* * * * *
The Little Land of Appenzell.
=_275._= SWISS SCENERY,--A BATTLEFIELD; PICTURESQUE DWELLINGS.
On the right lay the land of Appenzell,--not a table-land, but a region
of mountain, ridge, and summit, of valley and deep, dark gorge, green as
emerald, up to the line of snow, and so thickly studded with dwellings,
grouped or isolated, that there seemed to be one scattered village as
far as the eye could reach. To the south, over forests of fir, the
Sentis lifted his huge towers of rock, crowned with white, wintry
pyramids.
Here, where we are, said the postillion, "was the first battle; but
there was another, two years afterwards, over there, the other side of
Trogen, where the road goes down to the Rhine. Stoss is the place, and
there's a chapel built on the very spot. Duke Frederick of Austria came
to help the Abbott Runo, and the Appenzellers were only one to ten
against them. It was a great fight, they say, and the women helped,--not
with pikes and guns, but in this way: they put on white shirts, and came
out of the woods, above where the lighting was going on. Now when the
Austrians and the Abbot's people saw them, they thought there were
spirits helping the Appenzellers, (the women were all white you see,
and too far off to show plainly,) and so they gave up the fight, after
losing nine hundred knights and troopers.
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