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Title: A walk in the Grisons
Being a third month in Switzerland
Author: F. Barham Zincke
Release Date: June 9, 2023 [eBook #70947]
Language: English
Credits: Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WALK IN THE GRISONS ***
A THIRD MONTH
IN
SWITZERLAND
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
_THE DUTY and DISCIPLINE of EXTEMPORARY PREACHING._
Second Edition.
New York: C. SCRIBNER & CO.
_A WINTER in the UNITED STATES_;
_Being Table-Talk collected during a Tour through the Southern
Confederation, the Far West, and the Rocky Mountains, &c._
‘We have here a record of the travels of a sagacious and just-minded
man, who saw everything thoroughly, describes it in a perfectly
unprejudiced manner, and refrains from forcing upon us theories of his
own.’
PALL MALL GAZETTE.
London: JOHN MURRAY.
_EGYPT of the PHARAOHS and of the KHEDIVE._
Second Edition.
‘Mr. Zincke speaks like a man of rare powers of perception, with an
intense love of nature in her various moods, and an intellectual
sympathy, broad and deep as the truth itself.’--SATURDAY REVIEW.
_A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND._
‘There is quite enough in this little volume to arrest the attention
of anybody who cares for an hour’s intercourse with the mind of one
who has carefully pondered some of the deepest problems which affect
the physical well-being of his fellow-creatures.’--SPECTATOR.
_SWISS ALLMENDS, and a WALK to SEE THEM_;
_Being a Second Month in Switzerland_.
‘Here is a magician who can actually make the beaten tracks of
Switzerland more interesting than Magdala and Coomassie.’--EXAMINER.
SMITH, ELDER, & CO.: 15 Waterloo Place, London.
_A WALK_
IN THE GRISONS
BEING A
THIRD MONTH IN SWITZERLAND
BY
F. BARHAM ZINCKE
VICAR OF WHERSTEAD
AND CHAPLAIN TO THE QUEEN
_Rerum natura tota est nusquam magis quam in minimis_
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1875
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE.
The sketch contained in this third volume concludes the triptych of my
‘Months in Switzerland.’ The first volume was issued in ’73, the second
last spring. A separate volume has been assigned to each sketch. In the
original forecast of the work it was anticipated that sufficient range
could not be given to it in less than three such sketches. So far,
then, as that goes its design is completed.
My object has been to present a continuous picture of the scene,
endeavouring throughout to give to its human element such prominence
as the occasion might admit. That has now been done for some thousand
miles. Of this continuous picture about four hundred miles, these being
chiefly in the Grisons, are contained in the following pages.
In concluding the work I will ask my readers to recall two conditions
I propounded for their consideration at its commencement, as imposed
upon me by the nature of its subject, for, of course, the method of
treatment must always be that which the subject makes appropriate.
Of these the first is that fulness and minuteness of detail are
here, as in a _tableau de genre_, unavoidable and indispensable. The
character of the scenes and objects to be described, our familiarity
with them, and the nearness of our point of view are the grounds of
this necessity. Fulness and minuteness of detail are, again, required
for the sake of the constantly implied comparison with home scenes,
and with home life, which underlies the whole narrative, and is one
of the sources of whatever interest it may possess, just as it was at
the time with the excursions themselves. To this I will beg permission
to add what also I have said elsewhere, that in these volumes it is a
part of my aim so to take the reader along with me as to enable him
to reconstruct the excursions in his own mind, almost as completely
as if he had himself been one of the party. I, therefore, give the
narrative of all that was seen, and of all that what was seen brought
into my mind, not only from day to day, but almost from hour to hour.
I should have failed in this part of my aim, if the reader had come
to think that more had been seen than really was seen, or that my
opportunities were in any respect greater than they really were, or
that anything was grander, or more enjoyable, or in any way better,
than it really was. If I have succeeded by the method I have followed
in presenting a true picture, and if some, whose judgment I am glad to
find favourable, think the picture worth looking at, then this part
of my purpose is answered. Truth in these matters has a relative as
well as an absolute element: the latter, as it belongs to the objects
themselves, must needs be an unvarying factor, the former, as it is
coloured by the observing eye, cannot but be an ever-varying reflection
of times and persons. There are many things we of this day do not
see as those who were before us saw them; and those who are to come
after us will not see them as we see them. Hence the necessity that
each generation should have on all subjects, into which the varying
element largely enters, its own books; and this brings me to the second
condition of which I am desirous of reminding my readers, which is that
this work belongs to the category of those in which the writer’s own
impressions, feelings, and opinions are really the main part of what he
has, properly, to offer to his readers. He is not engaged in solving
some impersonal problem of science, or in discussing some question of
history, or of criticism, as impersonally as it may be possible to
discuss such questions, but in narrating how the natural scene, about
which all will have their own ideas, and how what he saw of everyday
life, about which every one will feel differently, impressed himself.
* * * * *
In the following pages I have thought it worth while again to invite
attention to the industry, thrift, helpfulness, and honesty of the
Swiss peasant proprietors, who are the basis and main stock of the
Swiss social system. Some study of them may be of use to us, because
we can in them trace up these solid sterling elements of character to
their source in the educative power of property, especially of property
in land; and the perception of the effects in them of this cause may
lead us to inquire whether the character of our own agricultural
labourers would not be raised, if they, too, were brought under the
educative influences of property. Probably nowhere in Europe, it may
be in the world, is the class that cultivates the soil so destitute
of property as in this country. He amongst our agricultural labourers
must be in an exceptionally good position who owns, or ever will own,
anything except his clothes, and a few pounds’ worth of old furniture.
To be in this way cut off from all hope of improving their condition
in life, and from the civilizing influences of property, and of the
pursuit of property, must, one cannot but think, have deteriorating
effects on the class. Should what we see elsewhere confirm us in this
supposition, then we may become disposed to inquire whether there are
not in this country some hindrances, as one cannot but imagine there
must be, to the acquisition of property in land by our agricultural
labourers; and whether the removal of such hindrances, supposing them
to have been discovered, would not have a tendency to engender in the
minds of this long disinherited class the idea of acquiring, and the
desire to acquire, some little property in land, and so to lead on to
their recovering the long-lost mental qualities necessary for enabling
them to live by the cultivation of small holdings. In the note at the
end of this volume I have endeavoured to show how the loss of these
mental qualities was brought about in them.
I said in the first volume of this work, when speaking of peasant
properties, that in these days both the man and the land can be turned
to better account. What I meant by this, as I there explained, was that
an able and energetic man has now opened to him more promising careers
than that of living by the cultivation of three or four acres, and that
these same few acres also might possibly now be made to yield a greater
amount of produce if cultivated scientifically, and with a liberal
application of capital. This may be quite true; still, if things had
their free course, we might come to find that many of our agricultural
labourers were capable of recovering the qualifications needed for
this kind of life, which, if we may judge from what we see in other
countries, is the natural desire and ambition of a peasantry; and, too,
it may be good for a nation so largely commercial and manufacturing as
ourselves to have so sturdy and stable a class among the ingredients of
its population.
And we may, perhaps, some day come to not dissimilar conclusions with
respect to the artizans of our towns. Property, and the pursuit of
property, may be found to be a remedy for much that we regret to see
in them, and it may be proved to be possible by moral and intellectual
training--their wages being already in very many cases sufficient
for this purpose--to qualify a fair proportion of them for attaining
to the possession of some little capital in money for investments of
one kind or another. This appears to be the natural, and, if so, then
the readiest and most generally available means for calling forth,
and strengthening in them, as in all men, some very valuable elements
of character. To this extent, and it is an extent that is far from
inconsiderable, property, and the efforts necessary for attaining
it, may prove in their case great humanizers. But for the initial
desire to acquire property the starting point of a certain moral and
intellectual condition is necessary. Roughs and wife-beaters have
no thoughts about property. And the vast sum that is year by year
squandered by our working classes on intoxicating drinks demonstrates
that, as the general rule, among them the idea of property is dim and
feeble. This, indeed, may be regarded as almost the distinguishing
characteristic of the working classes of this country. Reading,
writing, and arithmetic will not of themselves supply what is wanted.
They supply tools, and some materials; but tools and materials do
not teach us how to build. Training--moral and intellectual training
where what has to be built is a human life--will be requisite still.
With this to inspire and to guide them their efforts to acquire and to
retain property may contribute much towards making them good fathers of
families, and useful citizens, by creating in them habits of industry,
forethought, thrift, self-reliance, self-restraint, self-respect, and
respect for law and order.
F. B. Z.
WHERSTEAD VICARAGE:
_November 24, 1874_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Innertkirchen--The Susten--Andermatt 1
CHAPTER II.
Dissentis--Coire 19
CHAPTER III.
The Schanfiggthal--Peist--The Strela--Davos am Platz 37
CHAPTER IV.
Davosthal--Alveneu--The Schyn--Thusis--Hohen Rhätien 56
CHAPTER V.
The Via Mala--Schamsthal--Andeer 81
CHAPTER VI.
Aversthal 97
CHAPTER VII.
Juf--The Forcellina--The Septimer--Casaccia 126
CHAPTER VIII.
The Maloja--The Upper Engadin--Pontresina 149
CHAPTER IX.
The Roseg Glacier--Piz Languard--La Pischa--The Morterasch
Glacier--Pontresina 172
CHAPTER X.
Exceptional Germans--The Bernina House--The Heuthal--Livigno--Lapland
at Livigno--‘Mine Host’ 193
CHAPTER XI.
M. della Neve--Val di Dentro--Bormio--Val di Braulio--Santa Maria--The
Stelvio--Trafoi--The Ortler 219
CHAPTER XII.
Tauffers--Val Avigna--Cruschetta--Scarlthal--Tarasp 241
CHAPTER XIII.
The Lower Engadin--Süs--The Fluela--Davos Dörfli--The
Prätigäu--Schiersch--Grüsch 266
CHAPTER XIV.
The Rheinthal--Pfäffers--Ragatz--Coire--Dissentis--Val
Medels--Perdatsch 291
CHAPTER XV.
Val Medels--The Uomo Pass--Val Piora--Ritom--Altanca 312
CHAPTER XVI.
Airolo--Val Bedretto--All’ Acqua--The Cruina Alpe--The Corno
Glacier--The Gries Glacier--Down to Ulrichen--Conclusion 328
NOTE TO CHAPTER XIII. 351
INDEX 365
A THIRD MONTH
IN
SWITZERLAND.
CHAPTER I.
INNERTKIRCHEN--THE SUSTEN--ANDERMATT.
To see wide plains, fair trees, and lawny slopes,
The morn, the eve, the light, the shade, the flowers,
Clear streams, smooth lakes, and overlooking towers.--KEATS.
_July 29._--My destination was the Grisons. I wished to see something
of the aspects of nature and of the conditions of human life in that
elevated region of central Europe. I arrived at Interlaken in the
evening. It had been raining heavily all the afternoon. I found people
complaining that the weather had of late been unusually cold and wet.
_July 30._--Went to Meiringen to find a guide; or rather, as the
excursion I was contemplating would not require a guide, one who
might act as a light porter, and at the same time be in some sort a
companion. On the recommendation of the manager of the Reichenbach
Hotel, an acquaintance of the two last summers, to whom I had written
requesting him to secure for me a good and true man possessed of these
qualifications, I engaged Henri Leuthold, at a salary of 7 francs a
day, which was to be raised by whatever amount I might think fair, when
we had reached Pontresina, where living is dear, and guides are not fed
and lodged by the hotel keepers, which is the practice at Meiringen,
and many other places. This is a bad system, for, of course, the wine
and bread and cheese given to the guide on arrival, and the dinner
afterwards, are ultimately given by the traveller. It would be better
for all parties in all respects, as we are now discovering at home,
that all payments should be direct, instead of roundabout, and that
they should be made in money only. Both the payers and the paid will,
then, be making their calculations in one and the same denomination,
and there will be no room for misunderstandings. It rained more or less
all day.
_July 31._--At 12 A.M. the rain ceased, and I at once started for
Innertkirchen. Though so much rain had fallen, no sooner had it cleared
up than, thanks to the natural underdrainage of the land which obtains
throughout the greater part of Switzerland, the surface became clean
and dry. In passing I looked into the structure of the Kirchet, that
I might ascertain to what extent it is composed of old _moraine_
rubbish and of rock _in situ_. As seen from the Innertkirchen side,
it is clear that whatever there may be of the former can be only on
its summit, for just below that you see the undisturbed stratification
of the latter. I also looked at the existing deep and almost
perpendicular-sided channel of the Aare to the right of the Kirchet,
to judge whether it was due to a fissure of the mountain, or to the
cutting action of the stream. I came to the conclusion that, though so
deep and perpendicular, there is no evidence of any action but that of
the latter cause. It is quite clear that the channel in its lower part,
and for some way above the water, is entirely due to the recent erosion
of the stream. This being undoubtedly the case so far, we have only
to suppose that the cutting action of the water, which is now going
on before our eyes at the bottom of the ravine, formerly in remote
times had the same effect. What is now being done at the bottom was
once being done at the top; and so throughout from top to bottom. The
stream did not acquire its rock-excavating power recently. It would be
illogical to ask for some other agent, when we find one quite adequate
for the work that has been done, now doing precisely similar work on
the same spot. Work, too, of a more or less similar kind, together with
the presence of the same agent, is seen in every ravine in Switzerland.
We may, therefore, be sufficiently certain that the whole of this deep
perpendicular-sided channel was cut out by the existing stream. We
need not postulate an earthquake, or rend the mountain by any other
means. On the face of the ravine there are no ruggednesses and no
projections, excepting where pieces of rock have been thrown off by
the action of frost. You know that they have been thrown off because
the face of the rock is in these places less weather-stained, or
wholly unstained. Had the ravine been a rent, there would probably, in
whatever way it had been caused, have been many projections, and much
inequality of surface. On the other side, however, a question may be
suggested at this spot. The face of the mountain on the west side of
the bed of the old lake is cut down very precipitously. How was this
done? It could hardly have been the work of running water, for it is
continued from the top of the mountain down to considerably below what
was the level of the old lake. This may be due somewhat to glacier
action, somewhat to the action of frost, and somewhat to the wash of
the lake as it was subsiding. But whatever might have been the way in
which this was brought about, it does not affect the question of the
channel.
In the afternoon made a call on an old acquaintance at Unter Urbach,
one of the four villages in the old lake bed, which form the commune
of Innertkirchen. I found him, though a porter, yet the proprietor of
nearly four acres of good prairie. This land had been bought out of the
savings of his earnings as porter. First one acre was purchased. That
first acre was the great difficulty, for when it had been obtained,
money could be raised upon it to buy another piece. When that been paid
for partly by the good man’s earnings and partly by the produce of the
first piece, a third piece could be looked out for, and so on up to the
whole of the four acres, every subsequent purchase being more quickly
cleared than its predecessors. I heard the same story of another
acquaintance I had at Wrickel, the village in the north-west corner of
the old lake bed. Indeed this effort to acquire land is the mainspring
of the life of the peasants hereabouts. It is what sets in motion their
whole life. The better sort of men are all making this effort, are all
living for this purpose. It is the root of their industry, of their
painstaking, frugal, saving lives. The opportunities there are under
the Swiss system to acquire land give the land to those who deserve
to have it. The system acts as a winnowing process. It sifts out the
idle and profligate through the natural consequences of their idleness
and profligacy; and rewards the thoughtful, the self-denying, and the
hard-working through the natural consequences of their thoughtfulness,
self-denial, and hard work. It is a self-acting case of social, moral,
and intellectual selection.
It was very pleasing to contemplate how in the scene before me every
little scrap of ground had been turned to the best account. If a few
square yards could have been anywhere made or gained, the requisite
labour had not been grudged. For this purpose everything had been done
which ingenuity could have suggested, or hard work effected. We in very
many places are allowing the sea to gain from us all it can. They gain
from their lakes, and streams, and mountains all they can. Here every
man’s heart is in the land; with us no man’s: not the landlord’s, who
may never have seen it, except when he walked over it with his gun; not
the tenant’s, who regards it with the feelings of a passing occupier;
not the labourer’s, who thinks only of his wages, and regards the land
merely as the scene of his daily toil. For the casual beholder, it
has no suggestions but those of a food-factory. That it should be a
food-factory is certainly the first and most necessary use of the land,
and we should be glad to be assured that we were making the most of it
in this respect. It would, however, be more interesting, and perhaps
the better for us, if it had also some moral suggestions to make to
us. Here you see that men are thinking of it when they are rising up,
and when they are lying down, and while they are walking by the way,
that it shapes their lives, that it makes them what they are. These
facts and considerations are not a demonstration of the preferableness
of peasant proprietorship, but they are, I think, a demonstration of
one advantage, and that not an inconsiderable one, that is secured by
making the land accessible to all, which it never can be while each
generation is permitted so to settle and charge it as practically to
take it out of the market of the generation that will follow.
Having got through my visits I went with Leuthold to see the valley
of the Urbach. For this purpose we ascended the western mountain, and
having reached what to us was the commencement, but in nature the end,
of the valley, we had the upland village of Unterstock on the left. We
advanced up the valley for about an hour with grand mountain scenery
before us. Our object was not only to see the character of the valley,
and of its mountain ranges, but also to look at its winter stabling
for cows, that I might know how they are lodged and kept up here at
that season. For this purpose we went into several. As the stalls are
very low, and the cows closely packed, the temperature, whatever it may
be outside, can never be very severe within. When the cows have been
housed for the season, the men who have charge of them come up from
below every evening to milk them. They sleep in the hayloft; and having
again milked them in the morning, carry down the milk to the villages
of Innertkirchen. Should the weather prove bad, these men remain in
the high valley all day. To enable them to do this whenever requisite,
fuel, potatoes, and cheese are stored in each byre. To the potatoes and
cheese the cows add milk. As this is the arrangement adopted, it must,
doubtless, be under existing circumstances the best, though one would
have supposed that these daily journeys for and with the milk must
require far more labour than would be necessary for bringing down the
hay. What decides the question may be that labour is scarce and dear
in summer, but abundant and cheap in winter. If, however, the existing
mountain footpath could be made available for carts, the cows would
then probably be made in the autumn to bring down themselves and their
winter fodder.
I had had some reasons for looking forward to the little excursion upon
which I am now about to enter, and so I dwell for a moment on these
little incidents of my first afternoon, as one does on the first whiff
of a cigar, or the first sip of a glass of wine. He wishes to taste
to the full, and to assure himself of the good qualities of, what he
had been for some time anticipating. It would be disappointing if he
did not find, or imagine that he had found, the fruition equal to the
anticipation.
_August 1._--Off at 5 A.M. for Wasen by way of the Susten. The books
make it 26¹⁄₂ miles. This I think somewhat beyond the true distance,
though two English ladies assured me--they were the only English people
I found at the hotel at Hof--that on riding across it yesterday they
had found it more than fifty miles. It was a delightful walk, and
offered many elements of interest. As to the culture and vegetation;
they began with much variety. As we ascended, the walnut trees were the
first to disappear from the prairies and the roadside; then the plums
and apples. They were succeeded by the region of conifers with its
gradations; first the spruce, then the larch, last of all the cembra.
They in turn had to make way for the treeless upland pastures. In a
Swiss valley the kind of trees around you, or the absence of trees,
indicate the height to which you have ascended. They are a kind of
natural hypsometer. The thinning out of the villages, and _châlets_,
and prairies keeps pace with the thinning out of the species of trees.
The Gadmenbach was never far from the path. You often cross, or see on
the opposite side of the valley some blustering torrent, or some mere
thread of water, hastening to join it. Cliffs of naked rock appeared
at all elevations: sometimes protruded in the valley bottom below
you; sometimes higher up on its sides; at all events generally on the
summits in sight. At times we had glimpses of distant snowfields.
The soil, which the industry of many generations has accumulated and
preserved on the surface, is good on this, the Gadmen side of the
Pass, and so the predominant colour around us was green of varying
tints, generally the lively green of the prairies; at this time at its
liveliest, for the hay had lately been carried, and the second growth
was again springing up, without bents and seed stalks. There was enough
in all this pleasantly to feed the eye and the mind. With these objects
before you, you cannot but be kindly disposed towards every peasant
you meet, for you see how hard he must be toiling, as his fathers must
have done before him, to extort the means of living from the scene
which is giving you so much pleasure.
At the distance of an hour or two from Hof, a stream--I was told that
its name is Schwazbach--comes tumbling down its rocky course from the
mountain on your left, and, rushing under a bridge you cross, hurries
on to join the Gadmenbach a little below the bridge. It is composed,
in American phrase, of two forks, which unite themselves into a single
stream half-a-dozen yards above the bridge. At the point of the rocky
interposed peninsula grows a willow of many branches, and no main
trunk. The branches form angles with the stream of all dimensions, some
being erect, while some were on that day only just clear of the water.
My attention was first attracted by the little tree itself, which had
managed to establish itself in so conspicuous a situation, and one
so likely to have been undermined from either side. You have done
well, I thought, to hold on there so long. As I looked at it I found
that its branches were peopled with a horde of some hundreds of large
black caterpillars. Each was two or three inches long. If my boyish
entomological recollections are not at fault, we have not in England a
willow-feeding species of this kind. As I observed the colony, thinking
that the perpetual din and spray had done them no harm, I noticed
that all that were there were on the upper half of the tree. On the
lower half the younger leaves of every branch had been eaten off, some
completely, some partially, the oldest only being untouched, just as
was the case with the leaves of the branches of the upper part of the
tree; what, then, had become of those who had eaten them? Down to a
certain level every twig had its residents; below that level not one.
It was evident that the lower twigs, too, had lately been tenanted; but
where were their late tenants? They had not emigrated to the branches
immediately above the deserted ones, for those had no more occupants
than the topmost branches. Nor would any enemy have cleared off in this
regular manner those on the lower branches, and neglected those on the
upper ones. There could, therefore, be but one explanation. There had
lately been two or three days of continuous heavy rain. This must have
swollen our impetuous stream to an additional height of three or four
feet. Up to this height, then, the lower branches had been submerged,
and all that dwelt upon them swept away; just as might have been the
case with the exposed portion of some village of poor peasants, on
which an avalanche had fallen. Whether those who had lived in this
exposed quarter of the village had been better or worse Christians than
others would have had no effect in turning aside, or in bringing down
the avalanche, any more than analogous considerations had to do, as we
are told, either with the fall, or with the effects of the fall, of
the tower of Siloam. With our caterpillars, at all events, no theory of
misdoings, or shortcomings, is available. What, then, we call chance,
or accident, but which may be nothing of the kind--prevails among
caterpillars as well as among Christians. The avalanche falls, and
crushes half a village of Christians; the stream rises, and drowns half
a colony of sociable caterpillars. There is, however, this difference
between the conditions of the two; the caterpillar not having the
power of anticipating and guarding against many of the contingencies
of its lot, will not, probably, die of natural decay. Sooner or later,
in the present, or in the succeeding, stage of its existence, it will
fall a prey to some stronger insect, or to some bird or beast--these
went to feed the fish, or aquatic insects; but the Christian has that
faculty which made him a Christian, and which enables him to foresee
and provide against most of the accidents and chances to which he is
exposed; and so he has, or should, have, a fair chance of dying of
natural decay. The mischief is that he has not been taught to exercise
this faculty as much as he might, and ought; and that, therefore, he is
still liable to be carried off more frequently than need be by polluted
water, polluted air, overwork of body, or of mind, overfeeding, and
many other such, not accidents, but preventible causes, among which
must be reckoned his having placed his dwelling on a site exposed to
avalanches, or floods, or malarious exhalations. Perhaps the time will
come when not to do all that we have been permitted to do in the way
of providing against the action of such causes will be regarded as
irreligious, as a tempting of Providence, as a sinful neglect of the
laws of God.
And so I walked on and on, and up and up, pleasantly contemplating the
objects of the scene around, pleasantly spinning and weaving thought,
and, when tired of that, pleasantly talking to Leuthold. I had already
taken a liking to him. He was a clean-built, well-featured man, with
a gentle voice, and gentle thoughts. His wife had for some time been
in feeble health, and this seemed to be making him still more gentle
and thoughtful. I now recall one of his sayings; ‘If a man has health
and strength for his work, and is satisfied with his family, he has
the best riches.’ His trade was that of furniture-making, by which he
supported himself and his family during the winter. Not much can be
earned in this way at Innertkirchen; and, therefore, and, too, because
like his neighbours he was investing in land all he could save, he had
to live hard. His fare during the long winter was potatoes, milk, and
coffee, with meat only on Sundays. Of land, however, he had enough for
two cows. I was amused at his having brought with him his ice-axe, for
this would lead some of those we met to credit me with the intention
of essaying difficult ascents, though I was not contemplating anything
of the kind. It, however, indicated that he was himself ready for
such undertakings. He confided to me his intention of purchasing on
his return home some English volume, and of endeavouring by its aid
to acquire a knowledge of the language. The following question which,
after a pause of some moments, he put to me this morning will show that
he had already made a beginning in this study; ‘How many clocks will
you dine to-day?’
At last we reached the little inn of Stein, at the foot of the great
Stein glacier. We were here 6,122 feet above the sea, and about
1,300 below the Pass. For some time all that was bright, and soft,
and humanly pleasing in the scene had been dying out. On our left
we had lost the lofty ridge of the Gadmen Fluh, now screened by the
Wendenhorn, behind which, and so out of sight to us, it was rising
into the Titlis, its culminating point. On our right were grand
ravine-torn, and perpendicular-faced precipices. At the little inn
we found ourselves close upon the glacier. As this mighty mass has
been advancing for the last thirty years, you will think that in the
arrangements of inexorable Nature the days of the little inn are
numbered; and so as you sit outside, in the warm sunshine, a rock for
your table and seat, and the green turf for your footstool, with your
bread and cheese and wine before you, and with the herd of kine, some
quietly grazing around you, and some lying down, and meditatively
chewing the cud, you will feel as if the vast icefield beside and
above you were some cold-blooded, remorseless, living monster, that
is leisurely and irresistibly advancing in his own fashion to spread
himself over, and obliterate all around you. The turf, however, and the
little inn will not be unavenged, for the sun, whose warmth you are now
feeling so delightful at this altitude, or a diminution of pressure
from the snowfields above, will some day oblige the monster to recoil
again to his own proper domain of eternal cold and barrenness.
Having finished your bread and cheese, and _chopine_ of wine, and well
sunned yourself, your muscles will have recovered their tone, and you
will begin to make the last ascent along the side of the northern
mountain. The mighty monster is here a little beneath you, on your
right, as it were sleeping with one of his feet resting against the
mountain you are passing along, the other being to the west of the
rocky eminence before you. His vast body and shoulders are spread
out for many an acre between this eminence and the heights of the
Sustenhörner and Thierberg, on which reposes his snowy, shaggy head.
His hugeness, form, and position, make him worthy of far more notice
than he has as yet received. The reason why so few go to see him is,
I believe, that the books overstate the walk that is required for
going. Of this, if taken from the west, an hour may be struck off at
its commencement by starting from Hof instead of from Meiringen, which
reduces it to ten hours of not hard work even for a first walk, as
I found it this day. Or, if this be considered too much, it may be
divided into two easy stages, by sleeping at Stein; and who would not
be glad to sleep more than 6,000 feet above his usual level, and at the
foot of so grand a glacier?
Having reached the summit of the Pass, an entirely different scene
presents itself to your view. The aspects and colouring, and whole
character of the Meienthal are almost the reverse of those of the
Gadmenthal. It is but thinly clad with turf, which, too, is of sombre
tints. There is none of the lively green you have left behind you.
The forest is a long time in reappearing, and nowhere throughout do
the pines grow vigorously. Here on this side man has to struggle
more hardly to maintain himself. The villages are fewer and further
between. Wherever you turn bleakness and barrenness are the predominant
suggestions. This gives you new effects, and by simplifying the
mountain masses, makes them appear grander.
After three hours, or more, you see straight before you a somewhat
steep, half pine-clad ridge. You advance towards it, and at somewhat
over ten hours from Hof, including your halt at Stein, you find
yourself at Wasen in the valley of Uri, on the road to the St. Gothard,
and that the mountain which had lately been before you, and which is a
fine termination to your walk, is the western range of the Valley of
Uri.
_August 2._--Walked to Andermatt for breakfast. The building of the
new hotels I noticed last year at Göschenen, the northern entrance of
the St. Gothard tunnel, was going on as briskly as then. Of course,
before the railway is completed, there will be a post-road across the
Susten, and so that route will have become a feeder to these hotels;
and this new road will itself be fed by another from the Valais
over the Grimsel, and through the Haslithal; and so there will be a
considerable stream of people who, from that direction, will take the
rail at Göschenen. There will also be many who will for this purpose
come to the same point from the Grisons by way of Andermatt. Possibly,
therefore, they may not be building too many hotels. At all events the
tide of travellers in Switzerland is still rising, and probably will
continue to rise, for we cannot at present imagine any reason for its
subsiding, or point to any instances in which hotel building appears to
have been overdone.
At Andermatt a telegram from his wife was awaiting my good guide,
to tell him that if he wished ever again to see her alive, he must
immediately return home. As he showed it to me tears rose to his eyes.
Within five minutes of our arrival at Andermatt he was on his way back
to Hof. Poor fellow! In his solitary walk home he would have reason and
opportunity enough for recalling what he had yesterday said to me of
the place domestic happiness occupied, in his estimation, among the
constituents of the true riches. Though he had been with me only two
days, I had already come to regard him very favourably, and would have
trusted him farther than I could have seen him.
CHAPTER II.
DISSENTIS--COIRE.
He looks around,
And seeks for good, and finds the good he seeks.
WORDSWORTH.
My first business now was to look for some one to take Leuthold’s
place. Among the candidates who offered themselves I did not find one
whose appearance and style of talk suggested the probability of his
proving somewhat of a companion. I, therefore, despatched a telegram
to my wife, who was at Portresina, to send me by to-morrow’s post a
Poschiavo man, of whom some weeks back I had heard that he was desirous
of acting as my porter. I was not unwilling to try him, because he was
one of the class--a large and characteristic one in the Grisons--which
goes abroad to seek fortune. He had sought his for ten years, but not
with complete success, at the antipodes; and now having returned,
somewhat disappointed at the result of his quest, was for the present
open to any engagement that required only unskilled labour. Their own
country being too poor to find them employment, temporary emigration,
as most of us are aware, is resorted to by a large proportion of the
youth of the Grisons. This is the national tradition. In all the
capitals of the old and new world these temporary emigrants are found
engaged in the production and sale of pastry and confectionery, of
loaf-sugar and sugar-plums, of liqueurs and lemonade. My acquaintance
had endeavoured to amass the competency on which he might return
home, and which would entitle him to a place among the aristocracy
of Poschiavo, by the concoction of lemonade and ices at Sydney, and
at several of the New South Wales diggings. But what with fires, bad
debts, and bad building ventures at speculative diggings, which had
soon been deserted, he had not met with the success which generally
crowns Grison ambition; and so it had come about that he was now
maintaining himself, as chance enabled him, till he might recover heart
for a new effort. Having despatched the telegram for him to meet me
to-morrow evening at Coire, I went on in the afternoon by diligence to
Dissentis.
As we slowly ascended the zigzags which carry the road through the
carefully kept prairies immediately above Andermatt, the picture
presented to us was full of interest to an English eye. I went
over this ground in my ‘Month in Switzerland’ of last year, and in
my narrative of the scenes and incidents of that excursion I said
something of the history of the Oberalp alpe which we are now entering
on, and of the various ways in which it is at present turned to
account. I now again read the scene with undiminished interest. It
was thoroughly Swiss. The mountain side was so steep that skilful
engineering had been required to construct the road. With the exception
of two or three small patches of potatoes on the lower part, nothing
but grass could be grown. But how carefully had the grass been
cultivated! Though on the mountain flanks, which must originally
have been strewn with stones and rocks, not a stone was to be seen,
and only a few protruding rocks remained, which were so large as to
defy removal. Nowhere was there a noxious weed, or a bush. The smooth
emerald-green felt of turf was spread out everywhere, frowned upon by
overhanging craggy summits, whose work of centuries had now been all
undone; or rather what was obstructive in that work had been undone,
and what might be made serviceable had been turned to account. The
showers of stones they had been sending down through all those long
ages to bury the little soil they had helped to form, had by the labour
of successive generations of peasant proprietors been all removed.
There was nothing now that could obstruct the stroke of the scythe, or
the possible growth of a blade of grass. Some of the summits were still
streaked and patched with snow, which suggested that the frost, which
rends the rocks, was up there seldom idle. Along the grassy slopes were
no walls or hedges. Only where a boundary mark might be required, a
stake had been driven into the ground. These rose but a few inches
above the surface. Here and there might be seen a hay grange; but not
many of them, for in the winter the people hereabouts are all collected
into the little town. This, from the first rise, shows as a cluster
of sombre gray houses, amongst which two churches stand pre-eminent.
The season was late this year, and so on the grassy slopes, some of
them very steep, were to be seen busily employed in spreading, or in
collecting the hay several women. They were unshod, for here people
are too chary of whatever costs money, to wear shoes when they can do
without them. On their heads they had orange kerchiefs. The men at
this season are most of them dispersed far and wide in their different
summer employments, by which they will earn a great part of what
will support their families in the long winter; and so the haymaking
devolves in some places almost entirely on the women. To-day as they
stirred it about they made the air fragrant with its scent, that air,
which around us was so purely translucent, but which above our heads
seemed to solidify into a firmament of indigo.
The effect of the scene upon you is enhanced by the sense of your being
so many thousand feet above your ordinary level. You are, however,
still going up, and the mown sward is shrinking into Alpine pasture.
The haymakers now at a distance below show like pigmies. The little
town is now no longer sombre gray, but has in the sunlight, and by the
distance, become gleaming white.
As we approached the lake on the summit of the Pass we saw that much
turf had lately been cut for the long cold winter. Up here nature gives
no wood for fuel. Fortunately, however, the climate is not unfavourable
to the growth of plants that in suitable situations produce peat;
though there is considerable difficulty in drying the peat sufficiently
to render it combustible. To effect this we found it set up on rocks,
or, where these could not be found, on inclined banks from which the
rain would quickly run off. I was sorry to see that there was much
soil and sand in this peat, and that, therefore, it was not of the
best kind for producing heat. Still it is the only fuel the locality
supplies; and without it, such even as it is, fewer people could live
at Andermatt, because in that case the cost of a prime necessary of
life would be much increased.
At the head of the lake you are on the top of the Pass, and enter the
Grisons. At first, for some distance, you descend rapidly; and may
think, as you often have occasion to think on Alpine roads, and, too,
with far more reason than here, that the traveller has some need of
faith in the skill of the driver, in the excellence of the materials of
the carriage and harness, and in the training and sure-footedness of
the horses. For some time the road is down rather poor Alpine pastures,
meagre, steep, and rocky: but as we are not looking at the scene with
the eye of a Lincolnshire grazier, we are glad to think that these
meagre-looking steep and rocky pastures will supply many a family with
good milk and cheese, a part of the latter being convertible into
such of the necessaries of their humble lives as they cannot produce
themselves. And are there not grand mountain summits around you? And
is not the valley before you the cradle of the famous Rhine? And are
not all these mountains sending down affluents to the already vigorous
infant? These are the thoughts with which you begin the descent.
You continue the descent, and in due time come to the first village.
You then understand more fully than before the value of the
meagre-looking, steep, and rocky pastures. In the way of cultivated
human food nothing even here can be attempted but potatoes. For
anything else it is still too high, cold, and wet; and the few potatoes
will at the best be very poor, small, watery, immature; and a frost
may at any time prevent their reaching even these degrees of all
but worthlessness. There must, however, be a beginning, and these
industrious people are not slow in making it. A little lower down you
come upon attempts at cultivating in sheltered places with good aspects
rye and barley. It is now August, but here the rye and barley are not
yet in bloom. They are still green and growing; the ear, however, has
just got out of the stem: that is as yet all. If these crops should
ever get so far as to be worth harvesting, you see lofty frames, like
monster clothes-horses, with many bars, upon which the sheaves will be
fastened to improve the poor peasants’ chances of drying and hardening
the grain sufficiently for grinding. You will see, too, that these
growers of rye and barley under difficulties are now busy in attempting
to make hay under similar difficulties, and in a similar fashion. The
mown grass is not spread out on the ground to dry; that would be too
wet for such a purpose; but it also is arranged on frames, only of a
different construction. Each is formed of a post rising about five feet
above the ground, through which are passed two or three bars at right
angles to each other. Each bar has two arms, and each arm projects
from the post about three feet. On these arms the hay is loaded into a
kind of cock, which has this arrangement of the post and bars for an
internal skeleton. It is thus lifted off the damp ground, and is so
held up throughout by the bars, or arms, as to be completely pervious
to the air. In this way it is made in a ventilated cock; and when a
fine day comes, the women come, and carry it home in large hempen
sheets, and with joyful and thankful hearts: for are they not carrying
home what will give their little ones milk in the long winter? And up
here their little ones could not live without that milk.
As you approach Dissentis you see not only that the breadth of
cultivable land has much increased, but also that you have descended
into a more genial stratum of climate. Wheat, and even millet, have
put in an appearance on the scene. Here, in favoured situations, I
found the former so advanced that it seemed to be beginning to show
symptoms of a disposition to change colour.
As two or three hours of daylight still remained I walked down the
banks of the stream that descends from the Acletta valley, that I
might see its junction with the Rhine, for here the Rhine, of course,
occupies a prominent place in one’s thoughts, for has it not a
prominent place in the history of the Roman, the French, and the German
Empires, and in the history, too, of the greatest captain of each--the
great Julius, the great Napoleon, and the great Moltke? Behind it, as
a natural and national bulwark, and on its banks, the German people
from the beginning of their known national existence, were growing to
maturity, and organizing themselves. If the history of the white race
be regarded as a whole, this Rhine stands out as the most historic of
all its rivers. Much has directly resulted from its being what it is,
and where it is. Its absence would have so modified the history of the
race as to have brought about a state of things widely different from
that of to-day. The stream I was now tracking down to it--one of the
first threads from which, as it were from so many roving machines, its
first strand is spun--has below the town cut out for about a mile or
less a deep ravine bed, along the rocky channel of which it tumbles,
and twists itself, in its haste to incorporate itself with the nascent
trunk of the famous river. It seemed by its bluster and haste to be
emphasizing its desire to become a part of it, and a participant in its
renown. The actual junction was achieved a little beyond the ravine,
in a more quiet style. The impetuous affluent is now no longer in a
hurry, but will taste to the full the contentment of the consummation
of the hitherto so eagerly sought union. At this point were several
trout-fishers. Up then almost to its source this famous stream is rich
in fish. Its banks will soon be rich with vineyards.
As I had loitered for some time on the banks of the young Rhine, and of
its affluent, the evening was closing in when I returned to Dissentis.
As I passed up the main street I overtook the female swineherd of the
place bringing home for the night the pigs of Dissentis. There were
four or five score of them. She herself brought up the procession that
none might loiter behind. She had been tending them all day in the
ravine just mentioned, which was incapable of cultivation, and on some
stony irreclaimable waste land on the Rhine bank. Each porker knew his
own home in the town. Some ran on in advance of the herd to get as
soon as possible to the supper they knew would be ready for them. Some
did not separate themselves from the herd till they had arrived at the
familiar door. These more quiet-minded members of the herd probably had
no expectation of a supper prepared for them, and were, therefore,
still thinking of the grassy pasture from which they had just been
driven off. The swine were followed, at no great interval, by the
goats with stiffly distended udders. They, too, dispersed themselves
in the same fashion, from the desire to be promptly relieved of their
burden. After the goats, last of all, came the deliberately stepping,
sober-minded cows. The tinkling of their bells was heard over the whole
of the little town. In a few minutes the streets were cleared: every
man, woman, and child appeared to have followed the animals into the
houses to give them their supper, or to draw the milk from them, as
the case might be; or at all events to bed them for the night. Thus
do these hard-pressed peasants from their earliest years learn to
treat their dumb associates kindly, almost as if they were members of
the family, to the support of which they so largely contribute. There
can be few people in Dissentis who do not begin, and end, each day in
company with them. How familiar must they be with the ways and the
wants of the egoistic pig, of the self-asserting, restless goat, and
of the gentle, patient cow! The book of nature, too, is always open
before them, and they are ever interested students of its pages. From
hour to hour they observe the changes of the heavens, and consider what
they import, for to them they import a great deal. How their little
crops, too, are looking they note day by day, for the time that will
be allowed for bringing them to maturity will be so short, that the
loss of sunshine for a few days causes some anxious thoughts. This
dependence upon, and close contact with, nature is a large ingredient
in their education.
_August 3._--Opposite to my hotel was the public fountain of Dissentis.
The functions of a Swiss fountain resemble those of an Eastern well.
To it come daily all the women of the village for the water they will
require for their families. It has, however, other uses besides that of
supplying the water that will be needed within the house. The linen,
the milk vessels, and the cooking utensils of the village are for the
most part washed at the fountain, for it would be hard work to carry
home all the water that might be wanted for these purposes. Here, too,
the daily news of the village is discussed, and put into circulation.
This morning there was a stranger seated on the bench in front of the
Hotel de la Poste, observing those who came to the Dissentis fountain.
As to their personal appearance, it was evident that the hard work and
poor fare of many generations had not dwarfed the race, for those who
came were generally above what we should regard as the middle height.
Their features, however, as might have been expected, were somewhat
hard. Their dress was sombre: they are not a people who much affect
colour. Their _coiffure_ was simple: upon it not much time or care had
been bestowed. Their _chaussure_ at this early hour was with most of
them that of nature. In their manner there was not much of liveliness,
not, I suppose, because that would have been deemed unbecoming in
public, but probably because they might not have been disposed to it.
The hardness of their lives must bring with it some hardness of manner.
These good women had already been up some hours, milking the cows and
goats, and providing their husbands’ and children’s breakfasts; and
this might have taken out of them some of that freshness of feeling
that would have been in keeping with the freshness of the morning. They
might, too, have been desirous of getting as quickly as possible to the
hay-field, and the prospect of the hard work there awaiting them might
have had something to do with making them grave and taciturn.
The telegraph bureau is on the ground floor of the hotel. Here the
instrument, as is generally the case in Switzerland, was in charge
of a young woman. What would the last generation in the valley, or
the abbots and monks of their forefathers’ time, have thought of a
young woman of Dissentis earning her livelihood by keeping Dissentis
in instantaneous communication with all Europe, the new world, and
the antipodes? When the locomotive and marine engine were invented
man began to move to and fro upon the earth. This movement, however,
is still only at its beginning. When the electric telegraph was
invented all the world was enabled to converse with all the world.
This conversation, too, is still only at its beginning. And yet it is
to these two agencies that we must attribute the rapidity with which
events march in these times. But as this rapidity is so great at the
beginning what are we to suppose that it will be a century hence?
This is what no man can imagine. The astounding character of the last
war in Europe was due to the railway and the telegraph. Whatever at
this moment most engrosses attention, and agitates thought, as for
instance the organization of the working classes, the rapid combined
action of the leaders of aggressive Ultramontanism, and even the recent
development in ‘leaps and bounds’ of the commerce of the world, are
mainly due to the same causes. And if one of these causes is more
potent than the other, it is that all the world can now converse
with all the world, because it is this that in these days enables
for any purpose a whole kingdom, a whole continent, or the whole
world, to organize itself. We may compare the rapidity with which
these inventions have been turned to account with the snail’s pace at
which letters, the most fruitful of all human inventions, have been
manifesting their powers and uses. For how many thousands of years
have they been working for the overthrow of ignorance, superstition,
and injustice! It is true that in this work mighty advances have been
made: yet when we survey the whole field we see that hitherto only so
much has been done as to give assurance that a great deal more will
be achieved in the future. What has been accomplished gives us ground
for the hope that it is but a glimpse of what is to come. They have
done, or at all events have rendered possible the doing of, almost all
that has been done for us. What we notice is that it seems to have
been done so slowly. Perhaps the electric telegraph by collecting and
disseminating intelligence, and enabling people everywhere to converse
with each other, is destined to lighten this reproach of letters, that
they have not been so rapidly or widely fruitful as might have been
expected.
At Dissentis the magician who manipulated this instrument of
instantaneous communication with all the world, was a little body,
very little, with very gentle voice and manner. By the side of the
instrument she was working had been placed a bouquet of flowers,
white marguerites, and red geraniums, with a carnation or two--a
flower you see everywhere in Switzerland, generally in a pot, or box
at the _châlet_ window, for the Swiss are as fond of it, and tend it
as lovingly, as the modern Greeks. These flowers much brightened the
aspect of things, and took off from their office look. On my asking
for a _billet_ for the 10.30 A.M. diligence for Coire, the little body
filled it in, and handed it to me made out in my proper name. The
traveller, presuming on a previous conversation, commented upon this.
‘Now I see that you are in every respect a little Fairy. You know
everything.’
_Little Fairy._ ‘It is that in these days little Fairies must learn to
read, and yesterday evening your _sac_ was left for some time in my
bureau.’
_Traveller._ ‘Yes. But in learning to read letters they have not
forgotten their old skill in reading what is meant by a present of
flowers.’
_Little Fairy._ ‘Flowers fade, and so sometimes does their meaning.’
On the opposite side of the road to the hotel _Condrau de la Poste_,
is, to the left of the fountain, the hotel _Condrau de la Couronne_.
The latter Condrau is the editor of the Romansch newspaper which is
published at Dissentis. I was told that he was a well-educated man, had
for some time been tutor in a French family, and was entitled to write
himself Professor. I took away with me a copy of that week’s impression
of his paper. I found that it was not difficult by the aid of Latin and
Italian to make out the meaning of the printed Romansch of Dissentis,
though probably, if I had heard it read, I should not have understood
one word in ten.
At 10.30 was under weigh for Coire. The day was fine, and the
conductor arranged a seat for me on the roof upon the luggage. The
drive was pleasant and interesting. I can, however, only give of it
such generalities as might have been seen from my seat on the roof.
Of course the mountains most obtrude themselves on the eye. They vary
much. Some are grassed, some are wooded to the top; some show much
naked rock; of these some terminate in jagged points, some in rounded
domes; some that you see through gaps in the bounding ridges gleam with
sun-lit snowfields. As a rule the valley is wide, and so its bounding
ranges stand back to such a distance that they can be well taken in by
the eye from bottom to top, and in combination with their neighbours.
They can be leisurely and sufficiently seen.
Another point observable in this grand long valley is the regular
improvement in the vegetation which accompanies your descent. This
has been already noted as far as Dissentis. In reaching that place
yesterday afternoon we had passed from the treeless Alpine zone of
altitude down to that of late maturing wheat. When you reach Coire,
thirty-eight miles lower down, wheat has been superseded by maize,
and you are among vineyards, which had begun to show themselves seven
miles higher up at Reichenau. Between Dissentis and Reichenau different
kinds of fruit trees, and of garden vegetables successively appeared on
the scene. As the fruit trees began to come in, the frames for drying
wheat, and other kinds of grain, began to die out. Above Reichenau
are some naked glaring ravines cut deep into the white calcareous
soil. Here the bottom land has so widened out as to give space for
knolls and hills, some in wood, some in grass. As you descend an
improvement, corresponding to that in the vegetation, is simultaneously
observable in the houses and villages. As nature becomes more kindly
and bountiful, human life becomes more varied, more easy, and more
embellished. Long before you reach Reichenau good roomy substantial
houses begin to appear in the small towns. Many of these are surrounded
with gardens, of which you see nothing in the higher part of the
valley, but which after they have become possible continue to improve
all the way down. At last at Coire there is about the main street an
air of something that gives it a not quite unfamiliar aspect. It seems
as if a third-rate piece of Paris had been transported to the valley,
and there dropped between the mountains.
At Coire, if you have some time before you, and nothing else to do, you
will perhaps go to the Cathedral. You will there hear the old story
of Saints and wonders, as if there had been better men and greater
wonders a thousand years ago than there are now. Here the Saint was a
British king, of a date when there were no kings in Britain. You will
have met with British and Irish Saints elsewhere. You ask why these
legends of British and Irish Saints of that day, but no Saints now?
Have we degenerated so much from our fathers? I trow not. We are not
worse than were they. We may, perhaps, be somewhat better. How, then,
has it come to pass that these islands have ceased to be a factory
of Saints? Is it because other people have at last come to know us?
No longer are we so separated from them by the sea as to be in their
eyes almost another world; and as they have come to know us they have
arrived at the discovery that we are very much like themselves, at
all events in not being more productive of Saints than themselves. In
those times people wanted the idea of a nation of Saints. This they
could not imagine of their wicked selves, or of any of their still more
wicked neighbours, for they very well knew of themselves and of their
neighbours, that they were always trying to overreach, and plunder,
and knock on the head, and oppress each other; and so they localized
this idea beyond sea, and the British Isles became a kind of realized
Christian Atlantis. Tacitus, because the Romans were vicious, invested
the distant Germans with a halo of rude virtues. For much the same kind
of reason did the ages of ignorance and violence go to the British
Isles for so many of their Saints.
CHAPTER III.
THE SCHANFIGGTHAL--PEIST--THE STRELA--DAVOS AM PLATZ.
Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;
Where rolled the ocean thereon was his home;
Where a blue sky, and glowing clime extends,
He had the passion and the power to roam;
The desert, forest, cavern, breaker’s foam
Were unto him companionship.--BYRON.
_August 4._--My Grison circumnavigator--for he had gone to Sydney by
the Cape, and returned by the Horn--had been due at Coire last night at
9.30. A violent storm, however, on the Albula, and which had extended
to Coire, had delayed the post till past midnight, and so I had gone
to bed before his arrival. At 6 o’clock this morning he introduced
himself to me. The first impression was not quite what he intended it
to be. His general get-up was elaborate, and far in advance of mine.
Everything upon him was new, from his stylish billycock hat, which
afterwards he told me he had bought in Paris, to his boots which
were fitter for the carpet than for the road. His outer apparel was
of good broadcloth. His umbrella was of silk. As I was noting these
particulars at the first glance, he improved their effect by telling
me that he considered the 10 francs a day, for which he had agreed to
carry my _sac_, insufficient. This I at once cut short by assuring him
that I was of a different opinion; and that, if he had any intention of
accompanying me, he must be ready to start for the Strela as soon as it
ceased to rain. At 10.30 the sun burst through the previously unbroken
canopy of dripping cloud, which withdrew with a magical rapidity that
made one wonder what had become of it, and where it had gone. There was
no corresponding promptitude in the appearance of the circumnavigator,
for the sun had been shining half an hour when he again presented
himself at my hotel (I had not seen him since the interview at 6
o’clock), and with overdone complaints of the cost of his breakfast,
and with a bad grace, having taken my _sac_ in one hand, his silk
umbrella being in the other, we were off.
It is a good practical rule to be prepared for the worst, without at
all taking it for granted that it will come to that, for things need
seldom turn out as bad as they may be made to look, or as they may be
forced into becoming. So I began by assuming that all was just as it
should be, and would so continue. Our road was at first up hill, and
the sun was full on our side of the valley. This, and the moisture
with which the air was laden, for the wet on the surface of the
ground, and on every dripping object, was being rapidly evaporated,
made it unusually warm walking. I foresaw the good effect this might
have, for I anticipated that it would bring my circumnavigator to a
consciousness of his unfitness for his work, and so probably would lead
him to correct the estimate he had lately been setting forth of the
value of his prospective services. What I had anticipated was not long
in coming. He soon had to take off his broadcloth coat. Within an hour
he called a halt. Before the second hour was out his boots had become
so pinching and galling that he had begun to limp. He never again was
so beaten as on this day; indeed, he continued to improve during the
whole of the time he remained with me, though to the last he was far
from having acquired the power of doing well an ordinary day’s work;
and this often obliged me, as it did to-day, to end the day’s march
short of the point to which I should have been glad to have extended
it; but from this time nothing more was heard of his having underrated
the value of his services.
From Coire to the Strela my road this day lay along the Schanfiggthal.
As to the road itself it was still in process of construction. The
first moiety had for some time been completed, but not much used, as
was evident from the metal not yet having been compacted together.
Here the construction had been easy. The latter moiety was in a very
incomplete state, for here the difficulties in the way of constructing
a road had been great; and, as we saw to-day, there will be still
greater difficulties in the way of its maintenance. The heavy rains of
last night, and of the foregoing week, had made this manifest to the
contractors, for in some places, where the new road had been merely
gouged out of the flank of the mountain, it had been entirely swept
away; and this had been so done that it would be far more difficult
to replace it than it had been to form it in the first instance. The
mountain side is here composed of small incoherent slaty _débris_,
inclined at the greatest angle at which such materials, when aided by
the turf and forest upon them, are capable of withstanding the wash
of the rain torrents. In forming the road the turf, or forest, had
been cut through, and the angle above and below the road enlarged.
Both the angle, therefore, and the retaining conditions had been made
less favourable. Of this it was a necessary consequence that when the
rain torrent came down it should in many places cut through the road,
as it would through so much sand; indeed more easily, for the small
incoherent slaty _débris_ is more pervious to water; and should leave
incipient ravines sometimes across, sometimes even in the direction of
the road. In some places, too, where the road had been built up, the
substructions had been swept away. All this which was disastrous to
the contractors was not without some interest for those who now had to
pass over it, for it presented good opportunities for observing the
nature of the soil, and the action of running water upon it, and so
made clear what it was that gave to the valley its peculiar character.
On a long new slope where the road, in consequence of the removal of
the turf, had been completely carried away, and the whole mountain side
set in motion, I had to find my way across the steep, loose _débris_,
where if I had stumbled upon it, or it had slipped beneath my weight, I
should probably have rolled down many hundred feet to the valley below.
Again in a ravine, where a bridge was to be built, the late flood had
so cut away the further side as to leave a perpendicular face of some
twenty feet in height. From the left corner of the bottom of this to
the right corner of the top I had to walk up a diagonal ledge, nowhere
wider than the width of the foot, this being all that the workmen had
for the present thought it necessary to make for themselves. If I had
slipped from this ledge, or if it had given way under me, I should have
fallen on the rocks of the torrent: of its giving way, however, I had
no fear, for I saw that some of the workmen must have tried it with two
or three more stones weight than I had to place upon it. Of this road
one may say further that not only will it be very costly to maintain,
but that the population of the valley is so small, that if it is not
carried over the Strela to the Davosthal, it can never be much used. We
may, however, be sure that if maintained as far as Langwies, to which
point it will soon be completed, it will not be allowed permanently
to terminate there; for the Swiss are very wisely, and with much skill
and cost, rapidly opening up to the traveller every valley that can be
taken in hand by the engineer. This is one of the conditions of the
continued growth of their prosperity. Every valley that is opened soon
has its hotels; and the increase of travellers the hotels attract, and
the concomitant increase in the value of the land of the valley, before
long many times recoup the cost of the road. No people understand
so distinctly as the Swiss that to improve means of communication,
whether footpaths, post roads, or railways, is to improve the most
indispensable of the material conditions of progress.
And now a word about the Schanfiggthal itself. If not unique in its
character, still it exhibits so interestingly the characteristics of
the class of valleys to which it belongs as to make it well worth a
visit. What you first notice is that the new road, it was so with the
old horse path, is always at a great height, perhaps never less than
1,000 feet, above the bottom of the valley. A little observation soon
reveals why you have here, and must have, a high-level road. The valley
is formed on each side by a long precipitous _talus_ of the loose
_débris_ already mentioned. These slant from their respective ridges
down to the channel of the Plessur, in which they meet. The question
then arises, Why is not the road here, as in other valleys, on the
banks of the stream? The answer is that it is impossible to carry it
along the bottom, or anywhere near the bottom, because every small
affluent, or torrent, that descends from the lofty ridges on the north
or south side, has cut in its rapid course down to the Plessur a deep
ravine. Some of these ravines are of an extraordinary depth, and they
all become wider and deeper the nearer they approach to the bottom. A
road, therefore, is only possible at such a height as will enable it
to turn, or cross, these ravines, where they have not yet become of an
impracticable depth and width, and where it will not be liable to be
carried away every spring, or at any time by any storm that may occur
even at midsummer. Hence the necessity of the high-level road. That
it is something peculiar is forced on your attention by the scenery
throughout the valley being presented to you from an unusual point of
view. The Plessur is generally quite out of sight and hearing. You are
always looking down slopes of prairie or forest, which are seldom open
to the bottom. And the point blank of the opposite ridge is always
its middle height. All this is new to you; and will give in your
memory a character of its own to the green, well wooded, ravine-seamed
Schanfiggthal.
Another particular of interest the Schanfiggthal supplies is an
instance of what geologists call earth-pillars. Some of these I saw by
the wayside in the last ravine before entering Castiel, or St. Peter’s,
I forget which: the locality, however, may be so described as to be
readily identified. They are to be seen from the new road about 200
yards beyond the chief ravine it crosses in its whole course. It had
just made a bend to the left to cross this ravine, and then had faced
to the south to recover the line of its general eastward direction.
Just before it resumes this direction, that is to say just as it is
about to leave the left side of the ravine, there are visible, some
way below you, on the opposite side of the ravine, several of these
earth pillars. Some appeared thirty feet, or more, in height. Some had
still on their tops the boulders which had led to their formation. Of
course they are situated so high above the torrent of the ravine as
to be quite out of its reach, even at the times of its greatest rise;
for had it ever touched them it must have undermined and washed them
away. Obviously their formation is due exclusively to the action of
rain. It must commence the work on the side of a ravine, above high
torrent mark, by washing away the soil around a boulder. A beginning
having thus been made, the storms of centuries continue the work;
the water of every rainfall runs off the boulder, and cuts down a
little deeper into the soil beneath, carrying down into the torrent
below what has been cut away. This action does not cut down the soil
beneath the boulder-cap quite perpendicularly, so that as the height
of the pillar increases, or rather as the soil is more cut into, the
base of the pillar becomes somewhat enlarged. Its form, therefore,
is that of an exceedingly steep-sided cone. The interest of these
earth pillars is not confined to the fact that they are a result of so
long a continuance of rain action, for as we look at them we cannot
but be reminded of some other conditions that were requisite for
their formation, such as suitableness of situation, and soil of the
requisite texture. Other instances of the formation are to be found
in Switzerland elsewhere, and there may be some others even in this
valley; I believe, however, that nowhere in Europe is it exhibited on
so large a scale, and with such lofty and perfectly formed specimens as
in the Tyrol, in the neighbourhood of Botzen.
To one coming from Coire the first village of the Schanfiggthal is
Maladers. The maps letter the name conspicuously to indicate the
importance of the place. We, however, passed through it, or by it,
without seeing a house. We now, in the afternoon, passed through Peist
from end to end without seeing a soul. It was now the height of the
busy season, and all the people were up or down the mountain making
hay, and the shutters of all the houses were closed. As to the little
inn, or _châlet_ which occasionally does duty for one, it, as is
frequently the case in the Grisons, had no name or sign; and so we had
looked at it, as at the other houses of the place, without observing in
it any indications of likelihood for the discharge of this function.
At last an old woman, who had heard our shouts, put her head out of an
upper window, and gave us the information we needed. This unobtrusive
inn was on the old road parallel to, and a few paces below, the new
road. We were admitted by a young woman who had been left in charge
of the house. The room into which she showed us was small, low, and
square, with two very small square windows in the Grison, that is to
say the embrasure, style. The little light they might have admitted was
lessened by the favourite branching carnation, and a plant of ivy, in
pots. Our first question was what could she give us to eat? Her reply
was, ‘meagre cheese and dried beef.’
‘Of course you have milk.’
‘No.’
‘Can you get some?’
‘Perhaps.’ For she knew of a neighbour who might have a cow at home in
the village. All the rest were on the alpe.
In about half an hour the meagre cheese, dried beef, and milk were
set before us, for I saw that in such a house it would be better that
I should invite the circumnavigator to take his meals with me: it
would be soothing to his Australian sense of the dignity of man, and
would save trouble to the good people. I afterwards came to a similar
conclusion with respect to the second bed in my bedroom, for I could
not suppose that there was any other room in the house available for
guests to sleep in.
As to the meagre cheese, and dried beef, during the following three
weeks, as must be the case with every pedestrian through the by ways
of the Grisons, I had many opportunities of weighing their merits
and demerits, undisturbed by any simultaneous consideration of other
comestibles. The meagre cheese is made of skimmed milk in places
where a market can be found for butter. Peist sells its butter at
Coire; and so the good people of the place, and their few visitors,
have to content themselves with cheese from which the butter has been
extracted. It is not positively bad; but this negation of badness is
its only merit. The dried beef is a production of the Grisons, for
which they are indebted to their climate. At the altitude of their
valleys, the air is so dry that for nine months out of the twelve
meat has no tendency to decomposition. Availing themselves of this
favourable condition they kill in the autumn the beef and pork they
will require in the ensuing year. It is slightly salted and hung up
to dry. Nothing more is done to it, except eating it. In three or
four months time it is not only dried, but also cooked, that is to
say the air has given it all the cooking it will ever receive. It
has become as dry and hard as a board, and internally of the colour
of an old mahogany table. Externally there is nothing to suggest the
idea of meat; it is covered with cobwebs, dust and mould, and is
undistinguishable from fragments of the mummies of the sacred bulls
taken from the catacombs of the Serapeum at Memphis. When your host
brings from his cellar the leg of the mummy of a Grison cow, shrunk
to the dimensions of the human limb, and tells you that it is to be
your dinner, you are disposed to advise him to take it to the trustees
of the British Museum. He is, however, about to prepare some for your
repast, and you watch the process with curiosity. It is a very simple
one: the material is cut across the grain with a very sharp knife in
shavings no thicker than writing-paper. Were it cut the length of the
fibre it would be as unmanageable in the mouth as a piece of whipcord,
or a fiddle-string. Curiosity again, somewhat stimulated by necessity,
for the only alternative is the meagre cheese, at last impels you,
with many misgivings, and after much deliberation, to carry one of the
shavings to your mouth. After a week or two’s experience you will begin
to think that it is not badly flavoured, nor unusually repugnant to the
process of digestion.
It was not, however, my first essay in dining on mummy beef which
brought me to this negative estimate of its qualities. My dinner,
therefore, to-day was but a frugal one. While its remains were being
removed, our host, to whom in some way or other our arrival had been
communicated, entered the room, and seating himself on a chair which
he had placed in the middle of it, lighted his pipe, as a preliminary
to conversation. This presented an opportunity for inquiring whether
the resources of the village could be made to supply a supper that
might in some degree compensate for the shortcomings of the dinner. To
every question a decided negative was returned. There was, however, one
suggestion the good man could make. A neighbour had a hen; she might
not be unwilling to part with the creature for a proper consideration;
and there would be time to make it into something for supper. I was
horrified. I looked on the author of the suggestion, seated in the
middle of the room, in his blouse and with his pipe in his mouth, as an
ogre, and who, besides being an ogre himself, was offensively taking me
for a brother ogre. That this unprepared hen, the pet of the children,
and the familiar acquaintance of all the village, should have its days,
and its career, too, of usefulness, cut short; that it should be put
into the pot before the life was well out of it, merely to make a very
doubtful addition to my supper! The blood of the poor bird would be
upon me. The first mouthful would choke me; and that would be only what
I had deserved. I peremptorily forbad the repetition of so shocking a
proposal.
It was now the daughter’s turn, and her suggestion was soup and a
salad. This was a delightful suggestion; and there could be no doubt
but that the soup and salad would at seven o’clock prove as good
as the suggestion sounded charming. But of what was the soup to be
made? Curiosity could not but be awakened, though I suppressed it for
the present, thinking it better to give the soup that proof which a
pudding is known to require. In due time the opportunity came for
applying this proof: but all that it enables me to say unhesitatingly
is--this I say only to those who can participate in what was my
own curiosity--that herbs, onions, spices, and milk were among the
ingredients. I even lean to the opinion that nothing more had been
put into the pot. First, because these were all the elements of the
composition I could detect, either by the eye or palate; and next
because there was nothing else in the village that could have been
added except mummy beef, and I cannot believe that these frugal people
would for a moment have entertained the thought of expending any of
their little store of that precious material for such a purpose. No:
I believe that it was rigidly a _potage_ of herbs; and that there was
in it no element that would have disqualified it for being placed, at
their great annual festival, before the President of the Vegetarian
Society.
The beds and bedroom were as clean as one could wish. The basins were
coloured pie-dishes; the goblets were black wine bottles. At five
o’clock the next morning we found that the goodnatured contriver of
the soup had managed to procure some butter from the alpe for our
breakfast. The coffee was quite up to the usual hotel mark. The bill
for dinner, supper, bed, and breakfast for two persons was 2_s._ 8_d._;
that there may be no mistake, 3 francs 20 cents.
_August 4._--At Langwies, where the new char-road ended, the path
for the first time began to descend towards the valley bottom, which
was reached a little further on. In some places beyond Langwies the
horse-track was quite overgrown with long grass and nettles. This
indicated how little the Pass of the Strela is used. The scenery had
now begun to assume a new aspect. Up to this time an unusual amount
of bright green grass, and of dark green pine, had been universal.
We were now approaching the head of the valley, and the grass was
assuming the more sober green of upland pasture, while the forests
became less vigorous in growth, and less profuse in foliage. The
rock, too, where exposed to view, was no longer dark crumbly slate,
but had become of a hard compact texture, and of a gray tint. At last
the stream was reached, but not crossed; for after keeping upon its
northern bank for a short distance, we had to turn our backs to it,
and to ascend a grassy glade with forest on either side. The eastern
direction, however, was soon resumed, which soon carried us beyond
the last trees. After a time we had to cross a swollen stream on the
trunk of an unsquared pine, the wooden bridge having been carried
away two days back. Then passing some Alpine _châlets_, and skirting
a lofty mountain, both on the left, over good Alpine pasture, we
reached the head water of the Plessur. For stepping across this, upon
the stones which form its bed, you must yourself select a spot, for
just hereabouts there cannot be said to be any pathway. Immediately
beyond the stream you begin the last ascent. Here a good path, over
rock-strewn, and unusually flowery turf, conducts you up a steep
ascent, that for half an hour will shrewdly try your lungs and legs.
By that time you will have reached the top of the Pass of the Strela.
You will now have lifted yourself nearly 6,000 feet above Coire, and
will be at an elevation of nearly 8,000. Grand, naked, rocky summits,
free from weather stains, will rise some thousand feet higher on your
right and left. At first your way lies over a good expanse of turfy
plateau, with some precipitous rock-faced ravines on the right and on
the left. Before you is a troubled sea of mighty ridges and multiform
summits, many capped and streaked with snow. Everything is in strong
contrast to the somewhat monotonous green of the two long ranges of
the Schanfiggthal. A little advance brings to your feet the long
valley of Davos, 3,000 feet below you. At its head, to your left, you
look down on the blue-green surface of the glassy Davoser see. On a
quiet cloudless day you marvel at its reflection of the aerial azure.
The mountains stand round about it, and the woods come down to its
margin, except on the side nearest to you, where the prairies of the
valley reach up to it. Amid them is the little town of Davos Dörfli.
Somewhat further down the valley, which soon spreads out to a goodly
expanse of softest tinted grass is the larger town of Davos am Platz,
covering much space, for its houses are much dispersed. With that
full before you, you no longer care to keep to the horse track, but
taking the cattle tracks down the alpe, which carry you through a fine
old larch forest, you again strike the regular path just before you
enter the town. For a moment, if you have come from the Schanfiggthal,
you will feel some surprise at finding so many good houses, so many
large hotels, so considerable a town, and so excellent a road, in such
a place. The Kurhaus is an enormous establishment. Being repelled
by its name, and not attracted by its size, I went on to the hotel
Rhätia, at the further, or southern end of the town, having passed some
other hotels by the way. It was now twelve o’clock, and as the _table
d’hôte_ hour was near at hand, I stayed there for dinner. Chairs were
set for 116 guests. The landlord told me that among them all were but
three English parties. German was the only language I heard spoken. My
experience has brought me to the conclusion that where this is the case
the table is more bountifully provided, and the charges are less, than
in hotels that are frequented chiefly by English and Americans. Germans
will not submit to be badly served, or to be overcharged. Englishmen
are generally indisposed to assert their rights in matters of this
kind. And if they had the disposition, they seldom have sufficient
command of the language to enable them to wrangle glibly with hotel
authorities.
The contrast between the valley I had left and the valley I had now
entered, as I have just said, was great; but still greater was the
contrast between the human life of the one and of the other. There
was an awning along the south side of the hotel. At one end of this,
where it was of considerable depth, the seats were arranged in a
square: this part of the space, now that dinner was over, was occupied
by ladies and children. The other end, where there was only a single
bench against the wall, was assigned to the gentlemen, who, as they
took their after-dinner cigar, were conversing upon the condition of
Europe, and other questions of the day. In the road was a constant
succession of parties, departing, some on foot, and some in _chars_,
for an afternoon excursion. The contentment of rest after exertion,
aided by the narcotic leaf, disposed to dreaminess, and would not allow
present objects quite to overpower and obliterate recent impressions.
The bloused landlord of Peist, with his short pipe in his mouth, and
his good-natured daughter, who had earned their three francs and twenty
cents with so much unaffected kindly attention, and the villagers, who
during the long winter meet to spin in each other’s houses, that they
may effect some little savings of firing and lights, and at the same
time have a little talk about the affairs of the village, their world,
would not be displaced from my thoughts. Each order of impressions
somewhat deprived the other of reality. Each became a concurrent dream,
or the two together formed themselves into a single confused dream.
The fantoccini figures of the one story jostled those of the other
story for possession of the stage in the brain. For the time one felt
no longer as an actor in life, but merely as a spectator of life. Human
concerns became a spectacle, which only suggested evanescent fragments
of half-formed thought.
CHAPTER IV.
DAVOSTHAL--ALVENEU--THE SCHYN--THUSIS--HOHEN RHÄTIEN.
How poor are they that have not patience!--SHAKESPEARE.
The cigar mentioned at the close of the last chapter had come to
an end. This brought me to the question of where I would go next?
Where and how? Had I stood alone in the world, that is to say, on
this afternoon at Davos am Platz, without having to consider the
incapacities and wishes of so uncertain an instrument as my neophyte
porter, I should by whatever conveyance might have offered have sent my
belongings some dozen miles down the valley, and have followed them on
foot. Now, however, I was tied to him, and there were symptoms that he
was not disposed for any more work to-day. First he had in the morning
complained much of the ascent of the Strela; and again when we had
arrived at Davos am Platz, I had told him that we would have a halt of
two hours, and would then decide on what was to be done with the rest
of the day: but he had allowed nearly three hours to pass before his
reappearance. This I interpreted to mean that he wished to shorten the
afternoon’s work as much as possible; or, if he could so manage it, to
prevent anything at all being undertaken in the afternoon. These, then,
were disturbing elements in the question: if I were to proceed on foot,
he might be somewhat crippled for future work, or demoralized from a
consciousness that his devices had been seen through and thwarted. I
decided, therefore, to go on that evening to Alveneu Bad, 16¹⁄₂ miles,
by _char_. We soon found that at this time of day our inquiries were
too late: all the public vehicular resources of the place had been
taken up by the numerous afternoon excursionists. I then bethought
myself of trying its private resources in this matter. In this, by the
assistance of the porter of the Kurhaus, I was successful; and at 5
P.M. we started for Alveneu Bad in the private carriage of one of the
magnates of the little town. The carriage and harness were quite new,
and the horse was, evidently, well cared for. The good man and his wife
stood by to see the departure of their lately acquired turn-out, and to
impress to the last on the driver the necessity of care and caution.
When we had been gone about half an hour, a passing shower drifted down
the valley. I hoped that those drops did not reach as far as Davos am
Platz, that they might not be felt by the anxious old couple, though
I was sure that even in that case their hearts would revive within
them when they thought of the 22 francs they were to receive to-morrow
morning.
There is a new and excellent post-road all the way to the Bad which is
on the new Albula road. This new Davos road is a continuation of that
of the Prätigäu. It is carried at first along smooth prairies, backed
by lofty wooded mountains. The stream by its side is the Landwasser,
which as it drains many valleys has a considerable volume of water. At
last the mountains close in, and completely squeeze out the prairies.
There is then no more room for the road, which is, therefore, at
this point carried up and over the mountain on the right bank of the
Landwasser to Wiesen. Beyond Wiesen the road runs along the mountain
flanks above, and some way back from, the Landwasser. This gives you
commanding views of the ranges and summits to your left between the
parallel valleys of Davos and the Engadin. The scene is impressive.
Below you is the deep valley of the Landwasser. Towards the bottom
on the opposite side are bright green prairies and dull green pine
woods; these are overtopped by lofty mountains, streaked by long
deep slaty-coloured _couloirs_ from top to bottom. Other mountains,
behind these, seen through gaps, after showing a zone of black rock,
were capped with snow from which the rays of the western sun were now
gleaming. One in particular appeared to invite climbing, for its zone
of black rock slanted up with what seemed to be a practicable slope
to the snowy summit: of course, however, till a trial has been made
one can only speak of such appearances as possibilities. In several
places along the valley the new road, though only just completed, had
already led to the erection of new houses and hotels. This will go on
everywhere in Switzerland; and by the time all the available sites
are occupied there, tourists will have begun to flood the Tyrol and
overflow into the Carpathians.
Our horse was willing, and the driver not unwilling, and so we reached
the Bad before dark. I found here about fifty people just seated down
to supper. I was told that they were chiefly Swiss, many of them from
the eastern cantons. Family parties, in which the middle-aged element
largely entered, were in preponderance. It was evident that they had
much to say to each other; and saying this probably did them as much
good as drinking the waters.
_August 6._--Having been delayed three quarters of an hour by the
dilatoriness, or the scheming, of the circumnavigator, did not get
under weigh till 5.45. As we left the house a funeral was passing the
door. To us this might seem an early and a cold hour for taking a
deceased relative to his last earthly resting place. We might almost
feel as if there was in such an arrangement something hurried, some
impatience, an unfair curtailment of his last glimpse of the sun.
But, then, it reduces to a minimum the demand which the ceremony must
make on the working hours of the mourners’ day. We were now on the
Albula road. It here skirts the stream of the Albula, which our late
companion, the Landwasser had now joined. In a little more than an
hour, Tiefenkasten was reached, where the Oberhalbstein Rhine enters
the Albula. In an hour more we were on the bridge of Solis. Upon this
part of the road we crossed a long array of diligences and _chars_.
They were from Thusis, which had been reached from Reichenau on the
Coire-Andermatt road, or by the Splügen; and were on their way to the
Engadin by the route either of the Albula, or of the Julier.
At the bridge of Solis you cross the Albula, chafing and fretting
below you at a depth of 250 feet. From this point you enter on the
new Schyn-strasse, a grand piece of road, and similar in character to
its neighbour, the Via Mala of the Splügen route. For three miles,
or more, it is grooved out, or built upon the side of a narrow deep
ravine, several hundred feet above the rushing, tumbling Albula, and
with several times as many hundred feet above the road; sheer and
sharply shelving precipices below and above; and with the corresponding
opposite parallel side of the ravine closely confronting you, to
demonstrate to you how utterly impracticable was the construction
of the road along which you are walking with unusual ease, for it
has throughout been engineered, with scarcely any gradients, on one
general level. Of course a road of this kind must have some tunnels,
and, in places where it is crossed by _couloirs_, galleries to protect
it from being occasionally buried, or carried away; and its bridges
must be made capable of withstanding storm-swollen torrents. Some
will think it worth while to give a passing glance at these bridges
to see what were the difficulties the engineer had to contend with,
and the dangers he had to provide against. In one place I saw that
provision had been made below a bridge, to prevent the torrent from
deepening its bed back to the bridge in any direction except at right
angles to a line drawn across the centre of the arch of the bridge,
because a deviation from this line to the right, or left, would have
destroyed the foundation of one or other of the piers of the bridge.
A torrent towards the western end of the Strasse had cut the strata
of rock over which it fell into a somewhat regular flight of steps.
The layers of rock were two or three feet thick, and each was cut down
perpendicularly by the stream, some three or four feet in advance of
the one which was above it. So almost down to the bridge, where the
stream entirely disappeared, in consequence of the stratification
having here been abruptly tilted into an inclination that was not
far from perpendicular; and here the torrent had formed for itself a
channel by eroding only one of the layers of rock, and that to such a
depth that the layers on our right completely overlapped and concealed
the stream which had been carried down some way below in the eroded
layer.
The ravine of the Schyn nowhere admits of any kind of cultivation,
not even of an occasional patch of grass. Pines are its only produce.
Among these I saw towards its western extremity many fine specimens
of the silver fir, which I had nowhere previously noticed. I do
not see why the Douglas pine, one of the most rapid in growth, and
valuable as timber, of all the conifers, should not be grown largely in
Switzerland. Some of its moist and sheltered valleys would seem to be
the very stations that might in every respect be exactly suited for it.
It has been proved that it will grow rapidly in such places. In this,
as in many other ravines, a track for removing the trees that have been
felled below the road, is out of the question. If, therefore, they are
to be used for fuel, they are cut into pieces, six feet in length,
and pitched into the torrent, which transports them rapidly to their
destination. Fuel that has been torrent-borne in this way may readily
be distinguished, as it stands piled against the walls of the houses,
by the manner in which the ends of the pieces have been bruised and
frayed. If, however, what has been felled is to be used as timber for
building, the length required would make it impossible to float it down
such narrow, rocky, and tortuous streams. In this case winter must be
waited for, and when it has frozen the torrent, and buried it beneath
the snow, the hardy and industrious peasants avail themselves of the
temporary pathway nature has provided, and haul their timber along it.
But these winter pathways are not free from danger, for it sometimes
happens that a rock, detached by the frost from an overhanging summit,
falls on those who are at work below.
As you descend from the Schyn to Thusis everything is changed. You
again find yourself among prairies, fruit trees, and scattered
dwellings. A broad green valley lies before you expanding to the right
and left, in which are the towns of Sils and Thusis; and beyond the
valley is lifted up the broad shelving expanse of the eastern side
of the Heinzenberg, a wide, unbroken expanse of trees and prairies,
enlivened with many villages, and innumerable detached _châlets_. You
see that every rood of it is turned to the best account, and that it is
on the spot supporting a large and industrious population.
As you descend you pass the still solid remains of an old castle on the
right, perched on a cliff overlooking the Albula. Another is above you
on the mountain side. At the foot of the descent you reach the little
town of Sils, separated by three-quarters of a mile of bottom land from
Thusis, which you see on the first rise of the opposite bank, beyond
the Hinter-Rhein, the stream of the valley. A third old castle, that
of Hohen Rhätien, looks down on Thusis from the brow of a cliff, 400
feet above the stream, on what is still your side of the valley. As
you cross the bridge, on its up stream side you see the Rhine rushing
beneath it in a flood of whitish green. Immediately below the bridge
the inky Nolla, more inky than the Tyne at Newcastle, its blackness
is that of the skin of an unfledged rook, pitches its torrent of
defilement into the whitish green stream. You feel that this is an
act of disrespect to a main branch of so famous a river. Two hundred,
or so, yards further on you pass a second bridge, that of the Nolla
itself. You now see above the bridge what a vast amount of small black
shaly _débris_, the cause of its inkiness, this stream brings down in
its course from the summits of the Heinzenberg, and of the Piz Beverin.
You had also just noticed some acres of this dark _débris_ outspread on
the broad, and now dry, sides of the channel below the Rhine bridge.
The Nolla, then, you will remember as a kind of natural ink factory;
and may think, too, that it has been pouring forth its torrent of ink
from a date long anterior to the Chinese or Egyptian manufacture of the
pigment.
Thusis commences a few steps beyond the bridge of the Nolla. The first
house on the right side of the long street of which it is composed is
the chief hotel of the place. We walked up to the door, and stood on
the step. A four-horse carriage was about to start for the Splügen, and
the landlord was impressively reiterating his adieux, and his wishes
for a pleasant journey, to its occupants. For two or three minutes I
waited, but as he did not think it worth his while to salute with a
word the coming guest, or to beg to be excused for a moment, that he
might pile up still higher his good wishes for his departing guests,
I asked the circumnavigator to resume his burden, and went on to the
hotel de la Poste, at the further end of the opposite side of the long
street. Mine host that might have been now saw that, though it was well
done to speed the guest parting with four horses, it was ill done not
to welcome also the guest arriving on foot. But in this case the coming
guest hardened his heart, and no place was given for repentance. The
hotel de la Poste had its advantages. It was not yet 12 o’clock, and as
my companion had been limping for the last hour, I saw that I should
be obliged to sleep at Thusis; and when you have nothing to do, it is
something to have even the arrivals and departures of the diligences
to look at. Some of those who come, or who are waiting to go, by them
will perhaps have something to say; at all events you see something of
what manner of people they are. And then the telegraph bureau is at
hand, and you can, which it is always pleasing to do, in a few moments
ask your travelling friends what they are about, and tell them where
you are. This is very different from, and far better than, writing
and receiving letters. It is so near an approach to direct, actual
conversation. Letters belong to quite a different category. By the
time a letter is received all your plans, or those of your friends,
may have been altered. You may be going in an opposite direction to
that announced. Your feelings may have become the reverse of those
described. Regrets, or rejoicings, may have been called into being on
grounds that never came to have any existence. But telegrams, which
tell friends where they respectively are, and how they are, at the
moment, are present indubitable realities.
Being then obliged to remain at Thusis for the rest of the day, I went
in the afternoon to see the old castle of Hohen Rhätien. The ruins of
one of these mediæval strongholds cannot, generally, be regarded with
much interest, because gratitude is no ingredient in the feelings which
the sight of it awakens. The stage of history to which they belong was
rather a painful interruption, than a satisfactory continuance, of the
progress of human affairs. Its units, represented by these castles,
were small fragments of rude force; and these were but ill-compacted
into rude wholes, that hardly deserved the name of states. The strong
owners of these castles were prompted by a consciousness of their
strength to lives of violence and oppression, and the weak were
obliged to attach themselves to the strong, only to be oppressed. The
physical ruled the moral and intellectual without disguise and without
mitigation, except so far as it was counteracted by what soon became
the moral and intellectual tyranny of the Church. Of the evils of this
system we even suppose that we have not yet reached the end, but that
we are still in some degree suffering from them. For reasons of this
kind we are indisposed to see in it, what history tells us we ought,
the first step in the new order of things to which we belong, and which
we may hope has grander possibilities for us than the preceding order
of things in the old world had for those of its day; or, indeed, to
see in it anything but an assertion of force and injustice, which for
a long period altogether forbad, and the consequences of which may be
still somewhat hindering, the advance of society in the direction of
fair and reasonable institutions. It is with very different feelings
that we contemplate the monuments of Greece and Rome, and even of old
Egypt; for they do not, as these do, remind us of mere individual brute
force. They were works of organized societies, whose wants were of a
more human and cultured kind, and whose mistakes and misdeeds, as their
consequences are now no longer felt, are almost lost to memory. At all
events we owe them much. The very ruins of their buildings remind us
of one part of the debt. But we cannot, or will not, feel in this way
towards the owners of these old castles. In passing, therefore, the
remains of one of them many of us have no wish to inspect it. It is not
sacred ground to us. What pleases us most in the matter is the fact,
visible in passing it, that it is in ruins.
For such reasons as these, while a little before midday I had looked
up at the ruins of the old castle of Hohen Rhätien, I had not thought
them worth the hour or so that would have been required for going up
to see them; but now in the afternoon, having nothing else to do, I
inspected them with some attention. To get to them I had to recross
the two bridges. I then, about 200 yards beyond that over the Hinter
Rhein, crossed a small mill-race running parallel to the road, and
went straight up a steep timber-slide, which is visible from the road.
At the head of this you come on the regular horse-track, from Sils to
the castle. Three or four hundred yards of this bring you to a steep
turfy slope, where you may desert the horse path which winds round the
summit to the top, and in five minutes you will be on the top among
the ruins. They consist of several detached buildings. The first is a
square tower with thick walls. It has no door, or constructed entrance,
in the walls that now remain, the only access to the interior being
by a hole in one of the angles. We may, therefore, suppose that this
was an advanced outwork, that was entered either by a subterranean
gallery which connected it with the castle some hundred yards off,
or by a ladder which was applied to some aperture in an upper story
which has now disappeared from the walls. It may also have been useful
as a storehouse for provisions of some kind or other. Next to this
is a structure, which evidently was a small church. It is in good
preservation. The tower still stands. Alongside of the tower is a
chamber with a groined ceiling, which may, possibly, have been the
chancel. In line with, so as to be a continuation of, this chamber is
the nave of the church. The two windows that alone lighted it are very
narrow; but, then, in this part of the world windows are made as small
as possible, for to admit a sufficiency of light would, for the greater
part of the year, be to admit an intolerable quantity of cold.
Close to the church, in the direction of the castle, is a building
about twenty feet square. The walls are about three feet thick. Their
stones in some courses are laid horizontally, in others in a slanting,
or herringbone, position. Close to this is another building similarly
constructed, but more dilapidated. This is not quite so wide as it is
long. It has remains of a floor above the ground floor.
Just beyond these two last mentioned buildings is the true castle. It
is of very solid construction, but of no great extent. I paced it,
but do not remember its exact dimensions. My impression is that it is
not so much as a square of forty feet. Neither the door, nor windows,
were arched. The latter are in the form of embrasures, much recessed,
of course to admit to the interior as much light as possible through
such small openings, and to enable its defenders to command as much
space as possible outside. The lowest of these embrasures is at a
considerable height from the ground. Half the basement is occupied by
a spacious excavation in the living rock, which doubtless was the
cellar. This is the first necessity in every dwelling place in this
part of Switzerland, where the winters are so severe, and some days
in summer very hot. If the cellar of a house does not prove good,
that is to say, if it should prove incapable of keeping wine, cheese,
milk, beer, meat, and in these days potatoes, from the cold of winter
and the heat of summer, the house itself is of little value. This
large rock-cellar doubtless answered well the purpose for which it
was designed. I pictured it to myself stored with hogsheads of wine,
barrels of flour, salt beef and bacon, and tiers of cheese, against the
annually recurrent siege of winter, or an expected summer siege from
the lord of some neighbouring castle. There was plenty of everything,
for those were days when rapid digestion waited upon vigorous appetite,
and eating and drinking were the great business of life. There were
three stories. The large stone fire-place of the first of these
remains. Its chimney is carried up, and against, the inner wall, almost
as if it had been an after-thought. Does the existence of this chimney
throw any light on the date of the structure? We can hardly suppose
such a chimney of earlier date than the fourteenth century, but as it
appears to have been applied to the wall, and not constructed in it,
the wall may be of much greater age than the chimney. There are no
traces of chimneys elsewhere in the building. A court-yard surrounded
the castle. This included at the angle, between the two precipitous
faces of the extremity of the mountain, a space that might have been
a garden, or a yard for the live stock in troublous times. It is now
laid down in grass for mowing. The castle itself did not stand upon the
edge of the precipice. Between it and the precipice, indeed on the very
edge of it, are the remains of some small buildings. These, as probably
did the three other buildings first mentioned, must have supplied the
stabling for horses and cattle, and storehouses for provisions and hay
in ordinary times. The church could not have been intended for more
than thirty or forty people. This, and the small dimensions of the
castle itself, furnish us with some data for forming an estimate of the
wealth and power of its original builder, and of his successors. One
cannot suppose that his retainers comprised more than about a dozen
families. And perhaps the same may be said of the retainers of those
who possessed the dozen other castles of the immediate neighbourhood.
In descending I took the regular old road down to Sils, for I wished
to go the way the old feudal chief and his retainers had used. To one
either going to, or coming from Thusis, this way is quite a mile longer
than the timber slide.
These may, as we are told they are, be the remains of the oldest castle
in Switzerland; but their situation, as well as their character,
demonstrate that the explanation given of the name is erroneous. Livy
tells us that, at the time of the settlement of the Gauls in northern
Italy, the Etruscans they displaced moved off to, and took possession
of the district of which the Grisons of our day form a part. In
classical times it was called Rhætia, to explain which name, a leader
of the emigration of the name of Rhætus was invented. This tradition
is supposed to be supported by the assumptions that the name of Thusis
is derived from Tuscia, and that the name by which this old castle is
now known has come down from the times of Rhætus, its presumed original
founder. The tradition, however, affirms an improbability. No invaders,
settling themselves among a dispossessed and hostile population, would
have constructed so small a fortress, which could have given shelter
to only a very small garrison. Nor would they have placed it in such
a situation: for there being then no road below Thusis, it would have
been at the bottom of a _cul de sac_, and any one who could have held
and devastated the valley, would have starved out the little garrison
of the castle. We may, therefore, pretty safely conclude that it
belongs to the same date as the church, that is to say, to the times,
when feudal lords, who under the conditions of the period implied
castles, were a necessity. The great number there was of them at that
time in the valley was a kind of common insurance to each against some
of the risks to which they would otherwise have been exposed.
We read a good deal in Swiss histories of the way in which in many
places the peasants rose against their feudal lords, expelled or
killed them, and dismantled or burnt their castles. At all events
there was once an abundance of these lords, and we cannot suppose
that they voluntarily abandoned their strongholds, and their lands.
We see the ruins of a great many of these strongholds, and we see the
peasants now in possession of the lands which once supported these
strongholds. This, if like things are to be called by like names, is
neither more nor less than what French, German, Italian, and Spanish
Internationalists are aiming at. Here, in these valleys, as far as
the land is concerned, their scheme has for many generations been
thoroughly carried out. Lands which feudal lords once held peasants now
hold. The substitution of one proprietary for the other was in many
cases brought about by the direct use of physical force, in others
by the peaceable, it might have been, expression of the will of the
community, backed, however, by physical force: which comes to precisely
the same thing. And now this peasant proprietorship has had several
centuries to develop its nature completely, without any retarding, or
disturbing causes operating against it. Whatever merits, therefore,
and whatever demerits the system may have, may be seen here, for no
one would assert that it can be without either the one, or the other.
Some estimate of each I endeavoured to make in my first ‘Month in
Switzerland’ of two years back; and in my second ‘Month’ of last year,
I endeavoured to direct attention to the history, and to the present
action, in this age of capital, of the Allmends, or commonable lands
of Switzerland, which in the days anterior to accumulations of capital
were, in Switzerland at all events, a necessary appendage to peasant
proprietorship. All that I now wish to remark is that that portion of
the land which is held as private property, has for a long time been
divided into such small holdings, and from absence of settlements,
trusts, and charges, has been so completely at the disposal of
existing proprietors, as would probably satisfy the most extreme
Internationalist, who was in favour of permitting any private rights at
all in the land.
In human affairs, however, nothing continues long in one stay; and
their progress has at length given rise in these valleys to a new and
enlarged development of one of the instruments of production, which
formerly existed in them only in the germ, but is now seen to have
greater capabilities than have hitherto been found in the land itself:
at all events it is one to which the uses of, and the property in,
land must now accommodate themselves. This disturbing element, this
instrument of production, the powers of which have of late been so
much enlarged, is capital in money. And neither the Internationalist,
nor anybody else who interests himself about the mixed questions of
economics and politics, can arrive at any safe or workable conclusions,
unless he so far understands its uses, action, and power, as to see
that without it society would collapse, and revert to barbarism. We
may, perhaps, get a little glimpse into the question of what are
its uses, action, and power, if we divide the inhabitants of these
thriving valleys into those who are supported by capital in money, and
those who are supported by capital in land, and then endeavour to see
how each class is living. I propose the division in the above form,
because I suppose that ultimately, and in the nature of things, there
is no scientific ground for the assumption, implied in popular usage,
of there being a fundamental difference, when they are regarded as
means of production, between land and money, or even between either
of these two and labour. They are all I imagine, in a broad and true
generalization, capital. They seem to be all means of production, and
so only different forms of capital. Still the division proposed is
one with which we are familiar, and which is intelligible, at least
to the eye. To proceed, then, with it: it is clear that a man, and
one, too, who was the son of a peasant, can now live here, and live
better, than any of the peasant proprietors have for generations lived,
without owning, or occupying, a _klafter_ of land. Many are doing
this. Every year a greater number do it. What is required for doing
it is thought, knowledge, the power of seeing far, and of combining
divers facts and considerations, energy, perseverance, and character.
It is to be done not so much by the hands as by the brain. That is the
chief human instrument to be used. The field to be cultivated is not
a little piece of land for supplying directly a man’s own wants, but
his efforts must aim primarily at the supply of the wants of others,
in a sense of the world. This, however, is only possible through the
existence and the use of capital in money. For this purpose money has
two distinct functions. First it is the common measure not only of all
the useful and exchangeable productions of the world and of man, but
also of all that contributes to their production, whether the human
means as labour, skill, and knowledge, or the material means as the
land and the requisite tools, implements, and machinery: in short,
it renders both the human and the material means of production, and
the commodities produced, all commensurable. In the second place it
enables us, practically, to store up surplus produce of any kind in
such a form as to be reconvertible at will into produce of any kind,
or into the means of production. In these ways it correlates all the
wants and all the capabilities of the whole family of man, dispersed
over the world, putting each country into reciprocal relations with
all the others. It enables each to produce whatever it may have any
natural capacity for producing, and to exchange it for whatever it
may want. And this it does not only between different nations, but
also between the different individuals of the same nation, and of the
same neighbourhood. This is a field, the cultivation of some part of
which generally yields to its cultivator a far greater return than
can by any amount of individual labour be extracted from two or three
acres with some appurtenant rights of fuel and pasturage. And now if
we turn to those who are living on the hard-won produce of their few
acres, we see that their lives, too, have been greatly elevated and
embellished by the existence and applications of capital in money.
It might be shown that to it they were indebted for their education,
and for the opportunities they have had for starting their children
in the world. It has given them the means of travelling very cheaply
at the rate of twenty miles an hour; it has given them the means of
communicating with the world by the post and by the telegraph; it
has brought to their door opportunities for earning something from
the travellers that visit their neighbourhood; to it they owe their
newspaper; it, too, has enabled them to procure coffee, sugar, wine,
cheap clothing, and many other minor advantages. Annihilate capital,
and every man throughout these valleys, and throughout the world, is
debarred from access to the products of the world, and reduced to the
miserable life that is limited to what he can produce with his own
hands. Increase capital, which means ultimately, and in its largest
sense, the store of useful commodities the whole world may be made to
yield, and the human and material means requisite for production, and
for distribution, and then there is opened to every man the possibility
of entering by his own labour, or skill, or knowledge, up to the amount
of their productiveness, into the possession of everything he needs,
that any part of the world is capable of supplying. The way to enter
on their possession is at all events opened to him, and the command
over them to which he may attain will depend mainly upon himself, that
is to say, upon the way in which he was brought up, and what he was
taught. Whether he is ever to rise to the possession and management
of any portion of the money capital of the world will depend almost
entirely on how he was brought up, and what he was taught. When all
this shall be seen more distinctly than it now is by some of us, the
Internationalist, who is himself a creation of money capital, will not
perhaps have so much to say as he has at present about the tyranny of
capital.
But to go back to our Swiss valleys. It is clear that there has issued
from the peasantry, who till recently were their only inhabitants, a
class of men who are living a higher life than the peasants, that is
than the landed proprietors. It is the life of those who accumulate
capital in money, and who live upon the employment of it. And this
capital in money is, under the circumstances of the country, within
the reach of every one to far higher amounts in value than is the
land, the old form of capital. What is needed for its acquisition
is cultivated intelligence, and certain moral qualities. This is
precisely the point to which the attention and the efforts of the
Internationalists should be directed. If society takes care, and it is
endeavouring to do this in Switzerland, to give to all its members as
fair a chance as is possible under existing circumstances to attain
to this culture of the intelligence, and to these moral qualities,
the majority will more or less avail themselves of the opportunities
offered to them; and so, having numbers, wealth, intelligence, justice,
and moral character on their side, will be too strong to be disturbed
by the _residuum_. The son of an Upper Engadin peasant, who had gone
out into the world like most of his countrymen, there learnt German
and French, and made some money, and now, having returned home with
what he had made, was turning it to good account, remarked to me, ‘Our
education is improving, but already we have enough of it to enable
those, who are disposed to avail themselves of it, to get on in the
world. The rest are brutish, and must live by brute work.’ For a moment
I was shocked at the hardness of the statement: but I made no reply,
for I saw that it was no more than the action of the inexorable law of
natural selection applied to moral and intellectual life. It would not
be a law were it not inexorable. The analogy, too, of nature requires
that it should be applied to man as well as to the lower animals and
to plants; and, indeed, if exemptions from it were admissible in any
part of the general scheme, they would be admissible least of all
in the case of man, for it is of more importance to guard against
deterioration that which is highest and best, if we may so speak of any
part of the general scheme, than that which is of inferior value--at
all events than that which to us appears to occupy a lower place in the
scale of being.
CHAPTER V.
THE VIA MALA--SCHAMSTHAL--ANDEER.
Living things, and things inanimate,
Do speak at heaven’s command to eyes and ears,
And speak to social reason’s inner sense
With inarticulate language.--WORDSWORTH.
_August 7._--As I foresaw that I should not to-day get beyond Andeer,
I breakfasted in a leisurely style at seven o’clock, without at all
feeling that my loins were girded, and my staff in my hand. The head
waiter, a very incarnation of good nature and harmless vanity, availed
himself of the opportunity for trying to persuade me to delay my
departure till the evening, or still better till to-morrow, that I
might see General von Göben, who, as he impressively informed me, was
to arrive to-day with a party of seven, and had taken the whole of the
first floor. At Dissentis I was told that Von Moltke had been there;
and at Pontresina, and elsewhere, I heard of other German celebrities.
At the places where we ourselves most do congregate we find many
Germans; but as they do not much desire our society, and do not go to
Switzerland for precisely the same objects as ourselves, we must not
judge by the proportion of them we find in these places of the number
of them who are travelling in Switzerland. The elders and middle-aged
among them much affect Bads. At such places as Davos am Platz and
Tarasp they may be counted by the hundred. But even at these places
we do not see their largest contingent. That is composed of the young
and active, who wish to see the mountains, and who do all their work
on foot. These are dispersed, like an army of skirmishers, over the
whole country. In my excursion of this year, which took me on foot over
between three and four hundred miles, and fifteen so called Passes,
I nowhere met on the road a single Englishman, (had the Passes been
difficult ones my experience, perhaps, would have been different,)
but I seldom, if ever, passed a day without meeting several Germans,
generally in parties of three, without a porter. We may to some extent
judge of the degree to which Alpinism has penetrated the German mind
by the fact, that, while our Alpine Club numbers 300 members, theirs
numbers 3,000. I have no means of verifying these figures. I only
give them as I found them in a Swiss newspaper. The same authority
informed me that the Swiss Alpine Club now counts 1,700 members. Still
what there may be of fact in the above statements indicates that
mountaineering is not only a more accessible, but also a more popular,
pursuit with them than with us. There must be some reason for this.
Can the reason be that among them culture is both broader in itself,
and more widely diffused than among ourselves? These people, too,
are more gregarious and sociable than we are; perhaps some causes of
repulsion that are operative here may not be felt among them; and so
they may travel in larger parties than are common with us.
At 7.30 started for the Via Mala. A cloudless morning. The freshness
of the air, the clearness of the light, the depth of the blue combined
to stimulate the nerves both of body and mind, and prepared me for
feeling all the effects of the expected wonders of the scene; or as it
is unwise ever to expect anything, for appreciating highly whatever the
walk might present to me. As I walked along, looking down precipices
between lofty pine stems, as straight and round as if they had been
turned in a lathe, to the broken foamy thread of the Hinter Rhein in
the bottom, and then up 1,600 feet of opposite black precipice, on the
summit of which, here and there, a lofty pine broke the sky-line, but
showing at that height no bigger than a hop-pole, the circumnavigator,
understanding how my mind was engaged, and perhaps himself a little
touched by the scene, propounded the only remark he made on the
scenery during the eight days he was with me. ‘If a man,’ quoth he,
‘Sydney-way, had this gully on his run, he might make any amount of
money by showing it. Any amount!’ For the moment I was a little taken
by surprise; but it was no more than an unexpected application of his
governing idea--which I had already had served up in many forms, and
those not always quite _à propos_ to what was before us--that the only
good of anything in the world was its capacity for being turned into
money. Having been brought up to work at his trade from 5 A.M. to 8
P.M. for seven francs a week, (the wages paid at Poschiavo in those
days,) he had come to hate and despise labour; and his Australian
experiences, acting on a Swiss substratum, had made him an ideologist,
but of one idea, that one being that the one sure way to the one great
object was to buy cheap, and to sell dear. Again and again he had
repeated to me that this was the way in which all the money in the
world that had been made honestly had been made. But he never could
explain how the money that was given in the good price had been made,
except by the same process of selling dear. Those, he maintained, who
had been most pre-eminently successful in life were those who had most
thoroughly carried out the rule, perhaps without an undeviating regard
for honesty. He had not succeeded at Sydney, because ice was so dear
there; that is to say because ices could not be made without ice. The
liquor trade had great capacities, because there are other things in
the barrel besides liquor. The world, and its money-making inhabitants
were to him only an enlarged edition of the two American lads, who
during their journey in a railway car, without leaving their seats,
made each of them a large fortune by an incessant repetition of the
process of swapping what they had about them. I had little to say just
now to his remarks, for what of the world was before me indisposed me
to transfer my thoughts to the antipodes, or even to say anything on
behalf of labour and thrift, and of honesty, in reply to his narrow and
unfavourable experiences of life.
The Via Mala though of the same character as the Schyn is both more
diversified and more astonishing. The roadway itself is wider, and of
more solid construction than that of its neighbour; nor is it all on
one general level, for, as you advance along it, you are generally
ascending or descending. It also crosses from side to side, being
carried over the stream by bridges, which here it has been necessary to
build at a great height above the stream. The ravine, too, is not so
uniformly wedge-shaped, but in places the opposite side will appear to
be almost, or perhaps will be quite, perpendicular. There is indeed one
instance of its actually leaning towards you. The hammers and chisels
of the old world would never have made this road. Gunpowder it was that
rendered its construction possible, and we may almost say that made the
want of it felt. It first made the old castles indefensible, and the
man-at-arms as good a man in the field as the armoured knight; in other
words it first helped to sweep away such impediments to production,
freedom of exchange, and accumulation as the Hohen Rhätiens of mediæval
Europe; and when they were gone, and in consequence production had
increased, and facilities for communication became necessary, what had
aided in abolishing the castles was found capable also of aiding in the
construction of the road. We may suppose that the inventors of this
explosive, as has been the case with most inventions, had no glimpse of
the good work it would accomplish. They could have had no anticipations
of its disestablishing feudalism, and constructing roads through the
Alps. And even now we seem to be only feeling our way to some guesses
of what will be the kind of work it will do in any future war, that is
to say what effect it will have on the history of the future.
I observed as I was advancing along this Via Mala, in what good
keeping with the sombreness of the ravines was the monotonous form of
the pines. Were its trees of the kinds that are spreading in limb,
and varied in form and foliage, it would imply that nature was more
benignant than the other features of the scene suggest. But as it is,
you find that only one kind of tree can live here, and that a little
thought shows you is so constructed as to enable it to withstand the
heavy snowfalls and violent gales of winter. Its branches are so short,
perhaps somewhat shorter than they would be with us, and, too, so
constructed, that they never can be called upon to sustain any great
weight of snow, and the trunk tapers so regularly, like a well-made
fishing rod, as to enable it to sustain the most sudden and violent
storm blasts. The top yields to the pressure, but does not snap,
because the stiffness of the stem is gradually increasing; and this,
before the bottom has been reached, has increased to such a degree as
to prevent any strain being felt by the roots. As you observe this
adaptation of form and structure, the hardness of the conditions of the
station that are inferred deepens the effect upon your thought of the
hardness of the conditions that are seen.
At Thusis we had been told that the storm of the previous Sunday night
had so swollen the Hinter Rhein as to have raised the water to within a
few feet of the crown of the arch of the bridge. At the other extremity
of the Via Mala--the place is called Reischen--we found that a bridge
had been swept away. This had interrupted the traffic for twenty-four
hours, when those who had charge of the road succeeded in laying some
pine trunks across the chasm, and forming upon them a roadway of
transverse squared slabs. We stopped a few minutes to see the diligence
pass this improvised structure. The three leaders were taken out, as
there was some chance that the dancing and rattling of the loose slabs
might scare them. With this precaution the passage was effected easily.
I have already mentioned that on the first afternoon of this excursion
I inspected the deep perpendicular channel of the Aare on the eastern
side of the Kirchet to see if it presented any indications of its
having been formed by any other agency than that of the stream that
is now running through it. Every indication seemed to imply that the
channel had been eroded by the stream, and by it alone. Every deep
channel I passed, throughout this excursion, I looked at with the same
thought in my mind, and I nowhere saw anything to suggest the operation
of any other agent. And in this ravine, the most perpendicular and
deepest of them all, I saw nothing that pointed to a different
conclusion. Here a single arch is sufficient to carry you over the
stream at a height of 300 feet above it. It is impossible to suppose
but that the whole of these 300 feet were excavated by the stream that
is now fretting at the bottom of them. If, then, you are certain that
it cut out the 300 feet below you, what, except your niggardly ideas
about the extent of past time, is there to prevent your supposing that
it cut out the 1,300 feet above you? Believe the evidence of your eyes
in this matter, and it will add a hundredfold to the interest with
which you will contemplate this grand example of the method in which
nature makes a stream cut a channel for itself through a mountain
of solid rock. You will think how long she has been engaged in the
work, and that she is now carrying it on with the same instrument,
and applied in the same fashion, as thousands and thousands of years
ago. The reason why in these gorges the rock is cut with comparative
rapidity is that in them the stream is always both rapid and confined.
Because it is rapid it is working with the greatest possible power, and
because it is narrow that greatest power is applied at the greatest
possible advantage, that is to say it is confined to the central
straight line of the narrow bottom, for all the sand and stones are
turned in from each side to that central line. Hence the rapidity,
narrowness, and directness of the cutting action. When, however, the
stream has passed out of the gorge into more level ground, it becomes
diffused: it cannot, therefore, cut any longer at the bottom; and for
its former tendency to directness of course is substituted a tendency
to meandering.
In Switzerland you read much of the past and present life of this
terraqueous globe. So indeed you may on the alluvial flats of our
eastern counties, if it is there that your lot has been cast; but
with this difference, that in them the characters of the writing are
small and indistinct, while in Switzerland they are in Roman text, and
are held up before you, as it were on a signboard, to attract your
attention. The life of the globe, like that of a plant or animal, is
the result of the forces that have acted, and are acting within it, and
upon it. In Switzerland you behold what was their action in past times
in the mighty mountains they have upheaved; and in the stratification
of these mountains you behold what preceded their upheaval; and then
you go on of yourself to consider what preceded the deposition of
those strata. You are reading nature backwards, as you might a Hebrew
volume. In the igneous rocks that you see have been intruded you read
another chapter that reveals to you the action of other forces. The
shivering of mountain pinnacles tells you something about lightning,
storms, and frosts. Excavated valleys, and lakes, polished rocks, and
striated mountain flanks, and old _moraine_ mounds are a lesson to you
upon glacier action, and its greater activity in former epochs. Excised
ravines, filled-up lakes, avalanches of _débris_, mountainside slips,
burying villages and blocking up valleys, roads you are traversing cut
through, and bridges you were to have crossed carried away, fields
buried, or washed away, or lately formed, are chapters on the action
of running water. Forests flourishing on all but naked rock, greenest
prairies on a soil but an inch or two deep, earth-pillars, threads of
water on every mountain side, and a glancing stream in every valley,
oblige you to think of the relation of oceans, clouds, winds, the
varying capacity of the atmosphere for retaining moisture, and of rain,
to the vegetable and animal life of the land. Fragments of mountains
hurled into valleys may remind you of earthquakes. And the interest of
all this is intensified by thinking how it has shaped the life of man,
and is at this moment, while you are reading the lesson before you,
affecting its every day. Manifestly it is these operations of nature
which have provided him with his station here, and manifestly he must
conform his life to the conditions of the station he inhabits. It is
so, of course, everywhere. But here in Switzerland it is more readily
seen and felt that it is so.
On emerging from the ravine of the Via Mala the transformation of scene
has some resemblance to that on the St. Gothard route, when one passes
from the Devil’s Bridge by a few steps through the Urner Loch into
the Urserenthal. In the case of the latter the transformation is more
sudden and complete. There the change of form from pointed ruggedness
to wavy smoothness, and of colour from gray and black to soft green
is so instantaneous that the feeling produced is almost that of being
transferred in a moment from darkness to light. Here the change, though
complete, is not instantaneous. You are prepared for the valley of
Schams, its fields, chiefly of green, but with some gold, its villages,
its churches, its scattered _châlets_, its busy inhabitants by a mile,
or so, of intermediate improvement. The scenes are not shifted, or
reversed, before you know what is being done, but one melts into the
other. It is a diorama in which the valley of Schams takes the place
of the ravine of the Via Mala. Still, if you are at all susceptible to
effects of this kind, the change in the nature of the impressions will
be felt to be great. My feeling was that I was a musical instrument
possessed of consciousness, but not of free agency; and that nature
was playing on me what, and as, she pleased: first something rude,
simple, and clangorous; then something soft, soothing, and varied.
From Zillis, the first village of the valley, where we stopped at the
hotel de la Poste for half an hour, I counted five villages over the
grassy slopes around me, and seven churches, generally on more or less
conspicuous knolls. I was seated outside in the sun on a bench against
the wall. The presence of a stranger soon attracted the curiosity
of some children that were playing about in the street. A few cents
secured their attention. I asked them why they were not at school. The
schools here were not open, they told me, except in winter. During
the four months of summer they are closed, in order that the children
of these industrious peasants may learn to labour, as well as to read
and write; and that the schoolmaster, too, may have as well as other
people, time to get in his hay, or in some way or other to earn what
will enable him to buy hay, for in this part of the world none can live
without a cow.
And as it is with attendance at school, so is it to a great extent in
these valleys with attendance at church: it is affected by times and
seasons. I once asked a woman who was describing to me the rigour of
the winter in one of these high valleys, whether she was speaking from
experience? Did she live up here in winter? Of course she did. Where
else had poor people to go?
‘What do you do to pass the time?’
‘In winter we go every day to church.’
‘Why do you not go every day now?’
‘Because we have now something else to do.’
The custom, then, of going to church, as I have often suspected is
the case with prayer three times a day in the East, does not owe its
existence and its maintenance exclusively to motives of a religious
kind. It in some degree rests upon its giving people something to
do, who otherwise would at the time have nothing to do, and upon its
enabling them to indulge their sense of gregariousness. There is
nothing mischievous, or reprehensible in this. Quite the contrary;
for why in our efforts to keep alive our sense of the Unseen, and our
moral sense, should we reject what aid may be obtained from the action
of motives which, though not religious in the ordinary meaning of the
word, are quite natural and very beneficial?
I found that in this valley, as is the case in most others, there
are very few families who do not reside in houses of their own, and
very few owners of houses who are without a bit of land of their own.
This very much increased the interest with which I regarded the seven
villages, and the multitude of little patches of green, and of gold,
which tesselated the area around me of about a mile and a half in
diameter, walled in by its amphitheatre of rugged mountains. To live
in a house that is your own makes life pleasanter, and to cultivate
a field that is your own makes labour lighter. The thoughts, the
feelings, the lives of peasants who live in their own houses, and
cultivate their own land are of a higher order than the thoughts, the
feelings, the lives of those who do not; and where this underlies the
picture, the scene is a pleasanter one to contemplate.
Having loitered much by the way it was midday when I entered Andeer.
This is the chief place in the valley. It possesses many roomy
substantially built houses, and is quite a little town. From its extent
you would suppose that its population must exceed the 600 it is said
to contain. All these towns, however, cover more ground than towns
of equal population would with us from the fact that almost all the
dwelling houses have annexed to them cow-houses with the hayloft in
an upper story: and these cow-houses with haylofts over them are not
readily distinguishable from dwelling houses. The hotel Fravi, at which
I put up--I do not know whether there is another in the place--rehorses
the diligences and carriages, which go to and fro over the Splügen.
It is therefore a large establishment, making up many beds, and
having stabling for about forty horses. The thickness of the walls of
the hotel, nearly three feet on the third story, reminded me of the
severity of the winter these 600 people have to get through, somehow or
other, with their scanty means and humble appliances, when their houses
are for months together half buried in snow, and they are walled in,
as it were in a prison, with mountain-high snow barriers right and
left, and every breath of air that reaches them is charged with most
benumbing cold.
On this day, however, there was nothing to suggest the severities of an
Alpine winter, except the preparations these good people were making
for its advent. The depth of colour in the blue abyss, unflecked by
cloud, and undimmed by a suspicion of mistiness, was such as we can
know little of here in England. It was one of a succession of sunny
days, that was following a spell of wet; and so every man, woman, and
child was out making, or bringing in, hay. The shutters of almost every
house in the town were up, indicating where their inmates were, and
what they were about. Later in the day the results of the work of the
day, and of the few fine ones that had preceded it, began to be seen in
the streets. There was a constant succession of little trucks drawn by
oxen, some on wheels, and some on runners, loaded high with fragrant
hay. Those who could not afford oxen drew these trucks themselves,
the mother and the little people often pulling it along together;
and, to go a step still lower, those who could not afford the trucks,
carried their hay in large bundles on their own backs. The sun was at
the bottom of all this life and successful labour; and the warmth he
was pouring down into the valley to-day would keep these industrious
families alive in the winter. The amount of air, too, was just what was
enough for their haymaking. To one sitting outside the hotel, close by
its row of poplars, watching the arrival of the hay harvest, the breeze
appealed to four senses at once. You felt the contact of its crisp
freshness; you heard the rustling, and saw the quivering of the aspen
leaves as it moved by them; and it brought to you the fragrance of the
new hay. Later in the day when the hay was housed, and the fields were
wet with dew, you heard the blacksmith’s hammer repairing the damages
the good people’s tools had sustained, and the wood-cleaver’s axe
preparing to-morrow’s fuel. For in this part of the world all trades
work till 8 P.M., having begun at 5 A.M.; two hours in the middle of
the day being appropriated to rest--two sacred hours, the sabbath of
each day--which are most religiously observed everywhere, even at the
post-office bureau. And these men who were now working on till eight,
had been at work all day in the hay-field, from which they had only
been driven by the heavy dew of such an evening, following such a day,
at such a height.
CHAPTER VI.
AVERSTHAL.
Will Fortune never come with both hands full?
She either gives a stomach and no food--
Such are the poor, in health; or else a feast
And takes away the stomach--such are the rich
That have abundance, and enjoy it not.--SHAKESPEARE.
_August 8._--By the stratagem of inviting the circumnavigator to
breakfast with me this morning at 4.40 was enabled to get off at five.
As we passed down the main street of the little town--the hotel Fravi
is at its northern end--I again heard, as I had up to eight yesterday
evening, the blacksmith’s hammer and the wood-river’s axe; for there
was at this early hour too much dew on the grass for their hay-making.
If, as the monkish saying tells us, to labour is to pray, then the life
of these poor peasants, at all events in summer, is both continuous and
earnest prayer. It is prayer in deed, in support of the prayer in word
of their long winters, about which we were told something in the last
chapter. Their prayer in deed must have a good moral effect upon them,
for it is doing their utmost under such conditions as oblige them to
feel that the success of their efforts will after all depend on unseen
causes over which they have no direct control. It is also through a
dumb, yet still a most eloquent appeal to those unseen causes.
Above Andeer our valley, which is now approaching the Splügen, begins
to close in. The Splügen, however, was not my destination. The aspect
of things in, as we are told, the highest inhabited valley in Europe,
and a glimpse of the life of its inhabitants, had more attraction for
me; and so my route to-day was to be up the Aversthal, debouching,
whenever the time might come for that, at Casaccia at the foot of the
Maloja, on the road from Chievenna to the Engadin. My plan was to
get as far as I conveniently could in the first half of the day, and
to spend the remainder of it in looking at whatever there might be
to see at whatever place I might then have reached. I did not expect
much encouragement in my efforts to push on from my companion. Still
I would not begin by anticipating difficulties and disappointments:
at all events I had yesterday given him very little to do, and plenty
of time to rest; and some of that little to do he had shuffled off by
entrusting my _sac_ to a return carriage, and some of that plenty of
time for rest he had turned to account by sleeping through the greater
part of the afternoon in an empty diligence in the coach-house of the
hotel. At about two miles above Andeer the stream of the Aversthal
falls into that of the Hinter Rhein. Immediately beyond the point
of junction the path for the Aversthal starts from the right bank of
the Hinter Rhein, and takes the left bank of the Averser Bach. There
is no mistaking it, for at first, and for some two or three miles up
the valley, as far as an abandoned smelting-house, it is an old cart
track. After this it becomes a horse path. In some places between the
binonymous hamlet of Inner Ferrera or Canicül and Campsut it has of
late been so damaged as to be for the present available for pedestrians
only. But these good people have so much of the wisdom of the ant and
of the bee in repairing damages, that we may be sure that the road will
soon again be made practicable for horse traffic.
As this is undeservedly a not much frequented way, I will give some
particulars of it. It begins in a pine wood with the Averser Bach,
or Averser Rhein as it is more grandiloquently sometimes styled,
blustering by on your left over its rocky bed in no inconsiderable
volume. After a time you cross to its opposite bank. The stream has
now, in correspondence with the increasing grade of the ascent, become
more rapid and noisy. The rocks, too, over which it tumbles having
become larger--some of them are large tables of rock--give occasion for
several small waterfalls. There are lofty mountains by the side of your
path, and others still loftier are at times visible in the distance.
Sometimes your path lies over the outspread rock-fragments brought
down the mountain side by storm torrents. You see that it would be
bad to be caught here while such work was going on, for you would
have but little chance of keeping your feet against the descending
stream of commingled rocks and water. After this the valley widens
into prairies, upon which are a few _châlets_. This is the village
of Ausser Ferrera. Beyond this the path, still on the right bank,
takes you through a stretch of pine wood, which again terminates in
prairies. This time the expanse is larger; and here is Inner Ferrera,
or Canicül. You now have to recross to the left bank, and to ascend
through a pine wood, which continues as far as Campsut. Along this
part of the way the scene is often grandly hard and rugged. The near
and distant mountains are mighty masses. The iron-faced precipices awe
you. The stream is impatient to get away from them. At about a third
of this stage of the way we had to cross, not much above the stream,
some steep inclines of freshly brought down mountain rubbish, which had
in some places buried, in others carried away, the path. This brought
us down quite to the level of the stream, where its course describes
a curve round the end of a lofty precipitous mountain. We were on the
inner side of the curve. Here nature had given no space for a path,
and so it had to be formed partly by excavation, and partly by the
construction of a narrow wooden roadway supported on king-posts and
struts, just out of the reach of floods. On the opposite side of the
Bach, in the precipitous face of the mountain wall, which formed
the outer side of the curve of the stream here described, was a deep
ravine: to form it the mountain wall had been as it were split in two,
or rent asunder. Through this ravine poured the Starlera Bach. As soon
as we had rounded the curve, being still not many yards distant from
the Starlera ravine and its torrent, we came on a corresponding ravine
and torrent on our side--those of the Val de Lei. We crossed them by a
wooden bridge. Beyond the bridge is a little level space of three or
four yards square. Standing here the scene was singularly impressive.
The only sound was that of the three torrents rushing together. The
only sight that of the three deep, steep, ravines they were rushing
down, each torrent between two lofty precipitous mountains. Three
troubled streams, and six iron-faced lines of mountain precipices, and
the little space of unfathomable blue above: these were all. Had I
been alone, or had there been with me one who possessed an inner sense
capable of being touched by such a scene, I would gladly have loitered
at this point for some little time. The feeling that came over me was
that which the desert engenders--that you have intruded on a scene not
meant for man. There it is stillness, desolateness, absence of life;
here it is mountains closing in around you, and torrents blustering
by, and no place for anything else, that warn you off. The iron-faced
precipices will advance a little closer, the torrents will rise a
little higher, to resent your intrusion. I wished to surrender myself
for a little time to the impressions of the moment, to commune a little
with the _genius loci_. As it was, I was hurried through this home of
the spirit of the Brocken, and still wonder the monster did not show
himself, to make me understand that that was no place for such feeble
creatures as the children of men.
Beyond this point we found that the road had again been carried away.
A straight-sided gully had lately been cut through it to the depth of
about eight feet. Four men were here at work making a cutting for the
road down to the bottom of the newly-formed gully. In such a place
it would have been of no use to refill the excavation, because the
incoherent material used for this purpose would be carried away by the
next rain. They had instead of this sunk the road to the bottom of the
gully on the lower side. Up the perpendicular eight feet of the upper
face, which they had not yet begun to make practicable, we had to climb
by the aid of a few projecting roots. If our hold of the roots, or the
roots’ hold of the soil, had failed--of course there was but slight
chance of either of these possibilities occurring--we should have
tumbled down about sixty feet into the Bach, for as the road was along
the edge of a precipice, a fall from the face of the gully would have
been a fall down the precipice also.
The path now in good repair, and on the descent, continued through pine
woods, and in about an hour conducted us to an open grassy space,
where we crossed the stream to the right bank. Here was the village
of Campsut. We were now at an elevation of 5,000 feet, where nothing
could be grown but grass. As we were entering the village, a little
girl, of about ten years of age, a rosy _brunette_, who was running to
join her friends in the hay-fields, almost came into collision with us.
She was so confounded by this sudden rencontre with strangers, that
for some little time she was unable to answer our questions. When we
released her, she started off again like a wild animal that had been
suddenly disturbed by a more than doubtful apparition. At the further
end of Campsut we got a rare draught of milk. It was presented to us
in a little circular wooden tub with two small handles formed by the
projection of two of the staves. This milk was deliciously fresh and
rich; and as to the little wooden tub, that was so spotlessly clean
that it was a pleasure to look at it. The dame to whom we were indebted
for this draught was above the common height, and, like the little
girl, had remarkably good features, and a ruddy brown complexion. Hard
work, rough weather, long winters, and simple fare, had had as yet
their issue only in health and strength. I tarried over the tub of
delicious milk, not only for its sake. A little talk with such a donor
of such a draught was a pleasant interlude. The order and cleanliness
of everything in the _châlet_ showed that she had such ambition as
Campsut admitted of.
Beyond Campsut a charming bit of smooth turf interspersed with large
rocks, and detached larches, some little height above the brawling
stream, with grand mountains right and left, and still grander
mountains in front, brought us to Crot--a village of a few scattered
_châlets_. You have to descend to the stream. Before you lies the
sombre green, treeless Madriserthal, to be entered after crossing the
stream by a bridge. Our way, however, was not across the stream up the
Madriserthal; so just beyond Crot, having crossed the Bach of our own
valley, we turned away from the Madriserthal, and ascended a steep,
grassy slope on our left. This after a time became rocky, with, among
the rocks, larches and cembras. Having reached the summit of this rise,
with our Bach on our left, we advanced for some way, along the flank
of the mountain, through an ancient open forest, and then crossed the
stream, now in a ravine, by the second of two bridges, about a mile
from Cresta. On the Cresta side of the ravine is no wood: at first
only very rocky alpe, and then, when the village is reached, upland
prairie. At about half a mile from the village we met a chubby little
urchin of about ten years of age, with head and feet bare, clad in
strong thick homespun of hemp and coarse woollen. He came up to us
with an easy self-possessed air, knowing very well what we wanted, and
announced that he was the son of the _Pasteur_, and would conduct us to
his father’s house, which is for travellers the recognized inn of the
place, as he is their recognized host.
It had been part of my Machiavelism for this day to take with us
nothing to eat, in order to ensure our getting at all events as
far as Cresta. The stratagem had been quite successful, for having
stopped nowhere by the way, except for the tub of milk at Campsut, we
reached Cresta at 11.30 A.M. And fortunate it was that we had started
early, the result of the other successful little ruse I have already
mentioned, and had had no delays on the road, for we had not been at
Cresta half-an-hour when it began to rain, the rain being diversified
only with snow for twenty-two hours.
During the afternoon there was no going outside the door. But there was
enough within for an afternoon. First there was the _Pasteur_ himself,
a well-built man of about forty years of age. He wore coloured clothes,
in which it was clear that he did much out o’door work. This, from the
situation of Cresta, must have been restricted to cutting, fetching,
and riving wood for fuel, and making hay. On Sundays, of course, his
working clothes are exchanged for the clerical black and white, with
the portentous collar and bands of the Swiss Reformed Church. He kept
himself no cows, only goats. The goats, however, would require hay, and
he could assist his neighbours, too, in making their hay. Cow’s milk,
I suppose, can always be bought in such a place, where the number of
cows must be great in proportion to that of the villagers. He spoke
German, French, and Romansch, and was a man of observation, thought,
and intelligence. He is also the schoolmaster of the Commune, which is
that of Oberland Aversthal, which reaches from Crot to Juf, a place
some way above Cresta. His pastoral duties, I understood, extended
down the valley below Crot as far as Inner Ferrera, or Canicül. To
these employments must be added, as I have already mentioned, that of
entertaining such travellers as would prefer what he has to offer to
what they would find at the little village inn.
The good man’s wife was not now visible. She had for some months been
suffering from a serious illness, and had not yet seen a medical man;
nor, whatever turn her illness might take, was there much chance of
her seeing one, because it would require two days for one to come
and return, St. Moritz in the Engadin being the nearest point from
which assistance of this kind could be had. Here, therefore, medical
advice and medicines can only be received through the post. The poor
woman’s illness threw much of the work of the house upon him, in which,
however, he was aided by a sturdy Romansch-speaking damsel.
Then there was the view from the window. This, from a height above
the stream of about 500 feet, commanded the valley and the opposite
range. The lower half of this range was covered with the open forest
of cembra, a part of which we had passed through in the forenoon.
Above the forest was Alpine pasture. All along the ridge the line that
divided the forest from the pasture was perfectly straight: nowhere
did the forest encroach on the grass, or the grass on the forest. On
entering the forest above Crot we had seen some larch, but there was
none, I believe, opposite to Cresta, nothing but cembra. Nor were there
any young trees in the forest, though the old ones stood at such a
distance from each other as to give sufficient pasturage for a herd of
cows I could just make out as I stood at the window. I could also make
out with a glass a flock of goats in the forest, and that accounted to
me for the absence of young trees. I had often observed that the goat
cannot kill the young spruce, of which the forests generally consist.
Of course they bite off the new terminals of the leader, and of the
laterals, but not quite to the bottom of the new wood. The terminals,
therefore, of the laterals, though bitten back every year, still gain
an inch or two every year; and as this makes the plant grow into a very
compact and bushy form, the time comes when the goat can no longer
reach over the compact mass of laterals to bite off the terminal of the
leader. That was only to be got at so long as its enemy could reach
over to it. Every year the enemy is forced back a little; and so in a
dozen or twenty years it is no longer able to reach it. The terminal
of the leader then advances in safety, and a tree is quickly formed.
All that has happened is, that it was delayed some years in making
its start. But during this period of delay the roots were spreading
far, and establishing themselves with a good hold of the ground; when,
therefore, the start at last is made, the growth is very rapid. You
may always distinguish the trees that had in their early days been
kept back for a time in this way, for the lower part of their trunks,
the three or four feet nearest the ground, are always crooked. This
indicates how they had been maltreated by the goats. So it is with the
ordinary pine of the Swiss forests. Of the cembras, however, I observed
that they could not escape the goats in this way, or in any way; either
because the bite of these animals is at once destructive to them, or
because having been bitten back they have not the power of forming a
compact bush, and so of rising eventually out of harm’s way. At all
events the goats kill the young trees of this species; and this will
account for so many forests of cembra having died out, or now being
in process of dying out. One would suppose that this cause of their
destruction would be guarded against in these lofty Grison valleys,
some of which are rendered habitable only by the supply of wood
furnished by what remains of ancient forests of this species, which is
the only Swiss conifer that grows at such heights. But in this valley
of Oberland Aversthal there is some peat; its inhabitants, therefore,
are not entirely dependent for fuel on their single forest of cembra
opposite to Cresta. Their dependence, however, upon it for material for
the construction of their houses is complete. When, therefore, their
one forest shall have been consumed they must either take to building
with stone, or abandon the valley as a place of residence.
It was interesting to watch the effects of the snow storms, which
throughout this afternoon alternated with showers of rain, and will
continue to do so till 10 A.M. to-morrow. On our side of the valley,
which, as it faced the south, had been heated by the sun of the
forenoon and of yesterday, the snow never lay on the ground. On the
opposite side every fall of snow completely whitened the Alpine pasture
above the forest, but rarely extended any way down into the forest; and
on the few occasions when it did was very soon gone. When we left the
place the following day all the pasture above the forest was white, but
the turf between the trees was free from snow. Of course the ground
beneath the trees is somewhat warmer than in the open, as every animal
knows when it chooses its night’s resting-place; still the visible
difference between the two suggested the questions of whether there is
not what may be roughly regarded as a line for the snow that falls in
summer, and whether it is this supposed line of summer-falling snow
which defines the upper limit of the forest by preventing above that
limit the germination of seeds or by killing the young plants in the
tender stage of their first growth.
Of course there was a great deal of talk with our host. He was,
naturally enough, glad to have some one to talk to--a feeling which his
guest, as might be supposed, was ready to reciprocate. This was his
second year at Cresta. This year, up to the date of my visit, several
Germans, and two Americans, had stopped for a night at his house, but
not one Englishman. His continuance in his present position depended
in equal degrees on his parishioners’ good pleasure and on his own
choice. The liberty of the two contracting parties was equal. They
could bid him go, if so minded; and he, if so minded, could bid them
look out for another _Pasteur_. Romansch he thought was dying out in
the neighbourhood, being hard pressed by German on the north and to
some extent by Italian on the south. As respects the schools there was
a general leaning towards having German taught in them, on account of
its superior utility for business purposes, even in places where the
religious instruction is still given in Romansch.
The school of Oberland Aversthal is held in his house. A large room
on the ground-floor has been fitted up for this purpose. Considering
how poor the peasants are, I was surprised at the excellence of the
fittings. The room had double windows, and an excellent stove, which
was of such dimensions that I was at a loss to imagine how it could
have ever been brought up the valley. There were good desks and
benches, master’s desk and blackboard. In short, the apparatus was as
good as could be wished. All this is accounted for by remembering that,
though it is provided by the peasants, it is provided for their own
children. Every family in the valley has a strong personal interest
in the school; and this concentration of personal interest upon the
school-room issues in its being the best furnished room in the commune.
And as the minister is the master, we may suppose that the teaching
and tone of the school is correspondingly good. Of course here, as
elsewhere in these parts, the school is open only during the winter
months, which, however, at an altitude of 6,400 feet, that of the
schoolroom--Juf is some hundreds of feet higher--must comprise nine
months of the year.
Off the schoolroom was the guests’ chamber, whose wants had been taken
into account in the construction of the house. In this everything was
brightly clean. It contained two beds, and about a dozen volumes in
German. Behind these two rooms was the hall, or store-room, of the
house. Above the school-room was the sitting-room. On either side of
this was a bed-room. Behind these were some small rooms, in one of
which my porter was berthed.
The Canton had been desirous that a road should be constructed through
the valley to connect either the Upper Engadin, or Casaccia, below the
Maloja, with the Splügen road; and with a view to this the preliminary
surveys had been made. The proposal, however, was so distasteful to the
peasants, that it had been withdrawn for the present. This reminded
one of the opposition that was made to the Great Western Railway by
the authorities of a famous University; an opposition which has left
its mark on the railway map of England, for it diverted the railway
from its intended course, both to the cost of the shareholders and to
the inconvenience of the University. The unlettered ignorance of the
peasants of Oberland Aversthal has come to the same conclusion as did
the learned Doctors of Oxford. They both alike argued, we are no part
of the world; the world is wicked, and will invade us; we are no match
for the world. Fortunately not. The result in the case of Overland
Aversthal will be what it was in the case of the famous University.
The wicked world will in the end have its way, and the opponents of
the wicked world will come to acknowledge that it is not a bad way,
and that they are none the worse for accommodating themselves to it:
in fact, that they are themselves a part of the world, and cannot do
without it.
One little matter I noticed this morning cannot but work in the
direction of opening the eyes of these naturally conservative peasants
to their true interests. Some time after we had entered the valley--it
was at about 7 A.M.--we met a walking postman with a bulky bag on his
back. There was much in that bag. It contained the wants, the hopes,
the schemes, the feelings of Unterland and Oberland Aversthal. At
about the corresponding hour in the evening, as I was looking from the
_Pasteur’s_ window at the aspect of things in the rain, I saw the same
man arrive on his return journey. He had on his back the same bag. In
it he had now brought back the reciprocation of that terrible outside
world to the wants, hopes, schemes, and feelings of the valley. All
this only means that these good people have dealings with, and friends
in, that terrible world, dealings without which they could not possibly
exist, and friends who are very dear to them, and affection for whom
constitutes a large ingredient of their inner life. Every family must
every year sell a cow, and a young bullock or two, and so much cheese,
to buy coffee, and brandy, and scythes, and many other things it
cannot do without; and arrangements for these sales and purchases are
made through the post; and every family may have a relative seeking a
livelihood in the outside world, some far enough off in it, and it does
them good to hear of that relative’s welfare. Well, if it is desirable
that these transactions, and this intelligence, should be facilitated
by the walking postman, would it not be desirable that they should
be still further facilitated by a good road? It would, practically,
enhance the price they would get for their young bullocks, and surplus
cows and cheese, and lessen the price of the coffee, the brandy, the
scythes, and their other necessary purchases. It would, too, increase
the value of every _klafter_ of land in the valley. And it would bring
many travellers into the valley, in catering for whom some money might
be made. Some of them would get a better living, than any of them get
now, by acting as guides and porters. They would see more of the world,
and the world would see more of them; and just as the world would be
the better for knowing something of Aversthal, so would its good people
be the better for knowing something of the world. No one of them would
now wish to go back to the ante-post times. The silent, but inevitable
action of the post will lead on to the road; and then no one will wish
to go back to the ante-road times.
But the above-mentioned bag, full of such beneficent magic, for it was
magic that disclosed to every family what their hearts were yearning
to know, and what their business required, was not on this afternoon
the whole of the walking postman’s load. There was also on his back an
osier basket for our host. He had made preparations for its reception;
but the chubby little fellow, who had conducted us to his father’s
house, was the first to announce its arrival. He and his father were
soon out in the rain, opening it carefully so as not either to injure
the basket, or rudely to shake its contents, I should have said its
inmates, for on raising the lid there were revealed to their delighted
eyes three geese--three live geese. A little enclosure had been got
ready for them, to which they were forthwith transferred, the good man
carrying two, and the chubby little fellow the third. They already had
half-a-dozen chickens: the only ones I saw in the village, or, indeed,
in the valley. This, then, was a great and interesting addition to
the live stock of Oberland Aversthal; though now, on recalling the
conditions of the place, I cannot imagine how they were to be kept
through the winter, or, indeed, how they were to be kept at any time
out of harm’s way: for they needs must sooner or later get down to the
Bach, from which there would not be much chance of their coming back
alive, as they would probably, in their first attempt to navigate it,
be dashed to death against the rocks. But whatever might be the issue
of the experiment, the good opinion of our host I was already disposed
to form was further strengthened on my finding that he was fond of
tending animals. It was, too, an experiment that might, I wish I could
say must, add to the companions and the resources--there is a little
jar in that word resources--of his neighbours, whose lives up here
above the clouds are somewhat wanting in objects of ordinary earthly
interest.
The Romansch-speaking damsel was setting the table for supper at
the time when this new form of animal life arrived at Cresta. The
_Pasteur’s_ half dozen fowls hearing the stir outside came forth from
the shed, in which they had taken refuge from the rain, to see what
it was all about. They were of a small breed, for it costs too much
to keep large fowls in a place where their maize has to be brought
a day’s journey on a man’s back. I chipped off a few crumbs from a
roll that had just been placed on the table--they were detached with
difficulty--and threw them down from the window. The proud little
cock--it was a proceeding we must all many a time have observed--took
a piece up with his beak, but instead of swallowing it--what
self-restraint! summoned his seraglio for the delicious morsels,
depositing before the first arrival the one that was in his beak. That
surely, the thought flashed upon me--for at Cresta one sees things in a
new light--is not instinct; or if it is, then the ordinary definition
of instinct ought to be somewhat enlarged. It is self-denial,
politeness, policy, gratitude, affection. Whether it looks to the past,
or to the future, there is something wonderfully human about it. It
is true that all chanticleers do this; but if they do not understand
now, which is what I do not believe, then their progenitors must have
once understood, so this supposition only removes the fact some steps
back, that under the conditions of their position, that is under the
relations in which they were standing to their seraglios, it was the
right thing to do. The conditions and relations of the position must
have been understood, and what under them was profitable and becoming
must have been seen. Either then, for that is our conclusion, reason
is less mechanical in them, or else more mechanical in ourselves, than
is generally supposed; or, to put it in another way, their reason and
ours are more closely akin than is generally supposed.
But the arrival of the geese by the post carries us back to our
argument that the post is a preparation for the at present much dreaded
road. Will not these good people some day come to see that if it is
advantageous to have a path that admits of the postman bringing to them
three geese in a basket, and other such things, that it would be more
advantageous to have a road that would admit of the diligence post,
or the carrier’s cart, bringing them many other things they want, but
which are beyond the carrying power of the postman? This is a question
we may be sure will occur to them, and be discussed, in their long
winters; and, too, we may be sure that the young people, who will have
been brought up by the minister in the well-appointed school the old
people are maintaining, will upon this subject for the most part be of
a different way of thinking from the old people.
As to the supper, (the preparations for which supplied us with those
crumbs, the grateful, or judicious, appropriation of which made us wish
to improve our knowledge of what we call instinct,) it was the same as
our dinner had been with the addition of butter, and the substitution
of coffee for Valtelline wine. The meat was again the mummy beef with
which I had first become acquainted at Peist. To this was now added
mummy ham. The bread had been baked at Silva Plana in the Engadin,
and was a month old. It was the petrified fossil of bread. No traces
of moisture remained in it, and it was as hard to masticate as it
had been to cut. Those who know what are the habits of Swiss swine
in summer, when kept on the mountains about the _châlets_ where the
cows pass the night, will not be able to bring themselves to touch
pig in any form in Switzerland. As therefore I was obliged to reject
the mummy ham, and had not yet discovered the merits of mummy beef,
I dined on bread and cheese and wine, and supped on bread and cheese
and coffee. Not so, however, the circumnavigator. At dinner I had been
somewhat shocked at the vigour of his appetite, for he left nothing on
the table; and now at supper, seeing that the same process was being
repeated, and knowing how hard those comestibles had been to come at
in this part of the world, and seeing also that the good _Pasteur_
had set before us what he must have supposed would have left a large
margin for discretion, I rose from the table in a way to intimate to my
companion that I thought it time for him to do the same. He would not,
however, take the hint. I, therefore, reminded him that these things
were hard to come by up here, and that I had no doubt but that they
were in consequence used frugally, and wound up my little speech with
the dictum that enough was better than too much. My facts, however,
reflections, and platitudes had no other effect than that of extracting
from my voracious attendant the remark, that he always began to suspect
that he was not all right when he found that he could not feed well. I
could not help retorting, ‘Then just now you must have the satisfaction
of feeling that you are unusually well.’ But this, like what had
preceded it, glanced off from his thick skin, for he continued doggedly
at work, till there was not left on the table a crumb of anything,
of beef, ham, cheese, butter, sugar, or bread, wherefrom to draw any
further sanitary inferences. I now poured out on him the last dregs of
my disgust by telling him that it was fortunate for him that he had
not to live up here, for if so he would have few opportunities through
life for ascertaining the state of his health. It would have had a
pleasant flavour of revenge, if I could have made him pay his own shot
for this supper; but from that he knew that he was safe, because if for
any reason--my reason in this case was the wish to save our host some
trouble--you bid your man take his meals with you, you must of course
pay for both.
Besides his experiment in live stock, the good man was making one
in gardening. He had enclosed a little space, about half-a-dozen
yards square, facing to the south, and had sown in it white beet,
the leaf-stalks of which are eaten, cabbages, turnips, and lettuce.
This was his first summer at Cresta, and so he had lost no time in
endeavouring to ascertain how far the sun could help him in this
matter. But on this, the 8th day of August, the prospect of success was
far from encouraging. The turnips showed no tuberous tendencies, and
had formed each but a few small leaves. The foliage of the cabbages
and lettuces was in much the same condition. The peculiarities of
growth in those plants could still be known to his neighbours only by
what they might have seen in that much dreaded outside world. A little
might be expected from the white-stalked beet; but as there was only a
fortnight more for the continuance of the experiment, and it was even
then snowing, I cannot think that it will be repeated next year. Or if
so, it will not be for the sake of any contributions the little garden
may be expected to make to the _Pasteur’s_ table, but for the sake of
his recollections of the world below to which he once belonged. The
thought, however, crossed my mind that this little garden had been made
not so much as an experiment, but in the hope of pleasing his sick wife
by exhibiting to her its products.
The fact is that nothing can be grown here but grass, for Cresta is
some way beyond the last cembra on its side of the valley; and if one
of these highest-climbing of Swiss conifers could be coaxed into living
on such a spot--I saw a stunted oldish-looking dwarf of the kind in the
lower part of the village--it would require a century to overtop the
_châlets_. No human food, therefore, can be produced except what is
supplied by the goats and cows. Here everything is transmuted grass. No
tribe of wandering Tartars ever lived so exclusively on their flocks
and herds. Not a potato, not a stem of hemp, can be grown. Nature has
been far more bountiful to the most hard pressed Kirgishes. Their
steppes are a Paradise of fertility and variety compared to Cresta.
Indeed we must go somewhere near the Arctic zone to find a parallel to
its climate; and even that will not do, for Iceland will not give it,
because there a few turnips and potatoes, of the size of walnuts, may
be grown. For what we are in search of we must go beyond Iceland, and
enter the arctic circle, and perhaps at last the latitude that presents
an equivalent to its altitude may be found in Lapland.
What a life does this imply! What a weary winter! What dreary
confinement to the small comfortless house, with the snow piled up
to the windows of the first floor, month after month! How must the
returning warmth of the sun, and the first glimpses of the green grass
be hailed! How must every hour of the few days of their little summer
be prized! In that brief space they have to provision the garrison of
each home for the ensuing nine months. Their chief care is for their
hay, the one store upon which ultimately the lives of all, both man and
beast, depend. We may be sure they do not lose an hour of daylight. It
is fortunate they cannot cut their grass by moonlight. If they could,
there would be some probability of their working themselves to death.
They could not cut it by moonlight, because, though thick enough on
the ground, much of it is only a few inches long--not longer than what
I have often seen the mowers leaving behind them in English meadows.
You see no waste of that kind here, for these careful people mow very
smooth, and very near the ground. And then they know that their few
days of possible summer are always more or less abridged by summer
snow-storms. How then must they be rejoiced in their hearts when two or
three bright, breezy days come together, and enable them to get up what
had been previously cut! How heavily are they weighted in the race they
have to run for their lives against time!
Where the cow, a little aided by the goat, is the one great means
of support, the humblest family cannot exist with less than five or
six. They ought, indeed, to have not less than seven. Milk and cheese
are their mainstay, with on high days and holidays a shred or two of
mummy beef, or pork. Everything else they eat, or drink, or that they
clothe themselves with, or use in any way, must come indirectly from
the same source; that is to say, every family must every year sell one
cow (the price last year was twenty napoleons), and a young bullock
or two, and what cheese they can spare, to purchase with the proceeds
rye or maize flour, potatoes, brandy, coffee, hemp, wool, tools, and
whatever else they may require. Even the few pigs they keep can be
turned to some account only by the aid of the cow. No kind of grain,
or of roots, can be had for this purpose. When summer, therefore, has
come, piggy must follow the cow up into the high pasture, where the
cheese is to be made. The whey, that will be expressed from the curd,
will be his share. Upon this he will thrive moderately. When he will
descend from the mountains with some little weight of flesh upon him,
he will be taking his last walk. He is about to pass into the mummy
condition. But how will those that are to be retained for stock be kept
during the winter? For several months there will be nothing for them
to graze upon, and not one mouthful of anything convertible into human
food will be available for them. Every pedestrian in Switzerland will
have observed in front of the mountain cheese _châlets_, where the
cows have for generations passed their summer nights, and often, too,
by the side of the cow-houses in the villages, beds of a large-leafed
Alpine dock. Where the accumulations of centuries from the cows have
made the soil too fat and greasy for grass, this plant luxuriates. It
delights in rankness. It also affects moist places, as does in this
country its congener, the water dock. The leaves, and leaf-stalks of
this dock, these careful people collect in summer, and having scalded
them, seasoned with a sprinkling of salt, nettle-tops are sometimes
added, the mess is tubbed or barrelled, for the winter. This is the
pig’s winter food; his sour krout. His daily meal of it is served to
him warm. That the Swiss pigs have to ascend and descend the mountains
together with the cows accounts for their form. They are large-framed,
and clean-limbed; they have a long back, and long, bony legs. If built
at all like our pigs, they would be unable to do their long journeys,
and their climbing. In colour they are generally more or less,
sometimes entirely, of a rusty chesnut.
There had, then, been much to do, and there had not been much time for
doing it. There was the wood for fuel and for repairs that had been
felled in the previous winter, and that had to be brought in before
the hay was made. And there was the turf, too, that had to be stored;
and that also had been dug before the hay was made, that every hour of
sunshine might be utilized for drying it, and for making the hay--the
precious hay, to which everything must be subordinated, for upon it
everything depends. And that, too, after many delays and anxieties,
has at last been won, and is now safe under cover. The whey-fed old
sow, or the full-grown hog in about the condition they would be with
us when put up to fatten, and the old cow now past milk, have returned
home for desiccation. The cows, whose day is not yet done, are being
comfortably housed. The rye and maize flour, the potatoes, the brandy,
the coffee, the hemp and wool for the women to spin and weave, are all
being provided as expeditiously as possible. But time is running these
preparations hard, even if it does not show a-head of them, for the
snow has already fallen so deep that the ground will be no more seen by
the peasants of Ober Aversthal till next year. The long dreadful winter
is again upon them.
CHAPTER VII.
JUF--THE FORCELLINA--THE SEPTIMER--CASACCIA.
Yet still e’en here content can spread a charm,
Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.
Tho’ poor the peasant’s hut, his feast tho’ small,
He sees his little lot the lot of all.--GOLDSMITH.
_August 9._--Up at 5 A.M., but nothing could be done out o’ doors. The
only difference from yesterday afternoon was that the amount of the
rain had diminished while that of the snow and sleet had increased. The
downfall of one or other was incessant. Such is Cresta in the dog days.
The good man of the house, however, was of opinion--the circumnavigator
did not present himself and his opinion till past seven--that the
weather would improve before midday. At ten his prognostications were
verified, and we started for Casaccia by way of the Forcellina and the
Septimer. Every one yesterday, and this morning, recommended us to go
to the Engadin by the way of Stalla on the Julier, as the shorter and
easier route. But as I was not due till midday to-morrow at Pontresina,
where I was to meet my wife, and the little boy of my two former
_Months in Switzerland_, there was plenty of time, if only the weather
would permit, for the grander Pass of the Forcellina, the old paved
road of the Septimer, and the Maloja, all of which I wished to see; the
shortness, therefore, and easiness of the alternative route were only
deterrent considerations.
The valley immediately beyond Cresta begins to widen and flatten
its bottom prairie land. We walked over the grass rejoicing in the
returning gleams of sunshine; and all the more because we knew how
deeply every soul around us was stirred by the same feelings, for
did not those warm rays of light mean well-being for their families
during the long arctic winter that was already not far off? These first
gleams, however, were shockingly short-lived, for before we had reached
Pürt, the first village beyond Cresta, the sleet had again returned,
and we were driven to take refuge in a large hay-grange, which it was
pleasant to find nearly full of new hay. Upon this we sat for some
twenty minutes, noting, through the open door, the women of the place
scouring their wooden milk vessels, and setting their small white
meagre cheeses on the window sills to consolidate. Each piece was about
the shape, size, and colour of a marmalade gallipot. The sleet having
nearly exhausted itself, a second start was made. As we went along we
counted a herd of about fifty cows on the lower flank of the opposite
range. Among them was a large flock of crows; on our side we saw a pair
of hawks, and a pair of choughs. The feathered fauna of the Grisons
is to the eye of the pedestrian far more abundant both in species and
in individuals than that of Central, or of Western Switzerland. We
passed through two more villages, and as many more scuds of sleet, and
at midday reached Juf, the last village of Oberland Aversthal, and the
highest village in Europe that is inhabited throughout the year.
Here it was necessary that we should halt for dinner. Designedly I had
taken nothing with us, in order that we might be thrown entirely on the
resources of people who live at an elevation of 6,900 feet, that is to
say 500 feet above Cresta. The _châlet_ we chanced to enter was that
of the shoemaker of Juf. At first we found in it only an ancient dame.
Before, however, we left we had to receive a levée of some ten, or a
dozen of the inhabitants of the place. The ancient dame would gladly
do for us anything in her power. Milk, of course, she could supply;
but she insisted on our having it warm: for who ever offered any one
cold milk when sleet was falling? For this it was necessary that a
fire should be lighted. She also had some black rye-bread, and two
kinds of cheese: a piece of last year’s fat cheese, and plenty of this
year’s meagre cheese. This was all. I, however, was quite satisfied.
Was it not the best these good people had to offer? and was it not what
they had themselves to be satisfied with? The sitting-room was very
low--hardly more than six feet in height. This was, first, to economize
the wood of which the house was built throughout, and all of which
had to be brought from below Cresta; and then to make the most of the
heat of the stove, the fuel for which, whether wood or turf, was very
costly to them; every piece of the latter having been paid for with
so much of the precious time of their brief summer, and of the former
with very large demands upon the muscular tissues of their own bodies,
while cutting it in winter, and getting it across the ravine opposite
to Cresta. The stove was a large structure, and filled about a fourth
part of the room. The object of its size was that it might have as
much heat-radiating surface as possible. It was fed by an opening not
in our sitting room, but in the kitchen behind it. At last the milk
was warmed, brought in, and placed on the table in a large bowl. In
this was placed a wooden ladle to dip out the milk with. The bowl was
flanked on one side with the loaf of black rye-bread, which, as it was
moist and fresh, was preferable to the desiccated wheaten bread of the
_Pasteur’s_ establishment; and on the other side with the two kinds
of cheese. Of these the fat variety was so old as to have almost lost
its consistency, and with its consistency had almost gone its goaty
flavour; the meagre variety had the texture of new soap, while its
flavour was that which may be imagined of soap which has somehow or
other become somewhat insipid. I asked for a knife to cut the loaf and
the cheese. Had not the Herr a knife of his own in his pocket? No other
kind of knife was used at Juf. This being their practice with respect
to knives, of course forks were altogether unknown. The Herr happened
to have a knife in his pocket, and was not sorry that his not having
thought of using it had thrown some light on the table arrangements
of Juf, which do not admit of anything that would require a fork, or
any kind of knife, except that which is carried in the pocket. These
particulars do not seem inviting, but it must be remembered where
we were, what was the _entourage_, and what the conditions of the
situation, and it will then become intelligible how it could have been
that this Juf dinner, if that word may be used for what was before us,
would not have been left, if one had been called on to make a choice
between the two, for a Lord Mayor’s banquet in the Egyptian Hall.
We, and our ways, appeared as interesting to the Juffians, as they and
their ways to us, if we might judge by the attention with which we
were observed by the levée of old men and old women, and young women
too, who came in, and took possession of the benches fastened against
the wall, which surrounded the room, except in the stove corner. The
room contained no other seats than these benches. Among our visitors
was a poor fellow who had broken his leg on the mountains; and, the
fracture not having been properly reduced, he was now sadly crippled,
and complained of the pains he felt at moving, and at every change of
the weather. He never then, I thought, can be long together up here,
at all events at midsummer, without having his sufferings aggravated
by the latter cause. From what I understood of what we now had to
do, I was sure that my porter would be quite unequal to his work, I,
therefore, made inquiries for one who would act as guide and porter
across the Pass. A venerable senior among the company had a son, who,
he assured me, was exactly the man I was in want of; and so he went to
fetch him.
I paid five francs for our entertainment. I estimated its fair price
rather by the satisfaction it had given to myself, than by what it had
cost my hostess; that satisfaction was heightened at seeing how her old
weather-beaten, stove-dried features relaxed and brightened as she took
into her withered hand the little flake of gold, which perhaps was the
easiest earned payment she had ever received in her long hard life.
The balance between the services rendered and the value of them to
their recipient, having been thus adjusted to the contentment of both
parties, and the youth who was to accompany us over the Pass having
arrived, we recommenced our march at one o’clock. There was nothing
about him to indicate that he had been cradled in so rude a climate. He
was tall and slim, yet well and strongly built. His features were fine
and regular, and his complexion fair, almost to girlishness.
Before us was the long _cul de sac_ of the head of the valley. We
had to ascend the left mountain diagonally almost from Juf to the
visible summit, about two miles off. For the most part there was no
path at all, or our young guide could do better than following it. His
long, sure, smooth stride, as he glided up the slant of the mountain,
seemed like some new kind of pace; it was hardly walking. We found
it no easy task to keep up with him, which we only did, in Irish
style, by following him as well as we could. When we left Juf the sun
was bright, but as we ascended higher we saw a dark storm advancing
towards us from the direction of Cresta. It might not, however, reach
us; and for the present we had the sun, in the warmth of which even
the marmots were rejoicing, for we frequently heard the shrill cries
of their sentinels announcing the presence of an enemy, and saw those
that had taken the alarm scrambling back to their earths. When we
were approaching the summit, the diagonal direction of the ascent
ceased for a time, and we had for three or four hundred feet to go
straight up the mountain. This was the only bit of the Pass which at
all required attention to what we were about. It was something like
walking up one of the angles of the tower of York Minster, supposing
that angle to have become so dilapidated as to give from bottom to top
an almost perpendicular, irregular staircase. This is, I believe, what
is called in mountaineering phraseology an _arête_, that is the edge
of a mountain rib, or shoulder. Here the rib, or shoulder, was not far
from perpendicular, and could not be crossed. It had, therefore, to
be ascended, and its edge had been nicked into steps all the way up,
partly by nature, and partly by the pickaxe. As I was going up this
mountain staircase, and saw the storm below me, no great way off now, I
hoped it would not catch me upon it. In that case I thought there will
be some chance of my being blown off. We were, however, soon over this
bit, which also proved almost too high for the storm, for not much of
it reached up to where we were, about 1,700 feet above Juf.
This Pass presents a scene of solid, rugged desolation, of dreary
grandeur, as approached from the Juf side. The way to the summit
lies across one of the crateriform depressions, which are not
uncommon in such situations, between two mighty peaks, with torn and
shattered pinnacles. The whole scene is hereabouts so storm-beaten,
and frost-bitten, as to be apparently incapable of supporting even
a lichen. Everything on which the eye rests is in character--rocks
protruded, and rocks shivered, of a dull dark colour, pools of water
equally dark, and patches of new summer snow; the whole made more
forbidding to-day by icy gusts and pelting sleet.
And now that we have traversed the whole valley from the junction of
the Averser with the Hinter Rhein to the summit of the Pass, upon which
we are about to step, we are able to understand how its Oberland comes
to be the highest inhabited valley in Europe. But we will review the
whole of it. Our way up has been through three well defined stages. It
began with the Ferrerathal, the first stage. That is comparatively low
ground; in respect of altitude it has no special interest. It possesses
only the ordinary Swiss interest of being bounded by mountains more
or less rocky and precipitous, of maintaining forests more or less
shady and vigorous, interspersed at the mouths of lateral valleys
with small pieces of grass-land, which give space for the support of
their respective little villages. So, too, with the second stage from
Canicül to Campsut. The difference here is that the forest has become
far more damp and mossy, and the mountains, especially at the triple
watersmeet, more precipitous and iron-faced, and the stream more
impetuous, and that there is an entire absence of prairies, indeed
even of margin. From Campsut, the third stage, the particular of
inhabited altitude becomes interesting. This portion is divided into
two parts, that from Campsut to Cresta, and that from Cresta to Juf.
In the first the mountain ranges begin to recede from each other; and
as the forest has been made to confine itself to the rocky mountain
side, there is in the middle a good expanse of grass land, capable of
supporting many cattle. But as to the cultivation of anything else
we have now got too high for that. At Cresta, which is over against
the last trees, there is for about a mile a narrowing in again of the
valley. It then spreads out once more, and continues wide all the
way up to Juf. In this last part lies its chief interest, for under
ordinary Alpine conditions, though the grass might still be available
in summer, so elevated a valley would be unfit for human habitation.
What, then, is there here to counteract the ordinary conditions? The
answer is the height and direction of the ranges. They run from east
to west, closing in completely at the eastern end. The broad valley,
therefore, is thoroughly protected from the cold winds of the north and
east, completely open to the south, and no ray of sunlight with its
accompanying warmth is intercepted. Still, notwithstanding, there might
be a condition which would neutralize these advantages; for instance,
if the valley were closed with a glacier, or had glaciers from either
of the bounding ranges descending into it, the place would probably be
unfit for human residence. There is, however, nothing of the kind; the
head of the valley and the bounding ranges are not of such a height
as to support snowfields and their glaciers. It is, therefore, the
presence of the favourable conditions that have been mentioned, and
the absence of the unfavourable ones, which make the grassy expanse of
Oberland Aversthal the highest inhabited ground in Europe.
As you begin the descent of the Forcellina on its northern side you
come upon two or three pieces of old snow. Beneath these--it may be
about 700 feet from the summit--flowers suddenly become abundant; among
many others the charming little Alpine forget-me-not, a purple pansy
as large as a shilling, and a clear dark-blue little gentian. About
400 feet more of descent bring you to a grassy bottom--there are no
trees in sight--which is in reality the summit of the Septimer Pass
from Casaccia at the head of the Bregaglia to Stalla on the Julier.
In calculating the day’s work I had supposed that, as the books spoke
of the Septimer being a Pass on this route in the same sense as the
Forcellina, we should have had to descend so much from the Forcellina
as to have had to ascend somewhat on the Septimer. This expectation was
wholly unfounded: for to those who take it from the direction we did
every step upon it is downhill: to them it is only the descent of the
Forcellina. To those, however, who take it reversely and who are also
going on by Stalla to the Julier, and not by the Forcellina to Juf, it
is a Pass, and one with a stiff ascent of at least two hours.
The way to Casaccia was now along an old paved road, said to have
been constructed by the Romans. The pavement consists of blocks of
gneiss, and is generally in good preservation. On the summit it is
lost, either because it is now buried beneath the turf, or because
in this part of it its stones were taken up to build the hospice the
ruins of which you pass, and the wall that enclosed some space around
it. There are some places, in which you would have expected to find it
buried, or carried away by storm-torrents, but in which it is still in
good order, and much in the same state as I will not say its first,
because it is safer to say its last, constructors left it. For as we
are told that German as well as Roman Emperors used it for the transit
of their armies, we must infer that those who last used it for this
purpose repaired whatever damages time had done to it. I saw pieces of
it on the very edge of the stream, where it must sweep over it with
great force, but which were still quite uninjured. I was surprised at
its general width, as well as at the size of the stones with which
it is paved. I say general width, because there are some interesting
exceptions. These occur at points where the roadway could not have been
enlarged to its general width without cutting through a projecting
rock. That on a great military road the inconvenience--very great to
an army on the march--of these narrow places was submitted to shows
that it would have been very costly in old times to have cut away such
rocks; a work which a few handfuls of some explosive would now effect
in a morning. It also shows that if wheeled carriages were ever used on
this road their gauge must have been very small. Some five miles of the
old pavement still remain. I have seen very similar bits of Roman road
on Judæan hills. The sight of this drew from the circumnavigator the
sceptical remark, that it was a very good road (he meant too good an
one) for those times.
In descending this old historical, but now deserted route, on which
even a centrifugal tourist is seldom seen, I could not but think
of its older and better days. Those granite blocks, on which I was
treading, had felt the tramp of Roman armies marching, it might have
been, to the Danube, to secure that threatened frontier of the Empire
against barbarian aggression. The couriers who brought the intelligence
of victories from which much was hoped, and of disasters from which
much was feared, had traversed it with quicker steps than those with
which I was then descending it. At Rome, and in the cities and villas
of northern Italy, the despatches of which they were the bearers had
been anxiously looked for. After a time the mind’s eye could see hordes
of barbarians swarming down its steep pavement to plunder, and to
overthrow, the civilization, to aid in the protection of which it had
been constructed. Time had turned the tables.
But probably there had been an earlier, and unrecorded chapter in its
history. We know that there had been in almost prehistoric times an
Etruscan Dodecapolis established in the plain of the Po, and which
reached down to the Adriatic, an offset of the original Dodecapolis
between the Apennines and the Tyrrhenian sea. The inhabitants of these
confederations of cities were the earliest known organizers of commerce
in Europe. That they were great in maritime commerce implies this, for
maritime commerce presupposes inland and overland trade. Now in those
times tin and copper must have been among the most coveted articles of
European commerce, because it was from a combination of them that the
best tools and weapons then procurable were formed; and there is a very
high degree of probability in favour of the supposition that Britain
was even in those early days the chief source for the indispensable
tin, and if of the tin, then almost necessarily of some of the copper
at that time so abundantly used; and as we can hardly suppose that
the way to Britain through the Pillars of Hercules was then used as
a highway of commerce, we are almost driven to the conclusion that
they were brought down to the shores of the Mediterranean by overland
carriage. Some of the traffic may have centred at some port on the Gulf
of Lyons, perhaps at the point which afterwards became Massilia, for
of course it was an inland trade that supported the maritime commerce
of Massilia, and made it rich and populous, and powerful. That part,
however, of the traffic, of which the Etruscan Dodecapolis of the plain
of the Po and of the Adriatic was the _entrepôt_, in all probability
came over the Julier and the Septimer. In thinking of those remote
times the necessity of the existence of a very considerable inland
traffic has been almost entirely lost sight of. This was far the most
potent agency then at work among the barbarians of Europe, precisely
in the same manner as ocean commerce is in these days of ours far the
most potent agency now at work over the whole world. We have many
indications of it in the trade in gold as well as in that of tin and
copper. These commodities were widely carried about, and very generally
dispersed. This active and continuous traffic implies the existence
of certain well-established, and regularly used routes. And all this
reached far back beyond any historical traditions. The traffic in the
bulky article of salt also must needs have been of equal antiquity.
That the inhabitants of northern and central Europe were tribes of
barbarians is no argument against the existence of these kinds of
traffic. They did exist. And as to the people who carried them on
being barbarians, whatever that might have amounted to, they were not
such savages as the negroes of central Africa now are; and we know
that they can appreciate the value of the ivory trade, and of that in
ostrich feathers, and gold dust, which commodities, under the guidance
of Arab, and Banian, and Nubian traders, they collect at stations and
marts in the interior, to be furthered to the coast, and thence to be
dispersed over the world. And this they did also in the time of the
Pharaohs, three and four thousand years ago, as we know from still
existing Egyptian sculptures and paintings. The ivory that was expended
in the decoration of the palace of Ahab and of the kings of Assyria
was doubtless procured from this source, and in this fashion. The
barbarians, then, of central Europe, aided and instructed by Etruscan
merchants, might, though perhaps we ought to use a stronger auxiliary,
and say must, have done the same by the tin, and perhaps the copper, of
Cornwall. And this way of the Septimer was in all probability the route
a part of their trade in these articles took. If so it cannot have been
but that Etruscan traders were in those times to be seen every year in
Britain. They had landed at Dover. They had trafficked at the British
_entrepôt_ of Londinium. They must have had some kind of establishment
there. They had not stopped there. They had gone on to the mines from
which the tin was extracted, and had looked out on the western ocean
from the Land’s End.
As I walked down the Septimer, constructing in my mind this chain of
inferences, I saw by my side the large-boned, sturdy Etruscan trader,
overlooking his party of barbarian porters, loaded with tin and copper,
and perhaps with some amber, which he had been twelve months, or more,
in collecting, and which he had paid for with the gold jewelry, in the
workmanship of which those Dodecapoleis were so skilful, and in later
times perhaps with iron knives, and daggers, and spear and arrow-heads.
Again this trade must have had established routes, and for the eastern
Dodecapolis the most likely route must have been the Julier and the
Septimer; and it must have had some organisers and managers, and it is
in these cities that we must look for them.
Commerce, then, first traced this road. Of course it must have had
some halting stations, and _depôts_, and these could only have been
at such places as Casaccia, Stalla, Molins, and Tiefenkasten. Some
of these, doubtless, were fortified, and made capable of maintaining
a small garrison against sudden attacks of barbarians, just like the
forts of our Hudson’s Bay Company. Then came its imperial days, when
it connected the capital and heart of the world with a threatened
frontier. But commerce has now taken other channels, and empire has
established itself in other seats, and the barbarians have become
the foremost nations of the world; and this road is only traversed
occasionally by a few northern travellers, descended from the
barbarians, or from the kindred of the barbarians, it was constructed
to keep back, but who now have no other object in traversing it than
to see deep valleys and lofty mountains. For many centuries change has
everywhere else been actively at work, but the poor herdsmen who dwelt
round about the Septimer remained in much the same condition as their
predecessors of the old imperial and commercial periods of its history.
Hitherto there had been little change for them. It was only yesterday
that they were as hard-pressed and as poor as their remote forefathers
had been. Their only resource was still their cows, and what little
their cows enabled them to get of the products of sunnier valleys,
and of the plains below. Human societies, however, are now entering
on a new phase of their long progress, the distinguishing features
of which are that culture is becoming accessible to all, even to the
children of these herdsmen; that mind can now find a station, and a
market anywhere; and that new avenues to obtaining the means of living
are being opened on all sides to all men, who have the capacity and the
will to enter upon them. And what is changing the rest of the world has
not been unfelt up here. Many now go out from these valleys into the
world, and after a time return with the proceeds of their labour and
thrift. And, too, the outside world having advanced to a point which
enables it to take an interest in the aspects which nature wears up
here, sends hither, yearly, many visitors. This also supplies means of
living to some. Life has, in consequence, become easy to many, and less
hard and narrow to all. And these advantages, which are far from being
altogether of a material kind, at all events they both rest on and lead
on to, what is moral and intellectual, are year by year being extended
to greater numbers.
As I walked down the single street of Casaccia the contrast it
presented in externals to Cresta and Juf was felt to be great indeed;
but when I entered the hotel the contrast between its interior and
those with which I had yesterday and this morning become acquainted
was felt to be greater still. To one coming from the mountains--it
seemed as if one had been sojourning among them for a long time--its
single reception room had an air even of amplitude and loftiness.
One noticed, as one might something that is not seen every day, that
chairs and sofas had taken the place of benches against the wall. Table
linen, too, had reappeared, for the table was ready spread as far as
the usual condiments and appliances go. This indicated the possibility
of such a supper as would require such aid. In this house--it is
often so with small inns in Italy, and Italian influences begin to be
felt at Casaccia--there was no attempt to shunt the kitchen out of
sight. Here it had to be passed through to reach the stone staircase
that led up to the bedrooms. The landings and passages were spacious
for the size of the house; and so in a still greater degree was the
bedroom into which I was shown. It had two windows; but, as they were
small and deep-recessed, they did not admit a sufficiency of light;
and the ceiling and panelling being of a dark coloured pine-wood,
this scanty allowance of light was not made the most of. There was
about the room, and its contents, a look of newness from disuse, or
rather of oldness kept new by disuse. It had three beds. These it was
evident were not frequently required, for the bed-clothes had been
put away beneath the mattresses; and the washing apparatus for the
possible occupants of the three beds was all arranged on one of the
deep-recessed window-sills, as if it was regarded rather as something
to be looked at than used. This also led me to infer that the windows
were seldom opened: an inference which was not contradicted by a kind
of solidity and ancientness in the atmosphere of the room. The lock
on the door was very un-Swiss, and very Italian. Everybody knows that
every lock on every door of every bedroom in every hotel in Switzerland
is a little plain black iron box applied to the surface of the door.
Here it was a highly elaborated specimen of the locksmith’s art: all
open iron-work, with a marvellously large and complicated key, and
an equally marvellous arrangement of bolts. For some little time I
despaired of being able to discover how the key was to be inserted, or
used; and feared that, if I should succeed in turning it, I might not
be able to turn it back again. Such a lock would not have been out of
place on the door of some floridly decorated old Chapter House, or of
the banqueting hall of some mediæval castle. The good man of the house
assured me that the room should be arranged for me immediately. It was
then five o’clock. It was, however, not till night had come down on
Casaccia that this immediate arrangement was taken in hand. On that
day, at all events, he was the only person who was in the house, and so
he had to obtain from outside the female hands that were needed for the
immediate arrangement. At last he impressed for this little service two
of his neighbours--I suppose to atone for the delay by showing that he
was ready to do all that was in his power, even more than was really
needed.
As to the good man himself; in his making, as in that of the lock,
there was nothing Swiss. He was altogether unlike the hardy sturdy
people I had been among lately. The loss of a few thousand feet of
altitude had made a great difference in the elements of the human
composition. His figure was tall, but not erect. His muscular tissue
was soft. His features were large without being coarse. His hair and
eyes were of a jet black, though in the latter there was none of that
twinkling rapidity of motion, which is characteristic of the children
of the south. His face was quite smooth. His complexion was the
bloodless and untinted, but not unhealthy, white of many Italian women,
and of some Italian men. He had none of the volubility of utterance,
or quickness of manner of the Italian. On the contrary; his voice
and manner were as smooth as his face. Smoothness, indeed, was his
pervading characteristic. His smile was smooth, but it was the smile of
manner, not of the heart, and indicated not pleasure, but the wish to
please, or rather to make, and keep, things smooth. His dress even was
smooth, and studiedly so. To him would have been intolerable anything
so rough as Swiss homespun. His step was inaudible as he glided in and
out of the room. What he did for you in placing things on the table,
or removing them, was done as it were by the shadow of a man. He would
have deemed it barbarous to have disturbed, he would have shrunk from
disturbing, you even with a sound. His business was to assist, and to
please. I had asked him what I could have for supper? He had replied
with the gentlest tone, with a forward inclination of his body, and
with a half smile, ‘Whatever I pleased.’ ‘Could I have mutton cutlets?’
‘Certainly.’ ‘In half an hour?’ ‘Certainly.’ In an hour and a half the
supper was placed noiselessly on the table. It was announced in the
form that the cutlets were served. They proved, however, to be of veal,
as doubtless he had foreknown that they would be; but it had seemed
to him harsh to tell a man that he could not have what he wanted. In
like manner it was now deemed unnecessary to call attention to any
deviation from what had been promised and expected; or to say a word
that might imply that anything could possibly be otherwise than as you
had wished. Did not his manner give you to understand that he had done
all, and would continue to do all, in his power to supply your wants,
and to contribute to your comfort? Everything was said and done so
smoothly, that it was impossible for you by an exhibition of surprise,
or of dissatisfaction to break the spell of smoothness that had been
cast over you. We affect bluntness, and even roughness, under the
supposition that they indicate honesty and independence of character.
The Italian--and this Casaccian was Italian in mind and manner--does
not value the exhibition of these qualities. He affects gentleness,
mildness, blandness both for their own sake, and because they are means
to his ends. This is his idea of civilization; and it is what we,
perhaps, may come to when our civilization shall have become as old as
his. Our manners may, then, have become more soft, more pliant, more
politic. The time may arrive when we too shall consider it uncivilized
to say or do what will produce needless mental jars. Our present ideas
may indicate that we are nearer than the Italians to the woods and
caves.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MALOJA--THE UPPER ENGADIN--PONTRESINA.
There’s place and means for every man alive.--SHAKESPEARE.
_August 10._--As I had undertaken to present myself to-day at
Pontresina in time for an early dinner, I engaged a _char_ at Casaccia
to take me as far as St. Moritz; and having walked to the top of the
Maloja, was there overtaken by it. The Maloja has an altitude of only
5,941 feet, which makes it the lowest of all the passes by which Italy
may be entered from Switzerland. Its ascent from Casaccia is over an
excellent road, with a rise of 1,150 feet, the latter part of which is
through well-grown pine woods. I reached the summit so much in advance
of my carriage as to have plenty of time for contemplating the backward
view of the upper reach of the Bregaglia over the head of the forest--a
view which was well worth the time.
The books tell us so much of the peculiarities, interest, and beauties
of the Upper Engadin, that every one who goes to see it expects much;
and I cannot think that there will be many of those who see it, who
will feel any disappointment. In respect of length, and of capability
for supporting human life, it may be equalled, or exceeded, by other
Swiss Valleys, as for instance by those of the Rhine, of the Rhone, and
of the Ticino, but there are other particulars of interest in which
it leaves them all far behind. The great point is that it combines
an elevation above the sea, which is elsewhere found to be but ill
suited for supporting human life with an amount of population which
would in any other valley be regarded as considerable; and that this
large amount of population is evidently maintained in circumstances
of comparative comfort. Beginning at the height just mentioned, it
descends at first so gradually that at St. Moritz, twelve miles down
the valley, the stream is only 150 feet below the summit of the
Pass; while the town of St. Moritz itself, which is 300 feet above
the stream, is actually 150 feet higher than the summit of the Pass.
And in the sixty miles of its course from the Maloja to Martinsbruck
it only loses 2,598 feet. The effect, too, of its actual elevation
upon vegetable, and therefore, upon human life, must be somewhat
aggravated by its direction, which being to the north-east exposes it
to cold winds, and renders it, moreover, somewhat unfavourable for the
reception of sunshine. And, then, its temperature is still further
lowered by the contiguity on either side of many snowy summits. These
conditions make in its upper parts all kinds of cultivation, except
that of grass, almost impossible. I saw this day at St. Moritz, and a
little above it, some few potato patches, but as in every instance the
haulm of these had been killed back by recent midsummer frosts, nothing
this year would be got from them but disappointment. Still I found
this part of the valley surprisingly populous, for it contains what
almost may be called a chain of little towns, in every one of which are
several good houses, and in not one of which is there the slightest
indication of any approach to pauperism. The absence, however, of this
form of wretchedness might almost have been expected, because where the
winter is eight or nine months long no family can exist which has not
some assured means of living. But this does not explain the well-to-do
condition you must infer is the lot of many, whose substantial and
neatly kept houses you see in every one of these little towns. Nature
you conclude at a glance is too niggard here to maintain so many
well-to-do families; you begin then to inquire how they are maintained?
Whence come their means? What are they living upon?
The answer to these questions is worth obtaining not only for the sake
of what it will tell us of the history of these people’s lives, but
also because it will remind us of a change that is now coming over
the whole world. These good people are living mainly upon capital,
either upon the interest of capital invested in good securities, or
upon the dividends of capital employed in such ventures as are open
to them. This is a fact of Grison life to which reference has already
been made, and to which we shall have to recur again. The reader is
already aware that my companion, the circumnavigator, who was now
seated by my side, was one of those who had failed in the Grison method
of wooing fortune; but the owners of almost all these good houses had
been successful wooers, for the good houses that belong to old Grison
families are comparatively few. You pass a house which appears to be
a goodly mansion. It covers a great deal of ground, is solidly built,
and of two, or possibly of three, stories. It may not, however, be
quite so large a dwelling-house as it looks, for the ground floor, or
part of it, is perhaps a stable for half-a-dozen, or more, cows, and a
couple of horses--these are seldom kept in outhouses. And this house
may also contain a haystack sufficiently large to maintain these cows
and horses for seven or eight months. Still after these deductions have
been made it is a goodly house, and much ornamented, for its owner is
proud of it; and the question arises, Whence came the money to purchase
the land on which it stands, then to build it, then to buy the land
which supplies the hay, and last, but not least, of all to support
the family in comfort according to Engadin ideas? The money required
for all this must have been a considerable sum, and the valley of the
Inn has hitherto offered no opportunities for making such sums. In
the particular case now before us it was all made by selling little
cups of coffee, and still smaller glasses of liqueurs, at Paris. And
before its owner could begin this small trade on his own account, he
had to serve some years as waiter in an hotel; for he took no capital
with him to Paris except the determination to get on. That was then
all his stock in trade, but it was of such a kind as to be enough for
the purpose. It was ultimately upon that foundation that the big house
was built. His pecuniary savings began in the hotel. By the time he
had learnt the ways and the language of the place, he had saved enough
to commence the sale on his own account of the little cups of coffee,
and smaller glasses of liqueurs. With what care must the cent or two
that was made by each cup, or glass, have been guarded! How rarely were
any of them spent in self-indulgence! It was self-indulgence enough to
look forward to the house in the Engadin, with the thought that its
owner would become one of the aristocracy of the valley; and to find
at the end of the week that the life-supporting prospect--the ambition
of a life, was so many francs nearer to realization. The next house
was built by one who had rolled up his francs by vending little cakes,
and small confectionery at Vienna. The process had been throughout the
same. You inquire about a third with a coat of arms over the door, and
gilt lattice at the window. Its owner climbed the ladder by becoming
a _bon-bon_ maker at Brussels. After half a life spent in unswerving
fidelity to their single purpose these keen accumulators of small
gains had made enough to enable them to take their ease for the rest
of their days in Paris, Vienna, or Brussels; but that was not what
they had been slaving and saving for. Of the 100,000 francs each of
them had made, each invested the greater part in some good security,
and the rest he expended in buying a piece of land, and in building a
house, in that valley that has the climate of Iceland; and this house
and land together with the money invested, which enables him to live
in the house, is his unquestioned patent of nobility. In right of his
manifestly achieved success he assumes his place in the aristocracy of
the valley.
This is a spontaneously formed, and self-acting system. The distinction
is real and substantial, and the way to it is open to all, and must be
travelled by all who attain to the distinction, and none who travel it
successfully can miss the distinction. With us it is different. Here
there are many ways of making money, and but few only of those who have
trodden successfully some one or other of the many ways attain to the
splendid summits of society. It is not so in the Grisons. There the man
who makes the money in the hard and humble way open to him, and builds
the big house, and lives in it, becomes _ipso facto_ a Grison grandee.
He climbed up to his Herrship by a ladder that was very difficult to
mount, but was equally accessible to all; and every one that climbs
it enters the charmed circle. Enterprise, self-denial, and patience;
great enterprise, for it is that in a penniless peasant to go out into
the unknown world to compete with the natives of some great foreign
city, unflinching self-denial, and heroical patience are the only
course open to them. If the same mental stuff is needed for the making
of the Cæsar of the village as of the Cæsar of the world, then we may
suppose that under different circumstances, these men would have risen
to eminence through higher paths. They were made of good stuff. We see
in them men, who had their lot been cast here, would have become Lord
Chancellors, Admirals, Generals, Statesmen, Scholars, merchant Princes,
perhaps even Bishops.
But these successful builders of big houses are not all the people;
and we must not allow their big houses to hide from our view the
small houses of these little towns, and the small people who live in
them. All men have not the same gifts; and of those who have all do
not exercise them alike and to like issues. Many may have had the
enterprise without the heroical self-denial and patience, which in some
cases may mean a narrow horizon and a hard heart, but which narrow
horizon and hard heart were necessary for success in the case of such
small traffickers. And some, too, may have had the self-denial and
the patience in heroical degrees, and not been deficient either in
the requisite enterprise, but yet were kept back from turning these
qualities to good account by the goodness of their hearts. That may
have kept them at home to provide for, and to tend, an aged parent in
his chair-days; or an early affection may have influenced them to the
same result. And so possibly there may be as good stuff, intellectually
and morally, among those who have never left the village as among those
who went forth into the world, and prospered. Chance, too, has a place
in the affairs of men. Good fortune does not always mean good conduct,
nor bad fortune bad conduct. Conduct that was both wise and good may
have had ill-fortuned results. But we will set these cases aside, and
ask if those who, because they stayed at home for good reasons, and
so are now in no better condition than their fathers were, and those
who went forth and prospered, find in any sense their rewards equal?
Certainly not, if both of them measure, as the world does, all things
by francs. Still each has his reward, and the reward of satisfied
affections, and of a satisfied sense of duty, is great as it is felt at
the moment, for at that time every consideration gives way to it; and
it is great also in retrospect, which is the recalling of the feelings
of that moment. We are glad, then, to witness the success of those who
made the francs, and built the stone houses, and to talk with them
of their experiences of the world in which the francs were made; but
this does not diminish our respect for those who stayed at home, and
who will live, and toil, and die in the same small wooden _châlets_ in
which their fathers lived, and toiled, and died. Indeed, our respect
for them, and even our disposition to like them, are rather increased
by the sight of the big mansions of the lemonade, and bon-bon, and
coffee and confectionery lords.
So much in explanation of the big houses we find not only in the
Engadin, but more or less in all the Grison valleys. We now come to
the valley itself. The sun on this day was unclouded; but we were on
the road from the Maloja to St. Moritz; these words, therefore, must
not be taken to mean what they would stand for had they been said of a
drive from Bath to Bristol. We all know what a cloudless day is here
in the middle of August: in the Upper Engadin it is not quite the same
sort of thing. With respect to what meets the eye: there is no trace
of haze; the definition of every mountain and glacier outline is sharp
and clear; the luminous blue is not blue, or luminous, in our subdued
fashion; and even the greens and grays of the mountains are hardly
less green and gray quite up to the distant sky-line. There is little
toning down. Distance only blends the local variegation into an uniform
colour. You cannot make out the variegation of the flowery turf, of
the lichen-painted rock, and of the glancing foliage and shaded trunks
of the forest, on account of the distance: that is all. The distance
as it were fuses together the smaller differences; and then it puts
a varnish over the whole: the clear bright air is the varnish. Then
as to the appeal this diaphanous rarefied air makes to the sense of
feeling: though, indeed, it is not air; that is a word that here would
mislead; it is a celestial ether; and so with the sun, though it is
hot, what you feel is not heat; it is a permeating, invigorating,
life-creating warmth; this warmth, then, which the sun imparts to
this ether, pervades your lungs, your heart, and reaches to your very
bones. It makes you conscious of a lighter, and of a quicker life
than you ever felt before. Like the air of the desert it so rapidly,
so instantaneously evaporates the imperceptible perspiration that the
skin beneath your clothes as well as that of your face develops a new
sensation. It has ceased to be merely a tough, half-dead integument,
whose function is just to protect you from external rubs. As the flower
expands to the light, and turns to it, from the satisfaction it has
in absorbing it, so your skin has become sensitive to this ether, and
feels the delight of being in contact with it. And a third sense has
yet to be gladdened. Up here it is now the middle of hay harvest, and
the air is pervaded with the fragrance of the new hay. And you are all
the way passing by, or through, pine-forests, and the bright sun is
constantly raising into the air from their trunks, branches, and leaves
myriad molecules of their resinous exudations; and this perfume also is
wafted to you.
And then the scene has its peculiar features. In these twelve miles
you pass four lakes; the small lake of the Maloja summit, the Silser
see, four and a half miles long, the Silva Planer see somewhat longer,
and that of St. Moritz about a mile in length. Thus, throughout almost
all the way, you are driving along this chain of lakes, on a road a
little above them. Of the colour of these mountain lakes our English
home-trained eyes know nothing. It must be seen to be understood.
It is of the blue of the sky, only a shade less deep, and with some
slight admixture of green. You wonder what the trout that live in them
can find to live upon in water so pure, and which, in truth, is not
water, but the lymph of the celestial depths--heaven’s azure liquefied.
Everyone feels the charm of water as an addition to the scene: but such
lakes as these, which are not of water, but of some less earthly fluid,
how great is the charm they add to this scene! And the more so, if you
have come upon them suddenly after some days of trudging and toiling in
the mountains, where the eyes were wearied, almost wounded, with the
continual recurrence of pinnacles and precipices, rocks and ravines,
nothing but what was hard, dark, jagged, and torn. The impressions of
sombreness, ruggedness, and terror that had of late been stamped on
your brain, and seemed to be in it like things that were alive, are now
laid to rest by the sight of the smooth blue: its effects are soothing
and healing.
Another peculiarity of this road is the number of glaciers and snow
summits that are seen from it. Of these, too, as it is with the blue
lakes, you are hardly ever out of sight. You come abreast of a lateral
valley; and as you look up it you see at its head a mighty glacier,
the view of which seems so complete that you think you can make out
its whole course, that is to say its whole life, from the snowfield
out of which it is compacted, and by which it is forced on, till at
last it issues, in another form, from its own mouth. Or a range before
you recedes a little, or becomes depressed a little, and you see at
this point a mighty snow-capped giant from behind peering over into
the valley; and you feel the current of crisp air that is flowing down
into the valley from the glacier, or from the giant’s head--the breath
of the glacier, or of the giant. And in the twelve miles you pass as
many towns as you do lakes; one for every three miles: all clean, and
flourishing: and not a dilapidated hovel in a land where nothing is
grown but grass, and where there are nine months of winter and three
of cold, with the exception of a few such days as was to-day! This
absence of visible poverty adds much to the sense of satisfaction with
which you contemplate the scene. Nature here has made it difficult for
man to live upon his fellow man, for a man, under the conditions here
imposed upon him, can hardly do more than support himself. Of course
three-fourths of the population might be cleared off, and half the
quantity of cattle maintained; but that is not the turn things took
here. Every man, excepting the capitalists we have already spoken of,
and no one grudges them their hard-earned accumulations, which besides
do good to some, and no harm to anyone, everyone, excepting them, must
work hard to live; but to live here by his hard work a man must himself
have the fruits of it.
The direction in which the stream by your side is flowing is often an
ingredient in the thought of the wanderer among these mountains of
central Europe. ‘This stream,’ he says to himself, ‘is hurrying to join
the Po, or the Rhine, or the Rhone.’ On this day I said to myself,
‘These charming lakes are among the head Waters of the Danube.’ The
little stream we passed as it came racing down from Monte Lunghino into
the Silser see is the furthest urn of the Inn. This makes you feel that
you have passed into another region. The continent is now inclining
in another direction. The Danube, and the Black Sea for a time become
the goal of your thoughts of this kind. In this respect Lunghino along
the eastern roots of which I was now passing, and the opposite side
of which I had traversed yesterday, is pre-eminent, for it contains
the diffluent urns of three great historic rivers, the Rhine, the Po,
and the Danube; of the Rhine by giving birth to one of the feeders of
the Oberhalbstein stream, of the Po by giving birth to a feeder of the
Maira, which joins the Adda as it is on the point of entering the lake
of Como, and of the Danube by giving birth to the actual head water of
the Inn.
A little more than a mile before you reach St. Moritz, you look down
on the old monster Kurhaus, and a new and more monstrous one nearly
completed. They are upon the alluvial flat at the head of the lake.
As I saw by my side a patch or two of potatoes smitten by summer
frosts, I thought it strange that any people, possessed of free agency,
especially invalids, could be found to descend into, and to stay in,
such a place. With what ice-cold vapour must the evaporation from that
alluvial bottom load the air so soon in the afternoon as the sun is
off the ground, and down there they cannot have much of him! And how
cutting must the cold wind be down there! Is there anything that can
compensate for these evils? I doubt much whether mineral waters can
that sometimes are in fashion, and sometimes are forsaken. But there
will always be plenty of people who will try anything of this kind,
and there will always be some who will endeavour to persuade people to
resort to such supposed remedies. One would like to know what is the
proportion of people who go to these places a second time, not for the
sake of the society they expect to find at them, but for the sake of
the waters; and whether the proportion of actual cures is much greater
than of the cures effected by touching the bones, or the old clothes,
of some supposed saint. If after two or three weeks at such a place
as this a man finds himself no worse than when he reached it, he may
infer that after all his system is not so far enfeebled but that air,
exercise, and diet may do something for him.
The above wayside remark is made subject to correction from those who
thoroughly understand these subjects. There is, however, another way of
looking at this charming lake, with the green forest that descends to
it from the opposite mountain, and beyond the lake the valley opening
up to Pontresina, and with the long varied vistas up and down the main
valley, and with the little town of St. Moritz, perched on its niche on
the mountain side, close before you. There is so much variety, so many
objects, so much colour, and everything is so clear and fresh, and so
bright in the sunshine, that you can hardly think the scene belongs to
the same world as you are accustomed to at home. It hardly looks real,
the difference is so great. It looks like something got up to please
and astonish you, and in this it quite succeeds.
We reached the Post _bureau_ of St. Moritz at 11.30, and started
at once for Pontresina, the Australian having shouldered my _sac_,
or--to be accurate--having taken it in his hand, for from a feeling of
self-respect he would never shoulder it in a town, lest this method
of carrying it might lead to the degrading inference that he was a
professional. The walk was a pleasant one of about four miles down to
and across the Inn, along the lake side, and through woods and meadows.
I was just in time to save my engagement. Of course everybody knows
that time was made for slaves, but sometimes it is pleasant to be
punctual, for instance when a long business, subject throughout to a
variety of circumstances, has been brought to a close at a prearranged
moment, for then you may fancy that it is you who are master of time
and of yourself.
As I parted with the Australian he was sufficiently professional to ask
for more than he had agreed to serve me for plus the present I added
to the agreement. This demand I did not decline to comply with, for
had I not now reached my destination for the time with some treasure
of memorable sights and of pleasant thoughts for myself, and how could
our journeyings benefit him except in this way of francs? And why
by withstanding his request for more should I ruffle my companion,
or be ruffled myself? Besides, too, in our last four miles I had
begun to think him less burdensome, or more tolerable, than he had
appeared to me at any time previously. In those four miles he had
again, as he had frequently done on other occasions (but as now I was
about to see him no more the incongruity seemed rather amusing than
shocking) called the ravines gullies, the forest bush, my _sac_ the
swag, and the glaciers--how horrible, but how explicable in such a
circumnavigator--the icebergs! And so after all we parted amicably, as
it is best that people should, and with reciprocal expressions of good
wishes for each other’s welfare.
Pontresina consists of a long narrow street. At its northern extremity,
by which those arriving from the Engadin enter it, the first building
you pass is one of its two large hotels. The other is at its southern
extremity. A few hundred yards beyond this is a second little town,
Upper Pontresina, with its hotel. The two will soon be united into
one long unbroken street of about a mile in length. This street is
crowded at most hours of the day. There are people returning from
their forenoon excursions, and others starting for their afternoon
excursions. People arriving from, or leaving for the near towns of the
Engadin, or from or for Italy by the Bernina Pass. After the early
dinner, which had regulated my movements throughout the forenoon,
and indeed for some days back, my wife and her little boy took me in
hand, to introduce me to the sights of the place. ‘There is the Roseg
valley, and the Roseg glacier, with such and such peaks above it.’
These could be seen from Pontresina. ‘We will take you there to-morrow.
This afternoon we will go along the main valley, and give you a look
at the Morterasch.’ And that was what they did. The road, like the
street, only in a less degree, was alive with parties coming and going,
for it is not only the way to the Morterasch and Bernina, but also the
route to Italy by Poschiavo and Tirano. The evening was closing in when
we returned to Pontresina. The crowd in the single street had now in
the neighbourhood of the Post _bureau_ become almost a block. In the
crowd I met an Englishman I had seen in the morning at Casaccia. His
air was distracted. He had been for some time in search of a place to
shelter him for the night, but was everywhere told the same story, that
his search would be hopeless: even every landing and passage in every
private house, where a shake-down could be placed, was already bespoken.
Bewildering was the stir in the narrow street. There were many Germans,
but the English including the Americans, or as they might put it, the
Americans including the English, were largely in the majority. The
peculiarity of the crowd was that it included many children, and almost
as many ladies as gentlemen. What was it that had brought together this
concourse of people from many nations, and even from the New World?
It was simply to see glaciers. The glaciers had been there from time
before history, from the time, it may be, that man had trod the soil
of Europe: it is scarcely, however, a dozen years since such crowds
began to assemble here to see them. This indicates new thoughts and
new sentiments about the world we live in, as well as an increase of
wealth and of facilities for locomotion. It was never so seen of old
times. In our fathers’ times men and women flocked to London and Paris,
as they had done in the old world to Rome, to see and to be seen.
Society was the great attraction. For a little time a few had been
attracted to Athens, because it was the centre of art, of culture, and
of refinement, but that was a dawn of promise that was soon overcast.
For some thousand years before that dawn so soon obscured, the greatest
annual gatherings of men had been at Egyptian Thebes. The object,
however, which had brought them together there had been the exchange
of the commodities of Asia and of Africa. The attraction was first
commerce, then social dissipation. Here men are brought together in
a lofty Alpine valley, too cold to grow a potato, where there is no
trade, and no society, to see mountains and glaciers. This is a higher,
because a purely intellectual, purpose. In the first gatherings of the
young world only one class of men took part, merchants and traders. In
the next mainly those who had riches and nothing to do. Here we have,
without excluding the rich, men of all professions, mostly not rich,
and many of them with plenty to do. They come in multitudes; and the
cry is still, ‘they come,’ that is in yearly increasing multitudes.
But the impulse that has carried the world to Pontresina, will not stop
at Pontresina. At no distant day the children of these summer-tourists,
when locomotion shall have been still further improved, will cross
oceans for their summer excursions, and will climb the Andes, and
the Himalaya, as their children may the Mountains of the Moon, going
perhaps by the Soudan railway we now hear is in contemplation, and
taking the sources of the Nile by the way. People will not for ever,
now that they have begun to look out on the world, be content with the
moderate altitudes, and the sombre, monotonous pine woods of central
Europe. The appetite for seeing nature is one that grows with what it
feeds on. Those who have found pleasurable emotions result from seeing
Switzerland will wish to see something more of this glorious world.
They will long to become acquainted with grander mountain ranges,
with nobler and more diversified faunas and floras than those of our
temperate zone, and with other conditions and forms of human life than
those which obtain among a portion of our near kindred circumstanced
not very dissimilarly from ourselves.
The history of the recent spread of the love now so widely felt for
nature is interesting and instructive. Clearly it had its rise in that
increase in the knowledge of nature which belongs to our times. It
is, however, obvious that it is not confined to those who have this
knowledge in the form and degree which would entitle it to be regarded
as scientific. They are few, but the desire is felt by many, almost,
indeed, by all who have received any culture worthy of the name. It
seems, therefore, to have spread from the few to the many by a kind
of infection, which shows that it is a natural taste, which former
conditions kept in a state of repression. From what we see we may
conclude that the acquisition and possession of the images and ideas,
which the contemplation, or if that is too strong a word for the case
of those who have been debarred from any scientific acquaintance with
nature, then which the mere sight of the forms and phenomena of nature
supplies to the mind, is a source of delight. Of course, the delight
would be far greater, had the previous knowledge been wider and deeper,
that is to say had the mind been better fitted for the reception of
the images and ideas; but still it is felt, and so strongly as to give
rise to a desire for more extended fields of observation. Even in old
times there are indications of this pleasure having been felt. It was
not absent from the awe and wonder which accompanied the observation of
the starry firmament, and of the phenomena of the great deep, or from
the attempt to co-ordinate the details of the natural scene as depicted
in the hundred and fourth Psalm. Solomon’s collection of facts and
observations about animals and plants--for his works on these subjects
must have been something of this kind--was suggested by this pleasure.
And as these emotions had such issues among the ancient Hebrews, we
cannot suppose that their kindred neighbours were strangers to them. We
know, too, that by the Greeks and Romans they were still more strongly
felt. From these early observations and impressions, accompanied by
pleasurable emotions, as from a small germ, but one that was full of
vital power, has arisen the distinctly aimed effort to grasp in one
intelligible whole all the phenomena and forces of nature, and all the
forms of life the world has to show us. What was long ago dimly divined
is now clearly understood that the world, and all it contains, are very
good; that precisely it, and nothing else is the great external gift of
God to man--man’s great inheritance; and that it is only by seeing it,
and understanding it, that he can enter on the possession of it: for
there is no other way in which he can make it his own.
But the picture which the world presents to us for contemplation is not
composed merely of land and water, ranging through different zones,
with their respective floras and faunas, and physical phenomena: the
soul of the picture is the observer himself--man; not the individual
observer, but the race. Man it is that imparts dramatic life and
interest to the picture. Not that this globe is without a progress,
that is a history, of its own. It has that, but its history is devoid
of the highest element of interest, that is the moral element. It is
by viewing the world in connexion with man that the picture becomes
invested with this, the highest source of interest. And if an extended
view of the world, inclusive of man’s place in it, and relation to
it, be taken, whether the extension be in the direction of space, or
of time, it will be seen in each view with equal clearness--and the
inference from one view proves and confirms the inference from the
other, for they are identical--that in the long drama of human history
it is increase in the knowledge of nature which has led to increase
in man’s dominion over nature, and it is increase in his dominion over
nature which has led on to, and given rise to, those conditions which
have resulted in a richer and higher moral life.
CHAPTER IX.
ROSEG GLACIER--PIZ LANGUARD--LA PISCHA--MORTERATSCH GLACIER--PONTRESINA.
Ah! that such beauty varying in the light
Of living nature, cannot be portrayed
By words, nor by the pencil’s silent skill;
But is the property of him alone,
Who hath beheld it, noted it with care,
And in his mind recorded it with love.--WORDSWORTH.
_August 11._--At 8.30 A.M. got under weigh for the Roseg glacier,
piloted by my two new guides. The morning was bright, the air quiet
and fresh, and everything level to their wish that what they had to
show might be seen to the best advantage. As you turn your back on
Pontresina, and cross the rocky channel of the Bernina Bach, which
carries off the outflow of the eastern and northern sides of the
Bernina group, you command the upward view of the valley of the Roseg.
It is not of the narrow ravine kind, but has some little space of
wooded bottom, generally open enough to afford a little pasturage. You
are 6,000 feet above the sea; the forest, therefore, is composed of
larch and cembra. On either side are grand mountains. The western is
steeper than the eastern wall, and is still in the morning sun. The eye
ranges over the valley to rest on the great snow-field at its head,
which commences its rise at a distance from you of six miles. It is
of the purest white, and this is not to any great extent scarred and
broken by protruding rocks and summits, for the naked rock faces of its
ridges look not in this, but in the opposite, or southern, direction.
It closes the head of the valley, and is a wide field that satisfies
the eye with its amplitude of expansion, its pure white, and its
majestic rise to the sky-line.
A walk of five miles through the forest brings you to a little plain,
which is evidently the site of an old lake long since filled up with
glacier _débris_. At the near end of this is a little inn, kept by a
little Frenchman, who will talk to you about the empire, the commune,
and the republic, but with some reserve. At the further end, about half
a mile off, is the foot of the glacier. My guides, in the exercise of
a wise discretion, did not take me upon the glacier itself, but by a
path along the flank of Piz Corvatsch, for about a mile or more, to a
very commanding position, a little beyond the _châlet_ of the alpe.
This point, which is sufficiently above the glacier, is opposite to
a dark protruding eminence in it, yclept Agagliouls, below which its
two main ice-streams meet. And here, like the Lord Thomas and fair
Annet of the ballad we sat a while on a hill. They sat all day; and
when night was come, and sun was set, they had not talked their fill.
We, not having the excuse they had for being forgetful of time, after
half an hour began to retrace our steps, though we had hardly looked
our fill. Still we had looked enough to be able to carry away with us
a mental picture, that might be recalled at will, of the topography
and aspects of the grand scene--the widespread uptilted snowfield, and
its component parts, and the named summits, and their relations to
each other, and respective effects on the whole, and upon the glacier
in particular, which is the outcome of the whole. A peculiarity of
this scene is its bounded completeness. It does not in any direction
suggest the infinite, as it might if you were on a central, or
commanding eminence, with snowy heights all around you, reaching away
to distant horizons. It has near, definite boundaries. You seem to
take in the whole of it, when it is looked at from our to-day’s point
of observation; and when looked at from Pontresina, as all other
objects are there excluded from your view, the effect is almost that
of a picture set in a frame. One marked feature of the scene, from
our point of observation on Piz Corvatsch, is the lofty, precipitous,
slate-coloured, _couloir_-streaked Piz Tschierva, with its dark hanging
glaciers. It bounds our snowfield on the north.
As we returned we made a requisition for our dinner on the resources of
the expatriated Parisian, the victim of political instability. It was
verging towards evening, when, after a day of pleasant loitering, we
again found ourselves at Pontresina. The greater part of the evening
I spent in a long discussion with the head of one of the old patroon
families of what was once New Amsterdam, and is now New York, on the
suitableness, or the reverse, of the principle of free trade to the
present industrial condition of the United States. Of course the logic
of neither had any effect on the other.
_August 12._--Out at a few minutes before 5 A.M. We contemplated the
ascent of the Piz Languard, and whatever else the day might admit of
our doing. The masons and carpenters employed in building on our side
of the road a large new hotel, and on the opposite side a _dépendance_
to the existing hotel, were already seated around on pieces of timber,
and heaps of stones, waiting for the moment when they were to commence
the labours of the day. The horse that was to carry the little man as
far as the foot of the cone, and the guide we had engaged for the day,
arrived as we were emerging from the door of President Saratz’s house,
in which we had been so fortunate as to obtain our lodgings, and we
were started by the clock of the church across the street striking the
hour. Upper Pontresina was soon passed by our taking a short cut up
to the forest through a prairie or two, from which the hay had just
been carried. The ascent may be roughly divided into three stages,
each requiring about an hour. The first is through the forest, and is
somewhat toilsome. The second lies beyond the trees, and is about an
hour more of open, rocky, bleak, not steep Alpine pasture, along and
up the valley of the Languard. Then an hour of stiff climbing up the
cone by a grandly irregular mountain staircase. Here steps have been
made in the rock, here slabs of rock have been fixed for steps, here
an impracticable rock so barred the way that the path had to take half
the circuit of it before the staircase could again ascend. All this is
on a perfectly naked, precipitously steep incline--truly the side of a
mountain cone.
The summit which is sufficiently level affords standing and sitting
space for perhaps half a dozen parties. There might have been as many
upon it before we left it. It is composed of huge blocks and slabs of
rock tossed together in disorder, but so as to give many natural seats,
and some shelter from wind.
But what of the view? On this morning it was not seen to the most
advantage. There were clouds rising from many of the valleys; and
these, though they were neither continuous, nor fixed, interfered much
with the view, for they obliged us to watch for an opportunity for
seeing all that was to be seen in any direction, and made it throughout
impossible to see the whole panorama connectedly at a single glance
round. In time, however, we managed to see the whole in detail, so as
to be able to put it together in the mind. The view takes its character
very much from that of the region. It is the peculiarity of this
region, as compared with other great mountain districts of Switzerland,
that, while the mountain tops are not so lofty as elsewhere, the
valleys are far loftier. For instance, the Finster-Aarhorn rises to an
altitude of 14,026 feet, Monte Rosa of 15,364, Mont Blanc of 15,781,
but the Piz Bernina, the loftiest of the surrounding heights, rises
only to an altitude of 13,294. And if the small group to which the Piz
Bernina belongs be excepted, the height of but few of the summits of
the encircling ranges is greater than the 10,715 of the Piz Languard
itself, that is to say of your point of view. And as to the valleys:
while Interlaken is depressed to 1,863 feet, Brieg to 2,244, and
Chamouni to 3,445, St. Moritz and Campfer, the only points in the
valley of the Engadin visible from our observatory, do not descend
below 6,000 feet. Here, therefore, we have to look at a ring of lower
mountains springing from a far higher level. The consequence of this
is that they have not sufficient altitude to develop any very marked
peculiarities of form. This will be seen at a glance by comparing any
part of the panorama of this view with any other: the two will resemble
each other very closely. And if the whole view be compared with that
from the Gorner Grat, the Eggischhorn, or the Rigi, its general
sameness will be again perceived. What we here have is a multitude of
apparently small summits, a large proportion of which are snow-capped,
but none of which are distinctly featured; and they all appear to be
at about our own level. The effect is almost the same as that of an
agitated sea, the waves of which are of about the same height, and many
of them crested with foaming white. The only exception to this is the
Bernina group close by, into which you look: but even here the summits
which stand out of the snowfield appear to have no striking varieties
of form. There are no Wetterhorns and Shrekhorns, and Finster-Aarhorns,
no Weisshorns and Matterhorns among them. What in this group is really
grand, and which we saw well to-day, is that the whole of the snowfield
that is visible from right to left, and from above, converges to the
Morterasch glacier. There is in this the unity of a picture. It is
held up to you who are on the Piz Languard, to be looked at, just as
a picture might be, and just at the right distance for taking in the
details of such a picture. It has the completeness, limitation and
definiteness, which, from this side, belong to views of this group.
And, too, its pure field of unsullied white, contrasts well with the
dark rusty brown of the cliffs and ravines immediately around and below
you, which are themselves one of the most striking and interesting
features of this view from the Piz Languard. They are the foreground,
and have an impressive and awe-inspiring aspect. Beyond them, all round
the horizon, excepting the Bernina group, is the ocean of petrified
waves, many crested with petrified foam. Just in one place an opening
enables you to look down on St. Moritz and Campfer, the only point in
the vast panorama, at which you can find a trace of man, and of his
works--all the rest is but mountain summits innumerable, a world to the
utmost horizon of rock and snow.
In descending the cone, you may find near the foot of it a low
inconspicuous signboard, not two feet out of the ground, as if it had
been intended that it should escape observation. On it is inscribed the
word Bormio. The little man, who, during his stay at Pontresina, had
been constructing in his mind a map of the neighbourhood, knew very
well what this meant. It pointed in the direction of the Pischa Pass
to the Val del Fain. There below us, to the left, was the Western spur
of the snowfield of the Pass; and snow appears to have an irresistible
attraction for youthful minds, as it has also for feminine in the Alps.
A debate, therefore, instantly commenced whether it would not be better
to take to the snow. In this debate I did not join, in order that the
other members of the party might decide for themselves according to
their own wishes, and their own estimates of their own powers. I had,
however, no doubt of what the decision would be. It took but a little
moment to arrive at it; and then we turned our backs on Pontresina, and
made for the snow. First we had to get to the bottom of the valley:
that was quickly done; and then to ascend it to the snow over blocks
and fragments of rock, each of which was as clean as if it had been
boiled in caustic lye. They were also so tightly jammed together,
that you might walk a hundred yards, or more, upon them without one
slipping, or so much as moving, under your feet. How came they to be
of so clean a surface, and so tightly fixed together? They are clean
because there is little up here to soil them--no dirt, no dust; and
being buried deeply in winter and spring under the snow, there is
not much chance for lichens to form upon them; and whatever soil,
or stain, might commence to adhere to them, is washed away when the
snow is melting in the spring. And as to their being so firmly fixed
together, I believe that is a consequence of their being every year
rammed together by a rammer, that has to a London paviour’s the ratio
of Nasmyth’s steam-hammer to a blacksmith’s. And this rammer that is
brought into operation here is that of the avalanches that break away
from the overhanging heights. They fall on these streams and beds of
fragments of rock with hundred ton blows, compressing and jamming them
together, when the blow is direct, and, when they slide, sweeping off
the pieces that cannot be infixed in the compacted mass.
After the clean macadamized rocks came the snow: first about
three-quarters of a mile of gradual ascent; and then, when the actual
Pass was reached, a steep incline of snow up the mountain on the right,
and on the left a more level field on a lower stage. The two were
separated by a kind of ridge of snow about 250 yards long. A slip
from this to the lower stage would have been easy, and might have been
serious: there was, however, footing enough on the ridge, if only you
would look where you were going to set your foot, and not at the lower
snowfield. From this we stepped off to a glacier on our right; the
glacier of the Val del Fain, or Heuthal. It is of no great length, and
is uncrevassed, but has rather too great an incline for direct descent:
we, therefore, took it diagonally. The stream from the glacier is not
seen to issue from it, but as you walk over the stream of rocks, that
continues the stream of ice, you hear the stream of water rushing
by beneath your feet. The books I see say that this is a Pass for
experienced mountaineers; I should rather say that, when it is as it
was this day, it is a charming bit for lady beginners, who have got
so far as to know that they can, under not very trying circumstances,
trust to their feet and heads.
Having left the glacier you find yourself in a depressed area of some
little extent surrounded with jagged summits, on which, wherever it
can find a lodgment, snow is resting. The central area is not flat,
but composed of knolls and pools. As we were standing on one of these
knolls--it had a flattened top--noticing how hard, and cold, and dead,
was everything around us, we espied at our feet, growing here and there
on the scaly rubble on which we were treading, several plants of the
_Aretia Glacialis_. To find unexpectedly upon such a surface, and
with such surroundings, so charming a form of life could not but give
a little thrill of pleasure. Each plant was a compact round patch of
mossy foliage, singularly even and smooth, and firmly set together,
perhaps half an inch high, and two or three inches in diameter. Out
of this little green cushion stood up about a dozen, or more, little
pearl-coloured stars, not in one cluster, or in several, but each star
singly on its own stem. The pearl-coloured stars were interspersed with
some that were of a waxy white. The pearl-colour was the hue of youth,
freshness, and vigour; the white told of age and incipient decay. This
discovery led to our looking about for something more; and our search
was rewarded, for on the next knoll we found several tufts--that is the
shape it assumes up here--of the golden dwarf _Papaver Pyrenaicum_.
These two lovely plants did not on this day waste their beauty on the
desolate scene. Their flowers are now gone, and they are themselves
buried in snow; but what they were on that August day still lives in
the mind. The little pearly stars, and the golden cups, have still an
existence. Their form and colour, now that they are creatures of the
brain, are the same as they were while they were expanded on the shaly
knoll, protruded through the snow, on the top of the Pischa, quickened
by the warmth, and drinking in the light, of the sun that was smiling
on them. There, too, in the brain, they must have some substance, for
creatures of the brain must be of the substance of the brain. The
difference is that now they exist in another medium, and are cognisable
by another sense; but in that new medium they still have their original
form and colour, and still possess the power of giving pleasure.
If then any lady beginner in Alpinism shall have been brought here by
a desire to add to her Alpine mementos these two plants (I left them
undisturbed), gathered after such a walk, and on such a spot; she will
find, after she has secured her mementos, that what she has next to do
is to effect her descent into the Val del Fain. The first stage of the
descent will be found somewhat steep, and very incoherent. We, having
done this piece, and reached the turf-grown side of the mountain,
instead of continuing straight down into the valley below, along the
bottom of which lies the path to the Bernina House (not the Hospice),
descended the flank of the long mountain diagonally from the point
where we first came out on its side all the way to the Bernina House.
It is worth while to take the Val del Fain in this fashion, because,
although it may give you somewhat rougher work, the added amount of
rougher work will be repaid tenfold by the astonishing variety of
beautiful flowers you will see on the mountain flank. The stations,
as botanists call them, vary much, the ground being sometimes wet,
and sometimes dry, sometimes good and deep, and sometimes shallow and
stony. Indeed, this valley is celebrated for its flowers; and I am
acquainted with no other in which they may be found in greater variety
and profusion. As we approached the Bernina House--about half a mile
from it--the air was loaded with perfume. The _Edelweiss_ abounds on
these ridges. Some days back, my two unprofessional Pontresina guides
had found many specimens of it up the valley, only at a point further
up than we were to-day. While we were at dinner at the Bernina House
our professional guide ascended in search of it the dark cliffs at the
back of the house, beyond the stream, and was not long in returning
with a large _bouquet_.
The dinner just mentioned we had earned, for we had been on the move
since 5 A.M., and in that time had ascended the Piz Languard, and
crossed La Pischa. Nor was the dinner unequal to such antecedents;
for it consisted of trout, beefsteaks, Poschiavo potatoes, Valtelline
wine, _omelette aux confitures_, a _compote_ of pears, and cream at
discretion. The charge for this for three persons, was 9 francs, 20
cents. I give these particulars because it is a kind of ingratitude,
when you have been treated well at an inn, not to have a word to say
upon the subject. After you have paid your bill, the only way in which
you can encourage well-doing of this kind, and make a return for the
good services by which you have been benefited, is to make them known.
We now set our faces towards Pontresina--somewhat more than 5 miles
distant. Our way lay along the excellent Bernina post-road. At about
a mile, or a little more, from the inn we were abreast of the falls of
the Bernina. As the rest of the party knew the road well, having this
summer, and last, made many excursions along it, I here left them to
find their way home, while I diverged from the road to see the falls,
and to get a near view of the lower part of the Morteratsch glacier. As
to the falls: the rocks over and upon which the stream tumbles being
in unusually large blocks and slabs, and of a dark colour, and the
tumbling water being much broken, and in consequence very white, and
the overhanging larch being of a tender green, make them a favourite
bit with painters, and on this sunny day there were several easels
beside them. As to the glacier: it has a very distinctive character.
The point of view from which I was now looking at it was a rock just
above the last trees on the mountain side. Here it has the appearance
of descending by a rapid and short course (in fact, however, it has a
descent of 7 miles), from the snow-clad ridges above you, which, as
seen from this point, do not appear of commanding elevation, nor do
they present any very distinguishing features. The characteristics of
the glacier are its breadth and massiveness. At the point I took for
viewing it, its eastern half was hid from sight by an enormous central
_moraine_. As I afterwards saw from the road this enormous _moraine_
assumed on the lower part of the glacier the form of a Brobdingnagian
Ray or Skate, with its tail upwards, and its broad shoulders just
reaching to the termination of the glacier. As you continue your
contemplation of the scene, you may fancy that you are taking in at a
few glances the whole life and history of the glacier, from its first
beginnings on those heights, throughout its course opposite to where
you are seated, and down to its termination at the head of the small
filled-up lake you crossed, as you were coming up through the wood
below you. As to its termination at the head of the old filled-up lake,
that alone is well worth turning out of the road to see; for this is
not a glacier which thins out, and dies away feebly, as the fashion
of some is, but is one of those which end grandly and abruptly: few,
indeed, more so, for it emphasizes the conclusion of its course with
perpendicular ice-cliffs some 200, or more, feet high. This near view I
have been speaking of must necessarily be very incomplete, but you will
to some extent be able to supplement its incompleteness by what you
will see of the glacier from the road, and by the general survey of it
you will take from the top of the Piz Languard.
I got back to Pontresina at 5 P.M., having been out twelve hours.
This may seem a long day to those who are killing themselves by their
sedentary habits. But if a lady, and a child who had not yet numbered
as many years as these hours, could go through it without suffering
that amount of fatigue which is implied by the expression of ‘being
knocked up,’ we may be sure that a great many of those who might
pronounce it beyond their powers, would be very well able to do it;
and would be all the better for a month’s excursion, which would give
them such a day once a week. Such a month every year might perhaps add
a dozen years to their lives, and enable them to do each year a great
deal more than they will ever otherwise be equal to, and to do it
better.
Our guide of this day was a young man by trade a carpenter. He told
us that it was his intention, in accordance with the Grison custom,
to go abroad for some years. His plans were already arranged. At the
end of the summer he was to start for Chicago, where he understood
that a great deal of building was going on. He hoped that he should
be able to make and save some money, and, while so employed, to learn
English; with which money and language he further hoped in some half
dozen years to return to Pontresina. How strangely do things come
about, and combine! Here we have a Grison peasant going to the New
World to learn English, and a fire in a town on the border of Lake
Michigan, at a spot where, in the memory of people still living, the
buffalo quenched his thirst, creating for him an opening for going.
But, then, this peasant can read and write, and so can his neighbours:
had it been otherwise, he never would have comprehended the advantages,
or imagined the possibility, of his learning English; and never would
have known anything about Chicago, and its fires; much less have been
able to plan how he might turn the possibilities of the place to his
own account. And this is only a particular instance of a wide general
fact. The whole world is now in a very practical sense becoming the
stage for the activity of all who are capable of doing its work; and in
every field those who are better qualified will push aside those who
are not so well qualified. For a long time this has been exemplified
by the Scotch. Scotchmen were to be found not only in every large town
in England, but in India, China, the West Indies, and more or less all
over the world. So is it now beginning to be with the Germans. They
are spreading themselves over the whole of the commercial world. They
are to be found in this country, and in all countries, wherever any
business is to be transacted. The reason is again the same. Germany
is not favoured by nature with a rich soil, with any great variety of
produce, or with good harbours: what is giving its people so large a
share in the business of the world is that they have endeavoured to fit
themselves for it. And in these days of general intercommunication, and
of inexhaustible supplies of capital, nations follow the same rule as
individuals. The nation that has become better qualified than others
for producing anything the world requires, will take the place of those
who have not kept themselves up to the mark. If its people have the
other requisite qualifications they will never find any difficulty
about commanding the requisite capital; for it is they who will be
able to employ it most profitably, and it is for profitable employment
that capital exists. All the world is now open to all the world, and
the principle of the selection of the fittest, which Mr. Darwin tells
us rules among plants and the lower animals, will assign its place to
each nation, as it does to a great, and ever increasing, extent to
individuals. If it be a law of nature, it must be universal and without
exemptions.
At Pontresina everybody complains of the dearness of everything. The
hotel-keepers endeavour to persuade the grumblers among their guests
that this comes of its being a place that produces nothing but milk
and a scanty allowance of fuel. This is not the cause of the high
prices. London, which has to provide for a million more mouths than
the whole of the Swiss Confederation, does not produce even the milk
and the fuel. Much of its bread is brought from California, Oregon,
and the Antipodes. Much of its meat comes from Scotland and the
Continent; and so with everything it consumes. The supplies, however,
of Pontresina are drawn from central Switzerland and northern Italy--no
great distances. I saw in its long street hucksters’ carts, which had
been dragged up from the Valtellina and the Bregaglia by the wretched
animals then between the shafts. These carts were full of the most
perishable kinds of fruit, which were being retailed by the men who
had brought them, and who would soon be back again with another venture
of the same kind: here, as everywhere else in the world, whatever is
wanted is sure to come. The true reason of the high prices is one which
would not sound well in the mouths of those who are naturally, and not
reprehensibly, profiting by them: it is that scores of people more than
the hotels can accommodate, apply for accommodation every day in the
season. For every bedroom there are many applicants of this kind. The
one, therefore, to whom it is assigned, is glad to have it, as each of
the rejected applicants would have been, at rather a high price. It is
the same with guides, horses, and carriages; the people who are anxious
to secure them are out of all proportion to the supply. Every market is
practically a kind of auction; and at an auction no one thinks it wrong
that there should be much competition, or that there should be little.
Here we have much competition, in consequence of the supply being very
much in arrear of the demand. This is a matter which time will set
right. President Saratz’s new hotel, to be opened next year, will do a
little towards trimming the balance. It will be under the management of
his son, whom he kept in London for two years to learn English, and to
make him a Master of Arts in hotel-keeping. The Charing Cross Hotel was
the college in which he pursued these studies.
I have already mentioned that I saw this year more birds in the
Grisons than I had ever seen before elsewhere in Switzerland. To those
who take an interest in ornithology, the President will readily show
a collection of the birds of the canton, made by himself. He has well
set-up specimens of a great many species. As might be expected from
the altitude of the valleys our English species do not figure largely
among them. He has besides, in a room in the basement of his house, two
living specimens of the noble rock eagle--the Stein Orteler. These,
I believe, he intends to add to his collection as soon as they shall
have attained their full adult plumage. In his younger days he was a
successful chamois-hunter, and he has preserved the heads of more than
thirty of these antelopes as trophies of his prowess.
But to go back for a moment to the high prices now ruling at
Pontresina. They press hard on the peasants. None of them have, or ever
had, superfluities enough of cheese, and of potatoes and rye-flour
purchased with their surplus cheese, the fruits of very hard work, and
a bare sufficiency of fuel, with no margin for reduction in anything,
was pretty well all that in the general distribution of the good things
of this world fell to them. And now the prices of these necessaries
of life, and of the few other things they may be obliged to purchase,
have been greatly raised against them, first by the general rise of
prices everywhere, and then by the local causes of a great increase
in the permanent population of the neighbourhood, and of the large
summer influx of visitors, who are, as respects the peasants, merely a
flight of locusts, that in their passage eat up everything. As, then,
a Pontresina peasant, after maintaining his family from the produce of
his little plot of ground, can have very little surplus to sell, it is
evident that, if he cannot make his house fit for lodging visitors, or
obtain some share in the new, highly-paid summer employments, his life
must be much harder than it was before. To him that the world now comes
to Pontresina is the reverse of a gain.
CHAPTER X.
EXCEPTIONAL GERMANS--THE BERNINA HOUSE--THE HEUTHAL--LIVIGNO--LAPLAND
AT LIVIGNO--‘MINE HOST.’
To please his pleasure.--THOMSON.
_August 13._--After breakfast walked to St. Moritz to replenish the
fisc. As English sovereigns were reckoned at twenty-five francs
only--the Swiss Post-office allows twenty cents more per sovereign
on money orders from England--I did not understand, nor have I
since learnt, why I was asked to pay for the transaction the little
commission of two francs and a half.
Having returned to Pontresina I went to the Post _bureau_ to despatch
some heavy luggage to Lausanne. In the middle of the business, while
the clerk was engaged in weighing the pieces, a German pushed his way
through the crowd, and interrupting the business in hand, without a
word of apology, took possession of the clerk. I once saw at Interlaken
another gentleman of the same nationality act in precisely the same
fashion. The action exactly corresponded--the comparison must be
excused for the sake of its illustrative aptness--to that of a pig,
who having come up to the feeding-trough a little late, instantly
knocks aside those who are already in possession, and setting his
forefeet in the dish, gulps down all he can. The German pig, however,
goes further than this, for he plants himself lengthways in the narrow
dish, so that the first comers who have been knocked aside, can have
no more till he is satisfied. On both of these occasions the clerk
submitted without remonstrance. I have also seen managers of hotels
accept with equal meekness German animadversions long and loud on items
in their bills, which I cannot but suppose they would have resented
had they come from Frenchmen or Englishmen. Why this difference? Is it
because the Swiss are used to this kind of Tudesque violence? Has much
experience taught them at last that there is nothing for it but to wait
till the storm has exhausted itself? Or is it because they are afraid
of it? And, then, of these barbarians; as all the world knows that
Germans are for the most part easy, good-natured, reasonable people, to
what class do they belong? Are they junkers? Or are they specimens of
the Allemanic variety of the _nouveaux riches_? Do they belong to the
shopocracy, or to the Bureaucracy, or to the barrack? Do they come from
Berlin, or from the Hercynian Forest?
This was my last day at Pontresina. My little guide had now to return
to the college of Lausanne, where he would have to put in his
appearance on the 15th. It was now the 13th. He, therefore, and his
mother, must leave to-night by the 4 A.M. diligence. I would join them
at Lausanne, but at present it was too soon for me to return; and so I
determined to go by some cross-country way to the Stelvio and to the
Ortler; and when I had reached Trafoi to think about where I would go
next. My own idea for the start was to take the lakes Nero and Bianco
on the way to Poschiavo; and then by Val di Campo, and Val Viola, to
get to Bormio. But Christian Grass, a name well known in Pontresina,
whom I had engaged to accompany me, was quite sure that I should find
more to interest me if I went by the way of the Stretta to Livigno,
and thence over M. della Neve, and by Isolaccia, to Bormio. I was
easily persuaded, for so that we went I cared little what way we went.
I knew we could not go a bad way. His advice was, that I should send
on my _sac_ to the Bernina House, by the Post this afternoon, and walk
there in the evening; and then, at 6 A.M. to-morrow, by which hour he
would himself, having slept at home, arrive from Pontresina, start for
Livigno. As this was what I had myself thought would be best, so soon
as the Livigno route had been decided on, I showed my confidence in him
by telling him I would act on his advice.
About an hour before dark I reached the Bernina House. There is a bit
of wet ground, three or four acres in extent, between the House and
the Bernina Bach. It is completely levelled for cutting; but, as it is
swampy, it grows hardly anything but the large-leafed dock, and other
kinds of marsh-weeds. Still its produce is of much use in a country
where there is no straw for littering cows, and horses. I now found in
it a gang of ten men at work, cutting the weeds. Those who in these
parts mow for wages, are generally Italians; the native men being
employed on their own land, and in waiting in one way or another on
travellers; or, which comprises a considerable proportion of the young
men, have gone abroad for a time to seek their fortune. The pay of
these itinerant haymakers, was, I found, two francs, seventy cents a
day. As they live almost exclusively on polenta, they are able to save
the greater part of their wages. I asked one of them what they did in
winter. ‘We go home,’ he replied, ‘and sleep like the marmots.’
A heavy shower drove me from the field into the house for the
rest of the evening, for it soon became continuous rain without
any intermission of the patter against the window. Under these
circumstances, the landlady, who was also a not inconsiderable landlord
proved a host as well as an obliging hostess. She was never long
together out of the room, always having something fresh to tell about
herself, the people, the country, the summer and winter traffic of the
road, or something or other. The House is her own property. She has
also between thirty and forty thousand klafters of prairie, or grass
land levelled and irrigated for mowing, and fourteen cows. Fourteen
hundred klafters are about equal to an English acre. I have already
mentioned, as we found yesterday, that the good woman treats her guests
well in respect both of what she gives them, and of what she takes from
them. The bedrooms, of which there are six, are small but clean. They
are over the stabling, on the opposite side of the way.
* * * * *
_August 14._--It rained all night. At 6 A.M. Christian Grass, true
to time, arrived. At 10.15 the rain having subsided to a drizzle, we
started for Livigno. Our road lay up the Heuthal. We had been out half
an hour when the sun finished off the attenuating clouds, and we had a
most charming day for our walk. The marmots before us, and right and
left of us on the mountain sides, had come out from their earths to
salute, in their fashion, the return of ‘the God of gladness.’ Their
sharp short cries we heard all around us. ‘That,’ said Christian, ‘is
the barometer of fine weather; as the descent of the chamois from the
mountain tops is of a coming storm.’ Who would not have thought well of
the man who put local observation in such a form?
If one can be pleased with a long treeless valley, marvellously full of
flowers (though, indeed, they abound more on the high flanks than in
the bottom, where the path lies), and with mountains that are neither
covered with snow, nor very rugged, he will be more than satisfied with
his five miles’ walk through the Heuthal. All throughout it that admits
of being mown is assigned in lots to the burgers of Pontresina, for
hay-making: the rest is good Alpine summer pasture. Of course, as in
every Swiss valley, the music of a hurrying stream accompanies you all
the way. Near the further end of it, you come on a little shallow tarn.
‘What,’ you ask, ‘has created this tarn in this place?’ Something must
have excavated it. It seems itself to put the question to you; ‘can you
tell how I came here?’ As I looked up to the mountain that overhung
it, that seemed to give the answer. From its top down to the little
tarn there was a steep side, in fact an unchecked slide, if reckoned
vertically, of 2,000 feet. What enormous masses, then, of snow, must at
times, probably every year, drop down to this very spot! Their momentum
must be suddenly checked, and expended, just where the little tarn is.
The expenditure of such a force must have an effect. The little tarn is
the effect. Whatever in the soil is compressible must be compressed,
and whatever is expressible must be driven out, by the blow. This is
what the mountain seemed to say in explanation of the existence of the
tarn. ‘It is my work,’ quoth the mountain; ‘I excavated it.’
A little beyond the tarn, and on the same level with it, you suddenly,
without any preparation, find yourself on the top of a lofty mountain,
with a deep valley at your feet. In fact for the last five miles
you have been walking up the western declivity of this mountain,
without perceiving it, or giving it a thought, and latterly, without
being aware of it, you have been walking on its summit; and now in a
moment, you come to the brow of the summit, and the eastern side of
the mountain, all but, as it seems to you now you are looking down, a
mountain-deep precipice, is at your feet. One step more you think would
roll you down to the bottom of it. You slept last night at a height of
6,735 feet. You are now on the summit of the Pass, at a height of 8,143
feet. So gradual, through your five miles’ walk up the valley, has been
your ascent. The peaks right and left of you are 2,000 feet higher,
and the sight of them had assisted in keeping the true character of
your position out of your thoughts. There in the deep valley of the
Spöl below you, into which you now have to descend, lies your way to
Livigno. The valley is at right angles to what has hitherto been the
direction of your path.
Having got down to the valley we selected a halting place just above
the stream of the Spöl, and below the brow of its bank. Here we were in
the sun, but out of the wind; and having seated ourselves on the turf,
with rocks for footstools, we spent three-quarters of an hour about
what we called our dinner. We had breakfasted early, and had walked
just enough to make us hungry. It was a very pleasant three-quarters
of an hour. There was the bright, warm sun, the pleasant sensations of
its brightness and warmth enhanced by the recollection of the cold,
wet morning; there was the green valley before us, with a herd of cows
grazing near, and a party of salt carriers returning with their asses
to Poschiavo; there were the naked drab-coloured mountain-tops, three,
or more, thousand feet above us; there was the motion and the music
of the lively crystal stream, as it hurried by over its rocky channel
at our feet, near enough to enable us to dip from it without rising,
what we wanted for diluting and cooling our wine, that we might take
it in long draughts; and then there was for me the conversation of a
companion, who I knew was intelligent, and who also, I had every reason
to believe, was a man of good faith.
One source of pleasure in such a three-quarters of an hour is the
perception of its difference from your ordinary life. There is a
present sense of the long thread that connects you with home. What is
around and before you is not all that is at the moment in the mind’s
eye. Even the seas, the lands, the cities, the mountains that lie
between are not altogether lost to view. The images it may be of your
East Anglian Vicarage, and of all that you have lately seen between it
and this charming little halting place below the brow of the bank, and
just above the stream, of the Spöl, are recalled to mind. That within
you which thinks and feels is quickened into its own proper life. The
sense of life is the conscious enjoyment of the powers of life. And
here, as you sit at rest on this sunny fresh-aired bank with so many
senses of body and of mind so pleasantly appealed to, you have the
sense of life abundantly--the sense of a living mind in a living body.
The rest of our way was along a gentle, almost unobserved descent; at
times, as we passed along the silted-up beds of old lakelets, quite on
a level. The rounded tops of most of the contiguous mountains showed
where the materials had come from to fill up the lakelets. You see
in thought the steps of the process; the frost disintegrating the
summits, and the torrents from rain, and from melting snow, bringing
the particles and pieces down to the lakelets; and then you see man
appearing on the scene, and toiling through the short summer in
burying and removing the fragments of rock that strewed the surface,
and levelling all with what soil he could find, to make a bed for the
carpet of turf over which you are walking, and upon which you see that
all the life in the detached _châlets_ and hamlets you are passing,
ultimately rests: for here, that is the one means of supporting life.
The valley down to Livigno is generally broad and verdant. At 4 P.M.
we reached Livigno. It is a large scattered village, perhaps a mile
and a half long. Its houses are old, or at all events most of them
have the appearance of age, for the cembra timber of which they are
built after some years of exposure weathers to a rich black. This the
people call sun-burning. The place has three or four churches. On a
blocked-up window of one of these, I counted six tiers of swallow’s
nests. I saw here no gnats or musquitoes. This numerous colony,
therefore, must be supported chiefly by the house-fly. The reason why
there are so many house-flies here, and elsewhere in Switzerland, is
that there are so many landed proprietors. The valley is broad, and
is divided into little estates, each just big enough to support a
single family. The land can only be turned to account through cows.
Every house, therefore, in the long village has a manure heap at, or
beside, its door. These manure heaps, one for each house, are coverts
and preserves for breeding flies. If this part of the valley was in a
single property, there would be but one fly-preserve; as things now
are, there is a series of them a mile and a half long. The chain, then,
of conditions is as follows; a broad grassy valley at an altitude of
more than 6,000 feet; this is divided into small properties; each of
these is devoted exclusively to the support of cows; the manure from
each byre, for the eight months the cows are under cover, is heaped
up at the door; these heaps are left festering in the sun throughout
the summer, for the land, the hay not yet having been made, is not yet
ready for the manure, and the people are too busy to remove it; in
these heaps, innumerable flies are bred, these flies feed the martins
that build on the blocked-up church window nests six tiers deep. If the
whole valley were put into a few cheese farms, the reduction in the
number of flies, and so in the number of martins, would correspond to
the reduction in the number of proprietors. The number of flies is in
correlation to the size of the landed properties.
The only attempt that I saw had been made in Livigno to grow anything
except grass was that by the side of some half dozen houses in the
village in little enclosures of a few yards square, white turnips
and white-leafed beet had been sown. But in the middle of August,
the former had no tubers, and the latter were very stunted. Some of
the mountains right and left of the village, a little below it, have
a peculiarity: those in the second range appear to have mountains
of black rock placed on the top of what may be called the original
mountain, in shape somewhat like the naves of titanic cathedrals
without towers. One of these superimposed masses on the left is
especially well formed and grand.
It was 4 P.M. when we reached the inn. An hour afterwards, the rain of
the early morning returned. It soon, as the temperature continued to
fall, changed into snow, which continued for thirty hours. This was
a severe test of the resources of the place. I had heard that it was
celebrated for trout. One might of one’s self have supposed this, for
we had for the last 9 miles been walking by the side of a stream, the
water of which was nowhere too broken for fish. Of course, therefore,
we ordered trout for our supper, which was to be served at 6 o’clock.
The little inn has two little parlours. In each of these we found a
party of card-players. The two parties were forthwith placed in a
single room, that the other might be appropriated to the visitors.
These card-players were elderly men, they represented the class who
had in their younger days sought fortune in foreign cities, and in the
degrees which satisfied them had found what they sought. They had now
returned to Livigno to live on meagre cheese, mummy beef when a great
occasion justified such an indulgence, and black bread, with a trout
or two I suppose now and then; to be regarded as the aristocracy of
the place; to spend a large proportion of their evenings in playing at
cards for schnapps, and to lay their bones in the God’s acre of one of
the four above-mentioned churches. As we stood at the door of the inn,
looking at the falling snow, and not forgetting that it was the middle
of August, I asked one of these elders, ‘What, when he might have lived
in comfort elsewhere, had induced him to return to such a place?’ His
reply was, ‘The memory of one’s parents is a beautiful thing.’ I felt
ashamed of my question. I was rebuked, humiliated, and silent. In a
moment his sentiment so natural, or if not, then something much better,
so human, or again if not, then something much better, so tender, so
pleasing, was confronted by the recollection of the brutality of the
English wife-beater. What, I thought, can account for this world-wide
difference? Why is this peasant’s mind in this wretched Alpine recess a
smiling garden, while had his lot been cast in smiling England it might
have been a howling, outrageous wilderness? Can, I asked myself, can
in the one case the general diffusion of property, the great educator,
and the absence of it in the other, lead, through their natural
consequences, and effects, to these two so widely opposite states of
mind? Is this at the root of the difference?
As there was no going outside the door, and as the room assigned to us
was, now that the snow had been falling some time, uncomfortably cold,
I went into the kitchen for warmth, for company, and for something to
see. The arrangements of the ground floor of the inn were as follows:
the front door by which you entered, opened, throughout the day it
was never closed, upon a hall about 25 feet long, and 18 wide. On the
right of this were the two parlours; they were small square rooms,
each with a small square window, which had, as is usual in Grison
_châlets_, a strong family resemblance to an embrasure, the object
of this unusual diminutiveness and peculiarity of form being to keep
out the cold. On the walls were a few coloured prints on religious
subjects, and a few photographs of friends and relatives. Of these two
parlours the one nearest the front door was assigned to us, the other
to the card-players. Opposite to our parlour was a small room without
a window, strongly fortified against frost. In this was sunk the well,
which in winter was the only source to the house for its supply of
water. Opposite the other parlour was the door of the cellar. Next
to the hall, this was the largest room in the house. It was somewhat
sunk in the ground, and by placing the cow-house against it, and by
other devices, all available means for keeping out the frost had
been resorted to. It contained many vats, hogsheads, and barrels of
various sizes, which are replenished each year, while the roads are
still passable, or so soon as they become passable, but while there
is no probability of the occurrence of some of the few hot days of
a Grison summer. The hall has no window, and receives all its light
from the front door, which must therefore be left open except in very
severe weather, and from the embrasures of the two parlours. Against
the wall of the hall, between the doors of the two parlours, stood a
table, on which were two or three black bottles accompanied by some
little glasses. This was the provision for supplying the villagers
with schnapps of distilled drinks. Opposite to this table, against the
opposite wall, between the doors of the pump-room and of the cellar,
was another table, on which also were black bottles, but accompanied
with small tumblers. This was the provision for those who preferred
Valtelline wine to distilled schnapps. At the further end of the hall
was, on the right, the staircase to the bedroom floor; and to the left
of that, the entrance to the kitchen.
The kitchen had but one window, and that, again, as it was in the
embrasure style, admitted a very insufficient amount of light, and
that insufficiency was minimized by the blackness with which nearly a
century of smoke had stained the ceiling and walls: for in these wooden
interiors whitewashing is unknown. On a high stool on the right side
of the fire, in the chimney corner, sat the aged father of our host.
His hair was long, and as white as the snow that was falling. He wore a
kind of full dress, a swallow-tailed coat, and knee-breeches, I suppose
to indicate that he no longer made any pretence to do any kind of work.
In front of the fire was the burly wife of our host, preparing the
coffee, and frying the fish. The fuel used was the wood of the cembra.
This is so full of turpentine, that no sooner does a chip of it touch
the fire than it bursts into flame. It was by the aid of these chips
that the good woman from time to time ascertained whether the milk was
burning, the coffee had come to the boiling point, and the fish were
frying to her satisfaction. Supposing that her visitor had come to see
how things were done at Livigno, she took a large chip, and having
touched the fire with it, held it up before me in a blaze of pure
white flame, and said, ‘Behold a Livigno candle.’ ‘Thanks, Signora,’
quoth the visitor, ‘I see that bountiful nature has well supplied your
wants.’ All the while the landlord, when not summoned to the hall to
pour out a glass of schnapps--the wine to-day was seldom called for: it
was too cold and damp for such thin potations--was constantly coming
in, and standing by the good woman’s side, watching her proceedings
with deep, and generally silent, attention, as the eyes of a maiden
might watch the hand of her mistress. He was not quite calmed by his
reasonable conviction that the result would be a triumph, but he wished
to have himself some share, however small it might be, in producing
that triumph; so he would at times inquire, _sotto voce_, whether there
was anything he could do. Should she want any more wood? Any more milk?
He would now bring the jugs for the coffee, and for the milk, and the
dish for the trout. He would now warm the plates.
At last it was time for us to leave the scene of these preparations.
The moment had arrived, when all that could be done had been done for
the coffee and the trout. And now the good man’s turn had come. No
sense of social inferiority had he in serving his guests. Indeed in
Livigno, his function was honourable, and conferred much distinction.
He could not have served his guests with more observance had they come
to his house direct from Paradise, for the purpose of opening to him
the gate of Paradise, as soon as their supper should be finished. He
was quite sure that the gate would be opened; and gladness, that stood
in no need of words for its expression, filled his heart; but still
something might depend, a little, but still something possibly, on
his attention, and on the satisfaction his guests might receive from
their supper. And now the coffee, the trout, the bread and cheese,
and the butter are on the table at which we take our places. For some
minutes he stands looking on in an attitude, and with an expression,
of attention, and of readiness to fetch anything more that might
be required. In his own thought he was sure that everything was of
the best; that everything would go off well; that nothing had been
forgotten; but he would stay for a few minutes to be assured of this by
his visitors from that higher and better world. The assurance was given
him; and he left the room, as if loath to go, but with his whole face
beaming with the light that will suffuse the faces of those, who have
heard the blessed words that have opened for them the gates of Paradise.
In all this, as we found the next morning, there was nothing assumed.
It was his natural manner and disposition; only schnapps have the
power of bringing out, and of making predominant over everything else,
a man’s natural temper and disposition. Schnapps reveal the true
character. Through them the bad-tempered are made more bad-tempered,
and nothing but bad-tempered, and the good-tempered more good-tempered,
and nothing but good-tempered. And so on this day, they made our host
all over, body and soul, a host, and nothing but a host. Everything
else, if there had been anything else, was obliterated. From the bottom
of his heart to the tip of his tongue, and the tip of his fingers, he
was a host. If there was ever at other times a mask on him, it was now
torn off, and what was the essence of his being--the host--remained
unrepressed, unclouded, unqualified.
The guests’ bedchamber contained three beds. Their scantling was so
much beyond what is common in this part of the world, that one was
almost brought to think that they had been intended to accommodate each
of them two persons. This, however, is an uncertain inference, for of
course they were the work of a native carpenter, and his ideas may have
been enlarged by finding that in this room his handiwork would not
be so much cramped for space as is usual hereabouts. Or perhaps the
increase in the size of the beds might have been, and probably was, a
result of this not being Grison ground; for we were now in Italy, and
in Italy beds are generally as remarkable for amplitude, as in the
Grisons for exiguity, of dimensions. As I had invited Christian to
take his meals with me while we might remain here, I now extended the
invitation to the offer of one of the three beds. The price I had to
pay for this was, that I was obliged to sleep with the window closed.
The good man had so unfeigned a horror of night air, that is to say
of admitting fresh air from without, into the room in which he was
sleeping, in consequence of some supposed ill-effects it would have
on the eyes, that there was nothing for it but to comply with his
prejudice.
We were now in Italy, and had been since we descended the Stretta. Our
dinner, therefore, on the banks of the Spöl had been eaten in Italy,
and this had somewhat heightened the flavour of the enjoyment so many
other pleasant adjuncts had contributed to impart to it. Neither there,
however, nor here, nor elsewhere on the way, had we seen anything of a
custom-house, or of a custom-house official. We might, to the prejudice
of the holders of the bonds of the Italian tobacco loan, have brought
with us to Livigno, without let or hindrance of any kind, any amount
of cigars that we could have carried. I take it, therefore, that the
dwellers in these valleys on this part of the frontier, do not burn so
many cents when consuming the fragrant leaf as other Italians, and so
do not contribute much to the payment of the interest of that loan.
* * * * *
_August 13._--At 6.30 A.M. I came down to see how things were going
on. Snow was still falling. The hillsides down to the valley bottom
were white, but the valley bottom was still green. It was a fête day,
the greatest, I believe, of the year in these valleys. There was a
stream of people passing the door on their way to the church, about
half-a-mile off, just below the north end of the village. Men and women
were all in their holiday attire. The get-up of the men was very like
what was common some years ago, and may still be, in Ireland. Those
who were in the fashion, perhaps who retained the old fashion, wore
the swallow-tailed coat, of a frieze-like material, but of a dark
colour, adorned with brass buttons, and the knee-breeches with dark
gray stockings, I have already mentioned. Those who were of a less
conservative turn of mind, wore a kind of shooting coat, and long
trousers, but of the same dark material as the others; probably it was
homespun. I saw no overcoats, which appear to be quite unknown in this
part of the world, where people dress the same in fine weather and in
foul, in summer and in winter. They give a reason for this practice;
they say that what in this climate they have most to dread is checked
_transpiration_; and that they dress the same at all times in order
that they may not increase _transpiration_ by additional clothing, or
run the risk of having it checked by the removal of an overcoat: that
to dress the same at all times is safest in their climate.
Several of the passers by at this early hour, and throughout the day,
walked up to the table in the hall, on which stood the black bottles
and small glasses. It would fortify them against the raw wet day.
The shooting jackets which, perhaps, represented young Livigno and
modern ideas, were more open to conviction on this point, than the
swallow-tails. One brought with him a sturdy little fellow of about
eleven years of age who took his schnapps with the same gravity and
silence as his broad-shouldered parent. They walked together up to the
table, did not ask for the glasses to be filled, emptied them when
filled, and retired without a word, and without moving a muscle of the
face any more than of the vocal mechanism.
At 7 o’clock a young man came into the kitchen to make a mess of
polenta. When the milk had been raised to the full boiling-point, he
added about an equal quantity of meal, perhaps a little more than as
much, and stirred it continuously for about a quarter of an hour,
with a strong crooked stick, to mix it equally and to prevent its
burning. When the meal had absorbed all the milk, and had become very
stiff, it was prepared. It required much strength to stir it. He and
two companions now sat down at the kitchen table with the mess before
them. One ate it with cheese; one with milk, and the other with butter.
The old gentleman at the same time descended from his high stool in
the chimney-corner, which he had in vain attempted to persuade me to
occupy, and sat down at the same table for his breakfast, which his
daughter-in-law had prepared for him. It was a large basin of soup, or
more correctly, of a kind of vegetable broth. This he ate with black
rye-bread. The maker of the polenta offered me some on a plate. As long
as it is warm it is not a bad kind of food, though far from as good
as the hot maize cakes you get in the United States, or as the same
polenta would have been if in West Indian fashion it had been allowed
to get cold, and then been cut into slices, and fried, or toasted. Its
merit is that it is quickly prepared, and requires no apparatus but a
pot and stick.
At 8.30 our turn came. Fish again, and everything we had had at
supper last night. The anxious ministering of the good man was very
impressive, though of course not in quite so high a degree as on the
previous evening. It was too early in the day for that, though he was
already on the road that would bring him to the same point. At 9.30 he
announced that he must go to church, and that he should be absent for
an hour and a half. I told him that I would accompany him. A gleam of
satisfaction, felt in his heart, irradiated his face. ‘Well! well!’ was
his reply. He disappeared for a few minutes, and returned in his festa
dress; his face brightened with soap and with satisfaction. His attire
was that of the innovating party. The function, at which we were to
assist, was to commence at 10. All the world was on the road, and every
face was towards the church. He conducted me into a detached chapel,
a few yards from the church; it was already full. There were about
sixty men in it--all men. No priest was present. All were employed in
chanting a Latin Litany to the Holy Virgin. The harshness of their
voices was great, and so was the dissonance, for hardly any attempt
was made to keep together. When the Litany was concluded, we all left
the chapel, and entered the church. Here mass was to be celebrated.
We, that is to say the men, occupied the right side of the building;
the women, who far outnumbered us, occupying the left side, and the
whole of what might have been the west end. The service commenced by
seven or eight women walking up the main aisle to the priest, and, as
it appeared, making an offering, and then returning again down the
aisle to their seats. The large proportion of men in the congregation,
and the demeanour of all indicated that the controversies of the day
had not reached Livigno. Here the sense of the Unseen, which, under
whatever form it may show itself, is Religion, was quick and strong,
and prepotent in shaping the thought and lives of all. In them debates
about forms had not weakened the effect of the substance.
As we returned from the church the snow had at last begun to lie in the
valley bottom. The grass was now buried, and everything on which the
eye rested was white, with the exception of the roofs of the _châlets_,
and the paved roadway, which, however, was slushy with half-melted
snow. The contrast with the bright sun of yesterday at the same hour
was complete. Twenty-four hours had transported us from Italy to
Lapland. Probably in Lapland the aspect of things was at the moment
more summer-like. There was no prospect now of doing anything to-day,
for even if it were to clear speedily, it would be too late to cross
the mountains. Dinner, therefore, began to assume in one’s thoughts
a disproportionate importance; and we were not long in broaching the
subject to the good man. What could he give us? We should be glad of
the best he had. Had he any meat? He had. What was it? Was it dried
beef? Well! it was a day for dried beef. That would be one thing. ‘No,’
he replied with sorrowful firmness. ‘That I cannot let you have.’ Why
not? We can eat it; we have already become acquainted with it, and you
see it has done us no harm. ‘No,’ again, but with the sorrowfulness and
firmness more accentuated. ‘I can let you have eggs, and fat cheese,
and butter, and soup, and fish, but not the dried beef.’
‘My good man, we shall be glad to have it. Why not let us have it?’
‘Because your souls are due to heaven as well as my own.’
It was, then, because it was the festa. ‘But,’ quoth the visitor, ‘that
is just the reason why we should have it. To-day is not a fast, but a
festa.’
‘No! no! It is impossible.’ Such subtleties were ensnaring. They came
from the enemy of souls. The fact was that schnapps had quickened the
good man’s religiosity, while they had obscured his understanding. It
would have been unfeeling, and perhaps unavailing, to have argued the
point, or pressed the request further in any way. And so with thanks
for having reminded us of the road we must both travel to reach heaven,
he was told that his guests would be content to-day with what elements
of meat there might be in the eggs, and fat cheese, and soup, and
fish, and would dispense with the thing itself in its ordinary Livigno
form of dried beef. Who would not have abstained from a few shreds of
the hock of a mummied ox for the sake of witnessing the satisfaction
this announcement gave the good man? The momentary cloud passed away
from his face, and he instantly became again, and, as the afternoon
advanced, in a still higher degree than he had been yesterday, the man
of one thought--the host, and nothing else. At dinner his ministerings
were bliss; at supper they became devotion.
But dinner, though made the most of, was at last over; and supper,
the next event, was a long way off. The roadway, and the roofs of the
_châlets_ had at last succumbed to the ceaseless snow, and everything
was now unbroken white. The question was, therefore, forced upon us of
What was to be done? How was the afternoon to be got through? The cold
in the house was getting down to the bone, notwithstanding the dinner,
and frequent visits to the kitchen fire, for the outer hall door, and
all other doors were constantly kept open for the sake of the light,
and the kitchen fire was a mere pretence, except when some cooking
was going on. The card-players had again returned, notwithstanding
the festa, or perhaps because of the festa, for ‘on festas the church
before midday, and the tavern after midday’ is a saying here. What,
then, can be done? Rather for the sake of saying something than from
the hope of hearing any useful suggestion, I put my despair in the form
of a question to the good man.
‘The best thing you can do,’ he replied with a readiness and decision
which indicated that what he was announcing was the familiar practice
of Livigno, the outcome of the experience of life in the place, ‘the
best thing you can do is to go to bed till supper time.’
The novelty of the idea precluded an immediate answer. The time,
however, required for fully taking it in, was also sufficient for
enabling one to see that there was reason in it. Really there was
nothing else that could be done; and so half an hour’s more looking out
at the door, and walking up and down the hall, overcame the repugnance
I had at first felt to the suggestion. Do at Livigno as the Livignese
do worked in the same direction. And so at 3 P.M. we went up stairs,
lay down upon our beds, drew our coverlets over us, and were soon lost,
and continued lost for three hours, to all sense of the incongruity of
a day that would have been wretched in the middle of January coming
upon us suddenly in the middle of August.
CHAPTER XI.
M. DELLA NEVE--VAL DI DENTRO--BORMIO--VAL DI BRAULIO--SANTA MARIA--THE
STELVIO--TRAFOI--THE ORTLER.
Where nature seems to sit alone
Majestic on her craggy throne.--WARTON.
_August 16._--Last night when we returned to our beds the snow was
still falling: but we took it for granted that it could not continue
into a third day, and, therefore, ordered breakfast for 4.40 this
morning. True to time were we, and so was the breakfast. Nor were we
disappointed in our anticipation of the weather. It had arranged itself
favourably. Snow must have ceased to fall for some hours, for it was
beginning to disappear from the valley bottom; nor was the cloud canopy
either low down, or quite unbroken. With the expectation, then, that
the day would be equal to our wishes, at 5 A.M. we were off. As to
that indispensable part of the ceremony of taking leave--the bill--on
so promising a morning I was not sorry, perhaps I was rather pleased,
that the good man should find in it a reason for looking back with
satisfaction to our visit, and with hope that it might be repeated.
In respect of his bill the most attentive of Grison landlords, even
one who on fête-days has his thoughts turned towards Paradise, and is
desirous of helping others to take the right road to it, is likely to
prove only a Grison man, or simply only a man. Francs here are very
precious, and the opportunities for making them are very limited: we
will, therefore, condone our friend’s inability to withhold himself
from turning his opportunity to the best account. As we were leaving
the house, good nature, or, perhaps, conscience, prompted him to follow
us into the road with a black bottle and two little glasses from the
table on the left side of the hall. The morning was cold, and we ought
to take something to fortify us against the cold. We declined on the
ground that we had just breakfasted. Would we then fill our flasks?
We should feel the want of something strong in crossing the mountain.
This offer Christian in part accepted; and having again shaken hands,
we went straight across the sloppy meadow, and began the ascent of the
eastern mountain.
The first stage up to the forest was almost as sloppy as the valley
bottom. The path through the forest was better. Above the forest the
snow was dry. At 6 o’clock we had reached Trepalle, a scattered hamlet
with a church. Nobody was stirring. Immediately beyond Trepalle is a
little valley, but as it is very much higher than that of Livigno, it
was completely buried in snow. So was every mountain side, and top
within our range of vision all round. It was a polar scene. It gave us
also a good idea of what these valleys and mountains must be in winter
to the eye. What strikes one who comes on such a scene in summer is
that the distinctions of colour are gone: the bright green prairie, the
sunburnt houses, the dark green forest, the foamy silver stream, the
brown green alpine pastures, the gray, or still darker crags, are now
all alike. There is a grandeur in this, but a diminution of interest.
You soon tire of it; but of the colour-varied scene you never tire. A
little further on we came on a large flock of Bergamesque, Roman-nosed
sheep, attended by a tall, shaggy-headed shepherd in a sheepskin cloak.
Months it seemed must have passed since he last washed his face, or
combed his hair, or beard. His flock were bleating piteously, being
pinched by the cold and their empty stomachs, for since the ground had
been buried, which up here must have been at an early hour yesterday,
they could have had nothing to eat. He seemed to have some difficulty
in preventing them from straying; his object being to keep them on the
side of the hill on which the sun would first melt the snow. Some way
beyond the shepherd and his flock, as we were nearing the top of the
second range, where the new snow was in places two or three feet deep,
we lost our buried path, and were some little time before we recovered
it: but this was a matter of no consequence as we could not miss the
right direction. Just on the top of this ridge we came on a black lake,
with a black shaly margin; all the blacker because everything else was
white.
From this point it was all down hill to the valley that would take
us to Bormio. As soon as we could command the valley a strange sight
opened on our view. The main valley, its ramifications, and the spurs
of mountains protruded into it, were, at the distance from which we
saw them, and with at the time no sunshine to light them up, of a
dark, almost black aspect, for green hardly showed at all in their
colouring. This blackness was in the valley bottoms, and about half-way
up the mountain sides. At that height the snow began; and it began
at an uniform height on all the mountains bounding the valley, and
projecting into it. The snow line was as true, as if it had been set
out by human hand. The upper part of the mountains, down to about half
their height, was with perfect regularity uniformly white; the lower
half as uniformly black. The division between the two colours had
been made quite fairly, and the line had been drawn quite truly. We
soon reached Foscagno, from which the Pass takes its name. Foscagno
was just on the line where to-day the snow ceased. Semogo came next,
still on the mountain side. Isolaccia was the first town in the valley.
Then Pedenosso. After that Torripiano and Premadio. The number and
size of the churches might alone have shown us that we were in Italy.
By the time we had reached the valley the sun was shining brightly,
and down in the bottom, though it is wide and airy, we felt midsummer
heat. At Premadio we saw just the tip of the Ortler, peering over the
intervening ranges, and looking like a snow _châlet_ perched on the
summit of the highest of them. At 11 o’clock, not having had any delays
or halts, we reached the hotel of the New Baths of Bormio.
The altitude of the house is 4,580 feet. This, as it faces to the
south, ought to admit of its having a pretty good summer climate,
though I suppose considerable deductions must be made, particularly in
the first part of the summer, for the contiguity of the vast snowfields
of the Ortler, and for the other snowy eminences behind it. Its
immediate _entourage_ has a bleak, starved, naked aspect, the ground
being poor, and only partially clothed with vegetation. This might
at first be wearisome, and then repulsive, to one who was obliged to
remain a week or more at the place, though it is just what gives it its
character, and makes it interesting to the passing pedestrian, who only
sees what can be seen in coming and going, and whose stay is limited to
the time that is requisite for his dinner within doors, and his cigar
on the terrace outside. He notes only with satisfaction the poverty of
the immediate neighbourhood, the grand contiguous mountain masses, and
the rich colouring of the long valley below open to the midday sun;
and, before this source of satisfaction has been exhausted, is on
his way to other scenes, full of pleasant anticipations for himself,
seasoned perhaps a little with the commiseration he feels for those he
leaves in quarantine, at all events at anchor, at Bormio. If you are to
stay at a place, I almost think it preferable to be low down (of course
not quite in the valley bottom) than to be high up. In the latter
case you have a feeling that you have already seen everything. At all
events you have no desire to go down into the valley: that is what, as
a matter of fact and practice, no one does. But if your station is low
down, you always feel an impulse on you to climb up some mountain, or
to go somewhere or other to get a view, or to see something more of the
country. We must except from this remark those cases where the height
and the view are just what one has come for.
At 1 P.M., that is to say after a stay of two hours, which is about
the right time for a midday halt, which is to include one’s dinner,
and which, too, seemed time enough for Bormio, we began the ascent to
the Stelvio. As soon as you face up towards the Pass its distinctive
character begins to display itself. The first mile brings you to the
old Baths, constructed on a lofty cliff-niche, like an eagle’s nest,
high above the gloomy gorge of the Adda. As you pass the waste overflow
of the hot spring, you feel that the air by its side has received some
of its warmth. But this hardly withdraws your attention for a moment
from the gray ravine, and the gray mountain, below steep and deep,
and above steep and high. Beyond this the road, still carried high
up on the right hand mountain flank, becomes more impressive. On the
left, beyond the point at which the Adda enters the Pass from the Val
Fraele, the road bends somewhat to the right, and you enter a still
more impressive stage of the Pass. You are now in the gorge of the
Braulio. The mighty Braulio is on your left, and the south-western
buttresses of the still mightier Monte Cristallo are on your right. The
Braulio has here, and for some miles on, been cut down in mountain-high
perpendicular precipices of a yellowish-brown, for the rock is
dolomitic. On that side no road could have been constructed; but so
much the better, for it is very grand as looked at from the road on
the opposite side. On your side, the road side, the mountains are not
mountain walls, but mountain scarps. The scarps, however, are so steep,
and so seamed with _couloirs_, that there was the utmost difficulty
in making the road, as there still is, and ever will continue to be
in maintaining it. As you look up the mountain side from the road,
you see, above, masses of detached rock, as big as barns, temporarily
arrested in their descent, and ready on the slightest provocation to
crash down on the road. Sooner or later they all must come. At the
_couloirs_ is the great danger and the great difficulty. In them there
is no solid foundation for the road that must be carried across them.
Its foundation, therefore, had to be formed of masonry. And when it
had thus been carried across them, it was always exposed to be swept
away at any time by a storm, which for the nonce makes the _couloir_
the channel of a raging torrent of commingled water and rocks. It,
therefore, became necessary first to put the road in a masonry tunnel,
and then to fill the _couloir_ immediately above it with solid masonry,
in order that the commingled torrent of water and rocks might not dash
upon it, but rush down over it. And, again, in places where there was
not a _couloir_, but still, where rocks in bad weather might fall
upon the road, or avalanches in spring, similar precautions became
necessary: in such places the road must be either an excavated tunnel,
or a constructed culvert. These precautions are indispensable both
for the maintenance of the road, and for the protection of travellers
in bad weather. And however strongly the work may be done, it has
frequently to be renewed, for it is frequently broken in, or swept
away. In several places we saw men at work repairing the damages of
this kind of last spring. In some places the rocks that had fallen
on the roof of the tunnels and galleries had done them more or less
injury; in others it was the torrents that had dilapidated the masonry.
Everything here is impressive: the deep gorge with the angry stream far
below the road; the iron-faced mountain precipices opposite to you;
the steep mountain side above you, which you see is only waiting for
a storm to mobilize it; and which storm, as you look up at the great
rocks caught on the loose _débris_, you think can hardly be needed for
bringing them down; because, indeed, for anything you can see, there
is nothing to keep them from falling upon you while you are observing
their massiveness and position. If you look down into the gorge your
flesh creeps; if you look across it, your mind is solemnized by a sense
of the grandeur of those sheer mountain-high precipices; if you look up
at the rocks ready to fall upon you, your mind is awed by a sense of
the inexorableness of nature.
Beyond this stage, which had been, pretty generally, for some miles,
more or less on a level along the mountain flank, the scene changes.
You now by a steep ascent cut off several zigzags, and reach a higher
level, at the further end of which, some three miles on, is the fourth
_cantoniera_, that of Santa Maria, where your day’s work will end,
and you will take up your quarters for the night. On this higher
level we again encountered the snow. The day had been bright, and
the snow-plough had not been used here, and so for the last three
_kilometres_ of this distance we had to walk through sloppy snow slush.
In three hours and a half from the new Baths of Bormio, that is to say
at 4.30 P.M., we reached our destination. It is a large building, for
it contains a barrack, a custom-house, an inn, and lodgings for the
people who keep the road open and in repair. It is well situated in a
sheltered bend of the mountain basin, which lies below, and on the
south side of, the summit of the Pass.
We found half-a-dozen Germans in the house: some of them had come
up that morning from the Munsterthal. A little later, a dozen more
arrived from the Tyrol side, in a light omnibus-like diligence, and its
supplement. Of the whole number only three slept here: all the rest
went down to Bormio. I was the only Englishman in the house, and in
the visitors’ book the proportion of English names was small; which,
however, implies not so much that few English parties cross the Pass,
as that few stay here for the night, or have any reason for entering
their names in the book. Scarcely a French name was to be found in it.
The sun was still bright, and as it was full on the verandah, it was
pleasant to sit in and feel its warmth, while everything around on
which the eye could rest was buried in snow.
I reminded Christian of how varied, and full of interest, our day had
been. In the early morning Livigno, and the broad snowy ridges of M.
della Neve, where nothing but snow had been seen, then the long green
Val di Dentro with its meadows, cornfields, towns, and churches, then
Bormio, then the awe-inspiring Braulio, and now a return to the snow
world as complete as what we had crossed in the early morning. ‘Yes,’
he said, for I knew that I was talking to a man who had a sense of the
elements of interest in mountain scenery, ‘yes, but we have not done
wisely. We should have stopped at Bormio for the night. We might in
some way or other have found this too much, and then the pleasure of
the rest of our walk might have been much diminished.’ I had myself not
been without this thought, and, therefore, as he had to carry the load,
I had at Bormio left it to him to decide whether we should go on from
that point or not. But being a good and true man, because he knew what
was my wish, and because it was left to him to decide, he had raised
no objection to going further. Now, however, when the work was done,
and there could be no suspicion of a wish to shirk, he could say what
he really thought. I could only reply that the imprudence was all my
fault: and that, as it was I who had nothing to carry, I ought not to
have thrown the decision on him.
When those who were to pass the night at Bormio or elsewhere than
at Santa Maria, had cleared out, and the sun was setting, the buxom
and rather boisterous damsel, who had charge of the guests, brought
in a large basketful of wood, and announced her intention of giving
us a fire, which she forthwith kindled in a smaller room off the
_salle-à-manger_, where there was an open fire-place. As the wood
was cembra, in five minutes we had a blazing fire, and together with
the three Germans, who were full of good-nature and talk, we spent a
pleasant evening at an elevation of 8,317 feet in the highest house,
the books say, in Europe, with, though it was the 16th of August, a
sharp frost outside, which had lost no time in reasserting its dominion
so soon as the sun retired from the scene.
The buxom boisterous damsel assigned to me for the night a large room
with three beds. One of these I invited Christian to occupy. He had
spent the evening with us, and as we sat round the blazing cembra fire
had taken part in the conversation, for he had in youth, as is the
custom with so many of his countrymen, gone abroad, where he had learnt
French and German. This bedroom had double windows, which appeared to
be never opened: and this probably is the case from fear of letting
in the cold. If so the room can only be aired, or rather dried, on
the occasions when the stove is heated. The bedding, and everything
in the room appeared damp. This I was told was a result of the snow
being continuous throughout almost all the year, which keeps the roof
and walls permanently chilled through. One cannot but suppose that
dampness, as well as cold, must be a consequence of such conditions: at
all events I could not but believe that my hempen sheets, three heavy
blankets, and heavy coverlet, owed some of their weight, I might almost
say of their adhesiveness, to this cause. In the morning, however, we
found that whatever had been the hygrometric state of the beds, and
of the room, in which we had slept, we were ourselves none the worse.
I believe that when you are taking a great deal of exercise you can
resist the bad effects of a damp bed far more effectually than you
can when your manner of life is sedentary. Your system is acting more
vigorously, and giving off a greater amount of animal heat, which
enables you to repel the damp, and saves you from becoming its victim.
In fact, you do yourself air your bed before it can do you any harm. Be
the cause, however, what it may, we suffered not from cold or damp that
night, while sleeping high above all the other sleepers of Europe.
_August 17._--As we were to have an easy day--only to Trafoi at the
foot of Ortler--we were not off till 6 A.M. The sun was not yet on
our path, and the morning was arctic. If there were such things as
summer mornings at the pole, such might a fine one be there. Everything
was hard bound in frost, and everything was deep buried in snow,
except the black streak along the centre of the road, from which
the snow from Santa Maria to the summit had been cleared off by the
snow-plough. Of course overcoats, gloves, and scarfs are unknown on
these excursions, so on first emerging from the hotel I felt as if I
were thinly clad, and my ungloved hands were soon pocketed. But as
our way was at first all up hill, and the air quite still, the chill
of the first contact with the frost was soon lost, which, however,
had indeed not been much more than the chilliness of the interior of
the house in the early morning without a fire. By the time we had
reached the summit (somewhat under an hour) we were ready to blunder
through the knee-deep new snow up to a little eminence on the left of
the road, from which there is a commanding view. The path to it leaves
the road just alongside of the road-mender’s quarters on the summit
of the Pass, at the point of junction of the Austrian and Italian
frontiers. It is ascended in twenty minutes; or if there be less snow
than there was to-day, then in a little less time. To the north-east,
in which direction you can see furthest, the view is very extensive.
To the west it is grandly intercepted by the contiguous mighty masses
of Umbrail and Braulio. Of these the former is in Switzerland, the
latter in Italy. To the south are the still mightier masses of Monte
Cristallo, and of the dome-topped Ortler, which send down towards you
two mighty and strangely contrasted glaciers; that on the right is
long and broad, has a gentle descent, and had on this day a surface
that was white and smooth from the lately fallen snow; its neighbour
to the left, and which is only separated from it by a narrow rocky
ridge, is most unlike it in every one of the above respects. As seen
from our point of observation it appeared of no great length; it was
not spread out into a large field, but jammed into a narrow ravine
between two mountains. It was not in the form of a stream, but of a
cataract, of ice; its surface, too, was much rent and fissured; and
to complete the contrast, for some reason which did not appear, the
lately fallen snow had not rested upon it. As to the general effect
of this extensive view, it seemed to me to be more than half lost
by the covering of snow that had been laid over everything. If form
is the first element of interest in a wide mountain scene, colour
undoubtedly is the second; for colour it is that gives distinctiveness,
and the suggestion of life, to the forms you are looking at. It not
only enables you to distinguish more readily between the forms, but
also to make out the peculiarities, and interpret the character of
each. Meadows, cornfields, forests, villages, rocks, Alpine pastures,
lakes, glaciers, as well as the snowfields, are all signalized and
understood by their colour. But when colour is obliterated, and every
object made white, the power of distinguishing mere form, even that of
great masses, is greatly diminished, while all minor objects become
pretty generally effaced. All nature has then but one aspect. The scene
before us supplied us with a proof of this value of colour. The only
exception to the universal white were two enormous black holes by the
side of Mount Umbrail. These were points at which we could look down
into the Munsterthal to somewhat below the line up to which the snow
had been melted. As the sun was not yet touching these depths, they
looked almost completely black by the side of the otherwise universal
white. Of course the eye went back to them again and again, for they
were more suggestive, and so more interesting, than anything else
that could be seen. These two, as they appeared, black bottomless
pits were just the two places in the world around us where the deep
valley opened out most, and the sun had most power. They were, then,
the most favoured spots; and we could translate their blackness into
scenes of industry and village life. If the snow had been suddenly
removed from the whole scene, with the exception of those summits it,
on account of their height, legitimately occupies, then they would
have been distinguishable from their lesser brethren. We should have
known that they were the highest tops, however far off in the view they
might have been, and so we should have regarded them with the respect
that was their due. And in like manner with all the rest of the scene:
every object, having been interpreted by its colour, would have become
interesting. We should have been given to understand what it was, and
should have known what to think of it. While as things were, the whole
scene, because deprived of colour, was dumb. Nothing could give us any
account of itself except the glaciers. Vegetation, which is the garb of
nature, and which to so large an extent puts nature into relation to
man, was lost to sight. Another proof of the value of colour is that,
when it has been effaced by snow from an extensive view, the eye soon
wearies of the view, and to such a degree as to refuse to attend to it
any longer.
The descent was now commenced. As is usual in Alpine Passes, there was
no resemblance between the two sides. That by which we had ascended to
the top was long, and had been formed by nature into several distinct
stages, each possessing features and a character of its own. This
presented nothing that at all corresponded to the upper crateriform
stage on the other side, nor anything at all like the awe-inspiring V.
di Braulio. The descent was very rapid, by an innumerable series of
zigzags, constructed on so steep a face, that it was a long time, at
all events now that the mountain side was covered with snow, before a
cut-off could be made. The road continued steep, though the gradient
was being eased all the way down to Trafoi, in reaching which we
diminished our altitude by 4,000 feet. We could not but observe that
the Austrian side was not so well cared for as the Italian. Here, for
instance, the snow-plough had not been used at all. We had, therefore,
as the sun was now well up, to walk through some miles of sloppy snow.
On this side, too, there were no refuges. Probably, however, this
omission arose from the fact that the whole of the first two or three
miles is equally exposed to snow avalanches; there was, therefore, no
more reason for protecting one part than another, and it would have
cost too much to have protected the whole. We saw to-day evidence
of this general exposure, for even the late midsummer fall of snow
had yielded some half dozen avalanches; some small, but others of
sufficient mass to have blocked the road; these, therefore, it had
been necessary to remove, in order to make a way for the traffic: they
would, probably, have upset a carriage had they fallen upon it.
The contour of a mountain results from the nature of the rock of which
it is formed. Here it is of talcose slate. This is readily broken up
by frost. The consequence is that in the course of ages enough of the
mountain has been disintegrated to form an incline from top to bottom,
just at the angle at which it is possible for such rubble to rest.
Such mountains will, therefore, be without precipices; their _pente_,
however, will be very considerable. It was in the steep rubbly incline
of this mountain that the zigzags had to be made. It will be also seen
that in such a formation there can be no flat spaces, or protruding
rocks. On such a face, therefore, snow will, as a general rule, begin
to slide before it has accumulated to any great amount. There being
nothing from the first to hold it up, as soon as it begins to gather
weight, down it must come. Here therefore the avalanches will be very
frequent, but not very serious.
When we were about half way down to Trafoi the snow ceased, as I have
so frequently had on this excursion to observe of summer snow, at just
about the line where the forest commenced. We were now descending along
the north-western roots of the group of the Ortler, of which, and of
its glaciers, we had frequent glimpses. As we approached Trafoi, we
had a magnificent view down the Trafoier valley, in consequence of a
bend in the road having opened the distance to us: a world of far-off
summits, some topped with white, were in a moment brought into the
field of the eye. One stood pre-eminent above all the rest. I was
told that its name was Weisstobel. It was of purest white, in form
resembling the black mountain superimposed on a mountain I had noticed
at Livigno. It was as symmetrically shaped as if it had been the long,
lofty nave of a cathedral, with a slanting roof, but without towers or
pinnacles. It must be the king of the mountains of that district.
We reached Trafoi at 10 A.M. An Austrian custom-house officer was
standing at the door of the inn. We asked him if it was there that he
would inspect the little we had with us. He seemed to take it rather
amiss, almost to be disposed to be offended, that we should have
imagined him capable of so mean an action, one that might seem to
imply some distrust. We found that he was staying at the inn, and was,
as might be inferred from his forbearance, a goodnatured, convivial
variety of the species.
Again what a contrast! Three hours ago I had been standing on the
little rocky eminence above the Pass. Everything was buried deep in
snow, and bound hard in frost. In the level rays of the early sun, the
hard frozen particles on the surface of the deep snow around us gleamed
like so much diamond dust. Around to the distant horizon the landscape
was only arctic. Now the climate had been changed as well as the scene,
for I was seated on the spacious verandah of the Trafoi inn, with the
scattered village, its little church, and garden plots around me, not
dazzled, nor scorched, but only so quickened by the flood of light and
warmth the sun was pouring down on the spot, as to feel that they were
life to myself, as I saw that they were to all organized nature around
me.
The view from this verandah is food, and, too, very pleasant food,
for the eye. The point of central attraction is the Ortler, with its
smooth, massive, dome-shaped cap of snow. It seems quite close to you.
To the right of it, standing well to the front of the snow-field, and
very near to you, is the mighty black pyramid of the Madatsch. On this
day it was profusely reticulated with veins of the new snow that had
lodged in its crannies. The Ortler and the back of the Madatsch are,
as viewed from this point, apparently joined together, on the furthest
horizon, high up against the sky, by a long mountain wall of purest
white. Between them, projecting toward you from this distant horizon
of the snow wall, is Trafoier Spitze, a ridge of black, or of white,
precipices, as each happens to be of naked rock, or to be faced with
snow. On each side of this ridge of the Trafoier Spitze is a great
glacier, one descending from the Ortler, the other from the Madatsch.
The lower part of the Madatsch is cut diagonally by an ascending ridge
which is clothed with a thick forest of dark green pine. All this is on
your right, as you sit on the verandah with your back to the house, and
just at the best distance for taking in all the features of the scene,
the dark forest that rises athwart the lower part of the Madatsch being
quite close to you. In front of you, beginning at the Ortler, beyond
the green meadows and the Trafoier Bach, which are below you, is a
range of slaty coloured mountains, so near that you can make out every
object upon them, the detached rocks, the cattle, and the decaying
trunks of fallen pines. The first of this range runs athwart the roots
of the Ortler, its gray summit being overtopped by the Ortler’s snowy
dome. This range is steep, barren at its summit, and shagged with
cliffs, some gray, and some stained black with lichens. Its flanks are
seamed with slaty coloured _couloirs_, between which are breadths of
Alpine pasture above, and below the more or less scattered pines of an
open forest, in contrast with the close forest that rises against the
black Madatsch. Then on your left, as you look down the Trafoier valley
are many distant summits of the Tyrol: supreme among these is the snowy
cathedral nave, gleaming in the bright midday sun.
This view was my most distant point; and it seemed a worthy conclusion
of my outward course. It was a grand and varied scene: mountains black,
and mountains gray, and mountains white; snowfields and glaciers,
cliffs and _couloirs_; forests of closely set, and forests of
scattered, pines; emerald meadows in the valley, and sombre pastures
on the heights. Within hearing the appropriate music of the Trafoier
Bach. Above all the luminous field of unfathomable blue, sparingly
chequered with a few streaks and flecks of white cloud, just as on
the earth beneath the intermingled shade varied the bright sunlight
that was being shed over the forests, and the mountain sides, and the
cliffs of the ridges. Close by, somewhat to the left, was a small
cluster of humble shingled _châlets_, the village of Trafoi, to
suggest the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows of the peasant’s
life; just in front, was the last and chief structure of the little
village, the little church with its humble shingled spire, to suggest
the villager’s anticipations of a life beyond the present scene. At 4
P.M. clouds began to form on the highest summits. First, the distant
snow-wall, that seemed to connect the further side of the Ortler and of
the Madatsch, became lost to sight; then the Ortler and the Madatsch
themselves put on their cloud-woven _bonnets de nuit_. The bottom line
of this cloud-mass was now ruled straight. It just reached down to the
glaciers. All above and beyond them was utterly lost to sight. The
level, gray cloud-mass was to the eye a solid stratum, which originated
the glaciers, and out of which they streamed down into our valley.
In the evening we walked through the meadows and pine woods, and across
the Trafoier Bach, to the foot of the glaciers.
CHAPTER XII.
TAUFFERS--VAL AVIGNA--CRUSCHETTA--SCARLTHAL--TARASP.
So for yourselves ye bear not fleece, ye sheep;
So for yourselves ye store not sweets, ye bees;
So for yourselves ye drag not ploughs, ye steers;
So for yourselves ye build not nests, ye birds.--VIRGIL.
_August 18._--Down at 5 A.M.; but as the people of the house are not
yet accustomed to such hours, did not get away till six. A good deal of
linen that was in the washerwoman’s hands had been left out during the
night on the roadside rails in front of the inn. Here it is taken for
granted that every peasant, and that every one, too, who passes along
the road, and it is one of the most frequented roads of the country, is
an honest man. Of course they are honest, because almost every one has
property, or expects to have it, and has been brought up among those
who have it. The instincts, therefore, which property engenders have
become universal. These instincts, where the properties are small, are
industry, frugality, forethought, and honesty. Some years ago, while
travelling in the East, I had collected for my friends at home a
bundle of walking-sticks, made from the mid-rib of the palm leaf, the
olive wood of Jerusalem, and the balsam of the Jordan. Wherever I had
gone I had left the bundle about unheeded, knowing that no one would
meddle with it. Where a woman may go unmolested through lonely ways,
with several gold coins conspicuously displayed on her head, there
cannot be much disposition to pilfer. It was dark, when on my return
to England, I landed at Southampton. My luggage had to be taken by the
dock servants from the quay of the dock to the custom-house, only a few
yards. In those first few yards on English soil, half-a-dozen of the
best sticks were stolen. In the custom-house I called the attention
of the dock people to this inferiority in our English civilization;
and with some emphasis dwelt on the words stolen and thief. I was
informed that my language was actionable; and that it would be taken
down in writing, if only I would be so good as to repeat it. This I
had no objection to do, if only the writer would head his notes with
the _dicta_, that the man who endeavours to screen a thief is as bad
as the thief; and that if the property stolen has been entrusted to
the safe keeping of the thief, and he, and those whose servant he is,
are paid for protecting it, the theft is of an aggravated kind. Of
course no more was said about taking down in writing my estimate of the
occurrence. The sight this morning of the linen which had been left
out all night by the roadside brought that little matter back to my
recollection, and led me to infer that there must be some condition in
the arrangements of society at Trafoi, as there had been in the East,
which worked effectively in favour of honesty, while there must have
been something at Southampton that worked in the opposite direction.
The walk down the Stelvio below Trafoi was not altogether lacking
in distinctiveness of feature, as must be the case with every
mountain-bounded valley, and indeed with every object in nature. What
most arrests attention here is some little peculiarity in the manner
in which the mountain summits have been weathered away, and the decay
of the rock brought down to form the lower slopes now occupied by
forests, and by the bottom lands which man has reclaimed for grass.
About Trafoi, and for some way below it, you are able to look into
the forests on the flank of the mountain on the opposite side of the
stream. You see there that many decaying trunks of pines strew the
ground. They were thrown down by storms, or fell through age, and no
one thought it worth his while to remove them, and bring them across
the stream. The people, then, are few, and the pines are plentiful.
This led us to discuss the question, whether it was on the cards that
Trafoi should become another Pontresina. I was disposed to hold that
it would. We can see no reason why the stream of tourists that has now
reached Pontresina should not flow further. Trafoi comes next. What
brought it to Pontresina is present here to bring it on to Trafoi.
Here is a great snowfield, and a grand view of it: mighty summits,
more or less difficult of access and ascent; and a better climate, for
it admits of the growth of potatoes, and even of cabbages; and the
Tyrol is open to you by the Vintschgau in much the same way as the
eastern Grisons are from Pontresina by the Engadin. Its turn then, I
think, will come, unless some better point of view can be found in
the circumference of the Ortler group, and which shall be at the same
time easily accessible. Indeed, even now all that is wanted is the
construction of a carriage road over the Stretta and Foscagno Passes to
save the long round by Tirano on the south, or by Martinsbruck on the
north. I am, therefore, disposed to think that the purchase of land at
Trafoi would prove a good investment. I saw that the line for a road
over the Foscagno was already staked out. The special advantages of
Pontresina are the sense of space about it, which you have not here at
Trafoi, and that it is not only accessible itself but that also much is
accessible from it. Should the stream, however, reach Trafoi, we may
be sure that charges will not remain at the moderate level at which I
found them, both there and at Santa Maria.
At last our valley of Trafoi, which had been trending north, debouched
into the valley of the Adige, the direction of which at this point
is from west to east. Had we descended it on the right, it would
have brought us to Meran and Botzen. But as I now had to begin to set
my face homewards we took the road to the left up the valley. Our
destination was Tauffers. The day was very warm, and there was little
air; we now, therefore, began to regret the hour that had been lost
at starting. Between the point at which we left the Stelvio road and
Glurns are two villages. We stopped at the inn of the first of the
two for a glass of Austrian beer. I do not know whether the Austrian
excise, plus the cost of carriage, would justify the price asked,
or whether the lady of the house was demoralized by the unwonted
apparition of an Englishman, it being supposed popularly, that every
Englishman has a gold mine in his pocket; she did, however, demand,
and received, one franc and forty cents for two glasses, each of which
contained not much more than half a pint. Glurns, which is walled and
fortified in the old style, is the chief town hereabouts. A little
beyond it you come to a scene which has a curious effect. You are
turning round the foot of the mountain on your left; but if you will
look up the valley of the Adige beyond Glurns, you will see a perfectly
smooth, broad grass expanse, descending gradually towards you. It may
be somewhat less than a mile wide, and two miles or more long. It is
impossible for you to see it without thinking of a glacier; indeed
it is very like the one we saw yesterday, flowing down from Monte
Cristallo towards the summit of the Stelvio. If it were buried in snow
you would probably take it for a glacier. Of course the site of this
grand breadth of prairie was in old time formed by glacier action:
but it is strange that the glacier should have formed it so precisely
after its own image. Another peculiarity of this prairie is that it is
totally unbacked by either near or distant mountains. All along its
further side the sky line is the grass line. I never saw this before
in Alpine scenery. Everywhere else whether you look up, or down, an
expanse of grass land, mountains close the view, and supply the sky
line.
Some two miles from Tauffers we passed through a short-turfed
cow-pasture, with thinly scattered small larch, and thickly scattered
small fragments of rock. It was several hundred acres in extent. Its
whole surface was blue with the flower spikes of a small species
of Veronica. Christian, who is somewhat observant of plants, was
unacquainted with it. This shows that the climate is here very
different from what it is in the neighbourhood of Pontresina, of
course in the direction of being warmer and drier. This field of
blue supported an observation I had previously made that I know of
no country--we were now again close to the Swiss frontier--in which
there are so many flowers as in Switzerland of this colour, both as
regards the number of species and of individuals. The preponderance of
blue is certainly not the rule on the limestone hills that stand round
about Jerusalem, and which are remarkable in spring for abundance
of flowers, nor is it in any other mountain region with which I am
acquainted.
Our road was now again on the ascent; the sun was hot; the air was
still; and perhaps the Austrian beer aggravated the effects of the
ascent and of the heat. Tauffers, contrary to what we had expected,
was not yet in sight; and so our then state of body and mind suggested
to us the thought that the Teufel had taken away Tauffers. At last,
however, it came in sight, and this expression of our discomfort was no
longer tenable. Still the ascent continued, and the heat became more
aggravating; and though we plodded on we got no nearer to it. It was
clear now that Tauffers was the Teufel. Even the sight of its three
churches did not dissipate this supposition; for we were disposed to
be cynical, and so they only reminded us of the saying, of course the
result of the experience of mankind, that ‘the nearer the church the
farther from heaven.’ The village, therefore, which has the greatest
number must be the farthest off of all. Our suppositions and cynicism
were not abandoned when we had entered Tauffers, and on applying at
the White Cross, which the Austrian Preventive official at Trafoi had
strongly recommended to us, had found that their only bedroom was
engaged for the night. These are small jests, but they were at the time
enough to laugh at, and lightened the way.
There was, however, another inn in the place, the Lamb, and that,
fortunately, was both a better house and had all its accommodation
at our disposal. We were shown upstairs to the reception-room. It was
evident that it had not been used for some days, for the table and
benches were covered with a thick stratum of long undisturbed dust.
This, as the windows were closed, and are seldom opened, their purpose
being to admit light, and not also air, must have required a long time
for its deposition. The woman of the house, with an infant in her arms,
and radiant with good-nature, and the desire to do all she could for
her guests, swept off the dust with her apron. The first question was
of course the old standing question of all wayfarers. What could be had
for dinner? We did not care whether it was _bifteck_, or _côtelettes de
mouton_. The radiancy was extinguished. It was as if a rosy dawn had
been suddenly overcast by dark clouds. These viands were unknown in
Tauffers. Having failed in this _reconnaissance_, we fell back on what
we deemed must always be in this part of the world a secure position:
she could, then, let us have some dried beef. In Tauffers that also was
unknown. Things began to look serious. There was nothing to fall back
upon; and so we must now take our chance, from which, however, we could
not see exactly what was to be expected. We, therefore, gave the good
woman a _carte blanche_: let us have whatever could be had for keeping
body and soul together in Tauffers. This seemed to reassure her. She
began to enumerate the best resources, the luxuries, of the place. We
might have macaroni soup. Very well! We might have a salad with eggs.
Excellent! A pause. Could we have bread and butter? We might have the
bread but not the butter. There was no butter in Tauffers. None? None:
but she would send off a despatch to the alpe, and perhaps might get us
some for supper. At all events she could let us have some cheese? She
could: but it would be only meagre cheese. There was no fat cheese in
the place. Well, then, let us have for dinner the macaroni soup, the
salad and eggs, the bread and the meagre cheese; and let us have all
these viands as soon as possible. Yes, yes. We should have them all in
half an hour.
More than an hour having passed, and there being no symptoms even that
the table would ever be prepared for receiving the dinner, we again
summoned the good woman to ask the cause of the delay. Had she to
wait till the macaroni was made, or till her hens had laid the eggs?
No! no! She had lost the key of the linen chest, and had been an hour
looking for it: but now she would break the lock. This we peremptorily
forbade. To-morrow it would be all the same to us that we had dined
to-day, as we had dined often before, and might often again in the
future, without a table-cloth and napkins. But the loss of the lock
would to the good woman be an abiding loss: for such places have no
locksmiths; and the franc, or so, a new lock would cost, is in Tauffers
something considerable. Like the good man of Livigno, she regarded our
reasoning as sophistical. It was the voice of the Tempter, endeavouring
to persuade her to do what her conscience told her was wrong. The
sacrifice must be made. And so it was: for a few minutes afterwards she
re-entered the room with the indispensable linen, and began to lay the
cloth, smoothing it down with a touch and air that implied that she
knew its value, and how much it had just cost her.
The dinner soon followed. First the soup. After one has been out for
six and a half hours in a hot sun, and has withal begun to feel a
little fagged, any warm liquid, that can be swallowed without offence
to the palate, seems comfortable. Fatigue makes one shrink from
anything cold, from an instinct of the system that it would rather
not make the effort to bring the cold draught up to the temperature
of the body. We were, therefore, not rigid critics of the gastronomic
merits, or demerits, of this macaroni soup. It was enough that it was
comforting; as it certainly was to the good woman to find that we had
so far approved of it, as to have emptied the basin. Like the soup at
Peist, it would probably on analysis have yielded no evidence that
meat of any kind had in any way entered into its composition. Of what,
then, had it been made? I believe of the same ingredients; that is to
say, it was a broth of herbs, enriched with spices, among which mace
predominated, and thickened with vermicelli and flat macaroni. And
now the _pièce de résistance_, the salad, was placed on the table,
supported with twelve hard-boiled eggs. The lettuce was crisp and
good, and the oil with which it was profusely dressed, was not rancid.
I managed to dispose of three of the eggs. I could go no further.
Christian placed himself outside the remaining nine. For this, though
he had been encouraged to complete the achievement, he thought some
apologies necessary. Guides, he remarked deprecatingly, always had
good appetites. Apologies, I told him, were quite unnecessary, for
his dinner had to sustain the porter as well as the guide. And this
justification of his appetite I made him understand was not invented
for the occasion, but was the result of the long and hard experience
of a poor woman, who having had to provide daily bread for eight small
children, had explained to me that, though there were only eight mouths
to feed, yet in fact, as each child had two natures, his growing
nature, and his natural nature, she had to feed daily sixteen natures.
This put Christian quite at his ease. It did even more, for it made
him feel how superior his bachelor condition was to that of the poor
sixteen-natures-weighted woman. As to the meagre cheese, it tasted like
nothing in particular: not even much like cheese. The bread was white,
and not yet sufficiently old to have become a petrifaction.
So ended our dinner to the satisfaction of all concerned; perhaps
to that of the good woman most of all, who, seeing how her soup,
and salad, and eggs had been dealt with, could not refrain from an
announcement of her hope of being able to get the butter by supper
time. As soon as we had taken possession of the room, I had opened the
window. I now leaned out of it to see what from this point could be
seen of Tauffers. Our inn was on what might be called the _place_ of
Tauffers. Opposite to it was the public fountain; and beyond that a
large house. It was now four in the afternoon. The village is far from
small, and must contain about 500 inhabitants. Several ploughs, drawn
by cows, or bullocks, of a diminutive breed, were returning from their
daily tasks. For the human toilers, however, the day’s work was far
from done, for a continued succession of little carts, full of manure,
each containing at most what might have been put into four or five
wheelbarrows, was going out to the fields. Every now and then a woman
would pass with an enormous bundle of hay in a hempen sheet on her
head, or shoulders. The woman of the large house opposite was in the
road, cutting the trunks of some long cembras with a cross-cut saw into
klafter lengths (six feet), aided by a sturdy little boy as her mate.
When the cutting was completed, the pieces were carried by the two, and
piled up against the outer wall of the house, facing the street. This
is done universally, for though the fuel is thus left in the street,
there are no dishonest people to pilfer it. This woman’s house was a
large one, and would require here an establishment of two or three
servants, and an income of 300_l._ or 400_l._ a year. But I was told
that the family that occupied it had no servants; indeed, that there
was not a domestic servant in the place; that every family in Tauffers
did its own work; and that the family in the big house had not 60_l._ a
year to spend.
Behind the big house, and just above the town, for as things go in
these parts it is more than a village, is a strange-looking mountain.
It is of an equally sharp incline from top to bottom, smooth on
the surface, without rocks or trees, and only half clothed with a
very threadbare vegetation; this half clothing being as even as the
underlying soil which shows through it. The vegetation, then, being
poor, and the soil pale, the general colouring is not grass green, but
a kind of celadine. In the evening I went some way up it to see of what
its soil and vegetation consisted. The soil was of a much disintegrated
gritty kind of rock; but as the disintegration hardly proceeded beyond
the point of grit, no turf could be formed upon it, for the rainwater
that did not run down its steep incline, ran through it, as through a
sieve. And that, of course, that ran down over such a surface would
take with it any mould that there might have been an incipient attempt
to accumulate. This decided the character of the vegetation. No plant
could maintain itself on such a station, unless it had good roots for
holding on, was able also to do with very little moisture, and to
live all the while on a diet as simple and meagre as that which was
supporting the inhabitants of the neighbouring town. The species were
mostly veronicas, pinks, sedums, and saxifrages. The majority of them,
therefore, were such as are on a close inspection conspicuous for their
flowers. Almost the only grass was an agrostis which affects poor and
dry stations. These plants were nowhere continuous. Each seemed to
require, or had at all events received from the grace of circumstances,
some elbowroom. The vegetation, then, of the mountain belonged to the
class of things that improve on a near acquaintance, for when you were
upon it you found that it was decked with a great variety of very
bright, though humble, flowers. I was sorry to see that an attempt had
been made to plant a part of the mountain with cembras. The little
plants had been set each in a little hole, and were only a few inches
high. One can hardly believe that in a century they will be many more
feet. But should they ever rise above the ground, which as yet they
show no disposition to do, their presence will destroy the singular
character of the mountain.
The first stage of the ascent brings you to a church: I suppose the
pilgrimage church of Tauffers, for it is very common in this part of
the world to find a church on an eminence, at a little distance off,
to climb up to which, and attend its services on certain days, and at
certain seasons, or for certain classes, or for certain objects, is a
meritorious act, which will secure some special favour from some local
saint, or some saint that respects the locality, or whom the locality
respects. On reaching this church, I found that it stood on a little
excavated and levelled platform, a kind of niche, on the shoulder of
the mountain. On this little stage the water could hang longer than on
the declivity, and there was besides the water that came off the roof
of the building. This had encouraged the grass immediately around it,
and up to its walls, to grow vigorously. While walking round it, to get
a view of a ruined castle beyond it, I came suddenly on a little girl
upon her knees, intently employed in chopping the long grass with a
sickle-shaped knife, and depositing the handfuls in an old cloth. Not
another soul was in sight, or within hailing. She appeared to be about
9 years of age. It was evening. The sun was low, and the valley was in
shade; but, here was this little body, not playing with her fellows at
the end of the day, not looking out for her father’s return from his
labours, but labouring hard herself, far from home, and all alone. The
evening, which brings rest to all, and the mother to her child, had not
brought rest to this little premature grass-cutter, and had separated
her from her mother. As I came down the mountain, half an hour later,
when the remains of light were fast retiring before the brown shades
of approaching night, I overtook on the path the little body, with her
burden, as big as herself, on her head. This bundle of coarse grass was
to be made into hay, and added to the store of winter provender for
the goats and cows of the family.
Such is the training of life for all in Tauffers. Nature intended it
to be hard, but not so hard as the crimes and follies of man have made
it. Half of this little body’s evening task, and half of the daily and
yearly toil of every man, woman, and child in Tauffers is lost to them.
They have to task themselves with the toil; and then half the fruits of
the toil is snatched from the hands of the toilers, and sent to Vienna
to support 1,000,000 men in arms, for which a second tax in flesh and
blood is levied on poor Tauffers, and to pay the bondholders of a
debt incurred through the profitless, and futile attempts of Austria
to maintain a hateful dominion in Italy, and a shadowy and impossible
hegemony in northern Germany.
On the mountain above the church you get a good view of this broad
interesting valley--up and down. You see how much land there is
available for cultivation, and how carefully it is cultivated, and what
a large population it is supporting. Several villages are in sight,
and you will be able to count a hundred houses in Tauffers, which lies
at your feet. The view is more diversified than one coming from the
Grisons will have lately seen. It has much land in corn as well as
in grass. The expanse is sufficiently broad to give you the idea of
its being a substantial component part of the scene, and not merely a
little strip reclaimed from the foot of the mountains. It is in itself
something considerable, and in the general effects of the view can hold
its own against them. The mountains, too, right and left, and before
you, are grand; the latter ending against the sky in the snowy summits
about the Stelvio. At this point also you are not far from the three
old ruined castles of Tauffers. As I looked at them, I thought that
if we could recover the details of their day, we should find that the
civilized exactions of a modern empire are not greater--perhaps they
may be more all-pervading, though we will not be positive even on that
point--than were the rude exactions of mediæval local oppressors. The
old Baron, like the modern Kaiser, appealed to the sense of glory, but
whoever it might have been that was glorified, it was no more then,
than it is now, the poor peasant. And there was then, as now, a claim
for personal loyalty, in return for protection; but then, as now, it
was a protection that was very costly to those who were supposed to be
protected. So wags the world. One unsatisfactory condition is exchanged
for another that does not give satisfaction. But, throughout, men are
dreaming of, and hoping and striving for, something better. And dreams,
and hopes, and efforts have hitherto been the salt of life.
As I re-entered the village I passed a _châlet_ surrounded by grass.
On the grass, in front of the house, were spread out to bleach three
pieces of coarse hempen linen, the winter labours of, I suppose, three
families. They were of varying lengths. I paced them, as I passed, and
found that the longest measured about fifty yards. The differences in
length indicated, perhaps, not so much differences in industry, for
here all are industrious to the best of their ability, as differences
in the opportunities for this kind of work, and in the number of hands,
in the families to which the pieces respectively belonged. Considering
how slowly the shuttle advances in the hand-loom, I wondered that
any human being could have the patience to weave these fifty yards
of linen, and hoped that the time would come when the rewards of
labour would in these valleys be such as to enable these poor women to
withdraw from this old-world monotonous form of labour; and when among
them, as among all people claiming to be civilized, all the coarser
kinds of labour, which task not the intelligence, but only the hands
and muscles, of men, and still more if of women, will be delegated to
iron and steam.
And now we had returned to the hotel; for, as it was getting late,
Christian had gone out to the mountain to fetch me in for supper. The
good woman set before us the coffee, the milk, the cheese, the bread,
and last of all another platter, with ‘Behold the butter!’ She was
duly thanked; and afterwards assured that the world could show none
better, and that the merits of the coffee and of the milk were equally
indisputable. While we were at supper three German pedestrians came in.
They were on their way to Bormio by the Umbrail Pass. They took the
other end of the long table, and in time their supper was served. They
had no coffee, but instead of it, the same kind of soup we had had at
dinner. The salad and eggs were not reproduced. Our dinner, possibly,
had caused a dearth of the latter. Instead of the white wheaten bread,
with which we had been served, they had black rye-bread.
_August 19._--Left Tauffers at 5 A.M. Our destination for the day
was Tarasp in the Engadin; the way was up the Val Avigna over the
Cruschetta, the Pass of the Scarljöchl, and then by the Scarlthal.
The morning was bright and frosty with the air from the north. After
ascending for two hours, all the way through forest, to my surprise we
came on an irrigated meadow of about four acres. It could belong only
to Tauffers, for there had been no gaps in the mountains all the way
up. So far then, had these industrious people gone, and up so rough a
way, to level and irrigate this little bit of land. Every stone had
been cleared from it. It was as smooth as a lawn. The channel, too,
for bringing the water to it, though not long, had not been easy to
construct. I imagined them toiling up to their work, and then bringing
down the hay along the rocky pathway they had made for this purpose,
and for bringing down timber; and then in imagination I saw the
Austrian tax-collector seize upon, and carry off, half the produce of
their labour. It would have been a cruel misfortune, if, after they
had had all the trouble of making their meadow and road, an earthquake
had swallowed up, or a slip from the mountain had buried, just half
of their meadow. But in that case the first loss would have been all.
There would have been no more labour expended on the swallowed up, or
buried half. That would have been bad; but what the government does is
worse. It obliges them, year after year, to keep up, to irrigate, and
to make the hay upon, this half, and to bring it down to Tauffers; and
then it takes it all away from them. And this is to go on for ever.
We had now got beyond the forest, and, therefore, looked back for the
Ortler: and there was its perfectly-shaped dome, rising above the
mountains that form the eastern boundary of the Munsterthal, not to any
great height above them, but still a conspicuous and noble object--a
symmetrical dome of purest snow. Of course the higher up we advanced,
the loftier to us the dome would become. Forty minutes further on,
just below the last rise to the summit of the Pass, we came upon
another surprise in the form of a second prairie. We were now nearly
three hours from Tauffers, and as the forest had ended with the first
prairie, the road had been continued up to this point exclusively for
the sake of the second: this last part of it, however, had not been
difficult to make for it was over Alpine pasture, and only required
the removal of rocks and stones in the lines the rullies would take
in going to and fro. The moral of the sight was that when people work
upon their own land and in that sense for themselves, they work with a
will, which will take no denial, and which will not even be discouraged
by the claims of a government to go shares with them in the fruit of
their labours. This prairie was larger than the one lower down. Like
that it had been carefully levelled and irrigated; though, of course,
as the elevation was much greater, the hay was not so good: it was,
in fact, not so grassy, being largely compounded of non-gramineous
plants. From the same cause its growth was shorter, and it came later
to maturity. This was August 19, and the last load was, as we passed
by, being laid on the little rully on which it was to be taken down to
Tauffers. The man who was loading it, was working alone. He was a spare
weather-beaten veteran.
Beyond this last upland prairie was the summer _châlet_ for the alpe
around, on the mountain flanks. At the back of the _châlet_ was the
natural rock staircase up to and over the Pass. When we got near the
top the path lay over a stream of clean loose rock, with unfilled
interstices, and beneath these, quite out of sight but well within
hearing, was rushing along the stream of water, collected from the
heights right and left. On the summit we stood for some minutes feeding
our eyes with a farewell look at the noble Ortler. Its snowy dome now
stood high above the black ridge of the Munsterthal mountains, which,
as a base, with the two long ranges of the Val Avigna for its equal
side-lines, formed at this point a long acute-angled triangle. At its
apex on the Cruschetta we were standing.
The way was now down hill for four hours to Tarasp: at first over high
Alpine pastures. Here we passed the ashes of a fire that had been kept
up last night to scare away from the cattle a bear, which was supposed
to be in the neighbourhood. After a time the pastures thinned out, and
the path entered on a narrow gorge between precipitous fawn-coloured
mountains. It then passed over a reach of pebbly _débris_, which the
stream of the Clemgia had in times of flood washed clean. It was a
scene of much desolation. ‘You see,’ said Christian, ‘how much more
destructive in this country water is than fire can be. Fire may be
arrested; and at the worst destroys only what can be replaced. But
water cannot be arrested, and it destroys not only moveables and
houses, but also the precious land itself, the source of all our
wealth.’ As we passed through this scene of its destructive action,
walking over the rocks, and rocky rubble it had brought down, and
across the deep seams it had cut in these deposits, I felt that if one
must be caught in a bad storm, there would be few places that would
not be preferable for the encounter to such a gorge as this, where one
would have about as much chance of escaping as a minnow has from the
throat of a pike. As the gorge became still narrower the path was now
obliged to leave the level of the torrent, and mount some way up the
flank of the right hand mountain. This soon brought us into the forest;
and, as the sun was bright, the air was incensed with the fragrant
exhalations of the Scotch fir, which hereabouts was abundant. We were
now about four miles from Tarasp. In front of us to the north-west,
beyond the Engadin, many snowy summits were in sight. On the topmost
point of each the sun had raised into the otherwise unbroken blue
a cloud-banner. These cloud-banners were of very different forms,
each appearing to retain its own form persistently. One was a cap
of liberty; another a wide-spread oak; another an inverted pyramid
attached to its mountain-top by its apex. At last after about four
miles of the forest, its trees having now become larch, we got down to
the level of the Engadin. Schuls was on the opposite bank; but instead
of crossing the Inn to Schuls, we turned to the left, and having
crossed the Clemgia, not far from its junction with the Inn, took up
our quarters at, I believe, the Belvidere, the most southern of the
numerous hotels of Vulpera, a hamlet of hotels, about half a mile from
the Curhaus of Tarasp, which is an enormous establishment on the left
bank of the Inn. It was 12.30 P.M. and we had been out seven and half
hours without a halt.
As we had now got back to the Engadin Christian Grass’s engagement had
terminated. He was to receive 15 francs a day, returning being paid
for at the same rate as service. This is the regular market price at
Pontresina for long engagements. It would not be so high were there
more guides, or fewer tourists. You may sometimes hear those who have
paid lower prices elsewhere speak of Pontresina guides as extortionate.
This is a mistake. The higher and the lower prices are alike the market
prices: only here the market is in favour of the guide, while in such a
population as that of Meiringen it is in favour of the tourist. I was
sorry to part with Christian, but my plans would not for the next three
or four days require a porter; and as the wind was now northerly, and
the weather seemed to have arranged itself for a period of ‘settled
fine,’ he appeared to wish to get back to Pontresina for the chance
of some twenty-five franc days on the glaciers. After dinner, then,
having entrusted my belongings to the Post, which would now for a few
days be my porter, I accompanied him, for he would forthwith commence
his return home, as far as Tarasp. As I returned up hill to my hotel
at Vulpera, a feeling came over me as though I had undergone a sudden
transformation from a well enough contented tourist into a lone
wanderer far from home. For the moment neither the thought of home, nor
of wandering far from home, pleased. Life seemed a pilgrimage without
an object. Of what use could it be to see the world? What pleasure was
there in being where I was? Nor could I say to myself that I wished
to be anywhere else. ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation
of spirit.’ Such was the effect this evening of suddenly finding one’s
self alone.
As I re-entered the hotel, some two hours later, its sixty German
inmates were sitting down to a solid supper. At one o’clock I had seen
them acquitting themselves like Germans in quelling the sacred rage of
appetite: but now at six o’clock it had to be quelled again. No wonder
that they were disposed to give the Tarasp waters a trial. The only
thing to wonder at would have been that they had been made any the
better by drinking them. I stood quite alone in being content, instead
of the solid supper, with ‘a complete coffee.’ Probably some of the
sixty thought me too far gone, or too poor a creature, for the waters
to benefit.
Of course the Engadin is everywhere good. Here at Vulpera the mountains
are bold and varied. One of the nearest--it is the one just before
you as you stand at the door of the Belvidere--has a grand summit of
massive jagged rock. Equal merit cannot be predicated of its climate
at all times, or at any time for long together. In its three months of
cold, the annual supplement to its nine months of winter, the south
wind brings rain and snow, and the north wind brings frosty mornings,
and disagreeably chilly evenings. So had it been this morning; and so
was it now this evening: there was no sitting, or loitering about out
of doors.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LOWER ENGADIN--SÜS--THE FLUELA--DAVOS DÖRFLI--THE
PRÄTIGÄU--SCHIERSCH--GRÜSCH.
Oh! this life
Is nobler than attending for a check,
Richer than doing nothing for a bauble,
Prouder than rustling in unpaid for silk.--SHAKESPEARE.
_August 20._--My plan for to-day was to walk over the Fluela Pass
from Süs in the Engadin to Davos Dörfli, a little place at the head
of the Davosthal, just below the summit of the ridge, which in nature
separates the Davosthal from, though by road it connects it with,
the Prätigäu. I had to turn out at 4 A.M., that I might have time
to get breakfast, and to walk to Tarasp for the 5.10 diligence from
Schuls, which was to take me to Süs. Süs I reached at 7.40. Several
villages, some of them almost little towns, were passed by the way. The
combinations of mountains, woods, villages, reclaimed land, a good road
often constructed in difficult places, and all the time by your side a
full stream, worthy of being one of the main head waters of the Danube,
were enough to maintain the interest of a drive of two hours and a
half.
Now that, having left Süs, I was on the road absolutely alone--for
that could not have been said of my position yesterday evening with
sixty Teutons under the same roof, to dine and sup with at the same
table--and alone, too, for the whole day, but, however, with something
to see and to do, I was no longer disposed to feel like a lone wanderer
far from home. The world seemed a home, and a glorious home, full of
objects in every direction that had plenty to say, and were very good
company. For the first two hours the valley is narrow, not quite of the
ravine kind, but still generally with very little grass, and sometimes
with none at all. When at this distance from Süs you are just getting
clear of the forest, the dreariness and desolateness of the scene
begin to be felt. You are high above the brawling stream; you see its
foamy line, but cannot make out its movement, nor hear its brawling.
Summits scarred with dark cliffs are right and left of you. Before you,
and, if you look back, behind you also, are summits capped with snow.
The snowy summits before you are those of Piz Vadred, from which you
see descending the great Grialetsch glacier. Between that and you is
a singularly dead looking grayish valley. You think that there is no
indication of man’s presence here, except the road on which you are
walking. A few steps, however, further on bring into sight a _châlet_
in the bottom. The singularly dead-looking grayish valley does, then,
maintain for two or three months in the year a herd of cows. You
had been thinking that its produce could not go much beyond lichens
and mosses. You go a little further, and come upon another _châlet_,
that of the alpe of the next higher level, which carries you up to
the summit of the Pass. But the cows and herdsmen are this day out
of sight. You see nothing moving. Rocks and snow alone attract your
attention. You pass a forbidding looking stream; dark, chilly, gruff.
It is snarling at you, and telling you to be gone. As you get to the
further end of the long lozenge-shaped amphitheatre, which conducts you
to the summit of the Pass, with the Fluela Weisshorn on your right,
and the Schwarzhorn on your left, the snow-patches begin to cross the
road. On the actual summit the road is on a level, with a small lake on
either hand. The raised viaduct separates, and their respective colours
distinguish, the two. That on your left being fed by water coming
direct from the near glaciers is a lake of milk. That on your right is
so crystal-clear that you might take it for mountain air liquefied.
Just beyond these two contrasted lakes was a small hotel. I felt,
however, no inclination to exchange the glorious day and scene
outside for the interior of a small room; and so with a salute to the
landlord, who was standing at his door to offer me the hospitality of
his house--under such circumstances the salute seemed almost a kind
of mockery--I continued my way on. The scene, as is usual on reaching
the top of a Pass, was now totally different from what I had lately
been noting. The immediate _entourage_ was of a darker rock, and the
mountain tops were green and rounded. The road for the first mile,
or so, seemed to be along the arc of the segment of a circle. In a
spirit of speculation I took to the scattered rocks along the chord of
the segment. Among the rocks were many pools of water of marvellous
transparency. Every stain and scratch on the rocks at the bottom of the
water was as distinct as if there had been no water at all, indeed they
might have been more distinct, for as seen under the water they had the
appearance of having been brought out by varnish. This water, too, was
so pure and fresh for drinking, that a draught of it made me think that
I had never drank water before, and could not hope ever to drink it
again. As I regained the road I was overtaken by the diligence, which I
had left at Süs, preparing to start, three hours previously.
One welcomes the return of the first trees. It is good to be in the
zone above the trees. It is good also to find yourself returning to
the zone of trees. The first you come upon tell you they have a hard
time of it. You interpret their stunted form and irregular growth, and
their crooked, broken branches as so many accusations brought against
the cold long winters, and the cruel storms, and the summer frosts,
whose assaults they have had to sustain. They are maimed, and scarred
veterans who from their youth up have lived in the midst of war’s
alarms and injuries, but who will not yet be driven from the field.
Their reappearance, too, reminds you that, in respect of the effects
of the landscape, they stand in the same relation to the grassy turf
that the mountains do to the plains. They feed the eye of man, and
furnish his mind with ideas and images. Without them vegetation would
have no more interest than the earth’s surface would have without the
mountains. Each, too, has its place in the working arrangements of the
general scheme; the mountains in those of the world-organism, and the
trees in those of organized life.
With these thoughts I passed the little inn of Tschuggen, five miles
below the summit. About a mile and a quarter below Tschuggen, and a
little above the inn of the Alpen Rose, I called my midday halt. I took
my position among some clean slabs and fragments of a slaty-coloured
glistening rock, a few paces above the road, and on the right side
of it. I was here sheltered by a wood of larch from the north wind,
which was cold at midday. As I looked towards Tschuggen, up the way I
had been descending, a snow-topped pyramid, perhaps the Schwarzhorn,
bounded the view. Then looking across, instead of up, the road, the
mountain of the opposite side rose near and steeply. It was a big
mountain, but not of the naked rocky order, for its flank, full in
view before me, was pretty well covered with a vestment of vegetation.
In this, the predominant element was a sedum now profusely in flower,
which made yellow the predominant colour of the vestment. Just below
me, on the other side of the road, and somewhat below the road, was
a _châlet_, surrounded by little grass patches, wherever the land
could be levelled, from the road down to the valley bottom, out of
which rose, immediately beyond the little stream of the valley, the
yellow-vested mountain. The family, that lived in the _châlet_, were
alertly at work spreading, or carrying, their little parcels of hay.
Old and young, all appeared to be together in the field. As I watched
the labours of this busily employed family I thought their position
not unlike that of the first trees I had just seen some miles above.
Like them, and from the same causes, they had to sustain the struggle
for life against great difficulties. In the contemplation, however, of
their industry there was something to suggest the thought that their
hard days were not rendered additionally hard by the discontent and the
vice, which are seen and felt wherever life is maintained on easier
conditions.
From this halt an hour and a half of pleasant walking brought me to
Davos Dörfli, a well situated village in a broad expanse of grass land
at the foot of the Davoser see. It is only a mile and a half from Davos
am Platz, at which I had dined on my descent from the Strela seventeen
days back. My way then lay to the south. I had since made a round I was
disposed to think worth the time. To-morrow I was to set my face north
for the Prätigäu.
When you are walking, and the more so if you are alone, you are
disposed to note the changing aspects of the weather. Here, then,
are the observations that were made on this day. At 4 A.M. at Tarasp
there was an unbroken canopy of cloud: but it was not low down the
mountain sides. At 6 the summits that were lofty enough for snow were
standing clear; but the lesser summits were still shrouded with clouds.
At 8 most of these had disappeared. From 9 till 12 only thin streaks
and flecks of cloud high above all the summits. The definition of
every mountain ridge and pinnacle against the deep blue was now very
remarkable. At 12 clouds began to form on the tops of the mountains,
and spreading widely to a considerable extent obscured the blue. At
4 these formed solid masses, and the sky was much more obscured. At
6 the clouds sunk low down on the mountain sides, so as to shut out
the view. The wind was northerly all day. In the early morning it had
been so cold from Tarasp to Süs as to make the _banquette_ of the
diligence not altogether pleasant. Near Süs I saw potato-patches by
the road side that had been blackened at the extremities of the haulm
by frost. Throughout the day, even when for some hours I was walking
up hill with the sun on the road, the air was fresh and crisp. I have
already mentioned that on the previous evening at Tarasp it had been
disagreeably cold. This evening at Davos Dörfli I again saw potato
haulm that had been injured by frost. Not, then, taking this day as a
sample of the climate, for its merits were too much above the average
for that, but taking it as a sample of a fine day, almost the best kind
of day the climate has to show, we may say that in summer on some days,
for some hours, the climate is pleasant. The mornings and evenings,
when the weather is fine, that is to say when the wind is from the
north, are too cold. In the fine hours of the fine days the sense of
enjoyment from a sense of penetrating freshness, and of penetrating
warmth, is very delightful.
_August 21._--Had been assured last night that coffee would be ready
at 5 this morning. This promise was a case of deception prepense, for
there had been no intention of letting me have it till half an hour
later, when eight or ten Germans, who were to leave at 6, would have
their breakfast served. On these occasions it is of no manner of use
to complain, or to give yourself the trouble of showing in any way
your dissatisfaction; or rather it is better not to allow yourself to
feel any dissatisfaction at all. The master of the hotel is master of
the situation. And in a place like Davos Dörfli, where there is only
one moderately good hotel, the rule of its master is a despotism,
untempered by any effectual competition. Here again, as at Tarasp, I
found the hotel full of Germans, and of German-speaking Swiss; and, as
a consequence, the table well supplied, and the charges moderate. At
both of these places I had been reminded of three portions of cold meat
I had ordered at Pontresina. To give the particulars--they consisted
of six circular pieces, each of them of the diameter of a florin,
and no thicker than a well-worn three-penny. For this the charge was
about equal to the weight of the pieces in francs. Such doings would
be impossible at Tarasp, or at the Dörfli of Davos, or at the Platz of
that ilk.
At 5.45, then, I got under weigh. My road for the Prätigäu lay at
first along the level shore of the Davoser see for about a mile, and
then for about a mile or so more up a gentle rise of some hundred or
two feet in all to the Davoser Kulm, which from this side seems rather
to connect than to separate the two valleys. Though, indeed, you
afterwards find that the one you are bound for is a considerable way
down on the opposite side. About a mile below the summit I descended
into a cloud, and walked in it for about five miles, that is down to
Klosters. I heard a stream at times, but did not see it; and the books
say that I passed a lake, but I know no more of it than what is said in
the books. All that I saw was the road, and the mist-shrouded trees by
the roadside, from which abundant drops were falling. Not a breath was
stirring, and it was very chilly. The altitudes were from 5,300 feet on
the Kulm to 4,000 at Klosters. I might as well have been on a November
morning in the Essex marshes, or in the Lincolnshire fens. Just above
Klosters, without any intimation of the coming change, I stepped out
of the cloud. There before me, a little below, were the four villages
that form the commune. Many of their houses were goodly structures of
stone. Around the villages was a large expanse of good land. This first
glimpse of the Prätigäu was worthy of its reputation of being one of
the best cultivated valleys in Switzerland, which, arising out of, and
taken in connexion with, their system of land tenure, is what accounts
for its large population of 10,000 souls. It was for the sake of the
contrasts its high cultivation and its populousness would offer to what
I had seen in the valleys I had lately been wandering through, that I
was here to-day. The altitude and climate of most of them restricted
the industry of the inhabitants to the cultivation of grass; and this
in its turn was a great restriction on the number of the inhabitants.
From the first to the second village the road reascended a little.
This brought me again almost to the level of the cloud, and here the
position of the road placed a long reach of the valley before me. The
effect was strange, and such as I do not recollect ever to have seen
elsewhere. The stratum of cloud just roofed the valley. To the eye
it was a flat roof, both on the upper, and on the lower, sides. As I
looked forward the eye traversed the valley, below the roof, just as it
might a long gallery. The cloud-roof was at an uniform level, resting
on the mountains right and left, but of course the valley below it
fell away as it advanced in its descent. I cannot say how many miles
I saw down the valley under this roof. Though from my point of view
it appeared perfectly continuous, and without holes or fissures, such
could not have been the case, as was evident from there being several
patches of sunlight in the valley. These patches of sunlight were
poured in through fissures or holes in the cloud-roof, that is to say
through skylights in it, and they not only gave a strange and unwonted
effect of light and shade in the valley--the unlighted, which was the
greater part, showing of a dark gloomy green, and the lighted patches
of a bright golden green--but also enabled one to see under the roof to
a great distance.
On turning round to look back in the direction by which I had reached
Klosters, I saw another curious effect of cloud. The valley all about
Klosters was clear and bright. Somewhat above this visible, sun-lit,
lower expanse began the masses of cloud I had passed through in
descending. As I was just below these clouds, and looking up at them
through the opening over the neighbourhood of Klosters, in the area of
which opening I was standing, they hid from me the whole mighty mass of
Piz Buin--it is 10,700 feet high--except just the snowy summit. None of
the supports of the summit were seen or suggested. While I looked at
it, it disappeared and reappeared, again and again, as the vast stratum
of cloud moved on, or rose, or sunk a little. Of course the head of
Piz Buin was very far above my stratum of cloud, but as I was close
to it, and looking up at it, it was enough to intercept all but the
summit, which every now and then it did intercept. As the snowy summit
appeared and disappeared, it seemed as if it was not the cloud but the
summit that was moving; for was it not at one moment peering down into
the valley, and the next moment withdrawing itself? The effect was most
unnatural. The unsubstantial fleeting cloud became the solid and fixed,
and the top of the mountain which stands fast for ever the floating,
object.
A further acquaintance with the Prätigäu confirmed the first
impression. I have nowhere seen a richer green, or more of it, or a
more pleasing, I might almost say a more wonderful, combination of
woodland, grass, corn, and fruit trees, or more numerous villages, or
so many scattered _châlets_. Of course there is not much of this kind
in the grassy elevated valleys I had lately been traversing; indeed,
I had seen nothing of the kind since I had left Coire on the third of
the month; and what you see here is far in advance of what you can see
in the neighbourhood of Coire, with the exception of the vineyards.
The bottom of the valley is well cultivated. As you ascend to a higher
zone the fruit trees are gradually replaced by forest trees, and the
garden ground by grass, the _châlets_, however, still continuing. When
the amount of population is recalled all this can be imagined almost
without its being seen. The amount of cultivable land, almost all
of it made land, is of course the first condition. The next is the
altitude of the valley which ranges from about 2,000 feet at Grüsch
to about 4,000 at Klosters; and then its direction, which is such as
to give it protection from the northerly winds, and to expose one
side to the midday sun, while its length is raked both by the morning
and evening sun. These physical conditions, however, would not count
for much were they not accompanied by certain human conditions. Every
man of these 10,000 souls, in proportion to his ability, turns to the
best possible account every square foot of his land, and every ray of
sunshine that falls upon it, because he and his family will get the
whole benefit of his thought and labour. They clear the ground, and dig
it deep, and enrich it all they can, because it is their own ground.
They plant, and they tend what they plant carefully, because they, and
not others, will get the fruit of what they plant and tend. Herein lies
the motive of their industry.
Neither, however, this motive, nor the _terrain_ nature and the
course of events have placed at their disposal, would be of any avail
were it not for the presence of another condition, which has been
entirely overlooked by those who advocate in the press, and on the
platform, the system of peasant proprietorship. This other condition
is knowledge--the knowledge of all that is required for supporting a
family throughout the whole of the twelve months, the knowledge of
how all these things are to be produced from two or three acres of
land, and the knowledge of how each article is to be kept in store, and
when used to be used most advantageously. These are the particulars of
what is very far from being a simple problem. It is, in fact, the most
complicated form in which the problem of how life is to be sustained
is submitted to any portion of the human family. In comparison with it
the form in which the same problem is submitted to our agricultural
labourer is simplicity itself. He has nothing to do but to take from
his employer’s hand on Saturday evening the regulation wages of
the neighbourhood, and to transfer them to the hand of the village
shopkeeper for all that he will want during the next seven days. Add
to this that the law has established for his behoof a national benefit
society, which will provide for him in sickness, and in old age, and
which will not forsake him even when he has shuffled off this mortal
coil, for it will supply the coffin in which he will be carried to his
grave;[1] and then we shall be able not quite to see, but to get a
glimpse of, how completely his life is a school for the non-attainment
of this knowledge. In precisely the same fashion, and to precisely
the same result, domestic service will have acted on the mind of his
wife. They have both been thoroughly and most efficiently trained not
to have the knowledge, and the habits of mind, a peasant proprietor
must have, if he is to live as a peasant proprietor. I think it may
be safely asserted that out of our agricultural labourers not one in
10,000 has this knowledge, and that not one out of 1,000 is, as things
now are with that class, of the mental stuff which would enable him to
attain to this knowledge; for it is a kind of knowledge which is the
result of the accumulated experience and training of many generations.
It is not the knowledge of how to live as a market-gardener, or as a
small farmer: they live by selling and buying: but the knowledge of how
to produce from a little bit of land what will directly, and without
the intervention of much buying and selling, support a family. The
main support of the family is to be the produce of their own labour
applied to their own land. This is a most special kind of knowledge. It
involves a multiplicity of calculations and considerations. It is as
special as, and far more complicated than, that required for enabling
an Esquimaux family to live within the arctic circle. To be carried out
successfully it requires the hearty single-minded devotion to the work
in hand of every day of the life of every member of the family, that
work varying much from day to day. If an acre or two, or two or three
acres, of land were given to an English agricultural labourer, it would
never occur to him to turn it to this account. He would only think of
making it a petty farm, or a market-garden. This is what, whenever he
chances to get hold of a bit of land, he invariably does. He has not
the kind of knowledge which is requisite for enabling him to entertain
the idea of peasant proprietorship, that is of maintaining his family
by the direct produce of the two or three acres. That would require an
amount of forethought, forbearance, hard work, helpfulness, and above
all of varied knowledge, of which he is quite incapable of so much as
forming any adequate conception.
[1] See note at the end of the volume.
Now turn your attention for a few moments to the Prätigäu peasant
proprietor. He has no wages to receive. Wages in this connexion mean
in one word all that is requisite for supporting life. They include
everything. Nothing is omitted from them. He has to find all these
requisites by another road, and in another fashion. He has no village
shop to procure for him, and to keep in store for him, all the articles
that he will want. Pretty nearly everything that he and his family will
require for the twelve months he has to procure from his small plot of
land. This will require all the ingenuity, forethought, and industry a
man is capable of. Consider what it implies. He will have to produce
every article himself, to keep it in store himself, and to make it go
as far as contrivance and frugality can. His house, too, is his own,
and he has to take the same care of it as of everything else. There is
no one but himself to repair it. The same remark applies to his fuel,
every stick of which represents so much of his own labour, and to
his clothes, which represent so much of the labour of the family. The
wife, too, must be as great an adept in this kind of knowledge as the
husband. They were both brought up in its traditions, and were trained
to it from their earliest years. Every day of their lives they have
under the pressure of a quite inexorable necessity been perfecting
themselves in its practice. All their neighbours are employed in the
same way. There is nothing going on among them that diverts attention
to anything else.
If these Prätigäu peasants were transferred to this country, they could
do in England what they do in the Prätigäu. If 10,000 of our peasantry
were transferred to the Prätigäu, and put in possession of the existing
houses, and of the land, and of every appliance needed for cultivating
it, the only result would be universal starvation. Simply because
they would not have the knowledge, and habits of mind, requisite for
enabling each family to live from its little plot of land. The land
would be the same; the motives for turning it to account would be the
same; but the moral and intellectual conditions would be wanting. These
conditions, then, must not be omitted in answering the question of what
it is that has made this valley a garden that is maintaining its 10,000
gardeners.
In old times it may have been held by some half dozen mailed lords.
The ruins of the castles of several of these old oppressors may still
be seen in the valley. Of one we are told that the peasants took it
with clubs and stakes; the wall with which the lord of another barred
the lower ravine is still standing. One object of this wall was that it
might enable him to levy imposts on the necessaries of life, in order
that his own life might be more affluent at the cost of the poor. Such
a state of things may have its picturesque side; but who would not very
much prefer to see the valley as it is, the garden of 10,000 gardeners?
Or in these days we can imagine its becoming a Chamois preserve. But
again, I suppose most people would prefer to see it remain as it is,
the garden of 10,000 gardeners. We know of nothing better in this
world than men and women; and when the men and women are intelligent,
industrious, honest, and can, under very difficult conditions, steer
their course clear of the rocks and quicksands of pauperism, then,
although they may be deficient in the refinements which culture may
confer on those who have wealth and leisure, still they are in many
valuable and attractive qualities far above large classes that we in
this country wot of. But be this as it may, the average human heart is
more pleasingly touched by the picture of their hard and humble labours
than by that of the mailed Baron and his dependents, or of the Chamois
preserver, and his Chamois. Probably they have as brave hearts as the
Baron and his dependents had: at all events their fathers drove them
off with sticks and stones, and even the women of Schiersch in 1622
showed such heroism in assisting their husbands to repel their Austrian
invaders, that the men of Schiersch have since that day conceded to
the women of Schiersch the honour of receiving the sacrament first.
And, too, probably they are as much disposed to respect humanity, and
to help those that need, and to do to others as they would that others
should do to them, as the imaginary Chamois preserver would be.
A little above Kublis on the pebbly borders of a torrent, down the
flank of a mountain, where it was impossible to retain soil enough
for cultivation of any kind, for the occasional rushes of storm water
would sweep from the surface anything soluble or tender, I found the
coarse shingle dotted with hazel, and briar roses, and barberry, and
much of this open thicket almost smothered with the wild clematis then
in flower. This vegetation again reminded me of how completely I had
this morning changed the climate. Where I had been of late nothing of
this could have been seen. A few hours ago, in leaving Davos Dörfli, I
had passed frost-blackened potato haulm; and for three weeks I had not
had much to look upon, in the way of vegetation, besides pine woods and
grass. What I now saw prepared me for the advent on the scene of the
broad glazed leaf and feathery arrow of the maize.
A mile or so below Kublis the green valley is suddenly contracted
into a rock-bound and wooded ravine, which has in the bottom no more
space than is sufficient for the blustering Lanquart and the road.
Whatever good land is hereabouts must be high above you on the top of
the ravine. This ravine ends at Frederis Au, a kind of watering-place,
some little way off from the road. Here you again come on good bottom
land, some of it under maize. A little further on, the stream is again
compressed between high rocky banks.
At Schiersch, having now done twenty-five miles, I stopped for dinner.
It is a place of some size, and has many goodly stone houses; but
what attracts you most is the story of the still-honoured heroism of
its women. The books told me that the Lion was the chief hotel of the
place. Accordingly I entered the Lion, and was shown up to the first
floor. It was evident that the room into which I was shown, like the
sword of Achilles which could either hack a baron of beef, or carve a
Trojan, was used for two purposes. The long table and benches on one
side of it showed that it was intended for travellers’ accommodation.
The sofa, however, and chairs, a little work-table on the other side,
together with the presence of Madame herself and four children, one
asleep on the sofa, one suffering from whooping-cough, the third
waiting on the invalid, and the fourth in the mother’s arms, indicated
that it was also the Lady’s sitting-room, and the nursery. The guests
who came and went while I was in the house were waited upon by the
husband only. My successive inquiries for mutton, beef, butter, eggs,
fruit, cognac, extracted from him only negative replies. What, then,
did the good people of Schiersch live upon? He could let me have
cheese and dried beef. I had been expecting mutton _côtelettes_, with
a dessert of figs and peaches. In my disappointment I felt disposed to
go on further. I could hardly fare worse by doing so. But after I had
entered the house I felt a disinclination, by leaving it, to balk the
expectations of the good people, and perhaps my own too. And so I spent
half an hour at the Lion. As to the dried beef, I had ceased to think
it actively bad. The wine was rather sour. Against the cheese nothing
could be said.
Together with the above viands there was presented to me this problem.
If this is all that Schiersch can set before its guests, what is the
usual fare of the Schierschers themselves? Few of us as we pass through
a smiling Swiss valley think, or know, how hard its inhabitants live.
They, poor souls, or rather their hard-worked bodies, have neither
the dried beef, nor the half sour wine, nor yet such cheese as I had.
Meagre cheese, the curd that rises, on the second heating, after the
first curd for the cheese has been removed, black rye-bread, polenta,
and potatoes constitute, with coffee for their chief beverage, the
normal fare of the inhabitants of most of these valleys. The greater
part of the butter, and of the fresh meat that they produce is sent off
to places, where there are hotels with many travellers to be provided
for. All the fat of the land of the Prätigäu is in this way forwarded
to Davos am Platz, Ragatz, and Coire. Having disposed of this question
not quite satisfactorily, for I had rather that its settlement had
been more in favour of the good people of Schiersch--the brave women
of Schiersch at all events deserve something better; and having, too,
disposed of the comestibles which had suggested it, I said my adieux to
the members of the family of the Lion, and proceeded on my way, caring
little, and not knowing much more, where I was going, except that there
was a place two miles further on called Grüsch.
The first mile was through low wet meadows. Beyond these the torrent
of the Lanquart had in times of flood, carried away all the soil,
leaving behind nothing but rubbly stones. These covered a wide expanse,
rather more than a mile in length. The peasants of the locality, like
a community of bees, or ants, whose nest, or hive, has been disturbed,
had taken in hand the repair of the whole of this damage. They had
carried a dozen, or more, dikes across the valley, and crossed these
again at right angles by another series of dikes. This had divided
the whole of the desolated space into a considerable number of square
compartments. Their plan was to fill these in succession with the muddy
water of the Lanquart, hoping that the deposit from this, would in
time bury the stones, and give them a surface of alluvium, capable
of supporting grass. Some of the compartments were already supporting
beds of reeds. If, therefore, the dikes should not be washed away by
some unusually heavy flood, the time must come when soil enough will be
accumulated for grass. May this precious grass one day crown and reward
their labours!
At Grüsch I was well repaid for having preferred the ills I knew not
of to those of which I had had experience at Schiersch. I found it in
many respects an interesting little place. First it is well situated.
There are points of view in the village, from which the mountains
seem to stand round about it grandly, quite to come down into it. On
the north side a bold ravine has been rent from some height up in the
mountain just down to the level of the road. Some of the houses are
old and large, and were once the residences of local grandees, of the
days when Grüsch had grandees. In one of these I found my supper and
bed--a supper of veal cutlets, coffee, butter, cheese, and raspberry
_compote_. I give the particulars not only from a sense of what is due
to Grüsch, but also for the sake of encouraging Schiersch to greater
efforts. As to my berth for the night; I was at first shown up a
stone staircase to a spacious room containing three beds. From its
ornamented panelling and ceiling it must originally have been intended
for a sitting-room. I was more than satisfied with it. When, however,
there was no further prospect of the arrival of a family, or party,
of distinction, I was informed that there was a better bedroom in
the house, that it was at my disposal, and that the few things I had
brought with me had been removed to it. Even after this announcement
I was quite unprepared for its magnificence. It was a kind of state
apartment. It was gorgeously papered. It had muslin window-curtains.
The stove cased with white china, and bound with hoops of polished
brass, had an imposing effect. The pillows and coverlet were edged with
cotton lace. All this was overpowering, coming so close on Schiersch.
And, then, the manageress was so good-natured and obliging, so anxious
to know what might be wanted, and seemed to have so much pleasure in
doing it--almost as much as the good man at Livigno had had, whose
regard for his guests had extended even beyond this world. But the
crowning grace has still to come. After breakfast to-morrow morning,
I shall have to pay for this substantial fare, the splendour of my
bedroom, and so much pleasing attention, only 3 francs, 30 cents:
the same sum, except the 30 cents, I had paid at Schiersch for the
refection of dried beef and sour wine. This will compare, too, very
favourably with the bill at Livigno. That had been 30 francs, 60 cents.
But then our friend at Livigno had catered for both worlds, for soul
as well as for body. At parting I could not but shake hands with the
young woman who had waited on me and her satisfaction at finding that
her attentions and ministerings had been appreciated was alone quite
worth the 3 francs, 30 cents. All this was a great deal to get for so
little in this hard world.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE RHEINTHAL--PFÄFFERS--RAGATZ--COIRE--DISSENTIS--VAL
MEDELS--PERDATSCH.
He durst upon a truth give doom
He knew no more of than the Pope of Rome.--HUDIBRAS.
_August 22._--Was off at 5 A.M. Just below Grüsch the road passed by a
scene of recent devastation, very similar to what I had seen yesterday
evening just above the town. A late flood of the Lanquart had swept
over some three or four acres of garden ground, from which it had
washed out every particle of soil, leaving behind only a bed of clean
pebbles. Some corners and shreds of potato and corn patches alone
remained to show the passer-by what the poor peasants had lost. One saw
proofs of the efforts they had made to save not only their crops, but
that which was of far more value than the crops of a single season--the
precious land, their only means of living. In the hope of turning the
flood back again into its channel they had constructed a kind of long
_chevaux-de-frise_, first by fastening pieces of timber together at
right angles to each other, each piece being about ten feet long, and
then lashing several of these cross-tied bars, at intervals of about
three feet, to a long pine trunk. These contrivances they had fixed
at points they wished to protect. Faggots had then been laid athwart
the three-feet interstices, in order that the pebbles and rubbish the
flood would bring down might be piled against them. Of course these
fortifications had not been set at right angles to the line of the
flood, but slightly inclined down it, so that when it impinged upon
them, the line of least resistance to the impinging flood would be in
the direction that would take it back to the main channel. I suppose
the plan had been to some extent successful, for the land behind the
second line had been mostly saved. I was reminded of Christian Grass’s
remark on a similar scene in the Scarlthal, that for these poor people
to see a torrent sweeping away their land is a far more dreadful
spectacle than to see the flames devouring their houses.
Just beyond this scene of devastation was the stock of pine trunks,
that had last winter been cut in, and brought down from, the forest
above by the men of Grüsch, for their supply, during the coming winter,
of fuel and of timber for house repairs. The size of the trunks is,
if age be taken into account, an indication of the nature of the soil
and of the climate. These gave good evidence in favour of the soil
and climate of the Prätigäu. I measured the butt end of the largest
of them. It was nearly four feet in diameter without the bark. This
must have been a stately tree. I counted, too, the rings of its annual
growth. It had been one of the patriarchs of the forest, for one
hundred and forty had been the number of its years. Four generations
of Grüschers had withheld their hands from converting it into fuel or
money, and a fifth generation were now to have the benefit of their
educated forbearance.
The exit from the Prätigäu is through a grand portal. The precipices
are high and sheer; the Lanquart is rapid, dashing, and dinning; the
road is tortuous. At the last turn of the road, where the precipices
are highest and sheerest, and the Lanquart most rapid, dashing, and
dinning, you suddenly step out on the long and broad expanse, here two
miles wide, of the Rhine valley. The spirit of the scene is changed.
Some of this broad flat is so poor, all vegetable mould having ages ago
been washed out of it, that it will grow only stunted trees, and some
so low and wet that it will grow only reeds and rushes. Should you be
making for Ragatz, as I was, two roads will be before you; one along
the foot of the right-hand mountain range by Malans and Maienfeld,
the other straight across the valley and the Rhine, which is here on
its further side, and then along the foot of the left-hand range. For
a moment I looked on the scene before me, and then went straight on.
The two miles of dead level would be something new, and would give me
some idea of what the Rhine valley is here. The two next miles beyond
the bridge over the Rhine, and on to Ragatz, with the morning sun full
on the road, and against the side of the overhanging mountain, were
memorably warm.
Ragatz commences on this side with a monster hotel. Between a large
orchard, which you reach first, and this hotel is a road which brings
you in three or four hundred yards to the road from the town to the
gorge of Pfäffers, at the very mouth of which Ragatz stands on the
beginning of the level ground. It was still early, and so, without
stopping at Ragatz, I went straight up the gorge. From Ragatz to the
old baths is a distance of two and a half miles, and an ascent of
somewhat more than five hundred feet. The road is good, though it
must have been very costly to construct, and must be so to maintain.
The side on which it is excavated and built is not so precipitous as
the other, which is generally sheer cliff from five to eight hundred
feet high. All the way along, the Tamina is rushing by and tumbling
down before you. You see that it is wearing away its rocky bed; and
you can see no evidence, nor imagine any reason, why you should not
suppose that it was the same stream that in the same manner cut out
the whole of the ravine. If sufficient time be given, it is as easy
to cut out eight hundred feet as eight. The perpendicular face of the
cliff which looks to the east does not at all stand in the way of this
conclusion. Of course the rapidly descending water was disposed to
take a straight line, and even, if diverted from the straight line,
to work back to it as soon as possible. And then it would naturally
cut down its channel perpendicularly, because, as it would be flowing
rapidly, it would keep its cutting tools, the bits of rock and the sand
it was carrying along, at work in the middle of the stream. If you
throw anything into a confined mill-race, you will see that it does not
grate along the sides, but, as it sinks, is forced into the middle, and
swept along the middle, of the stream, there being a pressure on it
from both sides. The natural tendency, therefore, is that the erosion
of a rapid stream would be both straight and perpendicular. You see
this in all the gorges where the water is now, or has at former times
been, flowing rapidly. Only one point remains, Why is the face of
the gorge which looks to the west less perpendicular than that face
which looks to the east? This also may be explained. The afternoon
sun shines with sufficient force on the western-looking cliff to melt
the snow on its summit, and some little way down. As soon as the sun
is withdrawn the water from the melted snow may be recongealed. These
alternations of thawing and freezing are a cause that is at work every
spring to disintegrate the rock on the side that faces west. This
cause is not at work on the side that faces east; that, therefore,
remains perpendicular. The other side, however, which is acted on by
this cause, has receded a little, and become somewhat inclined. Had
there been no frosts, there would have been no weathering of this side,
which would then have remained throughout, with the exception of the
few places where little lateral streams enter the gorge from this side,
as perpendicular as the other side. The rain also being generally on
the west-looking side, helps to bring down the disintegrated rubble,
and dislodged rocks, to the bottom of the gorge, where the Tamina
immediately, if it cannot sweep them away, begins to wear them away.
As to the Baths of Pfäffers, those I mean near the head of the gorge:
while at a second breakfast there at 9.30 I thought the appearance of
the servants did not say much for the salubrity of the place. They
looked fleshless, bloodless, nerveless. But this was no more than you
might expect to see in people who had been living for two or three
months in so damp and deep a hole. The owner of the establishment ought
to change his servants every Saturday night, otherwise they will, or
at all events they ought to, scare away his visitors; their pale and
emaciated faces are so many finger-posts, on which is written the word
dangerous. No breath of air can reach the house. If the stagnation of
the air is what in ordinary valleys produces _goîtres_, what must its
stagnation in this wet gorge be capable of producing? If the exterior
of the house were not frequently rewhite-washed it would, I suppose, be
covered with the lichens and moss, and such like damp growths as you
may see on the wall by its side. It may, however, be argued that the
actual baths must be a prophylactic against rheumatism, because many of
those who have been here a week are still able to walk away.
I spent four hours at Ragatz. It is a loosely put together place,
consisting very much of large hotels in the style of Interlaken. The
interstices, as it is rapidly increasing in population, will probably
soon be filled up. The water of Pfäffers is brought down to the town in
a wooden pipe two and a half miles long. This water and the gorge are
the sources of the prosperity of Ragatz. As to Pfäffers, it is worth
seeing. As to the water it may possibly do no harm to drink it. It
issues from the rock at a temperature of about a hundred degrees. This
appears to be its only peculiarity; at all events it smells and tastes,
we are told, like any other water. No one seemed to know what, if any,
therapeutic ingredients it possesses, or what are the maladies in the
treatment of which it may be held to be efficacious. These, however,
are not the only ways in which it may be regarded. If it can give any
sufferer an excuse for hope, so far well, unless it should prevent
his having recourse at the same time to some other rational treatment
of his ailment. Or if it give an excuse to some for leaving too fast,
or too slow, a home, and to others for withdrawing themselves from
overwork, for a time, that also may be set down to the credit side of
the account.
In the evening I went by rail to Coire. As I passed along the broad
valley of the Rhine, I saw several mountains cut down almost as
perpendicularly as the gorge at Pfäffers. To the thought, though of
course not to the unthinking eye, the valley is more impressive than
the gorge. Here mountains have been planed down by old world glaciers,
and cut through by still existing streams, to such an extent as to form
a valley in places two miles wide. The face of many of the mountains is
still a precipice. In many the precipice at the top has been slanted
back by the weather, and the chips falling to the bottom have continued
the incline in the form of a long _talus_, which still remains only
because in all the centuries that have passed since the chips began to
accumulate, the stream has never been working on that side. These are
grander operations, and they contain more elements of interest to the
thought, than the narrow ravine of Pfäffers.
_August 23._--At Coire I had got back to a point already passed in
my outward course. Among the guests of the hotel, who were taking an
early breakfast to be in time for the early diligence, was a German
of the Hercynian forest type. There was an item in his bill of which
he did not approve. At the sight of this entry his wrath kindled in a
moment. He was not satisfied with assailing the waiters, he must have
the manager before him. The manager came. The grievance was detailed
with much emphasis. Its enormity was dwelt upon. But the manager was
not taken by surprise. He was as firm as a rock, and with a surface as
incapable of being ruffled. Again the Teuton returned to the assault.
Again the manager received it unmoved. How the conflict ended cannot be
recorded, for at this point I left the room.
This German was not more irascible than two of our young compatriots,
their ages might have been between twenty-five and thirty, whom I had
lately met, were impassive. I sat opposite to them at supper. To each
other they had hardly a word to say. Observing this I addressed to them
an occasional remark or two. Their replies, however, were seldom more
than monosyllabic. They were as indisposed to talk to a stranger as
to each other. The next day I sat for several hours in the diligence
with them. During the whole of that time, the least taciturn of the two
only twice uttered a word. Looking at his watch, which was ostensibly
his chief employment, he announced to his companion that it was nine
o’clock. Some time later, while we were changing horses, he looked out
of the window, and announced in tones expressive of interest suddenly
awakened, that a _supplément_ was being got ready. I heard the sound
of his more taciturn companion’s voice but once. A Swiss gentleman,
who was seated opposite to him, endeavoured to direct his attention
to a very celebrated mountain which happened at the moment to be in
sight. ‘Oh!’ was his reply, but it was addressed not so much to the
gentleman who had just spoken to him as to vacancy, ‘oh! we have had
enough of walking.’ Of course exhibitions of this kind are no evidence
of a national inferiority in natural gifts. They do, however, suggest
a suspicion of the inadequacy of our eight-parts-of-speech system of
education. To these two young gentlemen nature may have been not less
bountiful in her gifts, or, if the German observation that nature has
given to Germans industry, but to Englishmen genius, be true, may have
been even more bountiful, than to most men; and if so, then the fault
may not have been so much in them, as in the system to which they had
presumably been sacrificed: possibly they had not been fairly dealt
with. The improbability of any other conclusion arises from this, that
if their state of mind was not natural, and we can hardly regard it as
natural, it must have been produced artificially.
At Dissentis, too, which I reached this day at 1 P.M., I was still on
old ground. My object in stopping here was to get a porter for a walk
by the Lukmanier road, the Uomo Pass, Altanca, and Val Bedretto to the
Gries glacier, with the descent from which into the Rhone Valley at
Ulrichen my excursion would end. As soon as I had reached Dissentis
I requested the manager of the hotel to get me the best guide in
the place, asking him so to interpret best as to give intelligence
a prominent place in his estimate: because what I wanted was not
merely a two-legged pack-horse, but a man with whom it would also
be pleasant to carry on a conversation of four days’ duration. He
knew, he said, exactly what I wanted, and a man who would completely
meet my requirements--a man in every respect good, but in respect of
intelligence exceptionally good. This was promising; so the possessor
of these good qualities was summoned forthwith, and it was agreed that
we should, at 3 P.M., start for Perdatsch, ten and a half miles on the
way to the Lukmanier, which would be enough for an evening walk. The
man’s get-up was elaborate for a guide; and there was a jauntiness in
his manner, and, as it struck me, an expression of wiliness in his
eye, which suggested to me the thought that it would be as well to put
the agreement between us into black and white; and this I accordingly
did. He returned half an hour later than the time fixed for starting.
We had not got clear of the village before he had informed me that he
regarded priests as _canaille_ of the first class. Such was his form
of the superlative of that already vigorous superlative of contempt.
Why, I asked, did he give them this pre-eminent position? Because, he
replied, they did no work at all, and lived better than he did. The
fact was that he did not recognize, because he could not understand,
that there was any kind of work in the world, except manual labour. He
then passed on to the landlords of hotels, the only well-to-do class
he was acquainted with in his own neighbourhood, and included them in
the same category: they too were _canaille_. In their case, however, he
did not add his superlative suffix. The real reason of his dislike to
them appeared to be that they had more capital than himself; for he had
only enough to keep a small shop, while they had enough to keep hotels.
Of course I could only infer that, as I was unfortunately, or rather
heinously, able to pay him for accompanying me, he was regarding me at
that moment in the same light, and referring me to the same class. All
this was soon explained. He had lately returned from Paris, where he
had been at the time of the siege and of the commune; and if he was not
an actually affiliated member of the _Internationale_, he was at all
events in opinions and sympathy a communist of the first class. This
was not quite the kind of man I should have myself chosen; but still
there he was by my side, and must remain there for some days. There
was, therefore, nothing to be done now but to make the best of a bad
bargain. I had at all events an opportunity for studying at leisure the
kind of stuff of which not of course all communists must be, but of
which it is not unlikely that some are, made.
For the first six miles, that is as far as Platta, our way was along
the new road, which is being made from Dissentis by the Lukmanier
to Olivone. It is a grand piece of mountain road-making, as may be
understood from there being eleven tunnels in the first four miles.
This will also indicate the nature of the ravine, which necessitates
such work for the road that traverses it. The stream below the road is
the Mittel Rhein, which at Dissentis joins the Vorder Rhein--the main
headwater of the Rhine. These new roads, of which so many are being
constructed in Switzerland, are, I was told, made at the cost partly
of the respective cantons, and partly of the Confederation. This is as
it should be, for they are not of local advantage only, but are also
indispensable for the general prosperity of the country. Of course
there can be no internal or external exchange of commodities, and no
human circulation either of natives or of foreigners without roads; and
exactly in proportion as roads are multiplied and improved, are these
advantages extended. No people see this more clearly than the Swiss.
These are questions which their practical lives and practical education
enable them to understand readily and thoroughly. They are, therefore,
always adding to, and improving their means of communication. And,
as far as I know, there is not in the country a road for the use of
which a toll is charged: for to their apprehension a toll would be a
contradiction of the very purpose for which the road was made. It was
made to facilitate communication; and the toll by making communication
dearer, has the same effect in discouraging it that needlessly severe
gradients, or unnecessary circuits of many miles, or a shockingly bad
condition of the roadway itself would have. For this reason, that is to
say, because they see distinctly what is the object of having roads,
they make them as well as they can be made, keep them in as good repair
as possible, and make the use of them perfectly free to all.
The scenery is interesting at first in the ravine, and not the less so
afterwards, when you have emerged from the ravine, and have entered
on something more valley-like, with the mountains standing somewhat
back, and with openings in them to allow you some glimpses of snowy
summits. These, however, were matters about which the communist felt no
interest. All that he would here talk about was the profligacy of the
government in making the roads. The local and the general government
were equally culpable, for each raised its funds by taxation. It was
the people who paid for it all. Roads and everything else, were only
excuses for extracting money from them. It was vain to argue that the
roads were made for the people, and were for them a necessity; that
they increased their resources; enabled many to live well who had
lived miserably before; and increased the opportunities and comforts
of all. Probably it was just in this that the sting of the road lay:
because for those who had land it raised the value of their property,
and enlarged the opportunities of innkeepers and such like folk. The
wound this inflicted on the feelings could not be salved by the fact,
that while the road did hurt to no one, it must in their proportion
have benefited even the smallest tradesmen, for it created a demand for
what they had to sell by bringing buyers, while it also enabled them
to get from a distance, and more cheaply than before, the commodities
in which they dealt. Through such helps and facilities many petty
tradesmen had become far more flourishing than they were formerly. Of
course there would have been no objection to this last effect. Had it
stood by itself it would have been approved of. But, then, the movement
had not stopped at this point, but had also benefited innkeepers, and
some other such Tritons; indeed, had made them Tritons, and that was
intolerable.
It was a pleasant walk to Perdatsch. The new road has not yet got
beyond Platta. But there was nothing to regret in this. The new road
was good; but so also was the old paved horseway. This also one was
glad to see: it was rudely constructed of blocks and slabs of gneiss,
long since worn smooth by many centuries of local traffic, and the
passage over them, too, of many armies, which in old times, as we are
told, went and returned this way, during the long period when the
Lukmanier, because it was the easiest, was the most frequented, of
all Alpine Passes. It had been 3.30 when we left Dissentis, and as my
companion had stopped at Platta for twenty minutes for a _chopine_
of wine, the last gleams of daylight were dying away as we reached
Perdatsch. To be still on the tramp at the close of evening gave rise
almost to a new sensation, which, too, was not altogether a pleasant
one; for you seemed to be still at work when all nature was either
going to rest, or counselling rest. The peasants had returned home,
and so had the goats and cows. Those belonging to the little inn had
come down from the mountain, and, having now been milked, were taking
up their berths for the night on the lee side of the _châlet_, and
contiguous rocks. It was the hour, not for walking, but for talking, at
your ease, over what had been seen during the day that was past, and
for forming plans for the day that was coming.
The inn of Perdatsch is well situated. You have lately been passing
several little villages, which had, successively, been becoming
smaller, as the height had increased, and so the means for supporting
life had decreased. And now at the point where the stream from the Val
Cristallina meets that of the Medelser Rhein, and at the foot of M.
Garviel, which rises up before you to divide the V. Cristallina from
the Val Medels, stands the little wood-built structure. Your memory of
what is behind, and the sight of what is in front, suggest to you that
you have now reached the verge of inhabitable altitude. As you approach
Perdatsch, you see that the stream, in the leap it there takes of a
hundred feet, is of considerable volume; and you find it putting in a
claim to be a Rhine, the Mittel, or Medelser, Rhein; on the Splügen
you had met a second Rhine, the Hinter Rhein; on the Julier, a third,
the Oberhalbstein Rhein; in Aversthal a fourth, the Averser Rhein; and
you have seen all these joining a fifth, the Vorder Rhein. Each of the
five by assuming the famous name seems to insist on your remembering
that it bears an important part in the origination of the great river,
or at least is among its first contributories. I believe, however, that
the word in its original signification was not so much the proper name
as the appellative of a stream, or river. The Rhine may have meant
the river, the flowing water. Etymologists will say whether it has
any blood relationship with _rivus_, river, and Rhone, and possibly
Eridanus, which appears to have been the name of a river that emptied
itself into the Baltic, as well as an alias of the Po. But to propound
conjectures without an adequate knowledge of the subject, in etymology
as in other matters, is easy, and in both senses of the word endless.
This inn was about the smallest _châlet_ I ever entered. The following
were its internal arrangements. The entrance door was at the south-east
corner. From the door were two little passages. The one facing the
door led to the room occupied by the landlord and his wife. This room
might have been nine feet wide and a dozen in length. The second
passage turned to the right of the door along the wall. It was about
four feet wide. In this passage came first the cooking stove; the
passage was in fact the kitchen; and then beyond the cooking stove the
door of the reception room. This was about eleven feet square, and so
low that a tall man could not stand erect in it. Opposite the door of
the landlord’s own room, and rising over the door of the house, was
a ladder, by which one ascended to a passage corresponding to that
which formed the kitchen. At the further end of this upper passage
was a miniature bed, which my guide will occupy to-night. Close to
his crib was the door which opened into the guests’ bedroom. This was
the largest room in the house. It contained three beds. Its extent,
however, was only in area, for it was so low that it required some
manœuvring to get into bed, and I could not have attempted to sit up in
bed without knocking my head against the ceiling. This was the whole
structure, which to-night will shelter thirteen mortals. _Absit omen!_
On my arrival I found a solitary Frenchman--the only Frenchman I met
during this expedition--in possession of the little parlour. He had
left Dissentis an hour earlier than I; I had, however, seen him there,
and as we were in the same hotel, and bound for the same place, I had
addressed a few words to him; but he had then appeared to be indisposed
to engage in conversation. I now found him full of conversation, and
a pleasant man to talk with. He told me that he was a member of the
French Alpine Club; that its members had made so few ascents that
he was desirous of doing something, and so that he had come out to
get into training for an ascent of Mount Blanc; but that he did not
contemplate making the attempt till next year. He was a stout and
sturdy but rather short man of about thirty-four years of age. He
carried his knapsack himself.
The usual question now arose, What could we have for supper? In so
small a house, so far from the world, we did not expect to find much.
We, therefore, summoned the landlord, and asked him to give us a
list of everything in the way of eatables and drinkables his house
contained. He had dried beef, and also dried mutton: the latter was
quite a novelty to both of us. His wife could make soup. She could also
fry eggs in butter. He had, too, Piora cheese, not of course actual
Piora, but equally of course quite as good, wine, white bread, and
coffee. He was congratulated on having so many good things, and such a
wife; and requested to place every one of the good things on the table
as soon as his wife could prepare them. The cembra fire was kindled,
and its cooking power got up, as soon as the match was put to it; and
so in about half an hour, there being hardly room on the little table
for all the viands, supper was served. We found there was no reason
why we should desert our old acquaintance, the dried beef, for our
new acquaintance, the dried mutton. The soup was an instance of the
deceptiveness of words. It had no more resemblance to the Tauffers
mess of herbs, spice, and macaroni than chicken broth has to the
ambrosia of terrapin or turtle. It had but two ingredients, and those
were rice and milk; enough of the latter to float the former. It was an
undecided question whether the eggs would not have been better without
the butter. The plain butter and the Pioresque cheese were good. The
white bread was an old world petrifaction. The wine was acid, if not
sour. The coffee was good, as was the milk that accompanied it. On
the whole we were content. Things were far better than we might have
anticipated. We loitered over them; and it was 10 o’clock--a late hour
for such places, and for such work as we were engaged in--before we
went up the ladder, and crept into our cribs.
I had not been long in the house before eight peasants arrived for the
night. They walked into the reception room. We, however, were already
in possession. There was hardly standing space for them all; and it was
evident that there was no space for another table, and benches, for so
many. The landlord and his wife were equal to the occasion; and the
peasants being reasonable people at once recognized the necessities
of the situation, and accepted the alternative the host offered them
till we might retire to bed. They had, too, come to make a night of it,
and would not be disappointed. Besides there was nowhere else to go.
The alternative was that they might have for the present our host’s
and his wife’s bedroom. To this, then, they withdrew, and forthwith
commenced playing at cards and drinking, transferring themselves to the
reception room when we left it. There they remained till 3 o’clock in
the morning; at which hour they quitted the house, to proceed further
up the mountains to make hay. They were Platta men, and the foreman
of the party was the Platta schoolmaster, a tall wiry man, with a
black bushy beard. At times during the night we were woke by their
shouts and laughter, as the fortunes of their game varied. The stakes
they were playing for was the wine they were drinking, for which the
losers had to pay. When disturbed by their merriment, I cannot say that
I was lulled again to sleep--the effect was rather in the opposite
direction--by the rude bluster of the stream, which was tumbling down
its rocky channel not many yards from my head--still I had no wish that
either the merrymakers or the stream were further off.
CHAPTER XV.
VAL MEDELS--THE UOMO PASS--VAL PIORA--RITOM--ALTANCA.
With the imagination be content,
Not wishing more; repining not to tread
The little sinuous path of earthly care,
By flowers embellished, and by springs refreshed.
WORDSWORTH.
_August 24._--Last night I had proposed that we should start this
morning at 5--my usual hour for getting under weigh. But as my proposal
appeared to be objectionable to the communist I withdrew it, and told
him that we would breakfast at 5.45, and be off at 6. At 5.45, as I
left my room, I saw that he was still asleep in his crib in the upper
passage. While sitting down to breakfast I requested the landlord to
make him get up. After breakfast I asked for the bill. The landlord
left the room to make it out with the aid of his wife. As the room was
very small, and they were only just beyond the open door, I could not
but hear what passed. They agreed between them that the charge should
be 4 francs. I then found that my man had descended the ladder, for
I heard him suggest that they should write 5 francs. A little after 6
we got under weigh. Having crossed the stream of the Val Cristallina,
and rounded the foot of M. Garviel, over large blocks of gneiss, we
entered the long upper stage of the Val Medels. It is a grand valley
about 6 miles in length. The only buildings it contains are the three
small refuges of St. Gion, St. Gall, and Santa Maria. The ascent is
gradual, for in the 6 miles you only rise about 1,000 feet--from 5,036
at Perdatsch to 6,243 at Santa Maria. There is no bottom land in it
capable of being mown for hay. This results from the rocks, with which
it is thickly strewn, being so large that they could not be removed for
levelling the ground. Its lofty ranges stand some way back from each
other. The concavity of the valley is grandly simple. The long lines of
descent sweep down from the summits of the two ridges to meet in the
stream of the Mittel Rhein. At first, and high up, the descent of these
lines is steep, but all the way down the steepness is lessening, at an
even rate of diminution, till they almost come to a level in the bottom
at their point of contact. In this long open valley there are no trees,
though we are told that the name Lukmanier (_Lucus magnus_) implies
that there were once many. If ever it were so, their place has now been
taken by tufts of dwarf alder, and of dwarf juniper, which rise only
a foot or two from the ground, and at the lower part of the valley
thickly stud the hillsides. The alder dies out after a time, but the
juniper continues, though in ever lessening amount, to the further
end. As this long valley is throughout pretty well turfed, it must be
capable of maintaining during the few months it is free from snow, a
great amount of stock. I saw in it some large flocks and herds.
My companion appeared to take no interest in the scene, or in the
people; and this morning I was not disposed to take much interest
in him, and so I left him very much to himself. At last he began of
his own suggestion to talk about our fellow-traveller of last night,
his thoughts still running on Paris. He wished to know whether I had
discovered who our fellow-traveller was, or whether he had himself
told me. Yes, I replied, he had told me that he was a Frenchman. ‘A
Frenchman!’ he exclaimed; ‘he was an accursed Prussian spy. You could
see it in his face. You could see it in his maps. You could see it
in his being alone. He had been sent from Berlin to map the country,
that the Prussians might know beforehand to what account the Lukmanier
might be turned, should the Pass ever in any way be needed in any
coming war. A Frenchman! What Frenchman ever could speak both German
and English? But many Germans could speak both English and French. He
was an accursed Prussian spy. The French it was who had gained all the
glory of the late war. They had shown that they were the braver of
the two people. They had not employed spies, nor had they trusted to
gold.’ This was meant for England. ‘In the next war they would crush
the accursed Prussians.’
And so we reached Santa Maria--a hospice which is much cleaner and more
commodious inside than you would expect from the outside. I should not
have entered it had not my miso-Prussian companion thought that his
two hours’ walk had earned him a half hour’s halt and a _chopine_ of
wine. It was as fine a morning as nature could put together at this
elevation. No ingredient required for the composition had been stinted.
The sun was shining brightly. The air was fresh, and crisp; for its
current, as is the rule on quiet mornings till about 9 o’clock, was
down from the snowy tops around. When the valley after 9 A.M. begins to
get heated, the current is reversed, and continues upward till about 4
or 5 P.M. In the sunshine the warmth felt like a kind of subtle ether,
which permeated one’s whole system, for the moment you were out of it,
you felt the want of it; and the moment you returned to it, you felt
again, throughout your whole frame, the influence of the all-pervading
fluid. I sat on a rock on the sunny side of the cheese-house, in front
of the hospice. Immediately behind the hospice was the long flank of a
greenish brown, and the snowy summit, of the Scopi, nearly 1,450 feet
above me. Straight before me, twenty minutes off, was the summit of
the Lukmanier Pass, only 250 feet higher than my seat. To the right,
at the distance of an hour and a half, and 1,200 feet higher, was
the Uomo Pass. It was a grand and impressive mountain scene. There
was at the time in sight a party of Italians bringing bags of salt on
their asses down the Lukmanier, and showing in the distance no bigger
than mice. The salt was for distribution among the cheese-makers of
this, and of the contiguous valleys. For how many centuries had salt
travelled that way! What a large part had its traffic played in the
early communications of mankind! How surely does what is wanted wear
for itself a way. This commodity is bulky, and but little is to be
gained by bringing it, and yet the supply has never failed. But here
the days of the traffic in its present form are now numbered, for the
new road is all staked out; and when it shall be made, these asses
laden with salt will no longer come down the Lukmanier, accompanied by
their shaggy owners. Salt, however, will be cheaper in V. Medels, and
V. Cristallina, and the other valleys of this group of mountains. Some
figures that now add a suggestion to the scene, will have disappeared
from it; but human life will have become a little easier and better
supplied, and that not in salt only, but in many other things besides.
Half an hour having passed with some discontent, though on the balance
of the whole without much reason for it, we began the ascent of the
Uomo. It would be worth walking up it were it only to see in some of
the little rock basins of its stream, when you are about two-thirds
of the way up, how wonderfully transparent water can become, or rather
is before it has become charged in one way or another with extraneous
matters. On reaching the summit you there find that the water cannot
readily get away on account of the number of little depressions
spread over the surface. Here, therefore, it is rather swampy. These
depressions have, perhaps, been caused by the concussion of falling
avalanches. Where the momentum of such masses in motion is arrested,
some soil must be thrown out, and a depression formed, which same soil
perhaps is again thrown back by the subsequent fall of other avalanches
to the right or left. By action of this kind the whole surface may be
kept in a swampy state. This swampy summit is a common watershed both
for the Rhine and for the Po, so that you are uncertain whether the
little pool before you will send its overflow to the North sea, or to
the Adriatic, or divide it between the two.
On leaving the summit you turn to the right, your path at first being
on the mid flank of the mountain which forms the northern range of the
Val Piora, on which you now enter. Hitherto Piora has been known only
for its cheese; but I am disposed to think that the day is coming,
when it will have a place in the memories of the eye as well as of
the palate. As you take your first glance down the valley, you see
beyond it the grand group of the St. Gothard, standing up well before
you, gray-sided, many-peaked, precipitous, and snowy, looking down
on the lesser heights of the Val Canaria. As you descend the valley,
you ask why its cheese should have become so famous? You find the
answer beneath your feet. Its wholesome-looking turf is rooted in
disintegrated limestone. If, then, it be true that good horses cannot
be bred except on limestone pastures, and that even the human organism
is the better for having, as we may say, been bred at second, or third
hand upon them, through its vegetable and animal food, then we can
understand how it comes about that the cheese of Piora takes high rank
in the order of merit. I recollect having heard more than thirty years
ago the Sir George Crewe of those days affirm, that when he left home
he generally missed in the vegetables served at his dinner the flavour,
which a dressing of lime imparted to the same sorts, when grown in
his own garden at Calke Abbey. People then thought this fanciful; it
was, however, an anticipation of what we are now told is demonstrable.
He at all events would not have overlooked its limestone pastures in
endeavouring to account for the merits of Piora cheese.
At what, till you reach it, appears to be the lower end of the valley,
you find a small lake, with a village on its further shore. To the left
of the lake, and somewhat above it, is one of the chief cheese-stores
of Piora. It is a roomy stone structure, partially sunk in the ground,
with the view of keeping its temperature equable. I cannot say how many
cheeses I saw in it; but there were a great many, and they weighed
about fifty pounds each, and their wholesale price was eighty cents a
pound. From this point, bearing to the left, and descending to a lower
level, you reach a second lake of a blue-green colour, about a mile in
length. Its name is Ritom. You pass along its right-hand shore, at the
bottom of a steep range, from which you see that rocks must frequently
be detached in spring. At about the middle of the path along the lake
is a second store for Piora cheese. The cheeses are made on the Alps,
and are brought to these storehouses to mature. Here we again stopped.
At both of these storehouses we found two men in charge. Our object now
was to make inquiries about Altanca, a village on the northern ridge
of the Val Leventina, where I proposed to spend the afternoon, and to
stop for the night. I had been told at Dissentis, by a horse-dealer who
frequented these valleys in the way of his business, that at Altanca
the only person who undertook to provide accommodation for travellers
was the Curé. As we were now drawing near to the place I thought that
I might here get some definite information on this point. The head
cheese-maker, to whom I addressed myself, might have sat for the model
of a Hercules. I never saw a man who, I could have supposed, would in
the days of clubs and spears have had a better chance in encounters
with hundred-headed hydras, gigantic boars, and man-eating lions. His
features, which were garnished by a thick, curly, black beard, though
large, were not at all coarse, but only in fair proportion to his
massive frame. To my inquiries about the capabilities of the Curé’s
establishment, he replied that the Curé himself was old, and deaf,
and that he had three sisters of about his own age residing with him.
I noticed the indirectness of his reply, which left it to me to draw
for myself from the particulars he had given whatever inferences I
pleased, and thought that there was rather more of diplomacy in this
than I should have expected in a mountain cow-herd. Taking it, however,
to imply that an evening spent with the deaf old Curé and his three
equæval sisters would not be a lively one, I asked him if he could put
me in the way of finding something more promising. ‘I can commend to
you,’ he replied, ‘a _Parisienne_.’ It was clear from his look, as well
as from his confining himself to that single word, that he knew very
well what were the ideas it called up in people’s minds--vivacity, as
much as could be maintained at Altanca, good cookery, as far as the
materials of Altanca admitted, and some mementos of a more embellished
mode of life than was native to Altanca. Of course I was obliged to
him, and would entrust myself to the _Parisienne_. On my offering him
a glass of Scotch whisky, of which I had a flask with me, he saw that
I was a Britisher, and replied in English. His story was that he had
gone out to California as a digger, and there it was that he had picked
up his modicum of French and English, and his knowledge of the world.
After some years of digging, he had found that gold was no compensation
for absence from his native mountains. Hercules in the garden of the
Hesperides was pining for houseless and treeless Piora; and so he had
returned, and become a cowherd once more on the borders of the blue
lake, and at the foot of the craggy mountain. As I left him, I thought
how much more tender his heart was than his hand, which I felt could
have crushed mine almost as easily as it could an egg-shell.
At the foot of the lake I came upon an hotel in construction. It was
nearly completed. There were at work upon it forty-six Italian masons
and carpenters. The architect, and the future landlord, were present
superintending and expediting the work. The old Curé, too, who had come
up from Altanca, was seated on a rock close by, alone, watching its
progress. Perhaps he was thinking that a new order of things was about
to commence; that Altanca was about to be introduced to the world, and
the world to Altanca; that the quietude of centuries was about to end;
that troublous times might be coming: but if so that it would be his
successor that would have to deal with them. Perhaps also the Curé of
Altanca may have wondered where the fifty guests, who it is hoped will
fill the fifty beds of this hotel, are to come from. Those, however,
who are aware that there will be no difficulty in finding many fifties
who are ready to come, will be rather disposed to ask how they are to
get to the hotel? People hereabouts say, that when the road over the
Lukmanier shall be completed, there will be taken in hand a branch from
it over the Uomo, down the Piora, and by Altanca to Val Leventina. This
is probable enough, for one improvement generally suggests, and leads
on to others, which in fact it renders possible. The road, however,
from this hotel by Altanca to Val Leventina will be a very difficult
piece of engineering, for it will be down an unusually steep descent of
2,500 feet.
The existing horse-track from the hotel at the foot of the lake down
to Altanca covers about half of these 2,500 feet. Though steep it is
for the most part paved, and must have been a great undertaking for
so small a community, for it comprises only twenty-five families; and
all this was done to enable these poor villagers to send their cows
up to the mountain pastures, and to bring down their produce. It was
one more instance, and, though you have instances of it everywhere in
Switzerland, a very striking one, of how much people will do, when
they are working for themselves. The road was to be made, if it ever
could be made, to enable them to send their own cows to their own
pastures, and therefore it was that the arduous work was taken in hand,
and carried through. In places the road is along the edge of a grand
ravine, at the bottom of which is the stream that drains the lake into
the Ticino. It has two very fine cascades. One of the mountains that
rises above it is Hadrian’s tomb expanded into a mountain.
And now we are at Altanca. Just above it are some little prairies
and small pine woods. Wherever there was a chance that a tree might
be able to hold on, one had been persuaded to make the attempt; and
wherever there was a chance that a little soil might be able to hold
on, an attempt had been made to form a prairie. The village itself
is on a ledge of rock. About fifty feet below it is a little area of
some dozen acres, sufficiently level for spade husbandry. Here the
twenty-five families grow their little patches of rye, cabbages, and
potatoes. It was now towards the end of August, and so their busiest
time. The rye harvest, and the hay harvest, were both being brought
home; and this glorious day would perhaps be the busiest of their
brief summer. We found all the houses closed. In the village no one
was to be seen. Everyone was in the field. Almost the first house we
passed was the Curé’s: surely one of the three sisters would be at
home, though, indeed, I had some disinclination to tapping at the door,
for conscience told me that I was deserting the recognised host of
the place for selfish reasons, that it would hurt the feelings of the
sisterhood to find that I was in search of entertainment elsewhere, and
that there would be something cruel in selecting them of all people
for such inquiries. It was, therefore, a relief to find that they,
too, were in the field. On such a day to have remained within doors
at Altanca would have been a reproach. I might have guessed that they
were not at home, for a large bundle of hay in a hempen sheet had been
deposited on the door-step. Some fifty yards below this house was a
row of twenty-barred _kraschners_, the kind of gigantic clothes-horses
on which at these altitudes corn is stacked and dried in sheaf. About
a dozen of the dames and maidens of Altanca were clambering up the
bars of these _kraschners_, with loads of sheaves on their shoulders,
and packing them away between the bars. They do not work from top to
bottom, but from end to end, beginning at the bottom. A few sheaves are
put in over the bottom bar. Of these only the heads are passed through
the opening between the two bars. The sheaves are then bent on the bar
so that their long butt-ends hang down. In each row all the head ends
are on one side, and all the butt-ends on the other. The heads and
butt-ends of the alternate rows being reversed, the long butt-ends of
each row, as you ascend from bottom to top, completely protect from wet
the short head ends of the row below it. Of course when the whole is
full, no head ends are seen on either side, all being covered, as it
were thatched, by the rows of butt-ends. The topmost row is protected
either by a wooden ridge, or by a little straw. Our appearance on the
scene, as might have been expected, caused an instantaneous suspension
of work. Those who were going aloft with loads on their backs, and
those who were thrusting into their places the sheaves that had
been brought to them, came to a standstill as they were made aware
from below of the unwonted intrusion. Everyone seemed to know the
_Parisienne_, and so the interruption did not last many moments.
This busy quarter of Altanca was at its extreme east. The
_Parisienne’s_ mansion was at the west end. We soon reached it, for
here distances are not great. The front door opened on the kitchen and
store-room. You passed through this and entered the ‘keeping’ room, a
large and tidy room for a _châlet_. It did, however, also contain a bed
in an obscure corner. No one was at home. But the master of the house
was soon summoned. He had spent his days of foreign sojourn at Paris,
where he had made the money which he had spent on his house, and where
he had also found his wife, and learnt to speak French. He immediately
produced a bottle of wholesome wine, some mummy beef, and petrified
white bread. I asked for fresh rye-bread and Piora cheese. He assured
us that his wife would be at home early in the evening, and would do
all she could for us. He had a new bedroom which he would place at
my disposal. Fortunately it had but one bed. He would, therefore,
procure a bed for the communist in a neighbouring _châlet_. He was a
tall handsome man, as almost all the men are in these valleys. He
despatched a messenger for his nephew to spend the evening with me, for
he was one who had seen much of the world; he could, too, speak English.
At last evening came, and with it the nephew, and the long expected
_Parisienne_. Her first thought was to offer me a pair of slippers,
and to ask me to take off my boots. As is the case with so many of her
countrywomen in middle-age she had lost her figure, but had retained
her vivacity. She was full of lively talk, and, to be Irish, equally so
of good nature. She would do all she could, but, as an aside, Altanca
was not Paris. During my stay in this house I had this aside in many
forms, and _à propos_ to many matters. But though, as she impressed
on me, Altanca was not Paris, she did what she could to show that
it had not extinguished her recollections of Paris. It was pleasant
in such a place, and under such circumstances, to hear what in some
degree reminded one of French _esprit_, and of the neatness of French
expression. As was natural, too, in a Frenchwoman, she was proud of her
_potage_. I thought it rather salt. The stock probably had been made of
dried salt beef. ‘Excuse me, monsieur, the French kitchen is even more
_salée_ than the Swiss.’
‘Madame, you are right. The _potage_ is excellent; and to-morrow at
All’ Acqua, and often in the future elsewhere, I shall have reason
to recall its merits, which will ever be accompanied with pleasing
recollections of its maker.’
If the cheesemaker of Ritom might have sat for a model of Hercules,
the nephew of our host might have sat for a model of Apollo. He was
tall, clean-built, and strong-limbed, without showing much muscular
development. His features were regular, and finely-chiselled, and full
of thought. His voice was clear and musical. And yet he was only a
carpenter of Altanca, who had just returned to see his family, after
having followed his trade for nine years in California. Below the
window at which we were sitting were the few acres of the corn and
garden ground of the twenty-five families of Altanca. As we looked
out upon it, watching the people at work in the gloaming, I knew what
thoughts were passing through his mind, and so, addressing myself to
them, I said, ‘That little bit of land would be but a neglected corner
in a Californian farm.’
‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘things are on a very small scale here. But that is
not all. There is no liberty here.’
‘How?’ I asked. ‘The people here manage their own affairs as completely
as they do in California. Both are equally republican.’
‘Yes,’ he again replied, ‘but it is so only in form. There is no
liberty here.’
He meant liberty of opinion, and scope for action.
CHAPTER XVI.
AIROLO--VAL BEDRETTO--ALL’ ACQUA--THE CRUINA ALPE--THE CORNO
GLACIER--THE GRIES GLACIER--DOWN TO ULRICHEN--CONCLUSION.
So build we up the being that we are:
Thus deeply drinking in the soul of things,
We shall be wise perforce.--WORDSWORTH.
_August 25._--The _Parisienne’s_ estimate of the services that had been
rendered to me was nine francs: a low estimate if compared with English
charges; still for some even of it I was indebted to the communist,
as I was also for my not being able to get away before six o’clock.
Our destination was All’ Acqua, at the head of the Val Bedretto. As
we left Altanca I found that many of the goats and cows of the place
were suffering from the foot and mouth disease, that has of late years
been very troublesome here among our own herds. It was sad to find
such a calamity lessening the resources--and their cows and goats are
their chief resource--of these hard-working and scantily provided
people. The view, as we began to descend to the valley of the Ticino,
was very grand, as it had been from Lake Ritom down to Altanca--far
grander, indeed, than anything you can see from the valley itself.
Between the village and the valley the path is all the way over very
steep reclaimed grass land. To reclaim it had been the labour of many
generations. The dusty road of the hot valley was a poor exchange for
the Medelserthal, the Uomo, the Piora, the Ritom, and the Altanca of
yesterday. We had not, however, much of it, for we were to leave it
at Airolo. At Airolo, however, I was provokingly detained for half an
hour by my thirsty and lazy attendant, who could not, after a walk of
only an hour and a half in the early morning, pass a wine-shop without
turning into it. The long main street of Airolo was up, just as if it
had been Cheapside, in order that an iron water-main might be laid down
in it, in anticipation of its coming wants, when the railway beneath
the St. Gothard shall be opened.
A troop of artillery passed through the place. They had been out
somewhere near Andermatt for their summer manœuvres. Yesterday at Piora
we had heard the booming of their guns. I thought of them, and of the
national force to which they belonged, in connection with the railway.
Switzerland was strong when it was self-contained, and when a large
part of the country was almost inaccessible. This was what enabled
it to establish its independence. It could support itself, and its
enemies could not get at it. Now, however, it is not self-contained,
for it is very largely dependent on trade and travellers. It can no
longer produce its own food, but must look to trade and travellers for
the means of purchasing a large portion of its daily bread. If, then,
the railways that bring these travellers, and the cotton, the wool,
and the silk its factories work up, and carry to their markets the
manufactured fabrics, and which, too, bring a considerable proportion
of its daily bread, were held by an enemy, the country would be starved
into submission. This might be done in two or three years without
firing many guns, or much fighting. Nor if an enemy should desire to
invade it, would any part of the country be inaccessible. Railways and
roads have opened the whole of it. Either, then, it might be starved
into submission by having its supplies cut off, or the enemy might take
advantage of the means of communication it has already constructed, and
to which it is still adding, to make himself master of its strongholds,
and chief centres of population. Modern Switzerland, therefore, is
now no stronger than any other part of Europe: indeed, not so strong
as many of its more behindhand districts. All the grand appliances of
modern science, wealth, and organization, such as railways, gas-works,
water-works, large factories, extensive commerce, banking facilities,
must in future wars be so many sources of weakness to the weaker
powers, that is to those who are not strong enough to protect the
costly material mechanism of modern civilization. The strength with
which nature had endowed Switzerland under the old condition of things
has under their existing condition been well-nigh completely cancelled.
This may in proportion be applied generally to the whole Continent,
with the single exception of its strongest nation, for the weaker are
now in a degree and manner peculiar to these times at the mercy of
the strongest. This suggests the question, what will be the eventual
result of the developments of science and wealth having made the weaker
nations almost powerless, and the strongest nation almost omnipotent?
It was pleasant on this sunny morning to get out of the stifling heat
of Airolo. Before we could enter the Val Bedretto we had to cross the
Ticino, close to the mouth of the railway tunnel. Here was presented to
us a very busy scene, which showed how much work was doing, and would
have to be done. No sooner had we entered the Val Bedretto than we were
met by a current of crisply fresh air descending it. There is nothing
to a cursory glance particularly striking in this valley. Still it
has its own features; but if I were to attempt to put them into words
the description would appear to be not unlike that of many another
Alpine valley. This, however, would be an injustice; its pathway, its
forests, its villages, its mountains, the rents in its mountains, some
of them very deep, and from the colour of the rock almost of a pure
white, the main valley itself, its laterals, and its broad pebbly
stream, have each and all their own character, and quite enough to
interest and satisfy the mind; at least I have never found a Swiss
valley, and certainly did not find the Val Bedretto, uninteresting;
even though, as it happened, I had to stop for a quarter of an hour at
Fontana, and again for half an hour at Villa for those ever-craved,
and never-satisfying _chopines_ of wine. This annoyance, however,
even if in some degree it amounted to that, was one of very small
dimensions: it was not, for instance, to be compared in respect of any
inconvenience that attended it, with a high wind, or a smart shower,
or even an overclouded sky, or still less with a battered foot. At all
events, all is well that ends well; and so I thought, as early in the
afternoon we reached our day’s halting place at All’ Acqua, though not
at first knowing the good-fortune that was awaiting me there; for I had
now, without the least anticipation that it would be so, heard the last
of those unconscionable _chopines_ of wine.
Here, then, I am in my last little mountain inn. I have now had my last
dinner of macaroni soup, and of crude beef, and am sitting outside
in the bright sun, very pleasant at this height, and am noting the
composition of the scene. The little house stands some hundreds of
feet above the Ticino, on the left bank. The stream, though lost to
sight, is still heard from down below. Beyond it, on the opposite
side, are steep mountains, clothed on their lower flanks with more
or less detached larch, tufts of dwarf alder, and patches of grass,
to the upper limit of the tree line, and then up to the summit with
open grass and rocks. On my side, around me, the foreground is open
pasture strewn with rocks. It is studded with a few large venerable
larch. A small stream threads its way down it to supply the house with
water. This open, rock-strewn pasture rises into a near line of wooded
mountains, with a few patches of grass. These constitute the middle
distance, beyond the immediate foreground. They are backed by another
quite distinct line of mountains, which are the background of this part
of the panorama. The second range is in complete contrast to the first,
for it is much loftier, and steeper, and absolutely naked. Its summits
are in the forms of pyramids, peaks, and cliffs, and grandly dominate
the interposed green range. It is against the sky line. Down the valley
are the snow-patched finials of the St. Gothard group. Up the valley
are dark scantily-turfed slopes, tipped with snow. In that direction
will lie my path to-morrow.
I returned to the house with three Italians, who had come from
Domo d’Ossola by the Falls of the Tosa. Their coloured scarfs,
patent-leather buskins, and the rest to match, were more elaborate, and
more designed for artistic effects, than would have been considered
appropriate for mountain work by any people from the north of the Alps.
But they were engaged in a great undertaking, and this get-up would
magnify it in their friends’, and, too, in their own, eyes. While they
were at dinner the landlord came in to ask me, if I would give up to
them my guide, who in that case would accompany them as their guide and
porter in the afternoon back to Airolo, adding that he would himself,
to-morrow, take my man’s place with me. I was only too happy to hear
the proposal. I declined, however, to have anything to do with the
pecuniary part of the arrangement: that the two men must settle between
themselves. I would pay my man the whole sum for which he had agreed to
go with me across the Pass to Ulrichen, and he must pay the landlord
for taking his place for the day. This would be a gain in more ways
than one to him, for he would be paid by the Italians for returning
with them this evening to Airolo, and I would give him two days’ pay
for returning, whereas he could return from Airolo to Dissentis in one
day easily, having nothing but himself to carry. He would thus get
home two days sooner, get all I had agreed to give him for the longer
time, and what the Italians would give him for a day, having only, _per
contra_, to pay his substitute for one day. At this proposal he burst
into a storm of wrath, and demanded three days’ pay for returning.
This I told him would be contrary to the contract, even had he gone to
Ulrichen. In his rage he denied that there had ever been any contract.
I produced it. He then took his money; and much to my satisfaction, I
saw no more of ‘the most intelligent, and in every respect the best
guide in Dissentis.’
The family of the inn comprised six little bare-footed, bare-headed
children. The eldest could hardly have been more than eight years old;
the youngest was an infant in arms. Their confidence was readily won
by a distribution of ten cent pieces. The infant clutched his piece
as tenaciously, and appreciated it as highly, as the eldest. The
good-natured signora was pleased to find that her little ones were
regarded with some interest, and not as nuisances. I spent half an hour
in the evening in the dairy to witness the economies of the butter, and
of the cheese making. The good man had a sturdy female assistant, with
broader shoulders than his own, who accompanied him to the alpe to milk
the cows and to bring home the milk, which was immediately curded over
the fire, and set for cheese of the Pioresque kind. The milk that had
been set for cream, was now skimmed for butter. The sturdy assistant
churned the cream, while the good man converted the skimmed milk into
meagre cheese. The whey from both the fat and the meagre curd, was set
to the fire a second time, for the production of the second curd. This
is too soft and poor for cheese. In French Switzerland it is called
serré; here it goes by a name which is pronounced muscarp, but written
_mascarpa_. The thin watery whey expressed from this is given to the
pigs, who stand outside, with their snouts thrust in at the door, to
claim their rights. By the time the whey is ready for them it is almost
dark, only just enough light remaining to enable you to see that,
as they silently absorb gallon after gallon of the liquid, they are
‘visibly swelling before your eyes.’ The muscarp is then carried into
the house in a wooden keeler, and the good man, his prolific wife, the
sturdy female attendant, and the six children, the two eldest of whom
had, to the extent of their capacities assisted at the butter and the
cheese making, sit at the table round the tub, and with wooden spoons
address themselves to its contents. I take a spoonful. I had not tasted
curds and whey since I was a boy in the West Indies, where the mess
goes by I suppose the Scotch name of bonnie clabber. To encourage
the family party, for the junket does not quite equal my fancied
recollections, I pronounce it to be good. ‘But,’ quoth the good man,
‘you would not think so, if it were all your supper every evening.’
_August 26._--At 5 A.M. was off with Clemente Forni. It was as fresh
and bright as could be wished for one’s last morning among the
mountains. The way was over short rock-strewn turf, by the side of
the infant Ticino, with near mountains right and left and before me.
Clemente was of the kind of men you take to at once, and who give you
afterwards no reason--I will suppose this of him--for changing your
opinion. Everything around, and within, promised well for a pleasant
day on the Gries glacier, which both last year, and the year before,
I had looked at over the head of the Valais, from the top of the
Grimsel, with a desire for a nearer acquaintance. From what I had
seen of Clemente yesterday he seemed industrious, thoughtful, gentle,
honest, one who had a head, a heart, and a conscience. Indeed, the
stream of his discursive talk, fed from these fountains, never ran dry.
This made him a man whom it was pleasant to walk and to talk with. His
only scheming was how he might by his own hard labour bring up his six
little folk, and as many more as might come. In about an hour and a
half we reached the cheese _châlet_ of the Cruina alpe, in a little
mountain-locked bay, well sheltered from every wind. The sixty-four
cows kept upon it had all been milked, and with but a few exceptions
here and there, were all again lying down, knowing that they should not
be taken for the day to pasture, till the four herdsmen had made the
cheese, and had their own breakfast.
We entered the _châlet_. The milk of the sixty-four cows was being
curded in a gigantic copper caldron, over a clear smokeless cembra
fire. A man of about six-and-thirty, not tall, but broad and bony,
of iron frame and massive muscles, was in charge of the caldron. At
another fire was another of the party, preparing a pot of polenta
made with cream. The other two were lying on thick gray blankets
at the further end of the single room. The polenta was soon ready,
and was carried, in the pot in which it had been made, outside the
_châlet_--there was no room for the party within--and six one-legged
stools set round it for the four herdsmen, my guide, and myself, and
a round-bowled spoon brought out for each of us. We ranged ourselves
on the one-legged stools around the pot. One who hails from the south
of the Tweed will probably prefer polenta made with cream to oatmeal
porridge. When they had finished the polenta, each dipped with a
miniature wooden keeler, which does duty for dish, plate, and basin,
out of a large wooden tub as much muscarp as he would require for
supplementing his first course of polenta. A great deal of muscarp is
made from sixty-four cows, and it is the work of one of the herdsmen
to take this down daily to All’ Acqua, from whence it is sent on upon
another back to Bedretto. The man who takes it down to All’ Acqua
returns with a load of wood. On leaving the party I had some difficulty
in persuading the broad-shouldered, brawny-muscled cheese-maker to
accept a franc for his hospitality.
As we passed through the herd one of the cows that was on her legs
came up to us, and rubbed her head against my guide. ‘That,’ he said,
‘is my cow.’ While she was thus expressing, in her dumb fashion,
her satisfaction at seeing him--there was no hypocrisy in this
recognition--two dun yearling heifers rose from the ground, and coming
up to him, as the cow had done, began to lick his hand. These also,
I needed not to have been told it, were his. Here was irrefragable
evidence of the gentleness of the good man. What a pleasant sight to
the cow was the familiar form and dress! How often had those yearling
heifers eaten from that hand! They had never been cuffed, or kicked, or
sworn at. The wife and children, too, then, had had, and would continue
to have, done for them all that man could do at All’ Acqua; and so
would all who might come in the good man’s way. Who could help liking
and respecting one, for whom his beasts were showing such confiding
regard, or could fail to be reminded of very different scenes he had
witnessed elsewhere? When a horse shrinks from the man who has charge
of it, you need not be told in words how he is in the habit of treating
it. No further evidence is needed. On this occasion I, too, came in for
some share of attention, for a goat that was kept with the herd ran up
to me, and, rubbing her nose on my hand, begged for a pinch of salt.
How gladly would I have complied with her request! Were I ever again to
visit the alpe of Cruina I would not go without a pinch or two of salt.
We were now near the head of the Pass. The grass was beginning to thin
out. The marmots were abroad for their morning feed. As we disturbed
them, they wriggled home with a slow and awkward movement, for their
bodies are long and their legs short; and when they had reached the
door of their runs, so that they could feel somewhat secure, paused
for a moment or two to make out the designs of the intruders. Just
before us was the Corno glacier to which we were approaching, and on
to which a few more steps would take us. We had ascended about 3,000
feet from All’ Acqua, and were now at an elevation of 8,000 feet. ‘The
little sinuous paths of earthly care’ were far below, and around us
were some of ‘the flowers that embellish’ the pedestrian’s way, and
‘the springs that refresh’ him at these heights. One of the former was
a pale sky-blue gentian, a flower that still embellishes memory, as
it did on that day my path, and from one of the latter I had a rare
draught, at the spot where it welled out of the rock a little below the
glacier. And now we are upon the Corno glacier, itself. It has some
peculiarities. First it is in the form of a saddle, or the segment of
a circle, with the glacier for the arc of the segment, the chord being
underground. In a word it is convex. This double inclination is one
peculiarity. Another is found in its _moraine_. As it has no lateral
glaciers to cause medial _moraines_, you would suppose that it would
have two lateral _moraines_, and nothing more. It has, however, nothing
of the kind on either side, but, instead, one large, well compacted,
wall-like _moraine_ some considerable way from the margin. And now we
are struck with another peculiarity. The glacier on the Gries side is
depressed along the middle in the axis of its length. As, then, the
_moraine_ is not on the margin, we should have expected to find it
following the line of greatest central depression, whereas it runs
along the face of one of the inclines midway between the margin and the
line of greatest depression. These, then, are the questions the sight
suggests to us; Why are there not two _moraines_, one on each margin of
the glacier? How comes it that the single _moraine_, which must have
been formed from the mountains above, seeing that it is not on one of
the margins, is not in the line of the central depression? How comes it
to be so compactly and cleanly built along the middle of the descent
of one side towards the central depression? And what has produced this
central depression? Clemente from his knowledge of the locality was
able to answer all these questions, I think, satisfactorily. In winter
the glacier is buried in snow to a great depth. At that season, and in
the spring, the snow-inclines from the two mountains meet not above
the line of longitudinal greatest depression in summer, but exactly
along the line of the _moraine_. Here in winter and spring is the line
of greatest depression. Every rock, therefore, that falls from either
mountain rolls down to this line, and is added to the _moraine_. As a
general rule rocks only fall in winter and spring. This accounts for
their being nowhere except along this line, that is to say for the
strange position of the _moraine_ along the flank of an incline of
ice. In the early spring, when the snow is beginning to melt, and for
some time longer, the _moraine_ continues to be the line of greatest
depression. At this time, therefore, all the surface melting flows
along it through its open pile of stones: this accounts for their
being washed clean and kept open. As the summer advances, and the
sun becomes more vertical, the snow is melted away to some distance
below the _moraine_, and the line of greatest depression is advanced
considerably, along which, as long as there is any surface snow
melting, there is a stream flowing, which, as long as it lasts, aids in
deepening the central depression. This accounts for the summer line of
depression along the middle of the glacier, far below the _moraine_.
This glacier, then, as we said at first, is, when regarded as a whole,
of a convex form; but a transverse section of it on the Gries side,
and taken at a point alongside of the _moraine_ would be concave. Its
position explains its convexity. It descends on the summit of a gentle
ridge, or if you prefer so to state it, is formed on the summit of a
gentle ridge; it naturally, therefore, flows down each side of this
ridge. I have given Clemente’s explanation of the singular position of
the _moraine_, and of the central concavity of the western limb of the
glacier.
Having left the Corno we got upon the Gries by passing along the flank
of the last spur of the mountain to the north of the Corno glacier. At
its extremity, with the Corno on your left, you command a grand view
of the broad expanse of the Gries. To this we now descended. It here
presents a smooth surface, rising to the south-west. We passed the
line of poles, each fixed in a counterpoise of rock to keep it erect,
which mark the horse track across the glacier from the Upper Valais to
Domo d’Ossola. We spent about an hour upon it, walking up it, in the
direction of the lofty, massive, smooth-faced, umber-coloured mountain,
which protrudes through it to the west of the track to Domo d’Ossola.
We then recovered the path to Ulrichen.
One goes on a glacier, or goes to see anything, for the sake of the
thoughts the sight will awaken. This is as much the case with the man
who is unconscious, as with the man who is conscious, of thinking; as
much with the clod as with the philosopher; with the man who sneers at
thought, that is to say all thought but his own, as with the man who
knows that thought is his life, and himself. Now one of the thoughts
that interest the mind as you stand on this mighty mass of ice, and
know that, as you stand upon it, you and it are being invisibly,
imperceptibly, and regularly moved on together, is what moves it? That
the movement of the Gries is for local reasons unusually slow, even for
a glacier, heightens the interest of the question submitted to your
thought. I had at that time a wound on one of my finger-nails, which
had been caused by the bite of a dog two months back. It had originally
been at the root of the nail. But now it had in the course of those two
months advanced almost to the outer edge of the nail, that is to say
it had with the utmost slowness, but also with the utmost regularity,
travelled from the inner to the outer edge, a journey of an inch in
two months. Now what had caused it to move in this way? It was evident
that the whole nail, which appears to be firmly fixed to the finger,
had moved on with it. Day and night the movement had been going on; but
what was it that had been making it move? I suppose the pressure from
behind caused by the growth of new matter. This growth of new matter at
the root of the nail had caused continuous pressure from behind. This
continuous pressure had been propagated throughout the whole extent
of the nail, and so had obliged it to move on. Is not the growth of
the upper snow-field, and the consequent pressure from it, exactly
analogous? Is it not equally continuous? And is it not similarly
propagated throughout the whole glacier? And, too, with the same
result, that is to say is it not this pressure which obliges the whole
mass to move on in the line of least resistance? The wounded point in
the nail marked the rate of advance, just as a rock on the surface of
the glacier might.
We may see an instance of what continuous pressure will do in the case
of a tree growing near an iron fence. They at last come in contact,
and the pressure being from the direction of the tree bends the iron.
The comparatively soft bark is not cut into: it is the iron that gives
way. If the pressure had been in the reverse direction, that is from
the iron, the tree would have been cut into. So with the root of a tree
in an old wall. The pressure being continuous from the root cracks
the wall, though the root is soft and the wall hard. Some ilexes,
which a few years back I saw growing on the ruins of the Palace of the
Cæsars on the Palatine, supplied good instances of the effect of this
continuous action of soft on hard substances. Their roots had rent and
lifted large masses of what had previously been solid blocks of the
firmest masonry, that had stood uninjured through so long a series of
centuries, and, had it not been for these roots, would still have been
solid and unmoved. So also with the expansion of water when freezing
in the cranny of a rock, the expansion of the soft material burst the
hard one. The propagation then of continuous pressure throughout the
mass of the Gries glacier, although it is four miles long, and one mile
broad, and no one can say how thick, may possibly be sufficient to
account for its being moved on in the line of least resistance. And if
the principle be correct may it not be applied to glaciers of twenty
times the magnitude of the Gries? that is to say to all glaciers? In
the instances referred to, the formation of new matter at the root of
the nail, and of new wood upon the trunk and on the root of a tree, the
pressure comes from what is soft, and is applied effectually to what is
hard: so may it be with the action of the snow-field on the glacier.
We left the Gries by the same mountain by which we had reached it, with
the difference that we now, instead of traversing its southern, had
to descend its northern side. First, however, we had to ascend for a
few hundred yards. When you have reached the highest point of the path,
you look upon a large expanse of the Bernese Oberland. You may find
among the Alps many views that are more extensive, and many that in
some one feature, or other, are more striking than this. What, however,
is before you from this point is in a very high degree impressive. It
is a wondrous scene of Alpine architecture, simple in its elements,
but grand in its simplicity. To your left is one of the exits of the
Gries. The branch glacier in it terminates abruptly, not after a gentle
declivity, such as that of the body of the glacier, but in the mid
descent of a precipitous outfall. The previously smooth surface is
here ruptured with many deep, yawning, transverse seams. Beyond the
glacier--to you its further boundary--is a mountain so steep that you
may suppose, and perhaps rightly, that no human foot could ascend it.
This glacier gorge at your side is a lateral of the transverse valley
below you, a valley of enormous depth, scantily clad with humble Alpine
pasturage. You can just make out the herd that is grazing in it. On
looking over the long steep-sided mountain which forms its opposite
range, at the foot of which the cows are grazing, the south-eastern
region of the Bernese Oberland is spread out before you. It is at
that distance at which the field of vision may comprise many objects,
but every object is still seen distinctly. In this wide, verdureless
field, there is no suggestion of life. The midday sun, which is shining
brightly upon it, brings out nothing but the gray of the summits of
rock, which, when not in the shade, show of a pale ash colour, and the
white of the summits of snow, which gleams and dazzles in its purity.
This dark gray, pale ash, and gleamy white are the only colouring. The
gray and pale ash predominate in an endless variety of forms--mountain
walls, ridges, battlements, bastions, and escarpments. Every here and
there above these is a dome, or a tower, or a pinnacle of gleaming
white, just as the domes, and towers, and pinnacles of a great city
rise above its other buildings. This is a city of the world’s Builder
in which every building is an Alp.
You continue your descent, and soon lose this grand view. But the
mountain side, down which your way lies, is grander than usual, longer,
and steeper. Your path takes you by intrusive dykes of gneiss and of
a black basaltic-looking rock. We here overtook two professors, a
botanist with his cases, and an entomologist with his net. They had
been beaten by the ascent, and were retracing their steps, fagged,
crestfallen, and disappointed. They had our sympathy for their
pursuits, and our condolence for their disappointment. Poor fellows!
they had just made the painful discovery--may it not have been made too
late--that in their mode of life there had been too much desk work,
and not enough field work. When human physiology shall be better
understood these sad mistakes will not be so frequent. You have now
got down into the valley. You look up at the mountain you have been
descending. Its height, its steepness, its mass, its ruggedness, its
hardness, its inexorableness are so overpowering that your eye shrinks
from the effort to aid you in constructing an image of it. At the foot
of that high, overhanging, cloud-cleaving upheaval of adamant, you feel
very small, very feeble; to your present apprehension your bones are no
more than straws, if so much. For a time you allow these impressions
of the locality to run their course. Your way is then along the deep
valley. As you advance down it you give more heed than usual to the
hurrying dashing stream, and you note with more observance than usual
the reappearance of the first trees, and of the first _châlets_, and
even the form and size of the detached rocks, for the thought is in
your mind that these sounds and sights are being presented to you, for
this year at all events, now for the last time. And so about midday you
reach the little flat of Ulrichen, and your Month is ended. Your walk
will have taken you over between 300 and 400 miles, comprising more
than a dozen Passes of one kind or another; and you will have seen much
of nature and of man to awaken thought, and to interest you. Every day
will have been worth living, and not least so the last. But whatever
your capacity for being benefited, or interested, by what you may have
seen, you will be but slightly, if at all, indebted for it to that
eight-parts-of-speech lore, the study of which, though it formed the
chief occupation of all the days of our blessed youth, did not issue in
enabling all of us to know so much, or so little, as the names of those
eight parts of speech.
NOTE TO CHAPTER XIII.
_SOME REMARKS ON THE HISTORY AND EFFECTS OF OUR POOR LAW IN CONNEXION
WITH PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP._
I relegate this note to the end of the volume, because its introduction
into the body of the work would have been too great an interruption of
the continuity of the narrative.
A little comparative history may add to the interest of the picture
which the Prätigäu presents. In that valley, as in many others in
Switzerland, the peasants are ready to give so high a price for an acre
of land that large properties have become impossible; that is to say,
there cannot be, as the general rule, any proprietors in localities so
circumstanced excepting peasants. In England, however, where an acre
of agricultural land does not sell for more than, or for as much as,
half of what an acre sells for in these valleys, there are no peasant
proprietors. Here, notwithstanding the cheapness of land, it is the
small properties that have become impossible, and the general rule
is that there can be none but large proprietors. The difference is
diametrical. Can it in any way be accounted for?
The question suggested to us is, How has it come about that, while
the peasant proprietors have extinguished the large proprietors in
the Prätigäu, the large proprietors have extinguished the peasant
proprietors in England? As respects the case of the former there can
be no difficulty in seeing that, if the peasant cultivators will give
more for land than those who would buy for investment could afford to
give, then those who would buy for investment must disappear from the
market, and that already existing large properties will gradually melt
away under the action of this solvent. As respects ourselves the answer
usually given is that the land in this country is too dear for peasant
proprietors. This supposition, however, as I have just noticed, is the
very reverse of the fact. In Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, and
in parts of Germany and of Italy peasant proprietors give a great deal
more for land than it would cost them in England. It may, therefore,
be true that in England the cheapness of land has been one of the
conditions that has contributed to the formation of large estates; but
it is quite impossible to maintain that in this country the dearness of
agricultural land has extinguished the class of peasant proprietors,
because here the price of land, so far from being an obstacle to the
existence of the class, has presented, and at this moment presents,
quite exceptionally favourable conditions for its maintenance and
increase.
Can any other reason be alleged? In the Chapter to which this note is
appended I have pointed out that the English agricultural labourer
does not possess the knowledge and the habits of thought and life,
which are indispensable in a peasant proprietor. They are indispensable
in him, because they it is that enable him to live as a peasant
proprietor. This, if it be true, must be a serious impediment to the
re-establishment of the class amongst us, but cannot be regarded as the
primary cause of its extinction, because Englishmen were as capable as
other people of this knowledge and of these habits. What was really and
primarily in fault was not the decay of this knowledge and of these
habits, but that which engendered and brought about this decay amongst
us alone of all people.
If, then, the cause is neither in the present price of land here, nor
in any inherent incapacity in Englishmen, that is to say, if it be
neither in the land, nor in the men, where else can we look for it?
There remains no other direction in which we can look but law, and the
interpretation of law. In the Middle Ages we had the peasant class of
those times fully developed here. There were in this country, as was
perhaps the case everywhere then, variations in the possessions and
rights of the class, but still at that time peasant proprietors pretty
generally, if not quite universally, formed the basis of the English
village community. Why did they cease to do so? I think the answer
is that in this country, from a combination of exceptional causes,
legislation and the interpretation of law and custom became adverse
to the maintenance of the class. The exceptional causes were, first,
the strength of the governing class (locally represented by Lords of
manors), which was a consequence of the Norman conquest; and the great
rise in the money value of cheese, hides, and wool, especially the
last, consequent on the influx of silver from the New World during
the sixteenth century, while for the production of these articles the
climate, and for their export the easily traversed surface of the
country, nowhere far from the coast, and numerous excellent harbours
offered pre-eminent advantages. There was, therefore, both a strong
motive for the extinction of peasant properties, and power sufficient
for effecting it. Peasant properties, which everywhere implied rights
of appurtenant common pasturage, made the formation of large runs for
numerous flocks of sheep, or for a large combination of cattle breeding
with arable culture, impossible. They were, therefore, apparently in
the interests of the community, gradually rendered valueless to their
owners, absorbed, and extinguished. This process, though it commenced
at an earlier date, was chiefly carried out in the reign of Elizabeth.
Events in this matter only took the direction and course which might
have been expected.
But it is clear that if the right of the peasant to maintain himself
from the produce of a piece of land which he himself cultivates for
the support of his family is abrogated, he must either cease to
exist, and then the cultivation of the land would be impossible, or
he must be maintained in some other way. For centuries wages, the
alternative method, were not universally, or even generally, sufficient
for this purpose. The operations of agriculture were not at that
time as continuous as they are now; the demand for any amount of
agricultural produce was not as unfailing as it is now; and the farmer
had not access to such stores of capital as exist now. Under these
circumstances the alternative was insufficient. What then was to be
done? How was the existence of the peasant to be maintained? He could
not be allowed the hide of plough land and the common pasturage rights
of his forefathers, for these were obstacles to the formation of sheep
farms, and to large culture; nor could wages be relied on continuously.
The method hit upon showed the inventiveness of the English mind quite
as much as any one of the many institutions and discoveries for which
the world is indebted to the inhabitants of this island. It was to
give to the dispossessed peasantry, who were henceforth to become
agricultural labourers, a claim on the parishes, in which they resided
and laboured, to the amount requisite for the support of themselves and
of their families, when through failure of work or of wages, through
sickness or age, they became incapable of supporting themselves.
Three centuries ago this was the _rationale_ of the English poor
law, and it is so at this day. It was a substitute for peasant
proprietorship, and it aided in utterly extinguishing it. If a little
bit of land is the only means of supporting the life of a family,
the family will, however great the cost in labour, support itself
by this means. But if you make wages, supplemented by a claim on
the produce of the land, an alternative means; and at the same time
bring into play causes which shall partly dispose, and partly drive,
the peasantry to accept this alternative; they will accept it, and
peasant proprietorship will cease. This I think is in a few words the
explanation of the unique fact that in this country there is no class
of peasant proprietors. Our legislation favoured the consolidation
and accumulation of large estates. It did not favour the maintenance
of peasant properties: with respect to them its action and pressure
were in the opposite direction; while at the same time it gave the
peasants an alternative means of support. The tendency of events, and
the pressure of circumstances were irresistible; and the whole class
either became disposed, or was driven, to accept the alternative; and
so the class of peasant proprietors was utterly extinguished. Had
circumstances, legislation, and the interpretation the law put on the
rights of the class favoured its maintenance in this country, we should
have had here a peasant class similar to that of Switzerland, France,
Belgium, Germany, Italy, and other countries. The existence here of
exceptional conditions had an exceptional issue.
The extinction of the class has been followed by many large and
important consequences. Of these the most obvious is the difference
between the class that has been introduced as the basis of our social
system, that of agricultural labourers, and the class that was
extinguished, that of peasant proprietors. No greater difference can
exist between men. Peasant proprietors in their industry, tenacity,
and stability have just the qualities which might have fitted them
for constituting an useful element in the foundation of so artificial
and ill-balanced a social fabric as that of England, for as to their
narrowness of view, their chief defect of character, that in so rich
a community would have been of little detriment in any way; and
besides, too, in this country we must compare what their narrowness
would have been with the far greater narrowness of our agricultural
labourers. On the other side agricultural labourers are a very poor
foundation for the social fabric, and most especially in a commercial
and manufacturing community, which already from these sources has a
dangerously numerous _prolétariat_. As a class they are improvident,
thriftless, shiftless, have no sense of self-dependence, and not much
of self-respect, their self-acting effectual education having been that
which results from the teaching of wages, supplemented by a poor law.
The question of peasant proprietorship, as now discussed among
ourselves, is generally restricted to economical considerations. It is
asked, as if this contained the whole question, whether the economical
results of peasant culture are as satisfactory, acre for acre, as those
of large farms? This, though an important part of the question, is not
the whole of it: perhaps it is not the chief part of it. The character
of the basis of our social fabric may be a matter of more consequence
to the nation than even the amount of produce per acre. It will
explain what is contained in this remark, if I say that I suppose that
everybody would think that to admit to our parliamentary constituency
a million voters, whose sentiments and ideas were in the main those
of peasant proprietors, would be a less hazardous operation than to
admit a million pauperized agricultural labourers, who, possibly,
might endeavour to use the franchise for the purpose of securing a
more liberal administration of the poor law. And, practically, there
would be some justification for such an attempt, if made by them, for
the poor law may be regarded historically as the compensation given
to their class for the extinction of commonable rights in the land,
and, together with those commonable rights, of peasant properties; for
it is clear that if those common rights, and the associated peasant
properties, had been retained, there would so far have been no occasion
for a poor law.
It is obvious that the improvidence and misery of our agricultural
labourers have for many generations given us a large supply of labour
for building up our manufacturing and commercial establishments, and
for peopling the New World, and our Australian and other colonies.
The same cause may also have enabled us to maintain our military
force by voluntary enlistment. But as the same amount of land in the
hands of peasant proprietors maintains four or five times as large an
agricultural population as it does when cultivated by hired labourers,
it is quite possible that we might have received even a better supply
from the alternative system. At all events, now, in consequence of a
largely increased demand for men, contemporaneously with an actual
decrease of our relatively small agricultural population, which
under existing circumstances is our chief nursery for recruits for
all purposes, we are beginning to be pressed hard for men. We are
now suffering from a want of men, and would be glad if there were
some element in our agrarian system which made that ingredient of
our population far more considerable than it now is. Another evil
consequence, then, of a mistake made three hundred years ago has begun
to manifest itself.
The price of labour is closely connected with its supply, insomuch that
it may be argued that if a system has hitherto produced an abundant
supply it must also have lowered its cost. It is obvious, however,
to remark that the value of labour depends not so much on the amount
of wages that are paid, as on the amount and character of work that
is done. This is so much the case that it has come to be regarded as
a general rule that holds good all over the world, that labour is
least productive where wages are lowest; and there have been some who
have thought that this might have been said in their proportion of
our agricultural labourers. As a matter of fact, however, wages have
been higher in this than in neighbouring countries. Nor, in estimating
the cost of our labour, would it be allowable to leave out of our
calculation the amount of our poor rate. That has for centuries been
raised for the purpose of supplementing wages, and so is practically
a part of the wages of the labouring class, levied on the owners of
land and houses. By the way, we often hear this limitation of the
incidence of the poor rate complained of; but if our account of the
_rationale_ of the origin and action of the poor law be correct, it
may be questioned whether the incidence of the rate ought not, in
rural districts, to have been restricted entirely to land, because
the motive of the law was to enable large estates to be formed, and
to be cultivated by a poorly paid class of labourers, who for many
generations were by the law tied to the land they cultivated.
Another consequence of the obliteration of the class of peasant
proprietors, which is well worthy of notice on account of its wide
and deep effects, is that it has prevented the price of every acre of
agricultural land in the country from rising beyond half the sum it
would now have reached had this class continued to exist amongst us.
In far poorer countries than England peasants will gladly give for
such land twice as much as is its market price here. If we had this
class here, its members would do the same here. But, as this class
has been eliminated here, those, who in this country purchase land as
an investment for capital, have it all their own way. The class who
would bid twice as much for the land as the capitalist now gets it for
does not exist amongst us. The consequence is that he buys his land
cheap, very cheap indeed. This will be seen, if what he gets for his
money is compared with what other people get for theirs when it is
put into consols. The latter get a little more than 3 per cent. with
some prospect of depreciation of the capital, and with a certainty
in these days of depreciation in the purchasing power of the 3 per
cent. interest. The capitalist, however, who invests in land gets
for the present a little less than 3 per cent., but besides this
immediate percentage he gets the safest of all investments, plus the
most improving in the long run of all investments, plus the social and
political status the possession of land confers, plus several minor
advantages. Investors, therefore, in land in this country have no
reason to complain of the price they give for their land, or of what
they get for their money.
For this they are indebted to the extinction amongst us of the class of
peasant proprietors. Just as the people who buy ships are the people
who want ships for the business they understand and are engaged in,
and the people who buy factories are those who want factories for the
business they understand and are engaged in, and those who buy stock
in trade of any kind are those who understand and are engaged in the
trade for which the stock they purchase is necessary, so those who are
most eager to buy land are those who understand how to get a living
out of the land by the application to it of their own labour. They
are the class, who may be regarded as, _par excellence_, the natural
purchasers of land. This class, however, has in this country been
extinguished. The market, therefore, has been completely cleared for
those who would wish to purchase land as an investment, and they, under
the present condition of things amongst us, are limited to those who
are able to invest largely, or who buy with the view of adding their
purchases to properties that are already large. They, therefore, in
buying land have it all their own way; and this is the reason why they
get their land at a price which yields an immediate return of something
less than 3 per cent., plus many other valuable considerations. If
the peasant proprietor class existed here to such an extent as to
effectually compete with them, they would have to give a price that
would not yield 1¹⁄₂ per cent. for agricultural land. They do, then,
get their land very cheap, which is a result, perhaps one that was not
originally foreseen, of the action during three centuries of our poor
law. The extinction of the class of peasant proprietors has thus very
effectively aided the practice of settling and charging estates in
bringing about the large agglomerations of landed property, together
with all the resultant peculiarities, which distinguish our agrarian
system from that of any other country.
But if those who buy land get it at half its value, those who sell it
get for it only half of what they otherwise would. This suggests the
question whether it would be better for the country that the value of
the agricultural land of the United Kingdom should be doubled? This
may be answered by the question whether it is not better for us to
have land at its present price of say 60_l._ an acre, than it would be
to have it at 30_l._? If 60_l._ is better than 30_l._, then I suppose
120_l._ would be better than 60_l._
The facts and considerations that have been now referred to may
throw some light on a question of which a great deal has been heard
lately--that of what is called tenant rights. It may, of course, be
asked whether the progress of time has endowed tenants with any new
rights? How can the tenants of to-day have rights of which the tenants
of yesterday had no conception? Or, to speak broadly, can a tenant,
as a tenant, have any right except that of entering into a contract
with a landowner, and of invoking the law for the enforcement of the
provisions of his contract? But if it were answered that time can
give him no new rights, and that he can have no rights but those for
which he contracts, still what is really meant by the question would
not be settled. By a process of legislation the land of the country
having been formed into estates of such dimensions that their owners
cannot possibly cultivate them, and small proprietors having been
extinguished, the tenants are now presented to us as the only producers
of food for the community. Under these circumstances the question
arises whether it would not be for the advantage of the community
that the position of the tenants should be so improved as to lead to
their investing more money than they can at present with safety in the
cultivation of the soil, that is to say to their producing a great deal
more food for the community? This improvement in the tenants’ position
can be conceded only at the cost of the existing legal rights of the
landowners, and can be refused only at the cost of the imprescriptible
natural rights of the community; for of such a character is the right
of the community to the greatest amount of food the soil of the country
can be made to yield. This is in a sense the highest of all rights, for
it is the right of a community to existence. It was in the name, and
for the sake, of this right that under the conditions of past times
the rights of individual proprietorship, which were not primeval, were
first conceded. They had become necessary for the cultivation of the
soil, and, therefore, were allowed to be established at the expense
of the previously existing common rights. In this view tenant rights
are not rights which the tenants can claim in law, but rights which it
may be supposed belong to the community, and the concession of which
to the tenants the community may demand for the general advantage, it
may be even for the general safety. The two years’ notice which the
present Premier is said to regard with favour is precisely a concession
of this kind. It is a curtailment of the rights of the landowners,
to which the tenants can have no legal, or rightful, claim: it is,
however, a concession which, presumably, would promote the advantage
of the public, and which, therefore, public policy may require. If
improvements of this kind in the position of the tenants would increase
the produce of the country by one half, then that addition of a half
to the produce of the country is exactly the weight of the argument
in favour of the concession of tenant rights so called: to endow the
tenants with these rights would add, every year, one hundred million
pounds’ worth of food to the produce of this country, that is to say to
the subsistence of the community.
This list of the consequences of the working for three centuries of our
English poor law might be greatly increased; for instance, the division
of the people it has helped to bring about into a comparatively small
class who are very rich and a very large class who have not, and never
can have, any real property, accounts for the elsewhere unheard of
demands that are made on the charity of the small class, and which
demands are complied with because of their obvious necessity. Again
also the great bulk of the agricultural land of the kingdom being held
in large estates--a result in part of the working of the same law--the
owners of these large estates can afford to spend no inconsiderable
part of the rent of the whole kingdom in London, which to a very
appreciable extent accounts for the vastness of London. The poorness,
and almost meanness of life in our provincial towns are also to be
accounted for by a reference to the same fact. The rent of the land
around these towns is not spent in them, but in London or elsewhere:
at all events the adjacent landowners rarely live in, or contribute
anything towards the embellishment of the life of, these towns. Enough,
however, has been said to show that the endowment and establishment
of pauperism, as an integral part of the British constitution, as
much so as the Crown, or the Peerage, has had very extensive effects.
It could not have been otherwise, for it was the elimination from
the constitution of society, as far as the mass of the people were
concerned, of the old elements of self-dependence and property, and
the substitution in their place of dependence and of public doles.
These were new conditions to which all the arrangements of society in
their endless ramifications had to accommodate and adjust themselves,
and to which the future progress of society had to conform.
The course of events, then, taking the words in their widest sense, is
what has given to the Prätigäu its ten thousand peasant proprietors,
and it is what has extinguished the class amongst ourselves. If the
course of events affecting each of us had been interchanged their
condition might have been witnessed in this country, and our condition
might have been theirs. Whether it be possible in these days, in
the face of emigration, of high wages, of settled estates, of the
demoralization of the agricultural labourer, and of a poor law, to
recover the lost class may well be doubted. But however that may be, it
cannot be good policy to maintain any artificial, that is to say any
legislative, obstacles in the way of the reappearance amongst us of the
class, if that be possible, any more than it can be to maintain any
arrangements that might be having the effect of hindering capital from
being employed on the largest scale, and to the greatest profitable
amount per acre, in increasing the produce of the soil. Food-factories,
of at least 1,000 acres each, appear to be a natural result of the
combination of capital and science now possible. Let us, therefore,
have a clear stage for these. That, however, is no reason why we should
not at the same time have a clear stage for peasant proprietors also.
Let nothing be done with the view of favouring and nursing either one
or the other, but at the same time let nothing be maintained that is
a hindrance to the existence of either. There appears to be no ground
for supposing that our present land-system favours either; it may not,
however, be equally beyond controversy that it is not a hindrance to
both.
INDEX.
Acletta, 26
All’ Acqua, 333
Family of landlord at, 335
Altanca, 323
Alveneu, 59
Andeer, 94
Andermatt, 17
Animals, domestic, at Dissentis, 27
Atmospheric effects in the Upper Engadin, 157
Aversthal, 97-136
Barons, the old, 66, 73, 257, 283
Blue flowers, abundance of, 246
Bormio, 223
Braulio, Val di, 225
Burial, an early, 59
Buying cheap and selling dear, 82
Campsut, 103
Capital, uses and effects of, 75
What it requires, 79
Carpenter, a, of Altanca, 327
Casaccia, 143
Castles, old feudal, 66
Caterpillars, a colony of, 11
Cembra, what destroys forests of, 107
The Livigno candle, 207
Châlet, the first, 271
The smallest, 307
Church-going in winter, 93
Circumnavigator, a Grison, 37, 164
Clemente Forni, 336
Recognised by his cattle, 338
Accounts for the peculiarities of the Corno glacier, 341
Clemgia, 262
Cloud-effects, 275
Coire, 35, 298
Communism, historical, 73
Communist, a, 301
Parting with, 334
Corno glacier, peculiarities of, 341
Cresta, 104-125
Cristallo, M., 232
Cruina alpe, 337
Cruschetta, 262
Davos am Platz, 53
Davos Dörfli, 271
Dentro, V. di, 222
Dinner at Peist, 46
At Juf, 129
At Tauffers, 250
At Schiersch, 286
Dissentis, 25, 300
Earth-pillars, 43
Electric telegraph at Dissentis, 30
Engadin, Upper, 150
Lower, 266
Etruscan, the Septimer an--trade route, 139
Fauna of the Grisons, 127
Ferrera, Inner, 99
Ausser, 100
Flies, correlation of--to properties, 202
Fluela, the, 268
Forcellina, the, 132
Fountain at Dissentis, 29
Frenchman, the only--met, 308
Gadmenthal, 9
Gatherings of men of different epochs, 166
Geese, live--sent by post, 114
Geologic history, 89
Germans in Switzerland, 81, 110
Exceptional, 193
At Santa Maria, 228
At Tarasp, 265
At Coire, 298
Glacier motion, 343
Glaciers, the Stein, 14
Of Upper Engadin, 159
The Roseg, 173
La Pischa, 181
The Morterasch, 185
The Grialetsch, 267
The Corno, 341
The Gries, 343
Glurns, 245
Göschenen, 17
Grass-cutter, a--at Tauffers, 255
Gries glacier, 343
Grison fortune-seekers, 20, 152, 187
Grüsch, 288
Guest, welcome the coming, 65
Gunpowder, unforeseen uses of, 85
Haymaking in the mountains, 311
Hen proposed for supper, 49
High-level road, 42
Hohen Rhätien, 66
Honesty, connexion of--with property, 241
Hypsometry of the Grisons, 177
Impassivity, English, 299
Inference, a comfortable--from excess, 119
Instinct, an--with a human motive, 116
Italian influences at Casaccia, 144
Tourists, 333
Juf, 128
Kirchet, the, 3
Klosters, 274
Kublis, 284
Lakes of the Upper Engadin, 159
Land, efforts to obtain, 5
Reclamation of, 259, 261
Loss of, 262, 291
Lapland in central Europe, 121
Leuthold, Henri, 13, 17
Life, correlation of vegetable--to human, 34
Livigno, 201-220
Inn at, 205
The host at, 207
Festa at, 211
Lapland at, 215
Lunghino, Monte, 161
Maloja, 149
Marmots, 132, 197, 339
Meienthal, 16
Meiringen, 2
Milk, a tub of, 103
Morterasch, the--glacier, 185
Mummy beef, 47, 117, 216, 286, 309, 325, 332
Nature, love of, 169
Natures, sixteen--to feed, 251
Neve, M. della, 221
Nolla, the, 64
Ober Alpe, 21
Ortler, 238, 260, 261
Parisienne, a, 326
Passes, Susten, 15
Oberalp, 23
Strela, 52
Splügen, 98
Forcellina, 133
Septimer, 136
Maloja, 149
La Pischa, 181
Stretta, 199
Foscagno, 222
Stelvio, 232
Cruchetta, 262
Fluela, 268
Davos Kulm, 274
Lukmanier, 301
Uomo, 317
Gries, 346
Pasteur of Cresta, 105
Peasant, sentiment of a, 204
Proprietors, 278-284
Peat, 23
Peist, 45
Perdatsch, 305
Inn at, 307
Pfäffers, 294
Pigs at Cresta, 123
Pines, adaptation of form in, 86
A large, 292
Piora, 317
Pischa, La, 179
Piz Languard, 175
Polenta, 213, 338
Pontresina, 165
High prices at, 189
Poor Law, an alternative to peasant proprietorship, 351
Has substituted agricultural labourers for an independent
peasantry, 355
Has affected the supply of labour, 357
Has kept down the price of agricultural land, 358
Has made our food-producers a tenantry, 361
Other consequences, 362
Legalized hindrances bad, 363
Porter, a circumnavigator, 19
Post in Aversthal, 112
Prätigäu, 277
Prayer, labour is, 97
Property, connexion of--with honesty, 241
Providence, 11
Race against time for life, 125
Ragatz, 297
Rheinthal, Vorder, 33
Across the, 293
Rhine, 24, 26, 307
Riches, the best, 13
Ritom, Lake of, 319
New hotel at, 321
Road, new--in Scanfiggthal, 41
In Davosthal, 58
Proposed in Aversthal, 112
Across the Foscagno, 244
Swiss roads, 305
Rock-eroding power of running water, 3, 88
Romansch, 33, 110
Roseg glacier, 173
Sabbath, a daily, 96
Saints, the island of, 35
Salt-carriers, 316
Santa Maria on Stelvio, 227
On Lukmanier, 315
S. Moritz, 162
Scanfiggthal, 37-50
Schamsthal, 91
Schiersch, 285
Schools, 92
Of Oberland Aversthal, 110
Schyn, the, 61
Selection in human society, 79
Septimer, the, 136
Snow-way for timber, 62
Soup, 49, 250, 309, 326
Spöl, halt on the, 199
Spy, a Prussian, 314
Stein glacier, 14
Stelvio, 233
Strela, 51
Stretta, 199
Sun in summer life in winter, 95
Süs, 266
Susten, 9
Snow, summer, 109, 203, 233
Tarasp, 263
Tarns, mountain, 198, 317
Taufers, 247-261
Telegraph at Dissentis, 31
Telegrams _v._ letters, 65
Thusis, 63
Tourists, future, 167
Trafoi, 237
Chances of, 243
Trees, the first, 269
Ulrichen, 348
Uomo Pass, 317
Urbach, the valley of, 7
Val Avigna, 259
Bedretto, 331
Di Dentro, 222
Del Fain, 183, 198
Medels, 313
Piora, 317
Via Mala, 83
Vulpera, 263
War and material progress, 329
Wasen, 16
Watersheds, 161
Watersmeet, a mountain, 101
Weather, one day’s, 272
Zillis, 92
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
Transcriber’s Notes
In the list of other books by the author, “arefully pondered” changed
to “carefully pondered” and “Switzer-and” changed to “Switzerland”
Page 172: “MORTERASCH” changed to “MORTERATSCH”
Page 185: “Morterasch glacier” changed to “Morteratsch glacier”
Page 356: “poor aw” changed to “poor law”
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