ges divide
the territory into deep valleys, each of which naturally forms a
political unit--the Commune. Here is a miniature world, concentrated
into a small space, and representing the sum total of life to its
inhabitants. Self-government becomes second nature under these
conditions. A sort of patriarchal democracy is evolved: that is, certain
men and certain families are apt to maintain themselves at the head
of public affairs, but with the consent and cooperation of the whole
population.

There is hardly a spot associated with the rise of the Swiss
Confederation whose position can not be determined from the Rigi. The
two Tell's chapels; the Ruetli; the villages of Schwiz, Altdorf, Brunnen,
Beckenried, Stans, and Sarnen; the battlefields of Morgarten and
Sempach; and on a clear day the ruined castle of Hapsburg itself, lie
within a mighty circle at one's feet.

It was preordained that the three lands of Uri, Schwiz, and Unterwalden
should unite for protection of common interests against the encroachment
of a common enemy--the ambitious house of Hapsburg. The lake formed at
once a bond and a highway between them. On the first day of August,
1291, more than six hundred years ago, a group of unpretentious
patriots, ignored by the great world, signed a document which formed
these lands into a loose Confederation. By this act they laid the
foundation upon which the Swiss state was afterward reared. In their
naive, but prophetic, faith, the contracting parties called this
agreement a perpetual pact; and they set forth, in the Latin, legal
phraseology of the day, that, seeing the malice of the times, they found
it necessary to take an oath to defend one another against outsiders,
and to keep order within their boundaries; at the same time carefully
stating that the object of the league was to maintain lawfully
established conditions.

From small beginnings, the Confederation of Uri, Schwiz, and Unterwalden
grew, by the addition of other communities, until it reached its present
proportions, of twenty-two Cantons, in 1815. Lucerne was the first to
join; then came Zurich, Glarus, Zug, Bern, etc. The early Swiss did not
set up a sovereign republic, in our acceptation of the word, either in
internal or external policy. The class distinctions of the feudal age
continued to exist; and they by no means disputed the supreme rule of
the head of the German Empire over them, but rather gloried in the
protection which this direct de