THE ALPS AND THE JURA
We spent so much time at Chillon that we decided to put in for the
night at Evian; but first we circled round the Ilot de Peilz (or, as
some call it, L’Ile de Paix), one of the three artificial islands of
the lake, which has none of its own. It was created about the middle
of the eighteenth century on the _beine_. It still bears the three
elms which shade its seventy-seven square meters of surface. The
waters at one time undermined it and it had to be repaired.
Later we got a good look at the other two islets. The one called La
Rocher aux Muettes, near Clarens, was built up on a reef of rocks
about one hundred and twenty-five meters from the shore and was walled
up in 1885. It covers about sixteen hundred square meters.
The third is the Ile de la Harpe, in front of Rolle. It was protected
by a wall in 1838 and bears a white marble monument in memory of the
patriotic General F. C. de la Harpe--he who, by telling the Emperor
of Russia that he wished he might use the words “My Country,” had his
support in the struggle with Bern and was instrumental in winning the
freedom of Vaud. This islet stands, or sits, on what is called a
_tenevière_ or group of stones heaped up by nature or by the work of
man, and in prehistoric times served as a _palafitte_ or village of
lake-dwellers. This proves that the level of the lake was about the
same two thousand years ago as it is now. The sluiceway at Geneva
tends to make an artificial difference of height throughout the lake
and there has been for two centuries a law-suit between Geneva and Le
Pays de Vaud growing out of this disturbance. The Vaudois claim that
raising the level of the water has flooded their roads and fields.
We ran over to Villeneuve and had an excellent luncheon at the Hôtel
du Port. About half-way between Villeneuve and the pretty town of
Saint-Gingolph, on the Morge, we crossed the current of the Rhône,
which, I suppose, owing to its swirling force and the sometimes really
dangerous whirlpools it creates, particularly when there is a strong
wind, is called “la Bataillère,” and is dangerous for small craft.
When the Rhône is much colder than the lake it makes a subaqueous
cataract, pouring down almost perpendicularly to the gloomy caverns
below.
For a wonder there was very little air stirring from the lake at that
time of the day, though there are always winds enough for one to
choose from, not counting the _bise_ or _la bise noire_, as it is
called when it is particularly cold and disagreeable. Emile told us
the various names of them; the _bornan_, which blows south from La
Dranse; the _joran_, from the northwest; the _molan_, which (at
Geneva) blows southeast from the valley of the Arve; the _vaudaire_,
which blows from the southeast over the upper lake from the Bas
Valais; the _sudois_, which, having full sweep across the widest part
of the lake, dashes big waves against the shores of Ouchy. Then there
are the day breezes, called _rebat_ or _séchard_, and the night wind,
the _morget_, which shifts up and down the mountains, owing to changes
in temperature. In summer, he said, there is a warm, south wind, known
as the _vent blanc_, which accompanies a cloudless sky. The natives
call it _maurabia_, which means the wheat-ripener, from _maura_ or
_murit_ and _blla, blé_.
“There is a charming excursion,” said Will, “from Saint-Gingolph.
First a walk along the bank of the Morge to Novel, and then up to the
top of Le Blanchard. Or, from Novel one can go almost twice as high to
the Dent d’Oche. Perhaps a little later, when the snow is all gone, we
can arrange to make it, if the climb would not be too much for you.”
“Too much for me!” I exclaimed, “What do you take me for--a
valley-lounger?”
“There is an easier climb,” continued Will, ignoring my indignation,
“up to the top of Le Grammont, which is only about fifty meters less
in height. I have been up there several times. At the side of Le
Grammont there are two charming lakes, Lovenex and--and--”
“Tanay,” suggested Emile.
“One gets an excellent chance, from the top, to compare the mountains
of the Jura across the lake with the Alps. The Jura has been compared
to a great, stiff curtain, without fringes or folds; even its colours
are rather monotonous, its distant blue is a bit gloomy and tragic. It
is curious, but this solemnity and monotony is said to affect the
inhabitants. On the other hand, the Alps sweep up with green forests,
and there are coloured crags, and the snows that crown them take on
wonderful prismatic tints and sometimes look as if they were on
fire--as if copper were burning with crimson and violet flames. The
difference has been explained partly by the way the valleys run;
those of the Jura are longitudinal and follow the axis of the range,
so that the mountains are easy to climb, while the Alps are shot
through with transverse valleys.
“In the Alps one finds even at this day, certainly in the remoter
regions, a primitive, natural, pastoral life, while the natives of the
Jura are quicker to take up industries and are broader-minded. One
could hardly imagine a native of an Alpine valley interesting himself
in politics. The Alpine herdsman looks down on the world; but the man
of the Jura might even belong to a labour-union! It has been well said
that just as in the Middle Ages, the common people of the Jura were
under feudal lords, so, up to the present time, the manufacturers have
controlled a large part of their time and their work, even of their
lives. But the natives of the Alps never submitted to any such
tyranny.
“I remember reading somewhere that the Alps gallop, as it were, with
their heads erect far over the earth, while the Jura Mountains march
peacefully along, noiselessly and unboundingly, to follow their career
in a graceful and courteous fashion, but without any sublime éclat.
The Jura shows a simplicity, and spreads out distinctly and, as it
were, prudently, offering nothing unexpected, exuberant, mad or
magnificently useless, but, rather, a well-regulated behaviour, a calm
and dignified, but somewhat gloomy, austerity, a cold and melancholy
air.--Don’t you think that is pretty good?--
[Illustration: ALPINE HERDSMEN.]
“This same lover of mountains finds even the snow different. On the
Jura it falls on dark-green firs and pines and, mingling with the
dreary foliage, gives forth only a sad and cautious half-smile. But in
the Alps the white snow makes the mountains joyous. He compares it to
a virginal mantle, embroidered with green and azure. When the morning
has, for them, brought on the early day, they seem to sing gaily their
reveille and their youth; a hymn of light floats high in the air above
their heads and finds an echo of joy and of love in the hearts of
mortals. In the evening they smoke like incense and, bending under the
circling sky, they then offer a strangely fascinating image of prayer
and of melancholy. From afar the Jura listens, and, like a dreamer,
pursuing his way, plunges into the darkness.”
* * * * *
I may as well say, here and now, that a month later we carried out the
plan of climbing Le Grammont, (which, of course, means the Great
Mountain). We went to Vouvry and first admired the exquisite view
where the pretty church, as it were, guides the eye up to the
mountains, and contemplated the canal which the descendants of that
fine old “robber-baron,” Kaspar Stockalper, who claimed the right to
dominate the trade over the Simplon and guarded it by a body of
seventy men, built to connect with the Rhône, though it remains
unfinished. Then we easily followed the trail to the mountain-top. We
chose a day which promised to be remarkably clear, and it fulfilled
its promise. Words fail, and must always fail, to describe that
panorama of splendour which includes the aerial heights of Mont Blanc
and the Jungfrau to the south, the whole extent of the lake and the
tamer peaks of the Jura to the north, and a rolling sea of petrified
and frozen billows in every direction.
When one speaks of Switzerland one instinctively thinks of Mont Blanc,
and it seems an unfair advantage which France has taken to keep
possession of Savoy, which used to belong to Switzerland, and the
crown of the Swiss Alps. History has made strange partitions of
territories; but the more one sees of Switzerland the more one
wonders that it could have ever become a united country, composed as
it is of isolated valleys, separated by lofty mountain-walls,
intercommunicable only by treacherous passes. That same dividing
construction of the country was the ruin of Greece, where each little
province or city, set by itself and developing various qualities of
character, was opposed in ideals and ambitions to every other.
It is curious, too, that the general notion that the Swiss are
peculiarly liberty-loving should be based on a legend. Probably no
other country in the world ever furnished so many mercenaries. But it
is now one united country and largely freed from the crushing burden
of rampant militarism.
It was a fine view also we had from the top of Le Grammont,
overlooking the delta of the Rhône, which, from the height of nearly
twenty-two hundred meters, lay below us. We could see how it was
building the level marsh land into the lake. Perhaps some day the
_débris_ from the mountains will quite fill up the gulf. It is amazing
how much material is brought down in the course of a single year, even
by a single freshet. We could see, also, the confining walls of the
dykes which, together with breakwaters, form what is called _la
correction du Rhône_, preventing any riotous behaviour of that torrent
when the floods sweep over the plain. The disreputable exploits of the
river, before it was thus tamed and disciplined, explain why the
region back of Villeneuve, regarded as desolate and uncultivated, is
or has been compared to the vineyard-laden and fertile slopes of the
Jorat.
* * * * *
But we are really not mountain-climbing; we are circling the lake and,
except where some river or torrent forms what is technically called a
cone, projecting out into the water, we are able to skirt close to the
_beine_, often under tremendous, beetling cliffs. They become higher
and higher, more and more romantic and magnificent. Only occasionally
is there room for a village to cuddle in between the lake and the
mountains, as, for instance, Meillerie, back of which one can see the
great quarries gashing the mountain, and the tunnel through which the
railway runs.
Samuel Rogers, in 1822, winging south on his Italian journey, so
beautifully illustrated by Turner, was moved by the beauty of
Meillerie to break out into song:--
“These gray majestic cliffs that tower to heaven,
These glimmering glades and open chestnut groves,
That echo to the heifer’s wandering bell,
Or woodman’s ax, or steersman’s song beneath,
As on he urges his fir-laden bark,
Or shout of goat-herd boy above them all,
Who loves not? And who blesses not the light,
When through some loop-hole he surveys the lake
Blue as a sapphire-stone, and richly set
With châteaux, villages and village-spires,
Orchards and vineyards, alps and alpine snows?
Here would I dwell; nor visit, but in thought,
Ferney far South, silent and empty now,
As now thy once-luxurious bowers, Ripaille;
Vevey, so long an exiled Patriot’s home;
Or Chillon’s dungeon-floors beneath the wave,
Channeled and worn by pacing to and fro;
Lausanne, where Gibbon in his sheltered walk
Nightly called up the Shade of ancient Rome;
Or Coppet and that dark untrodden grove
Sacred to Virtue and a daughter’s tears!
“Here would I dwell, forgetting and forgot,
And oft methinks (of such strange potency
The spells that Genius scatters where he will)
Oft should I wander forth like one in search,
And say, half-dreaming:--‘Here St. Preux has stood.’
Then turn and gaze on Clarens.”
The picture now is not so different from what it was almost a hundred
years ago.
“Day glimmered and I went, a gentle breeze
Ruffling the Leman Lake. Wave after wave,
If such they might be called, dashed as in sport
Not anger, with the pebbles on the beach
Making wild music, and far westward caught
The sun-beam--where alone and as entranced,
Counting the hours, the fisher in his skiff
Lay with his circular and dotted line
On the bright waters. When the heart of man
Is light with hope, all things are sure to please;
And soon a passage-boat swept gayly by,
Laden with peasant-girls and fruits and flowers
And many a chanticleer and partlet caged
For Vevey’s market-place--a motley group
Seen through the silvery haze. But soon ’twas gone.
The shifting sail flapped idly to and fro,
Then bore them off.
“I am not one of those
So dead to all things in this visible world,
So wondrously profound, as to move on
In the sweet light of heaven, like him of old
(His name is justly in the Calendar)
Who through the day pursued this pleasant path
That winds beside the mirror of all beauty,
And when at eve his fellow pilgrims sate
Discoursing of the Lake, asked where it was.
They marveled as they might; and so must all,
Seeing what now I saw: for now ’twas day
And the bright Sun was in the firmament,
A thousand shadows of a thousand hues
Chequering the clear expanse. Awhile his orb
Hung o’er thy trackless fields of snow, Mont Blanc,
Thy seas of ice and ice-built promontories,
That change their shapes for ever as in sport;
Then traveled onward and went down behind
The pine-clad heights of Jura, lighting up
The woodman’s casement, and perchance his ax
Borne homeward through the forest in his hand;
And, on the edge of some o’erhanging cliff,
That dungeon-fortress never to be named,
Where like a lion taken in the toils,
Toussaint breathed out his brave and generous spirit.
Little did he who sent him there to die,
Think, when he gave the word, that he himself,
Great as he was, the greatest among men,
Should in like manner be so soon conveyed
Athwart the deep.”
A half dozen kilometers farther down the shore is the famous castle of
Blonay. The days of feudalism were certainly tragic not only for the
baronial masters who were subject to feuds and duels, but also to the
common people. Lords and villeins, however, die and forget their woes,
and the turreted castles which they built and had built are a splendid
heritage for those who live under different conditions. The gorgeous
tapestries which they hung on their walls become food for generations
of moths or, if they escape, and still preserve their brilliant
colours and their quaint and curious designs, display them to
thousands of visitors at the museums where at last they are pretty
sure to gravitate. The solid gold plate is perhaps melted into coin to
pay the price of liberty. And so the cost of a picturesque château,
erected high on an almost inaccessible crag, and lifting its frowning
battlements against a background of snowy mountains, even though it be
reckoned in human lives, may be small compared to the value which it
has in after ages, especially if it comes into the possession of the
people themselves, to be for ever prized as a memorial of a stormy
past.
[Illustration: _The Living-Room of an Alpine Castle_]