Paris and London. The 

 exportation of cows and oxen from Switzerland to the neighbor- 

 ing States, reaches 45,000 head annually. Heavy droves of cows 

 go every fall to Lombardy from the Swiss mountains. About 

 5,000 calves are sent abroad during the same time, from the 

 shambles. Goats abound in the mountainous districts; they crop 

 their food on the most dizzy height, and are the poor peasant's 

 profitable companion. They give a rich milk, which is converted 

 into cheese and butter, and their young kids are very nutritious 

 food. Their skins are a very valuable article of domestic trade 

 and foreign commerce ; no skins for grain and uniformity, sur- 

 pass them. They ascend to the highest parts of the mountains, 

 to the very verge of perpetual frost, and the limits of vegetable 

 life. They love to perch on lofty peaks, where no human foot 

 can follow. There is no class of mountain laborers more exposed 

 to danger than the goat-herdsmen. Their wages are reduced to 

 the smallest pittance, indeed they dole out a miserable existence, 

 not being even supplied with the indispensable necessaries of life. 

 They live and sleep almost constantly in the open air, and go 

 month after month without eating a morsel of even the hard and 

 ill-flavored flesh of the old goats. To rescue the young and giddy 

 kids, that wander sometimes from the main flock, and clamber up 



