A PRIMITIVE COMMUNITY.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1955, 31 May 1880, Page 3

A PRIMITIVE COMMUNITY.

The Geneva correspondent of the “ Times” writes under date March 12th :—“ The smallest Protestant commune in Switzerland, probably in Europe, and certainly the most primitive, is that of AbWd6heneib, in the circle of Saanen, canton Berne. Abland-' chonen, a word literally signifying ‘ a little outlying place,’ is situated in a remote mountain valley, 4000 ft above tho level of the soa, and its unsophisticated inhabitants contrive to dispense with most of tho appendages which are considered inseparable from modern civilization. Sir Wilfred Lawson will be pleased to learn that they do not possess a single public house; Dr. Richardson might possibly find in Ablanehenen tl(e Hygeia after which he sighs; for albeit there is not a doctor in the village, there has not been a death for many years, and were Mr Bright to take up his abode there ho would be freed from a trouble of which he has more than once feelingly complained, as though the commune enjoys the blessings of a penny post it has only one delivery of letters a week. As may be supposed in these circumstances, daily papers do not command a very ready sale in the neighbourhood. Commerce and handicrafts are conspicuous by their absence ; there is neither blacksmith, baker, wheelwright! nor shopkeeper in all the commune, and the people being all honest and peaceable, they rt quire neither notary, lawyer, nor policeman. Every fourteen days a pa lar with a van goes the round of the commune and .supplies the housewives with all that they want in tho shape of crockery, drapery, thread, needles, paper, and .’laundries ; food is provided by their own flocks, herds, and poultry, and, it- is hardly necessary to say, as they have little need for ready money, the Ablandcheners keep no banker. They have a tiny church with a single bell, and it is a standing joke in the place that when a girl is born they ring a peal, but on the birth of a lad they ring only one bell. It may he supposed, perhaps, that the inhabitants of this sequestered valley find their lives somewhat hard and monotonous, but a correspondent writing thence to a Zurich paper says this is so far from being the case that they enjoy a far larger measure of happiness than falls to tho lot of most men, and have no desire to exchange their Alpine homo for the life of cities.” v