SWISS SPORTS
There is a great distinction between the national sports of the Swiss
and those of Switzerland. The games which attract so many thousands to
the Alps in winter are in no cases peculiar to Switzerland, and are
rarely indigenous. Tobogganing and ski-ing, like mountain-climbing (as
a pleasure), have been introduced to Switzerland by visitors. Even
skating does not seem to have been much favoured by the Swiss until
there came the great modern incursion of tourists, seeking not an
asylum from religious or political persecution, nor the pleasure of
seeing Voltaire or Madame de Stael, but ice sports under a bright sun
in mid-winter.
The Swiss National Sports make a short and a dull list. They are
rifle-shooting, gymnastic games, and rustic dancing to joedelling.
They reflect the character of a little nation which, almost alone of
the peoples of the world, finds it a matter of joy and not of labour
to undertake military training, and carries the love of that training
so far as to make rifle-shooting the chief national sport. The Swiss
become very expert marksmen, and the government wisely encourages this
fancy for so patriotic and useful a sport. The citizen is allowed to
keep his government rifle at home, and to use it as much as he likes
for his private pleasure.
The gymnastic sports are organised on national lines like the old
Greek games. They embrace almost every form of manly exercise from
wrestling to weight-lifting. Mr. Symonds, whose pictures of Swiss
village life are very intimate and revealing, makes frequent
references to the Turnfests (sports gatherings) of the Turnvereins
(gymnastic clubs) of the Cantons. He recalls once being invited to
drink wine at an inn with a band of gymnastic victors:
The gymnasts had thrown off their greatcoats, and stood
displayed in a costume not very far removed from nudity. They
had gained their crowns, they told me, that evening at an
extraordinary meeting of the associated _Turnvereins_ of the
Canton. It was the oddest thing in the world to sit smoking in
a dimly-lighted, panelled tap-room with seven such companions.
They were all of them strapping bachelors between twenty and
twenty-five years of age; colossally broad in the chest and
shoulders, tight in the reins, set massively upon huge thighs
and swelling calves; wrestlers, boxers, stone-lifters, and
quoit-throwers. Their short bull-throats supported small heads,
closely clipped, with bruised ears and great big-featured
faces, over which the wreaths of bright green artificial
foliage bristled. I seemed to be sitting in a dream among
vitalised statues of the later emperors, executed in the
decadence of art, with no grasp on individual character, but
with a certain reminiscence of the grand style of portraiture.
Commodus, Caracalla, Alexander Severus, the three Gordians, and
Pertinax might have been drinking there beside me in the
pothouse. The attitudes assumed by these big fellows, stripped
to their sleeveless jerseys and tight-fitting flannel breeches,
strengthened the illusion. I felt as though we were waiting
there for slaves, who should anoint their hair with unguents,
gild their wreaths, enwrap them in the paludament, and attend
them to receive the shouts of "Ave Imperator" from a band of
gladiators or the legionaries of the Gallic army.
Apart from the rifle-shooting (which is commonly practised on
Sundays), the frequent gymnastic meetings (which mark every
feast-day), and the dancing festivals of the various harvest
celebrations, the Swiss have no strictly national sport, unless it be
chamois hunting. That last has been almost wholly given up to the
visitors, who are willing to pay large prices for guides and shooting
rights. The chamois is rare in Switzerland now; though there are
rumours that enterprising hotel-keepers are beginning to "stock up"
the heights near their places with bred specimens.
A wild chamois hunt offers the perfection of excitement and hunting
risk. The animals are very nimble and very wary. As they browse they
set an old doe as sentinel--a concession to femininity which seems to
be dictated by wisdom--and it needs the greatest skill and daring to
get past her watch and approach near enough for a shot. Lest there may
be a doubt as to the scarcity of the true chamois in the mind of the
reader, let me explain that the "chamois skin" of commerce, so
plentifully used for gloves and for polishing cloths, is not, as a
rule, chamois skin at all, but the dressed hide of rough-woolled
sheep--the same hide which, after different methods of dressing,
serves for all kinds of gloves--chamois, kid, "reindeer skin,"
dog-skin, doe-skin. All may come from the sheep.
Mr. John Finnemore gives a picturesque description of a herd of
chamois in flight alarmed by the hunter:
The merry little kids forsake their gambols, and each runs to
its mother and presses closely against her flank. The older
ones leap upon boulders and rocks, and gaze eagerly on every
hand to discover the whereabouts of the intruder. A few moments
of watchful hesitation pass, and then, perhaps, a wandering
breeze gives them a sniff of tainted air, and they fix upon the
direction from which the foe is advancing.
Now follows a marvellous scene--that of a band of chamois in
full retreat. The speed and agility of their flight is
wonderful. They are faced by a precipice. They skim up it one
after the other like swallows. There is no path, no ridge, no
ledge: but here and there little knobs of rock jut out from the
face of the cliff, and they spring from projection to
projection with incredible sureness and skill, their four feet
sometimes bunched together on a patch of rock not much larger
than a man's fist. They vanish with lightning rapidity, and the
hunter must turn away in search of another band, for these will
not halt till they are far beyond his reach in some sanctuary
of the hills quite inaccessible to him.
Very often a number of hunters go together, and close upon the
chamois from every side. Then the swift creatures are in a
ring, and, as they rush away down-wind, they are bound to come
within shot of those posted on the side towards which they
flee. Sometimes the chamois are turned back by long stretches
of cord set upon sticks, and drawn across places where they
could escape from the ring of hunters and drivers. From the
cord flutter bright pieces of cotton cloth--red, blue, or
yellow--and at sight of these the chamois face about and try
another path. But when driven to the extremity of terror,
chamois have been known to dash upon the line of flags, some
clearing the obstacle with a flying leap, others bodily
charging the rope, and bursting a way through. Very often the
latter entangle their horns in the rope, and go whirling
through the air in a double somersault. But they are on their
legs again in a moment, and off at tremendous speed.
[Illustration: HUNTING THE CHAMOIS.]
Apart from the national sports of the Swiss, the national sports of
Switzerland--in which, since they were acclimatised, the Swiss take
part and frequently excel--are skating, hockey, tobogganing,
bob-sleighing, curling, and ski-ing. Skating is, I suppose, common to
all lands where there is much ice. Tobogganing was introduced to
Switzerland from America, and ski-ing from Norway. Another interesting
recent sport is a modification of skating, and is known as
ice-sailing. The skater rigs up a sail which he holds with his arms
stretched out as yards--himself the ship. Skimming the ice one can
keep thus up only till the arms are tired, but a most exhilarating
speed is possible. Ice-sailing with yachts has been recently imported
to the Swiss lakes from America. For ice-yachting, an expert says,
"Dress as if you were going through the Arctic Circle on a fast
motor-car in the worst of snow-storms. Goggles, leathers, and furs
are indispensable. Use your eyes like a lynx, your rudder like a silk
rein on a blood-mare--and you will quite enjoy it." It has enough of
the element of danger as well as of speed to be attractive to the
adventurous.
Tobogganing strictly is a Red Indian sport, and the name is Red
Indian. But it is so closely related to sleighing that the germ of the
sport can be discovered in almost all ice-covered countries. It was
natural that in cold climates the wheels of waggons should be
replaced, when the earth was frozen, with runners, and thus the sleigh
came. The toboggan is a sporting variety of sleigh. Early traces of it
can be found in Switzerland. An English visitor to the Alps noticed
that the local postman used a rough sleigh to slide down the hills
which he had to descend; was intrigued by the idea of the swift
gliding; and there thus began to be cultivated the sport which has its
culminating glory in the Cresta Run at St. Moritz--said, by the way,
to have been planned by an Australian. Tobogganing has the charm of a
great bicycle "coast" many times multiplied. Artificial difficulties
have been developed to add to its risks and its excitement. The
simple toboggan slide, the dragging of a toboggan up a smooth snow
slope, and then sliding down at a pace reaching to thirty miles an
hour, is old-fashioned and tame. Nowadays, the slide must be so
arranged as to secure a much higher speed, and to give awkward
turnings which need cool courage to negotiate. A speed of sixty miles
an hour has been reached tobogganing.
Perhaps a charm of the toboggan is that it is not very useful. The
flat board, set on runners, can only slide down hill, and you must
draw it up first. The ski, on the other hand, has a very definite use.
It enables snow-covered country to be traversed with safety at great
speed, and a proof of its practical value is that the Swiss army is
trained to march on ski. Down a steep slope a pace of forty miles an
hour can be reached by the expert ski-runner, and he can leap great
heights and great distances with the aid of the momentum of that
speed. But to become an expert ski-runner calls for some trouble and
pain.
With ski the exploration of the Alps in all kinds of weather has
become possible. A recent _Journal de Geneve_ gave the account of an
extraordinary adventure of two Swiss ski-runners. On Easter Sunday,
1913, these two set out with a companion from Saas Fee for the
Britannia Hut. This hut was reached at 8 A.M., and the three
ski-runners went on to the Allalin Pass, but were compelled by mist to
return to the hut, which they reached about 5 P.M. On the Sunday
evening three Genevese climbers came to the hut, and one of the party
of three ski-runners went home, leaving two. These two intended to go
to Zermatt over the Adler Pass, but the weather was so bad that it was
Saturday before they could start. They were seen to reach the Allalin
Pass, and no more was seen or heard of them for a very long time. But
it seems that the ski-ers went down to the Findelen Glacier, up to the
Stockjoch, and down _via_ the Monte Rosa Glacier to the Gorner
Glacier; thence up again to the Betemps Hut, where they spent the
night. The following day, Sunday, in uncertain weather, they went down
on to the glacier again, meaning to go to Zermatt. One of the two,
named Dehns, was going on ahead. The wind had blown away all trace of
the track made by them the previous day, and the man who had remained
behind noticed that Dehns was going too much to the left, and called
out to him that he was not taking the right way, but too late. He had
not gone more than about sixty yards on to the glacier before he
disappeared into a crevasse, hidden beneath a quantity of fresh snow.
"I advanced," says the narrator, "cautiously to the brink of the
crevasse, and called to Dehns, who replied that he was all right, only
he had torn one ear and broken the point off one of his ski. I must
use his rope to help him out, he said. I tied the ends of my puttees
to my ski-sticks, my bootlaces, and anything else which could possibly
serve the purpose of string, and I let everything down to him so that
he could tie the rope to it. Dehns could understand what I said, but I
could hear nothing that he said owing to the wind and the snowstorm
which had begun."
Finally Dehns cut his way out of the crevasse in which he had been for
four hours. He was a little frost-bitten and much bruised; and his ski
were lost. They made their way to the Betemps Hut, and there they
remained for twelve days. They had very little in the way of
provisions, half of what they had had with them being down the
crevasse. Eventually the uninjured man contrived to burst open the
door of the hut cellar, where he found food and wine.
Without ski it was impossible for the prisoners to leave, for eight or
ten feet of fresh snow had fallen. Moreover, the condition of Dehns,
who was badly bruised and in much pain, was sufficient to prevent him
reaching Zermatt even with ski. On the twelfth day Dehns was better,
and they made an expedition to attempt to recover the lost ski, but in
vain. Next they attempted to make a pair of ski out of planks. But
that was not successful. The next day they were rescued by a search
party. The facts illustrate the value of ski for travelling in the
snow and the helplessness of the voyager without them.
Skating, of course, is excellent in Switzerland in the winter. Most of
the hotels catering for the tourist have set up rinks which are
"artificial" to the extent that Nature is assisted a little to produce
a clear smooth surface of ice. But the skating, like the tobogganing,
is limited in its area. The visitor who would have the keys of the
Alpine snows must learn the use of the ski.
It will be of interest to chronicle the chief winter sports centres.
Good tobogganing, bob-sleighing, skating, ski-ing, ice-hockey, and
curling are to be enjoyed at Arosa, Celerina, Davos, Klosters,
Lenzerheide, Maloja, Pontresina, and at St. Moritz in the Canton
Grisons; at Andermatt, at Engelberg, at Adelboden, Beatenberg,
Grindwald, Gstaad and Wengen in the Bernese Oberland; at Les Brenets,
at Caux, Chateau-d'-Oex, Chesieres, Diablerets, Les Avants, St.
Cergue, Villars-Ollon in the Canton de Vaud; at Champery and
Loeche-les-Bains in the Canton de Valais; and at Chamonix and le
Planet in the Chamonix Valley.
As for summer sports, there are golf links at Aigle, Axen-Fels,
Campfer, Celerina, Geneva, Gottschalkenberg, Interlaken, Les Rasses
(near St. Croix), Lucerne, Lugano, Lugano-Paradiso, Maloja, Menaggio,
Montana, Mont-Pelerin, Montreux, Pontresina, Ragaz, Samaden, St.
Moritz-Dorf, Territet, Villeneuve, and Zurich-Dolder.
Tennis courts are almost everywhere attached to the hotels. Certainly
no large village is without them, and they exist in plenty at
Adelboden, Chamonix, Engelberg, Grindwald, Interlaken, Lucerne, Berne,
St. Moritz, Wengen, and other cities.
The spring season in the Alps begins as early as March in some
places, but more generally in April. It is the chief season around
Lake Leman. The summer season begins with June, and is the chief
season in eastern Switzerland, the Bernese Oberland, Lake Neuchatel,
Zurich, St. Gothard, and many other parts. Indeed, there is a summer
season in all Switzerland. For the autumn, many favour the Lake of
Lucerne and the Lake of Leman. The winter season begins usually with
December, and again embraces almost all of Switzerland, but the chief
centres for this season correspond with the list of the towns (already
given) which make special provision for winter sports.
I do not know whether bath-resorts can be described fittingly as sport
centres; but it is well to chronicle somewhere the fact that
Switzerland is well off for thermal and medicinal baths. Baden is the
chief of the bath centres. Owing to its excellent climate and to its
hot springs Baden was, in Roman times, the most important
watering-place and health-resort to the north of the Alps. Numerous
excavations, inscriptions, remains of temples, statues, coins and
surgical instruments confirm this fact. In Roman times the principal
military road of Helvetia led through Baden, connecting the
watering-place with Vindonissa, the great Helvetian fortress, six
miles away. In the year 1892, beyond the Roman road in Baden, in the
direction of Vindonissa, there were discovered the foundations of a
large connected block of buildings, which, when fully excavated,
revealed fourteen apartments of various sizes, from 10 to 88 feet in
length. The architecture of this building, the medical and surgical
instruments and utensils found there, and the proximity of the
Helvetian fortress of Vindonissa, where Roman legions were stationed,
and the thermal springs show without much doubt that this was the site
of a Roman military hospital. Besides those at Baden there are
medicinal springs at Ragaz, Champery, Lavey-les-Bains, Passagg, Aigle,
St. Moritz-Bad, Grinel-les-Bains, and many other centres. They will
provide entertainment for those whose life is not happy without some
devotion to a more or less real ailment.
[Illustration: A CORNER OF AIGLE SKATING RINK.]