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me in the end to rest and sleep for a few hours. As soon as day broke, I released myself from my prison, and since everybody was still deeply sleeping, was off and away. God reward you, my generous friends!"

In August Bräker frequents Girtanner's house, on the 13th they attend a meeting of the Literary Society together. [Chronik, p 396]

[The Literary Society of St. Gallen was founded in 1789. Bräker valued his membership of it, though he regretted the decline and eventual collapse of the Moral Society of Lichtensteig and its library.]

September (no exact date) "Conditions in the Vogtei [bailiwick] of Werdenberg":
     "In September 1793 there are tales of travel

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. Of travel? I hear my reader say. So even that poor peddler can go travelling, can he? Of course every beggar can always travel, year in, year out, and travelling is my life! But I am no such presumptuous beggar. Indeed I always like to arrange things so that I can travel at someone else's expense. But the gentlemen pastors do the same, and I have the invaluable good fortune to meet with kind-hearted people everywhere who help me to do this. Well, the first journey was from Wildhaus to Grabs and Werdenberg, with a dear friend

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who treated me as his guest. 'Twas the church festival and annual fair at Grabs. I would long since have liked to go that way, to see the border of our Toggenburg from the other side, and to observe the countryside that lies beyond.

On Saturday afternoon we walked for four and a half hours to spend the night at Starkenbach, and we were thoroughly soaked by the rain. On Sunday we went on to Werdenberg and back again to Starkenbach, over eight hours there and back, in the filthiest of weather and by the most wretched of footpaths, over wooded gorges, boggy heaths and forests, truly no pleasure-jaunt! But there was time enough to make my observations of this object and that. Soon the weather improved. The dear sun shone on the proud mountain heights. There was a friend with us who visits the annual fair at Grabs every year and so was acquainted with the way. He led us over a way through the desolate forest which can be traversed only by good walkers. On the other side of the huge ravine at Gams the way is better. In pleasant weather it must be very striking, from the highest part of our inhabited Toggenburg a wonderful prospect out over the Rhine to the Alps and mountain ranges on the near side and the far. Never has Nature drawn the frontier line of our fatherland more impressively as on this side. There are precipitous mountains, monstrous ravines, forests and heaths, full of rotting timber, secure fortifications of our frontier, passes where a hundred men could hold back whole armies and stone them to death

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. In Grabs we paid a visit to a good friend, and had to wait quite some time for our midday meal in Werdenberg.

One sees very few respectable people and few houses that witness to prosperity. And yet the region is so fertile and like a paradise compared to our highest commune of Wildhaus, yet there one finds far more prosperity. What may be the cause of this? Indeed I think I have perceived that a despotic yoke of slavery makes men stupid and lazy, and the more liberty a people has, they more hardworking they are. There one sees everything in good condition, all the houses neatly and orderly built, gardens, meadows and fields all well kept and tidy. By contrast here one sees at a glance that all is neglected, the windows are broken or stuck together with paper, meadows and fields are worked in slovenly fashion, covered with weeds or taken over by torrential forest streams and strewn with stones and rubbish. The fences are neglected, sometimes there are none and the cattle are tied up to stakes so that (like their masters) they cannot get enough to eat, and they look as dirty and thin as the seven lean kine of Egypt.[Genesis 41, v 4] The streets lie full of filth and dung mingled together. The majority of the people will not even take the trouble to wash their hands and faces and comb their hair, where

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The journey probably took place from 17th to 19th August. [Chronik, pp 396-397]


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The Chronik [p 396] gives his name only as "Z".


204

Bräker is probably referring to the medieval Swiss practice of trapping invading armies in a narrow steep-sided valley and rolling large stones down on them from above.



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