TO CHAMONIX
While I was reading about Madame de Genlis after breakfast one
morning, Ruth came into the library and we talked about the advantage
of foreign travel. Does the broadening effect come from seeing new
scenes or does it proceed from the intercourse which it favours with
men and women of entirely different habits and modes of thought?
I said that my belief was that a person living in an isolated country
town, by reading books of travel, especially those furnished with
illustrations, and by attending “moving-picture shows,” might attain
to as complete a knowledge of any given foreign country as he would by
merely travelling through it armed with a Baedecker. The generality of
travellers carry with them the individual aura of their own conceit
which is quite impermeable to new ideas, and what they have seen does
not soak into their inner consciousness at all. But for the average
person, if there be such a person, stay-at-home travel is more
advantageous than actual peregrinations. Rushing from one country to
another or from one place to another is not seeing a country.
Ruth called my attention to what Lord Bacon said about travel. In his
day “the grand tour” was the culmination of a young nobleman’s
education, and Italy was the goal. Switzerland was merely an obstacle
on the way, to be crossed with more or less discomfort and with little
thought of its picturesqueness. Ruth took down a handsome edition of
the “Essays” and turned to the one which treats of this subject and
read it aloud to me.
It was not in accordance with his scheme to fill the mind with
pictures of beautiful scenery, though he realized that for young men
it is a part of education and for their elders a part of experience.
He says:--“He that travelleth into a country before he hath some
entrance into the language, goeth to school and not to travel.” He
would not object for young men to travel provided they take a tutor
who knows languages and “may be able to tell them what things are
worthy to be seen in the country where they go, what acquaintances
they are to seek, what exercises or discipline the place yieldeth;
for else young men shall go hooded and look abroad little.”
He believed in keeping diaries. He tells us that the things to be seen
and observed are:--“the courts of princes, especially when they give
audience to ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and
hear causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and
monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls
and fortifications of cities and towns; and so the havens and harbors,
antiquities and ruins, libraries, colleges, disputations and lectures
where any are; shipping and navies; houses and gardens of state and
pleasure, near great cities; armories, arsenals, magazines, exchanges,
burses, warehouses, exercises of horsemanship, fencing, training of
soldiers and the like; comedies, such whereunto the better sort of
persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes; cabinets and
rarities; and to conclude, whatsoever is memorable in the places where
they go, after all which the tutors or servants ought to make diligent
inquiry. As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital
executions and such shows, men need not to be put in mind of them; yet
they are not to be neglected.”
He did not believe in staying long in any one city or town; but “more
or less as the place deserveth, but not long,” nor staying in any one
part of a town: “Let him change his lodging from one end and part of
the town to another, which is a great adamant of acquaintance.” And he
advised “sequestering himself from the company of his countrymen and
diet in such places where there is good company of the nation where he
travelleth.” Acquaintance was the thing to cultivate, especially
secretaries and attachés or, as Bacon called them, “employed men of
ambassadors,” and the reason for this was that he might “suck the
experience of many.”
“When a traveller returneth home,” he says in conclusion, “let him not
leave the countries where he hath travelled altogether behind him, but
maintain a correspondence by letter with those of his acquaintance
which are of most worth; and let his travel appear rather in his
discourse than in his apparel or gesture, and in his discourse let him
be rather advised in his answers than forward to tell stories, and let
it appear that he doth not change his country manners for those of
foreign parts but only prick in some flowers of that he hath learned
abroad into the customs of his own country.”
I remarked that Ralph Waldo Emerson found to his disappointment on
his first trip abroad that he could not rid himself of himself. It was
the same Emerson in Rome, in Paris and in London, as in Boston. How
much would travel do for such a man? The great philosopher, Immanuel
Kant, never ventured more than sixty miles from Königsberg and he was
lost if varied from the daily routine of shuttle-like attendance on
his lectures--back and forth, back and forth.
“Yet,” said I, “Kant wrote remarkably accurate descriptions of
Switzerland in his Physical Geography. He could never have seen the
Alps except in his imagination.
“What better description can you find than in his ‘Comparison of the
Beautiful with the Pleasant and the Good’ where he says:--‘Bold,
overhanging and as it were threatening rocks; clouds up-piled in the
heavens; moving along with flashes of lightning and peals of thunder;
volcanoes in all their violence of destruction; tornadoes with their
swath of devastation; the limitless ocean in a state of uproar and
similar spectacles exhibit our power of resistance as insignificantly
puny compared to their might. But the spectacle of them is the more
fascinating, the more terrible it is and we are prone to call these
objects sublime, because they raise the powers of the soul above
their accustomed height and discover in us a power of resistance of an
entirely different sort--one which gives us the courage to pit
ourselves against the apparently infinite power of Nature.’”
[Illustration: MONT BLANC AND THE VALLEY OF CHAMONIX.]
“That is fine,” said Ruth, “I had forgotten, indeed I never knew that
Kant was such a poet.”
“Speaking of poetry,” said I, “did you know that Coleridge, who wrote
the ‘Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni,’ had never seen
Chamonix or Mont Blanc in his life? Being a poet, he did not need to
see with his actual eyes. Moreover he had a model in Frederika Brunn’s
‘Chamouni at Sunrise,’ which runs with a rhythm reminding me of some
of Richard Wagner’s verses. Do you remember her poem?”
“No, but it is in a note to Coleridge’s.”
“Please read it.”
“‘Aus tiefen Schatten des schweigenden Tannenhains,
Erblick’ ich bebend dich, Scheitel der Ewigkeit,
Blendender Gipfel, von dessen Höhe
Ahnend mein Geist ins Unendliche schwebet.
“‘Wer senkte den Pfeiler in der Erde Schoss,
Der, seit Jahrtausenden, fest deine Masse stützt?
Wer türmte hoch in des Aethers Wölbung
Mächtig und kühn dein umstrahltes Antlitz?
“‘Wer goss Euch hoch aus der ewigen Winters Reich?
O Zackenströme, mit Donnergetös’ herab?
Und wer gebietet laut mit der Allmacht Stimme:
‘Hier sollen ruhen die starrenden Wogen?’
“‘Wer zeichnet dort dem Morgensterne die Bahn?
Wer kränzt mit Blüten des ewigen Frostes Saum?
Wem tönt in schrecklichen Harmonieen,
Wilder Arveiron, dein Wogengetümmel?
“‘Jehovah! Jehovah! kracht’s im berstenden Eis;
Lavinendonner rollen’s die Kluft hinab:
Jehovah rauscht’s in den hellen Wipfeln,
Flüstert’s an rieselnden Silberbächen.’
“I think that expression, ‘Scheitel der Ewigkeit’ is ludicrous,” said
Ruth.
“Coleridge always improved on his originals when he translated, but it
looked rather odd for him to have discussed the elements of the
scenery in the Alps when he had never been in Savoy. It looks as if he
tried to throw dust in people’s eyes. But tell me, Ruth, which do you
like best the Coleridge ‘Hymn’ or Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc,’ which also
claims to have been written in the Vale of Chamonix? First you read
the lines you like best in Coleridge and then I will read a few
passages from Shelley.”
Ruth took the volume of Coleridge and began. “I like the first twelve
lines,” she said:--
“‘Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.’”
“Yes,” I said, “that ‘bald awful head’ is better than ‘Scheitel der
Ewigkeit,’ but I don’t like the immediate repetition of ‘awful’ two
lines below; ‘as with a wedge,’ too, is weak. But go on!”
“‘Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn!
“‘Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the Vale!
O, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth’s rosy star and of the dawn
Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?’”
Again I interrupted:--“I think it is far-fetched to call the mountain
‘Earth’s rosy star,’ and again he uses the word ‘rosy’ just below:
‘who filled thy countenance with rosy light?’ That is a weak line,
don’t you think? ‘Visited all night by troops of stars’ however is
masterly. But go on.”
“‘And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence came)
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest.
Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain’s brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain--
“‘Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice
And stopt at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
“‘Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle’s nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth God and fill the hills with praise!
“‘Thou, too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast--
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me--Rise, O ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky
And tell the stars and tell yon rising sun
Earth with her thousand voices praises God!’”
“I think it ends pretty feebly,” said I. “He compares Mont Blanc first
with a vapoury cloud, then to a cloud of incense; then calls it a
kingly Spirit throned, then a dread ambassador and then a Great
Hierarch. What could be more mixed in its metaphors? But now let us
take Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc.’”
“I think it begins with a curious mixture,” said Ruth. “He says the
everlasting universe of things flows through the mind, where from
secret springs the source of human thought brings its tribute of
waters with a sound but half its own such as a feeble brook assumes in
the wild woods. How can the eternal universe of things rolling rapid
waves diminish itself to a feeble brook? But it goes on:--
“‘In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap forever
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.’”
“It seems to me a hopeless mixture. The description of the Vale is
better:--
“‘Thus thou, Ravine of Arve--dark, deep Ravine--
Thou many-colored, many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting thro’ these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning thro’ the tempest;--thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odors and their mighty swinging
To hear--an old and solemn harmony;
Thine earthly rainbows stretcht across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which when the voices of the desert fail
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;--
Thy caverns, echoing to the Arve’s commotion,
A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting sound--
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind which passively
Now renders....’”
“Oh stop, stop! Uncle, I can’t follow it!”
“Very good, I will skip to where he tells how he is gazing on the
naked countenance of earth. Listen:--
“‘The glaciers creep
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains
Slow rolling on....’”
“What are rolling on, snakes, avalanches or far fountains?”
“‘There many a precipice,
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing....’”
“Oh, what a rhyme--ruin and strewin’. Do you suppose Shelley dropped
his ‘g’’s?”
“Don’t be irreverent. Listen:--
“‘vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world....’
“I will omit about a dozen rather blind lines about man and his
puniness and begin:--
“‘Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrents’ restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms a tumult welling
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River
The breath and blood of distant lands, forever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapors to the circling air.’
“Now he comes to Mont Blanc itself:--
“‘Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:--the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart thro’ them:--Winds contend
Silently there and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently and like vapor broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
Which governs thought and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits there!
And what were thou and earth and stars and sea
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?’
“Well, what do you say? Which is the truer poetry?” I asked.
“I think that Shelley would have done better if he had not tried to
rhyme his verses,” said Ruth. “The attempt to find rhymes led him on
and on into meanings that he didn’t mean. But there are fine lines in
both. By the way,” she added with an abrupt dislocation of our
literary talk, and yet it was suggested by it, “Will and I propose to
take you to Chamonix. Would you like that?”
“Of course I would.”
“We will get an early start to-morrow--that is, if the weather prove
propitious.”
The weather could not have been more kindly disposed. We started early
in the morning and reached Villeneuve in less than an hour. Thence we
rode up the at first broad and then ever narrowing valley of the
mystic Rhône. I wished that I might see some of the strange things
that it is said to conceal. Juste Olivier tells of its sandy
nonchalant banks, its marshes and creeks of almost stagnant waters,
the little bridges carrying fascinating paths, which later, glittering
with silvery dust, suddenly plunge under long vaults where the light
scarcely penetrates the green cool arches.
“Here and there,” he says, “there are fantastic clearings. Old trunks
of ancient willows, oddly wrapt around and still more oddly crowned
now with creepers, now with young bushes which have climbed to their
tops, and now with their own branches contorted and interlaced.
Immense oaks loved by adventurous pairs of the wild pigeons which fill
the solitude with their plaintive notes. Young alders countless in
number and growing so closely the heifers can with difficulty force a
way through between their smooth even trunks. In a word, a forest
variegated by marshes, by patches of sand, by yellowish fields where
the water contributes its murmur, the desert its solemnity, the
infinite its mystery, the unknown its charm.
“This is what you find in these shores of the Rhône called Les Isles.
Sometimes strange noises come to the inhabited châlets and the reedy
plain and startle the passer-by and are lost in the neighboring
fields; it is the voice of la Fennetta-des-Isles who sometimes bellows
like the _bise_ in the trees, sometimes like the calves in the
pastures, and seems to run over the wrinkled waters of the canal. If
the clamor approach the fisherman pulls in his line and turns his head
away, for he knows that any person who has caught sight under any form
whatever of the fantastic being who thus howls in the gloomy woods
has little more to expect from life.”
We heard no bellowing Lady-of-the-Isles nor did we see her under any
form. Probably electric trams, and corrective dykes, and the skeptical
boldness of modern science has scared the Little Lady away. She will
never come back.
We had a glance at the big château of Aigle and looked to see if we
could recognize any of the fair black-eyed, plump-figured women for
which that place is famous. We saw the waterfalls on the Grande Eau.
We passed through “the smiling village of Bex” and Will asked me if I
would like to take the time to visit the remarkable salt-works at Bex
the Old--Bévieux--but I told him that I preferred Attic salt. Then we
discussed the question how salt should have been deposited so high up
among the mountains. Was it the relic of the vast ocean that once
covered all Europe? This presence of salt-laden anhydrite and the
occasional sulphur springs with high temperatures are extremely
interesting. There is evidently heat enough under the Alps to start a
volcano some day.
The sight of the mountains gathering about us menacingly made me again
remember Juste Olivier’s poetic description of the names of these
Savoyan Alps. He advised his pupils to climb them, his word, as the
word of every true Alpinist, is “conquer”--conquer them:--
“What marvellous treasures! What fragrant valleys! What flower-adorned
slopes! What dazzling crystals! What depths of shade! What fountains!
Happy son of the Alps who has succeeded in taming the Genius of them.
From the highest summits like a cascade in the eternal chant, by a
thousand brooks, by a thousand murmurs, over slate and granite down to
the depths of staggering abysses, across mist-hung crags, by the side
of mournful lakes, amid green and smiling hiding-places, along
pasture-grounds spread with a network of light and shade, in
fir-forests which roar like the sea, beds of thyme under beach-trees
and laburnum, Poesy descends into the valleys and with the sunset
turns back in jets of flame toward the skies.
“Go forth, young hearts! Go quench your thirst at this unknown spring.
Follow up the torrents and lose yourselves in the plaintive forests.
The Genius of the Alps is waiting for you, and there also is the
secret home of the Genius of the Fatherland.”
Rogers took this same route and wrote about it, almost a hundred years
ago, at this very same Saint-Maurice where we now arrived:--
“Still by the Leman Lake, for many a mile,
Among those venerable trees I went,
Where damsels sit and weave their fishing-nets,
Singing some national song by the way-side.
But now the fly was gone, the gnat was come;
Now glimmering light from cottage-windows broke.
’Twas dark; and, journeying upward by the Rhone,
That there came down, a torrent from the Alps,
I entered where a key unlocks a kingdom;
The road and river, as they wind along
Filling the mountain-pass. There, till a ray
Glanced through my lattice and the household stir
Warned me to rise, to rise and to depart.”
There was much to interest us at Saint-Maurice, which traces its
ancestry to an old Keltic town called Acaunum or Agaunum (as the
Latins spelled it). Here once occurred an event which would have
pleased Count Tolstoï. A manuscript of the Ninth Century, discovered
by Professor Emil Egli at Zürich, relates it as follows:--
“In the army of the Roman Emperor Maximilian who reigned from 286
until 306 A. D. was enrolled a legion brought from the east and called
the Thebæan Legion. They hesitated about fighting brother-Christians.
The Emperor learned in the neighboring town of Octodurum that the
legion was mutinous in the narrow pass of Agaunum. He ordered every
tenth man to be beheaded. But when the legion persisted in its
obstinacy he repeated the punishment. Those left mutually exhorted one
another to persist and their leader Mauricius with two officers,
Exuperius and Candidus advised them rather to perish than to fight
against Christians.
“So they threw down their arms and were hacked to pieces.”
The legion consisted of sixty-six hundred men. According to other
legends--for this is only a legend which arose in the Fifth
Century--some of the legion were subjected to a martyr’s death
elsewhere--Ursus, Victor and Verena at Solothurn, Felix and Regula at
Zürich. However the story may be regarded, the town is supposed to
have received its name from the leader of the Eastern legion. The
abbey now occupied by Augustine canons who take pride (for a fee) in
showing their treasures--a Saracen vase, a gold crozier and a silver
ewer presented by Charlemagne, and other relics--is said to date back
to the Fourth Century and was founded by Saint Theodore, one of
Licinius’ Greek officers, who was converted and put to death.
Next we arrived at Martigny, the ancient Roman town of Octodurus, near
the junction of the Dranse with the Rhône. Octodurus signified the
Castle in the Narrows. It was the capital of the Veragri who with the
Seduni held possession of the pass of the Great Saint-Bernard. Cæsar
makes mention of it in the Third Book of the Gallic War.
Investigations have shown that the Wallisi had the right bank of the
Dranse and the Romans the left. Suddenly Galba discovered that all the
inhabitants had deserted their houses in one night and that a great
body of the Seduni and Veragri were occupying the heights. They knew
that the legion was not complete, that two cohorts were at Acaunum and
that a good many had gone over the Alps to get provisions and that the
fortifications were not finished.
“Galba held a council of war. Some of the men were in favor of
fighting their way back; but the majority voted to defend the camp. In
the meantime, at a given signal, the Wallisi began to storm down from
the heights and fling stones and lances. The Romans defended
themselves and every shot told. Wherever there was a rush of the
enemy the Romans met them. But the Wallisi had constant
reinforcements. After fighting six hours ammunition began to fail.
Breaches were made in the walls; the ditches were filled up and the
Romans were in desperate plight. Then Galba had his men rest a while,
and at a sudden signal having armed themselves with the lances of the
enemy, they made a sudden sortie. The Wallisi were surprised and took
to flight. Out of thirty thousand at least a third were killed and the
rest threw down their arms. Although the whole country was cleared of
the enemy Galba decided to winter elsewhere, and having burnt the
town, he led his troops undisturbed down the Rhône through the
Nantuati along the lake into that of the Allobrigi.”
[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF THE RHÔNE AT MARTIGNY.]
In the years thirty-seven, thirty-six and thirty-four B. C. the
Wallisi defeated the Romans, but under Augustus, in the year seven
B. C., they were conquered in turn. Augustus treated them humanely and
left them to govern themselves though procurators were sent among them
to collect tribute. In twenty-two A. D. Octodurus was given the rights
of a free city and had the protection of the Roman law: this was a
great incentive to trade and it became the capital and flourished.
Claudius made it an imperial market-town and gave it the name of
Forum Claudi Vallensium. In forty-seven the pass over the Great
Saint-Bernard was made into a highway and provided with mile-stones
clear down to Vevey. Relics of this can still be seen here and there,
now high above the pass, now following the Dranse, and the natives
call it still _la route romaine_.
Back of Martigny-ville along the Dranse is a broad field with
morasses; it belonged to the Abbey of the Great Saint-Bernard. It had
little value even as pasturage as its surface was covered with all
sorts of rubbish and scattered stones. In 1874 the artist, Raphael
Ritz, was making excavations near the so-called _trésor de la
Deleyse_. There was found the relics of a small amphitheatre with
bones and teeth of wild animals which had been slaughtered there “to
make a Roman holiday.” “Aux Morasses” gave up the remains of a
colossal bronze statue with gilded garment, a huge oxhead, a laurel
wreath with fine bronze leaves, smashed with blows from an ax and then
sunk into the thick miry soil. It is supposed that early Christians
may have treated these objects in such a manner because they regarded
them as idols.
In 1895 systematic excavations were instituted and a wall sixty-three
by thirty-one meters was discovered. It was the remains of a basilica
which served as a trading-station or custom-house, while in front of
it was the forum where once mingled Roman merchants, citizens,
soldiers, officials, priests and natives. It was supported by thirteen
large columns. On both sides of the square or piazza were narrow
wings, each furnished with stalls for merchants and smiths. In front
ran the Roman road, meant to last for all time; it is still here and
there visible running up the valley. It was paved with large irregular
stones. Along the southwest wing were a row of columns with enormous
pedestals. The great building was divided into three halls. One ending
in a semicircle, like the letter D, had a place for the statue of a
god. In the north central wall were eight pilasters and in the niches
skeletons were found.
Next to this was still another large building and beyond it was a
private dwelling with marble floor, marble dado and painted walls. Any
number of coins dating from the year one till three hundred and fifty
A. D. were picked up. These buildings were covered with hollow tiles;
and the hewn stones for the columns, the door-sills, the curb-stones,
were all brought from the Jura. Some of the marble came from Italy,
some from Greece; there was even porphyry from Egypt. All about
Martigny were found these wonderful remains of Roman occupation. One
capital of a temple was of colossal dimensions. They had
drinking-water piped to the city.
At La Batiaz, where stands the old castle that belonged to the Bishop
of Sion, but was dismantled nearly four hundred years ago, stood a
Roman watch-tower and not far away the graveyard was found among the
vineyards of Ravoire. We saw an inscription which was intensely
interesting:--
SALVTI.SACRVM
FOROCLAVDIEN
SES.VALLENSES
CVM
T.POMPONIO
VICTORE
PROC.AVGVSTO
RVM
This signified that Titus Pomponius had, with the aid of the
inhabitants, erected an altar to the Goddess of Safety. It dated back
to the time of Marcus Aurelius, the good emperor. At that day Wallis
(which it must be remembered is still preserved in the very name Vaud)
was united under the same government with the Graian Alps. The same
Titus Pomponius, together with his family, is found mentioned on an
altar to the god Sylvanus as a thank-offering for the conclusion of
his term of service, and it preserves a poem addressing the god as
hiding in the foliage of the sacred ash-tree, as the protector of the
lofty green luxuriant forest. It thanks him for having brought them
from a far land and over the immovable mountains of the Alps amid the
sweet perfumes of the bushes; it says:--“I performed the duties of the
office conferred upon me. Lead me and mine back to Rome, and let us
under thy protection cultivate Italian fields. I vow that I will plant
a thousand mighty trees to thee.”
The Bishop Theodorus lived here in 381 A. D. The Théodule pass is
named for him. He built a Christian basilica on the site of the
heathen temple. But the Dranse overflowed it and covered it deep with
mud and stones. Fire finished it, and now all that is left of it is
ashes, broken tiles, melted glass and bits of metal.
Martigny is another of the towns in which I should like to spend a
month. There are so many excursions to be taken from it as a
centre--up the Arpille, up to the Pierre à Voir from which one looks
down into two river valleys and across to the Bernese and Valaisian
Alps--a splendid view; to La Dent de Morcles, the Pissevache cascade
and dozens of other trips for pleasant days.
The geology here also is particularly interesting. Here the Rhône once
more proved that might made right. He turned at almost right angles
and stole into the valley belonging to the Dranse. Here the glaciers
of the ice-age polished the rock wall--“the most remarkable example of
ice-action in the Alps.”
Above Martigny we find the real and only genuine valley of the Rhône:
elsewhere it is a robber.
Still ascending the Rhône valley we reached Saxon with its picturesque
ruined castle, and then crossing the Ardon and the Morge beyond Riddes
reached the medieval city of Sion just at sunset. Approaching the
famous old city it was like a dream--the castles on the hills so
kindly left by the river; high up, the Château de Tourbillon, where
for five hundred years the princely bishops used to luxuriate, looking
down on a world of beauty.
Across a valley on a hill only twenty meters lower stands the old
castle of Valeria taking the place of an earlier Roman fort; its
towers glittered in the sunlight’s last rays. We went to it in the
morning, and, on paying a fee, were admitted to the Thirteenth-Century
church of Notre Dame, with its quaint Romanesque capitals, and
Seventeenth-Century choir-stalls elaborately carved. And, of course,
being devoted to antiquities, we looked into the cantonal museum next
door. We went also into the Fifteenth-Century Gothic cathedral with
its tower six hundred years older; and admired the carved ceiling in
the splendid hall of the Super-saxo mansion.
[Illustration: PISSEVACHE CASCADE.]