Tschudi, AEGIDIUS

Tschudi, AEGIDIUS (1505-72), of Glarus, was a zealous Catholic. His great work is the Schweizerchronik, which, continued from 1470 by Johannes von Müller, was long the standard authority on Swiss history. Though it is proved to contain baseless legends and fables (some of them apparently his own invention), the work has great interest and literary merit, and has accurately preserved the text of many ancient documents which would otherwise have been lost. There are works on him by Fuchs (1805), Blumer (1871-74), and Herzog (1888). To the same family belongs JOHANN JAKOB VON TSCHUDI, the eminent traveller and naturalist, born at Glarus, 25th July 1818. After completing his studies at Leyden and Paris, he undertook (1838) a voyage round the world; but circumstances restricted his design to an investigation into the natural history and ethnography of Peru, where he remained for five years. He settled in Austria, and from 1866 till 1883 was Swiss ambassador at Vienna. He died 8th October 1889. His writings comprise works on the batrachians, the Fauna Peruana (1844-47), on the Quichua language, on Peruvian antiquities, a Peruvian drama, and sketches of his travels in Peru and the rest of South America.