Returning to a vale of Wurtemberg they saw “a little rivulet” which began the mighty Danube stream on its way to the Black Sea, and drove up to the inn at Tuttlingen, of which point Cooper wrote:  “This is the Black Forest,—­The wood was chiefly of larches, whence I presume its name.”  Warned by their host-postmaster of a long climb of mountain separating the Rhine and Danube rivers, in a coach and six they left him for Schaffhausen and the Rhine Falls.  The mountain crest gave them a sweeping view of Lake Constance when its waters looked “dark and wild” wrote Cooper, adding, “we suddenly plunged down to the banks of the Rhine and found ourselves once more before an inn-door, in Switzerland.”  So in the late summer of this year their second visit was made to the land of Lake Leman, whose waters are overshadowed by noble mountains; and its surface broad, tranquil, and blue.  Enchanting distance made a fairy air-castle of a tiny chateau on a little grassy knoll washed by the lake, but a near view decided the family “to take refuge in a furnished house, Mon Repose,” in a retired corner quite near the shore at Vevay.

[Illustration:  VEVAY SHORES OF LAKE LEMAN.]

A boat, with honest John Descloux and his two crooked oars, was soon secured, and many an hour was spent listening to his lore of Leman, as they floated their several hours a day over its waters, under fair skies and foul.

[Illustration:  FETE DES VIGNERONS, 1833.]

During this Switzerland vacation Cooper’s fancy was strongly attracted by Vevay’s celebration of an old-time festival, abbaye des Vignerons, or great holiday of the vine-dressers.  It was “a gay and motley scene, blending the harvest-home with a dash of the carnival spirit.”  Shepherds and shepherdesses in holiday attire and garlands, tripping the measures of rustic song and dance.  Aproned gardeners with rake and spade, their sweethearts with bread-baskets of fruit and flowers, uniting in the dance a la ronde, as they came to a certain point in the procession; and so went the reapers, mowers, gleaners, herdsmen, and dairy-maids in Alpine costume, timing their steps to horn and cow-bell, and singing the heart-stirring chorus Ranz des Vachs, or the “Cowherds of the Alps,” the wild notes coming back in many an Alpine echo.  The festival concluded with a rustic wedding, the bride being dowered down to the broom and spindle by the lady of the manor.

[Illustration:  NOAH’S ARK, VEVAY, 1833.]

Such a holiday on the shores of Lake Leman, and the Pass of St. Bernard, Cooper placed as a background for his plot based on the hard old feudal-times law—­that (in the canton of Berne) the odious office of executioner or headsman was made a family inheritance.  The efforts of the unhappy father and mother to save their son from such a fate make up the pathetic interest of “The Headsman,” issued in 1833.  The Hospice of St. Bernard so well described in this book was visited by the author the previous year.