Word: helvetia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...California in 1846, 25 troopers, trained to a hair mounted on stallions, wearing gold-braided green uniforms, met him in the mountains. Impressed, Frémont complimented the burly Swiss who led them and the latter, Johann August Sutter, conducted Frémont to an eminence to behold New Helvetia, the largest richest one-man domain in the New World...
When Madame Sutter arrived, Sutter's gold had wiped out New Helvetia. She died of heart failure on the spot, lucky woman. The world, quite mad, had overrun the Sacramento Valley, tearing open its hills for gold, silver, platinum. Sutter's men deserted to wash gravel. His herds died, unmilked. His barns fell. His crops wasted. All his fat lands were squatted on, his fort occupied, by hordes of gold-mad grabbers who had shouted his name from the Mediterranean, across Panama, up to the Golden Gate; from Siberia, Japan, Russia, Sweden, up to the Golden Gate. Gunboats...
...awed him, but generally craggy heights and shining glaciers were obstacles to surmount, in record time, if possible. I strongly suspect that Suvaroff's Alpine Campaign, which he tells of in an essay by that name, interested him mainly because it took place in the most beautiful part of Helvetia, and because he admired the courage of those Russian lowlanders who bravely followed their general over unknown mountain trails in the darkness of the winter night...