There was a little church between Ouchy and Lausanne, gained by crossing the fields, where we remembered the Sabbath day, and joined in the church service led by an English clergyman. These Sabbaths are like green spots now in memory,--restful, cool, refreshing, and pleasant to recall,--when the world, and all haste and perplexity of strange sights, and sounds, and ways, were rolled off like a heavy burden, while we gathered, a little company of strangers in a strange land, yet of one family, to unite in the familiar prayers, and hymns, and grand old chants.
Monday morning the "American cars" bore us away from Lausanne to Freyburg. But such a caricature are they upon our railway carriages, that we were inclined to resent the appellation. Low, bare, box-like, with only three or four seats upon each side, they hardly suggested the original.
We had chosen the route through Freyburg that we might visit the suspension bridge, and hear the celebrated organ. The city clings to the sides of a ravine after the perverse manner of cities, instead of spreading itself out comfortably upon level land. So steep is the declivity that the roofs of some of the houses form the pavement for the street above. At the foot of the ravine flows a river crossed by bridges, and the towns-people have for centuries descended from the summit on one side to climb to that upon the other, until some humane individual planned and perfected this suspension bridge,--the longest in the world save one,--which is thrown across the chasm. In order to test its strength, when completed, the inhabitants of the city, or a portion of them, gathered in a mass, with artillery and horses, _and stood upon it_! Then they marched over it, preceded by a band of music, with all the dignitaries of the town at the head of the column. Since it did not bend or break beneath their weight, it is deemed entirely safe.
Through the most closely-built portion of the city runs the old city wall, with its high, cone-capped watch-towers, and the narrow, crooked, and often steep streets are very quaint. The sense of satisfaction which returns with the memory of these streets is perhaps partly due to the fact, that the girls of the party surveyed them from above great squares of gingerbread bought at a _pâtisserie_ near the station, and ate as they strolled through the town over the pavings of these crooked ways. The bread of dependence is said to be exceedingly bitter; but the gingerbread of Freyburg is uncommonly sweet, in memory.