VILLAGE SCENE IN SWITZERLAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4494, 14 August 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

VILLAGE SCENE IN SWITZERLAND.

(From “ A Walk in the Giisous.”) As I had loitered for some time on the banks of the young Rhine, aud of its affluent, the evening was closing in when X returned to Disseutis. As I passed up the main street I overtook the female swineherd of the place, bringing home for the night the pigs of Dissentis. There were four or five score of them. She herself brought up the precession that none might loiter behind. She had been tending them all day iu the ravine just mentioned, which was incapable of cultivation, and on some stony irreclaimable waste land ou the Rhine bank. Each porker knew his own home iu the town. Some ran ou in advance of the herd to get as soon as possible to the supper they knew would be ready for them. Some did not separate themselves from the herd till they had arrived at the familiar door. These more quiet-minded members of the herd probably had no expectation of a supper prepared for them, aud were therefore still thinking of the grassy pasture from which they had just been driven off. The swine were followed, at no great interval, by the goats with stiffly distended udders. They, too, dispersed themselves in the same fashion, from the desire to be promptly relieved of their burden. After the goats, last of all, came the deliberately stepping, sober-minded cows. The tinkling of their bells was heard over the whole of the little town. In a few minutes the streets were cleared ; every man, woman, and child appeared to have followed the animals into the houses to give them their supper, or to draw the milk from them, as the case might he ; or at all events to bed them for the night. Thus do these hard-pressed peasants from their earliest years learn to treat their dumb associates kindly, almost as if they were members of the family, to the support of which they so largely contribute. There can be few people in Dissentis who do not begin and end each day in company with them. How familiar must they be with the ways aud the wants of the egotistic pig, of the selfasserting, restless goat, and of the gentle, patient cow! The hook of nature, too, is always open before them, aud they are ever interested students of its pages. From hour to hour they observe the changes of the heavens, and consider what they import, for to them they import a great deal. How their little crops, too, are looking they note day by day, for the time that will be allowed for bringing them to maturity will be so short that the loss of sunshine for a few days causes some anxious thoughts. This dependence upon, and close contact with, nature is a large ingredient in their education.