they are ground down and fleeced by absentee Landvogts, so that they go to all their work ready to skimp it and in a spirit of resentment.
So how comes it, that freeborn Swiss who themselves know how dear freedom is to them, can yet rule so despotically over their neighbours and brothers, that it never comes into their heads to let them have a little more freedom - when a free Landsgemeind chooses a Landvogt, himself burdened from the outset with debts worth thousands, so that he is compelled to recover these from his poor little troop of subjects, to feed his own family and, if he is avaricious, to make himself richer. What use is a guilder to a free countryman, which on the day of the Landsgemeind he often drinks away even before he reaches home, when he must think the whole year through: I must allow my yet poorer brother to have this guilder and many others with it exacted from his poverty.
"Free-born men, if only you would think more humanely! Amid thoughts like this and general conversation we came again at nightfall to our lodging at Starkenbach, and rejoiced in our liberty. On Monday home and again to the market at Lichtensteig." [Voellmy, v 2 pp 265-268]
18th Sept. - 8th Oct. "Scenes from a journey: Zürich - Luzern - Bern":
On the 18th Bräker travels with his friend Z. to Wald, then to Uetikon, then by boat to friends in Wädenswil. Next day they go on to Horgen, and stay the night. There they hear a letter from a major in the Dutch service reporting on the war with France. On the 20th the travellers arrive in Zürich and visits friends there, bad weather forces them to prolong their stay into the next day. Bräker tries to find money to pay off debts, but no advance is forthcoming from Füssli and he misses his friend Gottlieb Sigmund Studer
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, who has already gone home to Bern. Bräker decides to follow him and writes home to tell his family that of his intentions. On the 23rd Bräker leaves Zürich with some letters of introduction from Füssli, and Rusterholz lends him an umbrella. He travels with two butchers from Zug, enjoys the views in Albis, and at Kappel visits the battlefield
on which Ulrich Zwingli died. [Chronik, p 397]
"--- So I strolled on all alone to Zug. It seemed that it was moving away from me. At Kappel they told me it would be a shorter journey below and round the lake than going on through Zug to Luzern, but I wanted to see Zug and cross the lake by ferry. I reached it late in the evening, however, and had scarcely enough time left to cast a quick glance in passing at the pretty little town, as it seemed to me, while I found an opportunity to cross over the lake and continue my journey next day all the earlier. Night fell. We seven or eight persons boarded a small boat that rocked continually and listed to one side. Moreover, the boatman looked to me to be drunk
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. The sky was full of stars. Someone said that fog was rising over the lake. That would be bad, said another. Once when it was foggy I went round the lake for four hours without reaching land, though it's only a good hour's journey. Then I was sorry that I had not stayed in Zug until next morning. But happily we got over at last under a clear sky - I mean to Buonas, where there are only a few houses, and found good lodging.
About Zug and its lake, truly I do not have much to say. [...] On the 24th, in the morning, I arrived punctually at Luzern. I stumped up and down a number of alleys and my first thought was to enquire for the dwellings of two gentlemen, Prof. Müller and Squire Pfeifer
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, to whom I had been recommended. Herr Müller, I learned, was gone on a journey to Konstanz and would not return for a fortnight. That was a severe disappointment to me. To Konstanz? thought I - hm
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Gottlieb Sigmund Studer (1761-1808), a lawyer.
206
Several early travellers in Switzerland remark that the Swiss lakes are tricky to navigate and subject to sudden dangerous squalls of wind. Some also say that the Swiss are no experts at building, maintaining or handling boats. Inglis (p 85) hired a boat on the Wallensee and had one of its oars break in his hand.
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Parts of the city of Luzern are connected by long wooden covered bridges over the lake.
