The Project Gutenberg eBook of Beautiful Europe--The Engadine, by
Spencer Musson
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Title: Beautiful Europe--The Engadine
Author: Spencer Musson
Release Date: April 19, 2023 [eBook #70594]
Language: English
Produced by: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUTIFUL EUROPE--THE
ENGADINE ***
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: MUOTTAS MURAIGL.]
[Illustration: title page]
Beautiful Europe
The Engadine
By
Spencer Musson
A. & C. Black, Limited.
Soho Square, London, W.
Published Autumn, 1924
Printed in Great Britain
AU PROFESSEUR CÉSAR ROUX
DE LAUSANNE
TÉMOIGNAGE DE PROFONDE ESTIME
ET RECONNAISSANCE
{vi}
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE LAKE DISTRICT
II. VAL BERNINA
III. SUOT FONTANA MERLA
IV. THE LOWER ENGADINE
V. THE NATIONAL PARK
VI. WINTER
INDEX
{vii}
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
BY J. HARDWICKE LEWIS
SKETCH
I. Muottas Muraigl . . . _Frontispiece_
II. Pontresina from above Celerina
III. Piz Albana and Piz Julier in Winter
IV. Val Fex
V. The Rosegg Glacier
VI. 'Zum Ewigen Schnee'
VII. Piz Kesch from the Sertig Pass
VIII. Lago di Bitabergo . . . _On the cover_
_The sketch on the title-page represents the Julier Pass._
MAPS
Sketch Map of the Engadine
Sketch Map showing Swiss National Park
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE ENGADINE.]
[Illustration: PONTRESINA FROM ABOVE CELERINA.]
{9}
THE ENGADINE
I
THE LAKE DISTRICT
'Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes angulus ridet' is the inscription
that greets the traveller over the post-stables at Silvaplana. He
is, perhaps, a little surprised, not having hitherto thought of
stables and the postal service as haunts of classic culture; but
those who know the Upper Engadine will readily accept the quotation
as expressing their feeling towards it. There is something about
that high-lying, broad-stretched valley, though its scenery is seldom
of a dramatic, overmastering kind, that gives it a quite individual
claim when Memory makes up her jewels.
There is an individual note, too, about the people, a suggestion of
peculiar history that mocks us as we try to seize it. One of the
earliest documents in a people's archives is ordinarily their
language, but that spoken by Engadiners, the interesting form of
Romanic known as Ladin, one of the many tongues evolved from late
Latin, only takes us back to the Roman {10} conquest of the Rhaetian
upland that won the magniloquent admiration of Horace. In truth, the
population is a human document, a palimpsest on which the Romans are
but the latest and most masterful writers. Since, at the
commencement of our era, the soldiers of Drusus and Tiberius wrote
their enduring record, there have been only interlineations, mainly
Teutonic, but many are the traces of antecedent scripts. Could we
read below the prevailing Latin, we should probably find an elusive
Keltic romance and enwoven with it perhaps a grave Etruscan legend,
while scattered through all are undecipherable memorials of forgotten
races and perished tongues. One ethnic wave after another has surged
up that ancient highway from central Europe into Italy, and each as
it passed or receded has contributed some component to the population.
But even the briefest sketch of the tangled history of the Engadine
is beyond the scope of this booklet. I will stick to my little last,
the graceless business of cutting away four out of every five pages
of a previous work which the world has willingly let die.*
* This little book is mainly an abridgment of 'The Upper Engadine'
(A. and C. Black, 1906).
Most travellers enter the Engadine by the tunnel under the Albula,
having slowly wound up from Chur along a line that can hardly be
surpassed in bold engineering and romantic variety. After a
momentary {11} halt at Spinas, we steam for a couple of miles down
Val Bevers--very interesting to the geologist and botanist, the
singular mixture of Alpine and meadow flora can be noted even from
the rail--and reach the valley of the Inn at Bevers, where are some
excellent specimens of the quaint old Engadine houses that have no
small part in giving the valley its individual character. Away on
the east stands Piz Esan, a bold, bare, dolomitic mass capped with
Rhaetic, which is the south-western sentinel of the lately
established National Park.
The rail turns right and left. Let us turn right to Samaden,
administratively the chief village of the Upper Engadine. Here, too,
are good examples of old Engadine architecture, including a house of
the Plantas, one of the ancient families of the valley whose name is
writ large on every page of its history. St. Peter's at Samaden
enjoys a traditional primacy among the churches of the valley, and
has many representative functions. It bears the date 1491, but this
must refer to the rebuilding of the nave; the Romanesque tower must
date from the tenth or eleventh century. Switzerland has old
churches in plenty, but both care and neglect have combined to denude
them of nearly all the interesting features that the belfries show
they must have possessed. Protestantism is often blamed for this,
but in artistic desert I do not know that there is much to choose
between the two communions; such difference as there may be {12} is
expressed in two different estimates of George IV. Someone remarked
that he had no taste. 'On the contrary,' said another, 'he's a great
deal of taste, but it's bad.'
Piz Ot, near Samaden, is a superb point of view; the neighbouring Piz
Padella is interesting botanically and geologically.
A mile beyond Samaden are Celerina and Cresta, now merged into one.
Plate II. is a view on the way: in the background Piz Albriz, on the
right a buttress of the sombre Piz Chalchaign, Pontresina in middle
distance; nearer, standing lorn among the tombs on a little
larch-clad hill, the ancient church of San Gian, which, except for
funerals, is now disused; in the meadowed floor of the valley the Inn
rests in quiet reaches after its furious descent from the lakes; its
clear waters are joined by those of the Flaz from Val Bernina, turbid
with 'the dust of continents to be,' and larger in volume than those
of the stream in which after their confluence its name and
individuality are lost; in the triangle between the rivers are the
Samaden golf links. The most famous and fatal of toboggan runs
descends between St. Moritz and Cresta.
Between Celerina and St. Moritz the rail threads the romantic
Charnadura gorge above the raging Inn. At the upper end is a fine
fall by which the water descends from the lake of St. Moritz, the
lowest of the chain of blue-green lakes that form {13} the
characteristic charm of the upper reaches of the Engadine.
St. Moritz strikes one on arrival as a town of hotels. Happily,
hotels are becoming sensible that they cannot afford to be unsightly
outrages on the scenery that is their _raison d'être_. An example of
this is the Hôtel Margna, designed by Signur Nichol Hartmann, in whom
the Engadine possesses an architect imbued with the spirit of its
characteristic and picturesque style of building, and with unfailing
resource in adapting it to modern requirements and utilizing old
construction. 'Only a matter of appearance,' said a practical
companion when I was hesitating to enter a restaurant that disfigured
a lovely nook of tarn and fell. It was said with a superior air of
appealing to higher considerations, much as Solomon, in extolling the
God-fearing woman, reminds us that favour is deceitful and beauty is
vain. But, after all, what is scenery save a matter of appearance?
In fact, Switzerland lives on appearances, and it is but business to
take them into account in catering for the thousands who are
attracted thither, not by the sterling virtues of the inhabitants,
but by the superficial beauty of the land.
St. Moritz, seated on a spur of hill at the head of the lake, is the
highest village in the Engadine, being some 200 feet higher than the
Maloja Pass at the head of the valley. At the highest point is the
old church, no longer used, whose interesting belfry seems {14}
leaning to its fall. The inestimable Swiss periodical _Heimatschutz_
has pointed a salutary architectural moral by presenting this
neglected tower with its simple proportions and vestiges of good work
side by side with the modern parish church, a painstaking example of
bad taste.
Beyond the old church the hill slopes up to the Badrutt Park, named
after a famous dynasty of hoteliers. Here is provision for golf,
abounding in speculative and absorbing contingencies. In the larch
wood on the upper road from St. Moritz to Camfer is the Segantini
Museum, in which are gradually being collected works of the painter
who loved and studied the Engadine with life-long devotion.
In the way of pictures, St. Moritz possesses a treasure of the last
kind one would look to find in a mountain village. In the Palace
Hotel is--what shall I say?--a copy, a replica, the original, for
even that claim has been made for it, of Raphael's Madonna di S.
Sisto, assuredly the noblest presentment of motherhood that the world
can show. By a happy inspiration it has been placed in the Ladies'
Room, where it must awaken a _Magnificat_ in many a heart.
Apart from technique, there are slight but unmistakable differences
between it and its famous compeer at Dresden. In the Madonna's gaze
is less of wonder and amazement, something reaching far into
futurity, assurance of final triumph and disdain of intermediate
obstacle; not yet had the sword that should go through {15} her soul
set its sign on the young mother's face. In the Child the difference
is in an opposite sense; in both pictures there is the same wonderful
suggestion of the awakening of the divine spirit amid the strange
limitations of humanity, but here it is rather the human pathos than
the divine power that holds our attention; there is less imperial
moulding of brow and mouth, less profound mastery in the eyes: the
eyes to which all things were open but which saw them now as man
sees, appear contemplating with perplexed wonder the path that was to
be trodden--he had known it all along, but it looked so different now.
In the flat land at the head of the lake, a little more than a mile
from St. Moritz, and linked to it by an electric tramway, are the
famous chalybeate springs, round which has grown up the cluster of
buildings known as St. Moritzbad. About half-way down, on the
larch-clad slope that rises to the right of the road, is the Museum
Engiadinais, the charming building in old Engadine styles in which
Signur Hartmann has housed the magnificent collection of Rhaetian
antiquities made by Signur Campell of Celerina. To speak of this
museum as a collection of antiquities gives a very inadequate notion
of its interior. Whole rooms, halls and corridors have been
installed there, and, combined with the old styles of the building
and the furniture and surroundings of {16} old life, make wandering
about it like an excursion into the past.
A little farther on is the Anglican church, a massive little building
in the grey-green gabbro of the neighbourhood. The tower seems to
have been suggested by that of the half-ruined church of San Gian, an
assimilation of local style that cannot be too highly commended. An
English church on the Continent, like the Englishman himself, his
clubs, customs, and amusements, is apt to have an air of
extraterritoriality. Who has not felt a shock on revisiting some
beloved mountain haunt to find that since he was last there the
church of his fathers, looking as though it had just stepped from a
suburb of London, had added its note of incongruity to those that
hotels and bazaars had accumulated on the devoted spot?
The chalybeate waters of St. Moritz have been known from early times.
In addition to the original spring there are now two others, one of
which wells up in the bed of the Inn. Bubbles of carbonic acid gas
that rise to the surface of the lake where the river enters it are
thought to indicate another spring below; in fact, the whole mass of
crystalline rock that rises into the peaks of Rosatz and Ova Cotschna
is probably a vast laboratory, in which the water that falls from
heaven and filters down to the river and the lake is charged with
healing virtues.
[Illustration: PIZ ALBANA AND PIZ JULIER IN WINTER.]
Its efficacy, no doubt, is largely due to the {17} co-operation of
the air, and to the ample provision made for the comfort and
distraction of health-seekers. Sportsmen, artists, naturalists, and
whatnot find wherewithal to occupy them, while those who wish to
lounge and dream, who are content for a while simply to exist, have
environment to their hearts' content: sleeping lakes and leaping
streams, slopes of pasture starred with flowers, solemn sanctuaries
of forest, wildernesses filled with the large companionable
loneliness of the hills. And all this enchantment shines in the rare
mountain air with a vividness that seems scarcely real. Indeed, it
is hard to set limits to the many and magical effects of altitude on
body and spirit. Though there may be no theological ground for the
statement by which it is said encouragement is sometimes given to
invalids at St. Moritz that in the worst event they are nearer heaven
than in any other health resort of Europe; yet, short of that
unnegotiable contingency, there are undoubted advantages at 6,000
feet above the sea not to be found at lower levels.
Two roads, one from the village and one from the baths, and numerous
paths, direct and digressive, lead from St. Moritz to Camfer,
standing on the uppermost of the three rocky steps that divide the
Upper Engadine into as many lake-basins. The upper lake has been
divided into three by detritus brought down from the Val Fex at Sils
and from the Julier {18} and Surlej at Silvaplana, the mid-lake at St
Moritz has shrunk to a remnant of its former self, while the lower
lake has entirely disappeared, tapped by the gorge that the Inn has
cut from the Upper to the Lower Engadine.
The origin of such lakes has long been a problem. The most
authoritative conclusion seems to be that in the slow tectonic
wrinkling of the earth's crust bars have been raised across the
course of a river, which has thus been dammed up into a lake and
drowned its former bed. Of course, a crustal subsidence might have
had the same effect, or the two movements may have been combined.
A mile and a half beyond Camfer is Silvaplana, seated on the green
promontory by which the silt of the Ova del Vallun descending from
the Julier Pass, seconded on the opposite side by streams from the
Surlej, has cut the original lake in two. A picturesque wooden
bridge spans the channel still left to the Inn between the deltas of
its furious tributaries; in the background rises Piz Margna, a
glacier filling the cleft in its broad head.
The sylvan shades commemorated in the name of Silvaplana have long
given place to flowery meadows, which now cover the broad holm that
the Ova del Vallun has thrust into the lake. High above the village
the vehement stream is commandeered for the electrical supply of the
valley. By the side of the {19} works is a water-wheel, the earliest
and the latest harnessing of water-power, a striking illustration of
the return of industry to its oldest helpmate. It will be a curious
instance of history repeating itself if manufactures again plant
themselves by streams as in the days before water-wheels were
superseded by steam. Population may one day be as congested in the
beautiful highlands that are now the playground of the nations as in
the great coal-basins. Happily the 'white coal,' as the Swiss call
their water-power, deals more sympathetically with nature than the
black. What a contrast to our factories and gasworks is this trim
little building at Silvaplana, with its aqueduct of ruddy larch, and
the fine cascade from the overflow of its reservoir. It is as though
the grimy palm of Vulcan were replaced by the light finger of Apollo.
The _raison d'être_ of Silvaplana was the Julier Pass. Before the
construction of the railway, this was a frequent route for entering
the Engadine, which makes a much more striking first impression here
than from the Albula. After emerging from the grey desolation of the
two upper reaches of the descent, a superb view of the Bernina peaks
and the ice-fields is gradually disclosed. More and more the
panorama is extended to the right, first by the Fex peaks and
glaciers, and finally by the massive Margna. The one thing lacking
is the Engadine; we seem to have arrived in a land of serried and
far-spread mountains, {20} in which there is no place for the valley
of the Inn. So precipitous are its sides at this point that no
suggestion is given of the broad lake-filled chasm intervening
between the immediate foreground and the sombre rampart that rises to
those glistening fields and summits. At length we are among the
first outposts of the forest, gaunt pines and battered larch,
scourged by centuries of storm; suddenly we see through the foliage
the glint of water and of verdure; a moment after, and the lovely
valley from Sils to St. Moritz, with lakes and forests, meadows and
clustered homes, is stretched before us.
It is a pleasant walk from Silvaplana to the pass, a broad saddle of
bog and pasture, flecked with snow, seamed with rivulets, and bright
with abundant flora. The tarns on the left are stocked with trout in
spite of being sealed with ice and buried in snow for half the year.
A path from the dairy of the Julier Alp takes us in three hours to
the summit of the Piz Julier, where, 'walled by wide air and roofed
by boundless heaven,' we have an extensive and splendid view.
Another delightful walk from Silvaplana, as from most places in the
Upper Engadine, is to the Fuorcla Surlej. This saddle between Piz
Corvatsch and Munt Arias is equally accessible from Silvaplana, Sils,
St. Moritz, and Pontresina; it thus affords a pleasant way of going
from any place in the main valley to the Bernina side-valley.
{21}
The road up the valley from Silvaplana lies straitly between the left
shore of the lake and the mountains that rise precipitously from it.
Walkers will do well, after Camfer, to take the path that skirts the
lakes on the right side of the valley, every step of which is
beautiful. It leads now under shady trees, now over parklike or
rock-strewn slopes; picks its way along precipitous hillsides, amid
many-hued crags, set with steadfast-rooted pine and larch, festooned
with red roses, inlaid with dwarf rhododendron, blue clematis, and
countless lovely flowers; occasionally may be found masses of the
rare and stately Alpine columbine. On the right are the
ever-changing waters of the lakes, or the flat, emblossomed meadows
that separate them.
Not quite three miles from Silvaplana the high-road passes the little
hamlet of Sils Baselgia, so called from the ancient church, the
basilica of the neighbourhood, that stands, 'a grief-worn memory of
old years,' in a flat meadow by the tranquil Inn.
Past and present are delightfully merged in Signur Badrutt's Hôtel
Margna on the right of the hamlet, an admirable example of an hotel
in the traditional architecture of the region, and in harmony with
the scenery around it. Nichol Hartmann was given a free hand with a
characteristically massive and picturesque old Engadine house, which
he restored, enlarged, and fitted with every modern comfort and
convenience, but with unfailing antiquarian feeling; old features
have been piously preserved, and their spirit carried {22} into the
new construction, with infinite ingenuity and down to the smallest
detail.
About half an hour farther from the high-road, Sils Maria nestles
cosily in a recess of the valley behind a rocky hill, which rises as
an island from the flat meadows that have supplanted the lake.
Val Fex, which stretches up some five miles to the south-east, is
perhaps the most beautiful of the side-valleys of the Engadine. From
the sunny breakfast-cloisters of the Hôtel Margna we see its
widespread glacier sagging between the Capütschin and Piz Led, as it
were a great white sheet let down from heaven. This forms the
background of Plate IV., with the picturesque little chapel that
stands on the steep meadow slope between the first and second reaches
of the valley in the foreground. On either side of the glacier
interesting passes lead to Chiesa in the beautiful Val Malenco, and
thence down to Sondrio, the capital of the Valtelline; in a few hours
we exchange ice-bound heights, sombre pines, and cautious,
close-growing Alpine flora for umbrageous groves, trellised vines,
and the luxurious breezes of the south.
Various points in the great rocky down that separates the Fex and
Fedoz valleys afford fine views. We look down the whole chain of the
lakes, seeming masses of turquoise in an emerald setting; on the
right the Val Fex mounts to its glacier with crowded peaks beyond; on
the left is the wild ravine of the Fedoz, the billowy ice-field at
its head descending in {23} a crumpled and crevassed glacier, beyond
which a host of rocky peaks ring round the abyss of blue haze that
covers the steep descent into Italy.
On the opposite side of the Val Fex is Marmorè, another fine point of
view. An interesting continuation of this walk leads to the savage
amphitheatre round the little Lej Sgrischus, 'the shuddering lake.'
This lonely tarn, 8,695 feet above the sea, frozen for nine months of
the year, abounds in trout, a striking instance of the hardiness of
these redoubtable little fish. How they came there is a problem; if
introduced by human enterprise it must have been centuries ago as the
renting of the fish-take is of ancient date.
A delightful place in which to pass a lazy hour or so is the narrow
promontory of Chastè, which stretches half a mile into the lake in
front of Sils Baselgia. Couched in springy undergrowth amid
larch-clad rocks and patches of beflowered meadow, we are filled with
a great content; the eye is satisfied with seeing and the ear with
hearing; the ripples lap against the craggy shore, streams hum in the
great mountain that rises like a wall beyond the streak of water,
birds twitter amid the whispering leaves, the earth seems flooded
with a vast, satisfying murmur that
Overtakes
Far thought with music that it makes.
A rock at the end is inscribed to Friedrich Nietzsche, the apostle of
unbridled individualism, himself so {24} helpless in the cruel grip
of idiosyncrasy, who frequently sought to cool life's fitful fever in
this lovely spot.
The charming path runs along the right shore of the lake past the
picturesque hamlet of Isola, slumbering on its green promontory by
the rush and roar of the tumultuous Fedoz. As the path approaches it
along the cliff its lichen-gilt stone roofs, nestling close together,
form a delightful mass of rich colour. These slices of mica-schist
that render roofs such a pleasing feature in the Engadine are mostly
quarried in the neighbouring Val Fex. Behind Isola the Fedoz
descends in a fine fall, bringing material for the delta that bids
fair one day to cut the lake in two. In the village is an
interesting old tavern, formerly a country seat of the Vertimati; the
fittings and furniture are quite a study in woodwork.
A little farther on is a block of breccia inscribed to the memory of
Thomas Henry Huxley, who spent many summers at Maloja. Then, at the
head of the lake, we pass some fine ice-smoothed rocks and ice-borne
boulders, and arrive at the pleasant space between the lake and the
descent towards Italy that goes by the name of Maloja, a name that
strictly belongs to its western edge, the nearest approach to a
terminal pass that the truncated valley of the Inn presents.
[Illustration: VAL FEX.]
Unfortunately for the first impression of Maloja, the most salient
object is the huge bulk of the {25} Kursaal, grotesquely incongruous
with its surroundings. Behind it are the golf links, bristling with
attractive difficulties and deceptions. Above them is the English
church, so light and graceful a little structure that it would be
captious to object that though it be Swiss it is not Engadine, and on
a hillock opposite the Roman Catholic church. In the grounds of the
Hôtel Belvedere are impressive records of ice action, including some
fine glacier-cauldrons.
It is a pleasant walk along the romantic ravine of the Ordlegna and
by the Lago di Cavloccio to the Forno club hut. A digression on the
right soon after starting leads to the little Lago di Bitabergo
(shown on the cover) amid rocks and sombre forests, a beautiful and
sequestered spot.
Those who have followed up the Inn from the beautiful mountain-girt
capital of Tirol, which is named from bridging it, will not willingly
forgo a pilgrimage to the little Lago di Lunghino, which is its
reputed source. It is an imposing cradle for a great river, lying
under a sheer wall of rock that rises into stony spires. The little
stream escapes from its austere birthplace under a bridge of frozen
snow, and flings itself, wild and white, down the steep descent to
its lakes. In the first instance it was probably one of the most
modest affluents of the stream it is now taken to represent. Both
its slender volume and the fact that its direction is different to
that of the Inn preclude its being considered in any real {26} sense
the source of the great stream that hollowed the Engadine, which now
lies a truncated trough with no terminal amphitheatre. The original
source and all the upper affluents of this mighty river that rolled
to the Black Sea have long since been captured by the Maira and
diverted to the Mediterranean. If we walk up the neighbouring Piz
Lunghino we shall look down on the field of that long battle of the
waters. It is the most striking example to be found of the slow but
steady encroachment of the southern streams that is going on all
along the Alps. The more abrupt slope on the south gives the water
greater erosive force, with the result that it is continually eating
back into the range and thrusting the watershed to the north.
Nowhere has this result been so extensive and startling as in the
region below us.*
* The remarkable record of this physiographical change preserved in
the present flora of the valley is noticed in the chapter on botany
in 'Upper Engadine.'
Heim, a great authority, thinks that the original source of the great
river that carved the Engadine was some seven or eight miles away in
the Val Marozzo, which now passes for the head of the Val Bregaglia,
whose normal direction seems thus reversed. The main water-shed of
the Alps must then, he thinks, have lain along a transverse ridge
somewhere above Vicosoprano. The head waters of the Maira gradually
ate through this and, by offering to those of the Inn {27} a more
rapid descent, captured them for the Mediterranean. The Engadine
lakes were thus bereft of their parent source; the current from the
rivulet of the Lunghino tarn was quite unequal to sweeping down the
detritus brought by its furious affluents, which were thus free to
form the deltas that are gradually filling the lakes, whose fate,
happily remote, would seem to be to disappear.
What changes, one wonders, are still to come? How long will the
solid peak beneath us withstand the continual flux? As one gazes on
the 'sea of mountains' stretching on every side, a new aptness is
given to the hackneyed figure. For seeing everywhere below the flash
of cataracts and the riot of descending streams, with the murmur in
the air of innumerable waters all incessantly engaged in the work of
transformation, the everlasting hills seem mutable as the waves of
ocean:
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands:
They melt like mists the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
II
VAL BERNINA
Val Bernina, the most notable of the side-valleys of the Engadine, is
traversed by the railway that runs from St. Moritz to Tirano in the
Valtelline. This is {28} joined by the Rhaetian Railway from Samaden
at Pontresina, the pleasant collective name of the three
villages--Laret, Spiert, and Giarsun--that stretch in a long street
at the entrance to the valley, happier than most resorts in the
Engadine in enjoying magnificent views of the great snow mountains.
Of course, like all popular resorts, Pontresina pays the penalty of
being appreciated. Those who gibe at the Upper Engadine as a
transcendent tea-garden have a special gibe for Pontresina. But the
garden is so very transcendent, so lovely, so extended, so varied, so
full of retreats of wild, sweet beauty, so continually rising into
points of view whence one looks illimitably across the high places of
the earth, that the term is freed from all opprobrium.
Seldom do crowded places have within a few minutes of them such
attractive haunts as the Schlucht promenade along the left bank of
the deep ravine of the Bernina. The many-hued cliffs grasped by the
snaky roots of straight-stemmed firs are writ with records of the
stream's former course: the curve of waterfalls; the winding,
widening, and narrowing of its channel; the swirl and sweep of its
current; the deep holes ground by stones revolving in its eddies, as
it gradually wore down its bed to that along which it now frets and
fumes, incessantly bearing away the substance of staid and sober
Switzerland to make land for the restless peoples of the Danube and
the Black Sea.
{29}
The great points of view are on the other side. The most famous is
the Piz Languard, reached by a beautiful walk. Another is the
Muotlas Muraigl to which we may mount by a cable railway from the
station of Punt Muraigl at the junction of the lines from Samaden and
St. Moritz. Hence we have a splendid prospect: in front lie the
Upper Engadine lakes, like successive reaches of a broad blue river;
to the right is the pinnacled ridge of the lower Julier range; to the
left the Rosegg valley, with the glaciers and peaks at its head;
still more to the left the view in Plate I., the steep northern slope
of the Chalchaign, and the shining summits and far-flung snows of the
Bellavista, Palü, and Cambrena peaks.
Fine, too, is the prospect from the Schaffberg, where is a memorial
to Giovanni Segantini, who for some time before his death was
occupied in painting this magnificent view. Here, one winter day in
1899, he succumbed, in face of the great landscape that had cast its
spell on him.
Could kindliest fortune fairer parting send?
The Rosegg and Morteratsch glaciers are Pontresina's two main
entrances to the high Alpine world, that radiant world which lies so
near us in the Upper Engadine, yet seems as far from soil and smirch
of lower earth as though it had just descended out of heaven from
God. Plate V. gives the former: in front is the pleasant, primitive
little inn; beyond it the {30} glacier, for a long time receding, has
left the usual mean and desolate disorder; farther are the combined
glaciers of the Rosegg and Tschierva; between them is the rocky
Aguagliouls, a curious reserve of vegetable life on which, it is
said, two hundred different specimens of plants have been counted; in
the height of summer sheep are driven across the glacier to graze
there; in the background, from right to left, are the Caputschin and
Mongia peaks, the broad gap of the Fuorcla Glüschaint, the Piz
Glüschaint, the double summit of la Sella, and, hidden in the clouds,
Piz Rosegg.
The Morteratsch glacier is Pontresina's other gateway to the great
white world. The railway has a station within a short distance of
it. A path mounts hence to the beautiful series of falls by which
the Bernina descends among purple rocks from the upper reach of its
valley. About a mile after this path joins the high-road are the
three quaint Bernina Houses, a typical old mountain inn, evidently
prepared to be buried in snow through the winter. Behind them stands
Piz Alv, a huge bare cone of limestone, sole memorial of the teeming
life of the sea that once covered the granite and schist around. A
striking contrast to its dusty bareness is the ruddy granite of the
neighbouring Piz Lagalb, clothed with hardy vegetation.
Continuing on the almost level road, we pass the Lej Minvir, then the
Lej Nair, 'black lake,' the waters of which, filtered through peat,
are of an inky {31} purple. Separated from it by a few yards of
pasture, and in such sharp contrast of colour as to seem almost
unreal, is the Lej Alv, 'white lake,' filled by the turbid stream
from the Cambrena glacier with greenish-white water. The contrast is
said to be reproduced in the trout abounding in them, which are of a
dark and light colour respectively. This narrow neck of bog and
pasture is the watershed between the Inn descending to the Black Sea,
and the Adda to the Mediterranean; occasionally, it is said, a wind
from the south or east, funnelled and furious in the pass, drives the
white waters over into the black, and temporarily unites the lakes.
Presumably at such times the white trout lie low, or the distinction
between the two breeds would have been lost.
The Bernina Hospice is finely posted above Lej Alv. Hence the road
on the left, and the rail and an enchanting footpath on the right,
descend by the lovely Lago di Poschiavo to Italy.
A return to Pontresina may be made by the popular 'Diavolezza Tour.'
Plate VI. gives a fine suggestion of the scenery at its highest
point, the little inn attractively entitled 'Zum Ewigen Schnee' in
the foreground, Piz Palü beyond. Hence we descend to the Pers
glacier, thread our way among its shafts and pinnacles, one of the
most striking and beautiful mazes of ice formation that I know; rest
awhile on the rocks of Isola Persa; {32} and finally pass over the
broad, billowy Morteratsch glacier and follow its right lateral
moraine to the hotel-restaurant set in front of one of the stateliest
pageants of the Alps. I wish the artist had been moved to give a
sketch of it, but he was probably there in conditions that made
sketching impossible. Most persons know the place as a maddening
babel. All day long trains, vans, and lesser vehicles discharge
their close-packed occupants, and a stream of pedestrians pass
through on their way up or down the valley. But one summer evening I
arrived there from over the glacier after walking from early dawn;
the last sightseer had gone; I had my supper at a little table on the
greensward between the larch wood and the rushing stream, in front of
me the majestic Piz Palvi, set on high in the lingering light like
the great white throne of the Apocalypse; it seemed a divinely
peaceful spot, such as may have been that garden of the early world
where God walked in the cool of the day.
III
SUOT FONTANA MERLA
From old time this has been the designation of the dozen miles of the
Upper Engadine below Bevers. Three-quarters of a mile down a lonely
little tavern, {33} las Agnas, marks the most historic spot in the
valley. Here, on the 7th of May, 1462, representatives of all the
communes assembled and settled the constitution and the
administrative and judicial organization of the little political unit
that federated with others into the Free State of the Three Leagues,
and here from time to time they long continued to meet in council.
In the adjoining meadow of las Islas all men who could bear arms
mustered in May, 1499, elected Thomas Planta as their bannerman, and
marched down to join the forces of the Three Leagues at Zuoz, and
bear their part at Calven on that bloody Easter Monday that won the
independence of the land. Near by is the intermittent spring of
Fontana Merla, the Merles' Well, the immemorial boundary between the
two administrative divisions of the valley, sur e suot, above and
below, Fontana Merla.
[Illustration: THE ROSEGG GLACIER.]
We then come to Ponte, with many interesting old houses, and then to
Madulein, a name that is said to have no connection with Magdalen,
while the etymology that derives it from _medio-lacu_ is probably
little more than a pun on some far older name rooted in a forgotten
tongue. The fact, however, that the derivation was current some
centuries ago is interesting as suggesting that there may then have
survived some strand of tradition stretching back to the time when a
remnant of the lake that must once have covered this reach of the
valley still existed. On a rocky spur of mountain above Madulein are
the ruins {34} of Guardaval, erected in 1251 by Bishop Conrad, 'the
castle lover.'
Here and there homely potato-plots and patches of oats and rye give
sign that the severity of the high Alpine climate is mitigating. On
the left opens out the pleasant Val d'Eschia, carved by water from
the glaciers that imbed the four rocky peaks of the Kesch, shown in
Plate VII. Before us is Piz d'Eren, a great cone of limestone capped
with snow. The valley widens and, clustering round a tall spire on a
broad slope of meadow, we see the close-packed houses of Zuoz.
When, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, the villages of
the Upper Engadine rose from the ashes to which the devoted
patriotism of their inhabitants had consigned them--a devotion that
saved the whole Leagueland--Zuoz was by common consent the chief
among them, and all the leading families built residences there.
On entering the village we see the interesting Chesa Gregori-Gilli,
dated 1551. On its front are the Rhaetian wildman and St. George,
with the inscription 'Evviva la Grischa,' followed by a precept that
at some periods of its history la Grischa has sadly needed 'Res parva
concordia crescit, maximæ discordia dilabuntur.' In the central
square is a fine house of the Plantas. On the neighbouring Tuor
Planta an inscription records that it was destroyed by fire in 1499
through the patriotic self-sacrifice {35} mentioned above, and here
again is an exhortation to dwell together in unity.
[Illustration: 'SUM EWIGEN SCHNEE']
These inscriptions point the moral of the municipal history of Zuoz.
Nowhere raged more fiercely the fire of faction that in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries bid fair to bring to naught the
independence that the heroism of a nobler generation had so hardly
won. Yet a saving seed was left. The picturesque Chesa Juvalta,
which preserves many portraits of past Juvaltas in the next village
of S-chanf,* recalls the pleasing legend that when the insanity of
civil strife was at its highest, and the streets of Zuoz were red
with the blood of its citizens, the women of the town, headed by Anna
Juvalta, threw themselves with tears and prayers between the maddened
combatants, and declared that they should only strike one another by
passing over the bodies of their wives and daughters.
* I will not attempt to phoneticize the peculiar _ch_ of Romanic
orthography. English spelling has been styled an invention of the
Father of Lies, but it is nothing to the masterpiece of
misrepresentation that the alphabet has achieved in Romanic. In
Engadine place-names I have preferably used the native Ladin form,
except in the many cases where the German form seemed naturalized in
English.
Relentless criticism has, I believe, relegated Anna to the limbo of
unaccredited immortals that every day becomes more crowded, but I
trust it will be long ere the souls of young Engadiners cease to be
nourished on the exploded legends of their country. It matters
little that they be not history. There are {36} legends that are
truer than history in that they embody the spirit without which the
external facts of history would not have been. William Tell may not
have shot his arrow at Altorf, nor Anna Juvalta stood between the
armed ranks at Zuoz, but had there not been many men and women of the
temper of Tell and Anna the Forest Cantons would still be ruled by
aliens, and Rhaetian independence would long ago have foundered in
anarchic bloodshed.
Zuoz and S-chanf have become of late years something of an
educational centre, and also a resort for winter sports. Zuoz has
provided itself with a Kursaal, which it terms Castell, a finely
situated building in good Engadine style designed by Nichol Hartmann.
Recent building in the district gives gratifying evidence of the
influence of the Heimatschutz, a league for the preservation of old
architecture, and the assimilation of its styles and spirit in new
construction.
Two miles below S-chanf is the hamlet of Capella, so called from the
chapel of St. Güerg of which but a fragment remains. Near it
formerly stood an enormous pine tree sacred to St. George, the patron
of the Upper Engadine, which was an object of profound veneration
throughout the valley. When, on S-chanf declaring for the
Reformation, the aged tree was felled, its fall was probably a
greater wrench with the past than any thesis or formula of faith.
What echoes of old rites, what ghosts of forgotten creeds, may have
haunted the shade of its sombre foliage! {37} That its sacred
character was originally connected with St. George is most unlikely;
it was more probably a relic of a faith and worship to which St.
George was as of yesterday, and which primitive Christianity
recognized as too deeply rooted in the popular imagination to be
lightly discarded. There was a large humanity in those early
missionaries that went for much in their success. They would not
rudely cut away props on which men's souls had leaned, but left them
to stand while they might, consecrated to a new significance. Some
better thing might be reserved for the succeeding time, but without
them it was not to be made perfect.
Soon after this the road crosses the Sulsanna, coming from its
cascaded valley, and the changing character of the scenery ahead
reminds us that we are nearing the end of the upper valley of the
Inn. A mile beyond Capella, in a green basin below the road, is
Sinuos-chel, the last hamlet, a few picturesque houses, one of them
quaintly frescoed, with a demure little church. The valley narrows
to a ravine; the Inn whitens to a torrent as it rages down the gorge
that it has cut for itself through the bar of schist that once dammed
it into a lake; two bridges, one in stone upon the present road, the
other the historic wooden Punt Ota on the grass-grown road above,
span the foaming yellow brook that is the immemorial boundary of the
Upper Engadine.
{38}
IV
THE LOWER ENGADINE
The division of the Engadine into Upper and Lower is not a piece of
arbitrary map-making. We seem to pass into a new country when,
leaving the broad upper valley, lying wide-stretched to the sky,
where only human supervision prevents the Inn spreading out into
lakes and marshes, we go down into the deep trough bordered by
picturesque peaks and ridges, where the river that has so long been
the companion of the road flows far below it between steep walls of
rock. And not only does the scenery change, but the climate, the
flora, the very dialect of the people and their character in history
is different.
Descending from the Punt Ota to the roofed wooden bridge that takes
us to the right bank of the Inn, we are hemmed in by heights in a
land of clamant streams. The sombre severity of Upper Engadine
scenery is broken into a romantic variety of detail: austere masses
of mountain give place to splintered peaks and ragged ridges, their
sides are more furrowed, a luxuriant forest vegetation clothes their
steeper slopes, and the meadows on the gentler slopes are more
interspersed with tilth.
[Illustration: PIZ KESCH FROM THE SERTIG PASS.]
The first village is Zernez, spread on a flat green widening of the
valley, the slender spire and frescoed walls of its church standing
on a little eminence {39} beside it. The church and a few
picturesque old houses are all that escaped a fire that destroyed the
rest of the village in 1872.
A beautiful railway route runs hence by the Fuorn Pass, the Val
Mustair, and the Stelvio road under the dazzling snows of the Ortler,
to Trafoi in Austria. Soon after passing the frontier is the defile
of Calven, where on Easter Monday, 1499, eight thousand hastily
mustered men of the lately formed Leagues attacked and routed a
strongly entrenched and well equipped Imperial army of nearly double
their number, a brilliant feat of arms that laid the foundation of
Rhaetian independence.* For about four miles of its course the
railway passes through the National Park; a clause in the agreement
between the Confederation and the commune of Zernez permits quarrying
and wood-cutting for its construction and upkeep in the sequestrated
region.
* I have described this remarkable little war at greater length in
'The Upper Engadine,' pp. 9-20.
For a couple of miles road and river thread a pine-clad gorge in
which the normally longitudinal valley of the Inn becomes transverse;
before us towers the huge Piz Linard, posted in front of and
dominating the vast Silvretta maze of fell and glacier. Then another
widening of the valley gives standing ground for the picturesque
village of Susch; an ancient tower rises by the quaint minaret of its
church; on a wooded hill beside it is one of the many 'chiefless {40}
castles breathing stern farewell' that add a note of historical
romance to the scenery of the Engadine.
In the Lower Engadine the valley of the Inn seldom widens into a flat
floor as at Zernez. On the right it for the most part rises
precipitously, giving little footing for building and cultivation.
Thus habitation has always been mainly on the sunny slopes and
terraces that look south on the left. At Lavin, two miles below
Susch, walkers can take the old road that runs on this side, high
above the new, by the shells and towers of old castles, and
commanding lovely views. Lavin, Guarda, and Ardez are known as the
Etruscan villages; I believe they have not an even colourable claim
to the appellation, which, however, is of old date, and has given
rise to much ingenious diversion in providing etymologies for
place-names in the neighbourhood. The villages, however, have an
idyllic charm from their quaint old houses and lovely situation that
has no need to borrow interest from factitious history or philology.
Guarda, on an open terrace at the entrance to Val Tuoi, is perhaps
the most frequented as a summer resort. Its neighbourhood affords
rambles to suit all tastes, from mountaineering to dawdling, with
special attractions in Val Tuoi for the botanic dawdler.
At Ftan, delightfully placed on an undulating terrace some 1,500 feet
above the Inn, we enter a region impregnated with mineral waters and
gases of {41} singular potency, where thousands of sufferers from
various ills that flesh is heir to are yearly gathered. It is
claimed that no other district in Europe is so rich in therapeutic
waters.
The springs, which issue with a temperature a little over 60° F., are
all strongly acidulated, and though varying a good deal in their
constituents and in the proportions in which they are mixed, fall
broadly into two classes: Glauber's salts (sulphate, carbonate, and
chloride of sodium) and chalybeate or iron. They are good for both
drinking and bathing; the large proportion of carbonic acid gas with
which they are charged is said to render them peculiarly efficacious
in baths. An interesting evidence of the plutonic character of the
neighbourhood are the mofette, vents in the earth from which carbonic
acid gas issues in considerable quantity. One in a field near Scuol,
in which unwary birds, lizards, and insects are frequently done to
death, has been estimated to discharge eleven million litres a day.
The centres of the little invalid world are the Kurhaus and
Trinkhalle, emparadised in beautiful gardens on the left and right
banks of the Inn respectively, and connected by a roofed bridge.
Both sides of the valley bristle with hotels for the accommodation of
patients: Scuol on an open terrace on the left with magnificent
views, and Vulpera ensconced among woods and meadows on the right.
{42}
The region takes its name Tarasp, _terra aspera_, from the castle,
which stands on a hill of splintered rock some distance from the
principal springs. On the hillside is the hamlet of Sparsels, with a
curious fountain-shrine; and below, by a little lake, Fontana, with
the parish church and a Capuchin hospice, for, owing to the long
tenure of the seigniory by Austria, this commune, alone in the
Engadine, has remained Catholic. In the eleventh century, after long
disputes, the castle and seigniory became vested in the bishopric of
Chur. In 1239 they passed to the counts of Tirol, and remained
Austrian till, by the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, they were made
over to Graubünden as a set-off to various fiefs of the bishopric of
Chur scattered in the Vorarlberg and Tirol. There are enchanting
views of this loveliest nook of the Lower Engadine from the windows
of the castle, whose latest purchaser is the ex-Grand-Duke of Hesse.
Descending the valley, we pass the ruin of the Romanesque church of
St. Peter on a rocky hill. Then the villages of Sent and Crusch,
'The Cross,' a little below which a road crosses the Inn to Sur En on
the right bank at the opening of the sequestered Val d'Uina.
About a mile and a half below Crusch is the deep ravine through which
the Sinestra flows to the Inn. On a rocky hill above is the ruined
castle of Tschanuf, {43} the seat till the beginning of last century
of an episcopal castellan who controlled the jurisdiction of the
Lower Engadine. Less than an hour up the wild and lovely Val
Sinestra are some famous springs impregnated with iron, arsenic, and
other minerals, and highly charged with carbonic acid gas. Centuries
before the present high-road and Kurhaus facilitated access to and
use of them, their virtues were known in the Engadine and Tirol, and
a little band of sufferers flocked yearly to this secluded glen,
living in tents while they drank the waters and bathed with pristine
simplicity under a spreading elder tree in troughs in which the water
was warmed by heated stones.
Descending the Inn Valley we come to Ramuosch in a fertile nook of
ancient cultivation. Its interesting church, which formerly claimed
to enshrine the wonder-working remains of St. Florin, was long a
place of pilgrimage both for Engadiners and Tirolese. Though the
saint was priest of Ramuosch, his birthplace was Matsch in Tirol, and
every year on his festival the chest that was believed to hold his
bones was carried in solemn procession from Ramuosch to Matsch, some
eight hours distant, and back. In 1530 it occurred to the
authorities of Ramuosch to open the chest, which was found to contain
nothing but rags. Ramuosch was then halting at the crossways, and
{44} this cruel disillusion decided it for the Reformation.*
* 'At the commencement of the great schism the Government of the
Three Leagues, after listening to incontrovertible arguments on both
sides in a theological conference at Ilanz in January, 1526, decided
to be perfectly neutral, leaving individual consciences free, and
allowing each commune to decide for itself to which persuasion it
would officially belong. Thus the people settled for themselves the
question that concerned them so deeply, which in the rest of Europe
was mainly decided over their heads by rulers often actuated by
considerations far from religious' ('Upper Engadine,' p. 168).
On the right below Ramuosch a fine waterfall marks the entrance to
the pent, pine-clad Val d'Assa. In a cliff some two hours up is a
stalactite cavern and a spring known as Fontana chi staina, 'the
spring that stands still.' Its final channel is probably a natural
siphon that empties a hidden reservoir three times a day, and ceases
to flow while it is refilling.
In a fertile widening of the Inn Valley is the village of Strada and,
perched high above, that of Tschlin. Dark woods clothe the right
bank of the Inn, now swollen by the melting of many glaciers to a
considerable stream. Then we come to Punt Martina, in German
Martinsbruck, standing amid grand scenery at the end of the Engadine.
By the iron bridge beyond it we pass into Tirol. In front the road
winds up wooded slopes, and then climbs and cuts its way among the
slate rocks of the romantic Finstermünz {45} Pass. On the left a new
road drops down along the Swiss side of the Novella gorge to Alt
Finstermünz, far below, where antiquated fortifications cling to the
sheer cliffs, under which the straitened stream flows swift and deep.
Old wooden bridges from either jealous bank meet in the vaulted
gangway of a square tower set on a submerged rock in midstream.
V
THE NATIONAL PARK
This great reserve has added a unique attraction to the Engadine.
The idea was for a long time the aspiration of an elect few,
leavening public opinion and pestering the Government. At last they
had their reward. For years the authorities that in an admirable
reciprocity govern and are governed by the population of Switzerland
cautiously committed themselves to the enterprise. In 1906 they
appointed a Naturschutzkommission to report on a desirable region to
be sequestrated. In 1909 a Naturschutzbund was formed to supplement
official efforts. The commission negotiated rights in first one
fragment then another of the selected and authorized area: from the
commune of Zernez in 1909 the Val Cluoza, in 1910 the Val Tantermozza
and the northern and western slopes of Piz Esan; from the commune of
S-chanf in 1911 the southern slopes of Piz Esan and {46} Piz
Quatervals, the Val Muschauns, and part of the right side of Val
Trupchum; from the commune of Scuol and the pastoral league of Tavrü
most of the east side of the S-charl district; from Zernez in 1913
the Praspol, Schera, and Stavelchod districts. All concessions were
with option of renewal. Right of emption was also secured over the
region linking the two unequal areas into which the appropriations
fall. This is termed the Verbindungsgebiet, roughly speaking the Val
Nuglia, the upper Val Plavna, and the heights bordering both. In
1914 a resolution of the Federal Council gave legislative seal to the
transactions, banning to human enterprise some fifty square miles.
The addition of the linking domain will bring the area up to about
eighty square miles. Of course, the figures give the horizontal
projection on the map; the surface measurement would be considerably
more, as anyone who has had to do with real property that is 'mostly
on end' will realize.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
{47}
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP SHOWING SWISS NATIONAL PARK.]
-------------------------------------------------------------------
As to the locality of this forbidden land, public opinion has
unanimously endorsed the choice of the commission. In no part of
Switzerland is there an equal area that could be given over to
untrammelled natural agencies with so little social or economical
derangement. It is wholly without permanent human habitation, there
is no tillage and but little pasturage to be disestablished, while
the hardly less important Fremdenindustrie has barely touched the hem
of the great reserve, which boasts none of the {48} transcendent
charm that has made the rest of Switzerland the playground of Europe;
with the exception of a short reach below the Fuorn Pass, no rail or
post-road threads its savage solitudes, it cradles no enchanting
lake, it enshrines no soaring peaks or shining glaciers, its valleys,
which enjoy such uninviting names as Val del Diavel, Sassa, Cluoza,
Nuglia, Sainza bon (I will not insult the reader's ingenuity by
translating them), though full of wild charm, are little haunted by
artist and photographer; wood-cutting, hunting, and scanty and
sporadic pasturage are the only industries that will be interfered
with. This unkempt, unused wilderness at the eastern edge of the
Confederation has the further recommendation that, partly from this
isolation and neglect, partly from lying on the borderland of
distinct botanic zones, it exhibits a varied and comprehensive flora,
and has given asylum to sundry odds and ends of vanishing fauna.
Though, following precedent elsewhere, the term 'reserve,' which was
first employed for the sequestrated area, has officially given place
to that of National Park, the former better expresses the aim of the
scheme. The proposed object of such sequestration in other countries
has been public enjoyment, but this is only incidentally an object of
the Swiss enterprise, which is rather a great scientific experiment
in the interplay of unimpeded natural agencies. Nature is to be
given a free hand, and man, his hands {49} behind his back, will look
on and see what she makes of it.
Of course, the field of unsophisticated nature is not, when closely
looked at, the peaceful paradise dreamed by the artless philosophy of
a century ago. The beneficent mother pictured by sentimental
idealists has been revealed to these latter days as a soulless
monster, red in tooth and claw with ravin, working blindly under the
impulsion of inexorable tendencies that know not truce nor ruth. To
make a sanctuary where she shall have her way without let or
hindrance amounts to keeping the ring for a free fight of flora and
fauna, only the meddlesome hand of her supreme masterpiece--whom it
is rather amusing we should exclude from our conception of
nature--being ruled out.
As regards flora, I believe the procedure has been mainly thus to let
things alone, but the administration are introducing much that is
new, or that has disappeared, in the way of fauna. To a large
extent, indeed, they have introduced themselves with that telepathic
percipience of a sanctuary so remarkable in hunted creatures.
Already in October, 1913, a large bear appeared in the Park. Their
former presence is attested by sundry place-names--Val del Orso, Bagn
del Uors--and in the Val Cluoza and elsewhere old timber bear-traps
still stand. Bears, however, are too expensive guests to be
welcomed. Not sixty years ago their ravages among sheep and cattle
were {50} still considerable, and the administration has engaged with
the neighbouring communes not to harbour them.
A former denizen of the Alps whose successful re-establishment has
been hailed with universal acclamation is the lordly ibex, or, as
Engadiners call it, the Capricorn (bouquetin, steinbock). Throughout
Switzerland there is a sentiment of romance connected with this
stately goat, who for over three centuries has had only an heraldic
existence in his ancient fastnesses; his imperially horned head is
the emblem of the canton, and swings as sign of innumerable inns; he
capers amid thistles on the seal of the commune of Zernez and prances
rampant on either side of armorial devices frescoed on the walls of
old houses. In 1920 seven young Capricorn were let loose in the
Cluoza-Spol section, and their number has increased in spite of
foreign marauders, but here we are on delicate ground, and it is well
to emulate the diplomatic reticence of the Federal authorities. The
stock is to be reinforced this year by a pair from the Zoological
Gardens at Interlaken.
The Park started with a good stock of chamois of several types and
some deer, and more have flocked to it as the good news of a
sanctuary was passed round in ways that man knows not; in fact deer
may be said to have taken possession of the S-charl district.
Marmots abound, and will still more abound. Moreover, {51}
affiliated to the Park, the only patch of it on the left of the Inn
is a sanctuary established for the droll little rodents on the Godgod
slopes between S-chanf and Capella well back in last century. During
the construction of the railway the Italian workmen wrought sad havoc
among them with snares, which they had become too confiding to avoid;
but they have since regained their paradise, and the discreet
wanderer may watch their engaging antics at work and play. Their
surplus progeny is no doubt making its own Verbindungsgebiet with the
Park.
It must not be supposed, from what has been said, that the great
reserve is a forbidding region of interest only to the naturalist.
It is replete with charm and full of a variety that blends in wide
harmonies, or surprises with sudden contrasts; a region of still
forest sanctuaries, of wild ravines and savage gorges, of eager
streams flashing white in cascades and torrents or rushing green and
smooth in deep-worn beds; of many-hued rocks piled in chaotic ruin or
set in mazy labyrinths or strewn splintered on the slopes; lonely
tarns shine on emerald uplands or sleep in stony wildernesses; the
lofty lawns are starred with flowers and sentinelled with immemorial
trees; in sequestered dells rivulets wind and whisper amid blossoming
herbage, or creep and croon in leafy coverts; great grey stones dream
under the hoary trees of Druidic glades; a land of pristine
seclusion, of gracious solitudes, of high, silent places where {52}
earth and heaven seem to meet. And over all plays the wizardry of
the clear mountain air and the fleeting mountain weather, weaving a
glamour of shifting splendour and gloom over peak and vale, stream
and forest, lighting the landscape into a prodigal enchantment of
detail or wrapping it in mystery and portent.
In common with all who are interested in the National Park, I am
greatly indebted to Dr. Stefan Brunies, Secretary and Treasurer of
the Heimatschutz, who has made the subject his own in various
delightful books replete with nature- and folk-lore. Therein are
given a number of itineraries for exploring the Park and studying its
plants, birds, and beasts, in all which the wanderer will find Dr.
Brunies an invaluable and entertaining companion.
S-chanf is, he thinks, the best starting-point for traversing the
Park. Crossing the Inn by the Livigno road, a path on the left
crosses the Varusch stream and follows up its right bank to Alp
Purcher. Here, on the left, a path enters the Park, and runs up the
Alp Müschauns under the chasmed heights of Piz Esan; on the steep
grassy slopes below them the practised eye will seldom fail to locate
chamois browsing. Passing on the right a long narrow tarn fed by a
tongue of glacier we reach a low saddle that leads into the
appropriately named Val Sassa, in the steep screes of which the path
is lost till it reappears on the broad valley floor, where, crossing
a wooden {53} bridge, we find, ensconced in dense forest, the Cluoza
blockhouse.
Here are eight beds and supplementary sleeping accommodation on hay;
the warder supplies meals at a fixed tariff. Chamois, and now and
then deer, may be marked on the slopes above, where salt-licks have
been placed for their delectation. Any wayfarer may pass two nights
at the blockhouse in the heart of the great reserve; for a longer
stay authority must be obtained from the Naturschutzkommission at
Bale.
We commence next day's walk by mounting steeply on the east to the
Murter Alp, a plateau of flowery pasture buttressed round with
precipices. Here we have a survey of the upper Val Cluoza and its
three savage head-valleys: Diavel, Sassa, and Valetta. Descending
eastward to the old sheep-pastures of Laschaida, we come to the first
outposts of forests, hoary, battered larch, which, as the path drops
steeply down, gradually give place to fir. At the bottom we emerge
on the pastures of Praspol by the turbid Spol, one of the largest
tributaries of the Inn, rich in trout, and a last refuge of the
hard-bested otter, who can now live and multiply there in peace,
doubtless giving a wide berth to the right bank for the two miles
along which the Spol forms the Park boundary. It will be interesting
to note if fish do the same; the right of fishing from this bank is
reserved to the commune of Zernez. We may cross {54} the stream by
the Punt Praspol, leaving the Park for a while, or we may take on the
right a lonely and bewitching forest path that runs above the left
bank of the Spol, crosses it by the Punt Purif, and descends to the
point where, half an hour below Fuorn, the post-road re-enters the
Park.
Those not in a hurry will do well to spread this walk, with
digressions that will readily suggest themselves, over the second
day, passing the night at Fuorn. If pressed for time, however, an
early start from the blockhouse will enable good walkers to get on to
S-charl or Tarasp. A quarter of an hour above Fuorn on the road to
the Pass, by the second bridge, which crosses a gully, a footpath on
the left through the forest brings us into the Val del Botsch,
abounding in chamois, and ascends steeply to the Fuorcletta, a low
saddle between towering dolomite peaks. Looking back as we ascend is
an ever-widening prospect of serried summits and savage gorges. Very
striking, too, as we thread the stony trough, is the contrast between
the stark desolation around and the soft rich hues of the Lower
Engadine, with a crowded host of peaks rising behind and about them.
The path then leaves the Park, and is for a while in the
Verbindungsgebiet, descending to Alp Plavna, turning to the left,
ascending, and re-entering the Park at the pleasant col of Sur il
Foss; then descending the Val Minger, it strikes the Clemgia a couple
of miles below the lone, forest-begirt hamlet of S-charl. The {55}
once busy iron-smelting village has dwindled to a dozen houses with
their little church on a holm of the rushing Clemgia. The name of
the secular Jurada forest on the left records an ancient reserve
banned to axe and saw as a protection from avalanches. To the south
the wild and beautiful valley is closed by the snow-flecked dolomite
peaks of the Pisoc. A half-day's walk down the right bank of the
stream, along the eastern edge of the Park, takes us by the Clemgia
Gorge to Tarasp.
'The course of nature' as exhibited in such experiments as the Swiss
National Park irresistibly calls to mind the headlong history of the
world during the ten years that have passed since its inauguration.
The teaching of nature had been studiously assimilated by a great
nation to which the world is deeply indebted in every field of
thought, science, and research; it was made the basis of their
national policy, and put in practice with every resource of skill and
deliberation. The results have been catastrophic, and would seem to
show that when man became a social being--and we may perhaps extend
the statement to all society, however inchoate, from the pack and the
herd to the hive and the ant-heap--he entered a new plane of
evolution, and that those who would apply to it the crude methods of
selection that operated in more primitive and individual stages are
fighting against the stars in their courses.
{56}
Some such thoughts as these shaped themselves in my mind into the
following lines in the second year of the war.
EVOLUTION
They said: Behold, battle is earth's high law,
Turn where we will is ruthlessness and strife,
Beast against beast, and plant with plant wage war,
Through havoc only gain we ampler life.
The strong leaf ousts the weak leaf from the sun,
Root strangles root in wrestle for the soil,
Close-shelved in rock lie types whose race is run,
Cast out in the eternal stress and moil.
Thus painfully, by force and guile and hate,
From flaccid forms that lurked in primal ooze,
Life, in advance from low to high estate,
Ever the weak rejects, the strong doth choose.
Shall man alone shirk universal rule,
And bind the peoples with his petty codes
That shield rank growth of weakling and of fool
And crush the hero under caitiffs' loads?
Truth is a figment, charity a myth,
Life gives its crowns to strength and craft and greed,
Why should we weave, to stay our hands therewith,
A moral net at variance with our need?
We will forswear the outworn, craven creed
That blessed the peacemakers and pure in heart,
And take the lesson taught by beast and weed
To guide our feet in court and camp and mart.
And thus they placed their land all else above,
Suckled their sons at iron paps of war,
Made mock of honour and a God of love,
Trampled on covenant and scoffed at law.
{57}
And God gave unto them their hearts' desire,
And poured into their cup the wine they sought
That turns the soul to stone, the brain to fire,
And brings the centuries' slow work to naught.
Gave strong delusion to believe a lie,
Gave them seared heart, sealed mind, and pervert sense,
The straitened outlook of the earth-bound eye
That sees no kingdom that is not from hence.
On from delusion to delusion hurled,
They worked out madly to its utmost cost
The doom on those whom, though they gain the world,
It profits nothing, for their soul is lost.
The gain is futile and the world is small
That can be bought by barter of the soul,
A new time dawns and gleaming portents call
For fresh means, changed ideals, altered goal.
VI
WINTER
The attraction of the Alpine winter, which till lately was a pious
cult of the elect, has become a common-place of advertisements and
agencies. Every year a larger crowd gathers in what used to be
considered frost-bound solitudes, and some new resort is opened for
the Christmas holiday-maker. Among such resorts the Engadine, with
its dry air, clear sky, and brilliant sunshine, takes a foremost
place. At no {58} time is it more lovely and enjoyable, more unlike
the surroundings we have left at home, more recuperative to jaded
denizens of the town. It would be difficult to find a gayer and
busier scene than its frozen lakes and snow-clad slopes present in
winter. Even the work that goes on partakes of the general
exhilaration. Sleighs and toboggans replace carts and barrows,
lightening the labour of man and beast, and adding a novel animation
to transport and locomotion. Bound and buried though Nature be, the
work of those who deal with her is by no means at a stand-still; the
universal snow, instead of staying it, inaugurates a general
transport system, converting rough mountain roads into smooth and
facile descents; little more than guidance and gravitation is needed
to bring the hay mown in summer and the timber felled in autumn from
the distant uplands to the villages and homesteads where they should
be. Nothing is more enjoyable than to take a passage down on a
sleigh laden with hay or faggots, to rush through the keen air over
glistening slopes, or along winding forest ways, or in the trough of
steep gullies that centuries of similar traffic have cut through
copse and wood; most admirable is the adroitness with which a
practised mountaineer pilots his wayward and unwieldy craft, which,
if once it 'take charge,' runs a mad career as fatal to its crew as
to wayfarers in its path.
Sports are organized in the most business-like {59} manner, and are
as cosmopolitan as the human crowd; northern and mountain lands in
all quarters of the globe have contributed to them, and when the
short sunny day is over, keen brilliant nights, carnival balls on the
illuminated lakes, theatricals, dancing, and unlimited miscellaneous
fooling prolong the strenuous enjoyment.
And then the setting of it all. The exceeding beauty and strangeness
of the snow-clad earth, spotless and radiant, like a bride adorned
for her husband, and the enchanting details that surround us, wander
where we will. On every side cold and heat, wind and moisture, play
fantastic tricks before high heaven, stereotyping cascades on the
precipices, casing in crystal the swirls and falls of streamlets,
draping cliffs and caves with iridescent fringe and lacework of ice.
Snow decorates the sombre towers of pine and fir as with jewelled
fleece, and bows to an added grace the pliant larch-limbs on which
remnants of autumn foliage still linger in brushes of tawny gold;
hoar-frost weaves fairy-like embroidery over twigs and leaves;
shadows chequer the stainless ground with exquisite pencilling; all
the familiar objects of wayside, croft and fell suffer a winter
change into something rich and strange.
He who would see all this at its best and at his ease must take to
skis, for the gift of which the Alps owe an incalculable debt to
Norway. The introduction is comparatively recent, but the alacrity
with {60} which it has been taken up shows how thoroughly it met a
want. Detachments of the Swiss army are exercised on skis every
winter, and the citizen soldiers have taken the accomplishment back
to their mountain homes, where it has been eagerly adopted. Children
may be seen on home-made skis trooping to the often distant school,
or having the time of their lives on slopes and plateaux.
Those who do not cultivate it as a spectacular sport may welcome
ski-ing as a means of locomotion, enabling them to go to places
otherwise inaccessible, to pass swiftly and lightly over snow in
which unskied bipeds would flounder up to the knees, if not over the
head. What matters it to the humble novice that his course seem but
shambling and shuffling to the winner of cups and breaker of records.
What is that to him as he brushes over the sparkling slopes and
threads the cloistral hills? He will find himself on shining
plateaux bathed in hazy light and walled in the shimmering distance
with ethereal ramparts. He will pass into solemn depths of forest
where the winding way is edged and arched with pines that stretch on
either hand into illimitable aisles. Sometimes his path will lead
him to a radiant sanctuary where Nature seems taking her winter rest
in undisturbed repose; no breath of wind breaks the stillness, nor
note of bird, nor human footfall; the earth as he ascends is
transfigured with new and strange magnificence, the heaven deepens to
a diviner blue and the shadows to {61} more mystic purple, the peaks
close round and rise cathedral-like on every side: a cathedral vast
and soaring, vaulted with unfathomable sky, piled and pinnacled,
sculptured and wrought, beyond any architect's imagining, and clothed
with light as with a garment.
{62}
INDEX
Agnas, Las, 33
Aguagliouls, 30
Albriz, Piz, 12
Albula, Pass, 10
Alv, Lej, 31
Piz, 30
Anglican Church, 16, 25
Architecture, 21
Ardez, 40
Assa, Val d', 44
Badrutt Park, 14
Bears, 49
Bernina Falls, 30
Hospice, 31
Houses, 31
Pass, 31
Val, 12, 20, 27-32
Bevers, 11
Val, 11
Bishopric of Chur, 42, 43
Bitabergo, Lago di, 25
Bregaglia, Val, 26
Brunies, Stefan, 52
Calven, 33
Campell, 15
Camfer, 17
Capella, 36
Capricorn, 50
Cavloccio, Lago di, 25
Celerina, 12
Chalchaign, 12
Chamois, 50
Charnadura Gorge, 12
Chastè, 23
Chesa Gregori-Gilli, 34
Juvalta, 35
Planta, 34
Chiesa, 22
Chur, 10
Cluoza blockhouse, 53
Val, 45, 49, 50
Cresta, 12
Crusch, 42
'Diavolezza Tour,' 31
Deer, 50
Electricity, 18
Eren, Piz, 11, 50
Eschia, Val, 34
Etruscan villages, 40
Evolution, 55
Fedoz, 22, 24
Fex, Val, 22, 24
Finstermünz Pass, 45
Flaz, 12
Fontana Merla, 33
Ftan, 40
Fuorcla, Surlej, 20
Gian, San, 12
Giarsun, 28
Godgod, 51
Guarda, 40
Guardaval, 34
Güerg, St., 36
Hartmann, Nichol, 13, 15, 21
Heimatschutz, 13, 36, 52
Horace, 9, 10
Huxley, 24
Ibex, 50
Inn River, 12, 17, 20, 25, 37-39, 44
Islas, Las, 35
Isola, 24
Julier Pass, 19
Piz, 20
Jurada Forest, 53
Juvalta, Anna, 35
Kesch, Piz, 34
Lagalb, Piz, 30
Lakes, 17, 27, 33
Language, 9, 10, 35
Lauguard, Piz, 29
Laret, 28
Lavin, 40
Linard, Piz, 39
Lunghino Lake, 25
Piz, 26
Madulein, 33
Maira, 26
Malenco, Val, 22
Maloja, 24
Margna, Hôtel, St. Moritz, 13
Sils Baselgia, 21
Marmorè, 23
Marmots, 50
Marozzo, Val, 26
Martina, Punt, 44
Martinsbruck, 44
Moritz, St., 4
Bad, 15
Dorf, 13
Morteratsch Glacier, 29, 30, 32
Muotlas Muraigl, 29
Muraigl, Punt, 29
Museum Engiadinais, 15
Nair, Lej, 30
National Park, 11, 39, 45
Nietzsche, 23
Ordlegna, 25
Ot Piz, 39
Otter, 53
Padella, Piz, 12
Palü, Piz, 12
Pers, Glacier, 31
Planta, 33, 34
Ponte, 33
Pontresina, 12, 28, 32
Poschiavo, Lago di, 31
Punt Ota, 37
Ramuosch, 43
Raphael, 14
Roman Conquest, 9
Rosegg, Glacier, 29
Samaden, 11, 12
S-chanf, 35
Schaffberg, 29
S-charl, 54
Schlucht Promenade, 28
Segantini, 14, 29
Sent, 42
Sgrischus, Lej, 23
Sils Baselgia, 21
Maria, 12
Silvaplana, 9, 18
Sinestra, Val, 42
Sinuos-chel, 37
Skis, 59
Sondrio, 22
Spiert, 22
Spinas, 40, 42
Springs, 40, 42
Strada, 44
Sur-en, 42
Surlej, Fuorcla, 20
Susch, 39
Tarasp, 42, 55
Trout, 20, 23, 53
Tschanuf, 42
Tschlin, 44
Tuoi, Val, 40
Val d' Assa, 44
Bermina, 12, 20, 27
Bevers, 15
Bregaglia, 26
Val Cluoza, 45, 49, 50, 53
Eschia, 32
Fex, 22, 24
Malenco, 22
Marozzo, 26
Sinestra, 42
Tuoi, 40
Valtelline, 22
Vulpera, 41
Watershed of Alps, 26
Winter, 36, 57-61
Zernez, 38, 39
Zuoz, 33, 34, 36
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