e feat of
engineering. The route over the Semmerling pass presents difficulties
far greater than any encountered in the United States. We spent
four days in and about Vienna. Its location on the River Danube
was a good one for a great city. The surrounding country was
interesting and well cultivated. The comparison between the people
of Vienna and Venice was very much in favor of Vienna. The city
was clean, well built, with many signs of growth and prosperity.
The people were comfortably clad, and the crowds that gathered in
the parks and gardens to hear the music of the military bands were
orderly and polite. Among the European cities I have visited, I
recall none that made a more favorable impression on my mind than
Vienna. I found no difficulty in making my English understood,
and it was said of the people of that city that they generally knew
enough of the English and French languages, in addition to their
native German, to sustain a conversation in either. We visited
Colonel Fred. Grant, then our minister to Austria, at Vosben, about
twenty miles by rail from Vienna. I did not seek to make acquaintances
in Vienna, as my time would not allow it, but, from a superficial
view, I believed that the people of that city were intelligent,
social and friendly, with more of the habits of Frenchmen than of
the Germans of Berlin, or of the English of London.

From Vienna we followed the line of railroad through Salzburg,
Innsbruck, to Zurich, stopping at each place for a day. This a
very interesting country, generally picturesque, and in some places
mountainous. Here we see the southern German in his native hills.
A vein of superstition colors their creed as good Catholics. They
are, as a rule, loyal to their emperor, and content with their
condition. The passage from the Tyrol into Switzerland is not
marked by national boundaries, such as rivers or mountains, nor
does the population vary much until one reaches Zurich. In our
progress thus far, from Nice through Italy and Austria, our party
had been traveling over, to us, a new and strange land. At Zurich
we entered within a region visited by Mrs. Sherman and myself in
1859. The cities and mountains of Switzerland seemed familiar to
us. Great changes, however, had occurred in modes of travel in
this short period in these old countries. Railroads traversed the
valleys and crossed the mountains, where we had traveled in the
stage coach. At Lucerne I went up