The Lake of Lucerne

A graceful time capsule of European travel before the age of mass tourism, this 1919 guide to Lake Lucerne captures Switzerland at a inflection point. Morris leads readers through the lake's dramatic fingers of water reaching into the Alps, past the limestone walls of Pilatus and the green flanks of Rigi, weaving natural observation with the legends that have clung to these shores for centuries. Here is William Tell's country, the myth still alive in the landscape. The writing carries a slightly defensive note, acknowledging that Lucerne has become 'the most widely advertised lake in the world,' yet insisting that its 'ancient charm and character' survives the 'hordes of personally conducted trippers.' For readers who savor the prose of another era, who want to feel the texture of travel before tourism became an industry, this book offers both armchair escape and a fascinating historical document: a view of a legendary landscape now vanished, when solitude among the Alps still seemed possible and the mountains belonged to the legends rather than the tour groups.