FROM GENEVA OVER THE ALPS.
A short drive over one of those wonderfully hard, smooth roads that make
carriage traveling in Switzerland so delightful, and we are at the hotel
at the Gorge du Trient, whence, early in the morning, we are to begin
the ascent of the mountains. The time before dinner is occupied in an
exploration of the wildly picturesque gorge, with its winding
foot-bridge built alongside the cliffs, over yawning chasms, around
jutting bowlders that rise to such a height that the sky seems like a
strip of blue ribbon suspended high above our heads. At the bottom of
the gorge a mountain torrent, springing from some unknown nook way up in
the mountain, comes rushing and tumbling down over the jagged rocks,
foaming and whirling, and dashing its spray high in the air, as it
hurries along to join the Rhone.
The slender bridge, at times hanging apparently without any support over
deep pools of water, seems too fragile to bear the weight of a person,
and one treads lightly, lest the frail structure give way, and he be
precipitated into the unfathomable abyss below. The gorge is about
three-quarters of a mile long, and is wierdly picturesque.
[Sidenote: MOUNTAIN CLIMBING.]
After dinner, some rash member of the party suggested that we do a
little mountain climbing. Then a wager was immediately laid that no one
had the courage and endurance to go to the summit of a high peak near
by. Of course the challenge was accepted, and the whole party, there
were three ladies and five gentlemen, all started to accomplish the easy
feat. It looked easy. The path zigzagged up the hill, and
[Illustration: THE SLENDER BRIDGE.]
was provided with resting places at stated intervals. Nothing could be
more delightful than to skip merrily along, like chamois, clear to the
summit. It was all very well for the first few hundred feet, and we
laughed and vowed that mountain climbing was not such a terrible affair,
after all. But at the first resting place two of the gentlemen and one
of the ladies announced that they were subject to heart disease, and
dare not go any farther. They _could_ do it, but it was a duty they owed
to their families and the world at large not to tempt death.
[Illustration: A BIT OF CLIMBING.]
[Sidenote: THE PERSEVERING ONE.]
At the next resting place one of the ladies discovered that she had
turned her ankle, and she went back. She danced as briskly as usual,
however, at the hotel that evening.
Another of the gentlemen thought it his duty to assist her down to the
hotel. This left but three, who silently lifted themselves up step by
step to the next resting place. From this the view was something
unutterably grand. The valley sweeping out to the lake, the mountains on
the other side, with the clouds kissing their summits, the fleecy white,
pink-tinged by the setting sun, forming a beautiful contrast to the
forbidding black of the rocks, and the dark green of the mountain
foliage. One of the gentlemen looked up to the dizzy height still before
him, and remarked that he had seen as much grandeur as he could take in
at one time, and down hill he went.
The other and last smiled a contemptuous smile as he disappeared on the
zigzag path, and setting his teeth, turned his footsteps upward. He
reached the summit, and waving a small American flag (which he always
carried about his person), took in the wonderful view, and slowly but
majestically descended.
I will not say which of the eight persevered and made the ascent. It is
a fault, a common fault, in travelers, this boasting of their own
achievements, and because one has a command of type and presses I do not
see why he should use those facilities to record his own performances.
If any one else of the party publishes an account of the excursion I
shall see my name in this connection, but never will I write it.
But I--or rather, that is, the one who did persevere to the summit, was
rewarded with a sight that amply repaid me--or him--for my, or his
labor. There at his feet, bathed in the light of the sinking sun, was
the valley of the Rhone, brilliant with its covering of green, relieved
by the silvery river meandering through its center. To the right,
crossing and cutting off the valley, are the Bernese Alps, their
snow-covered peaks glistening in the sunlight. It was a magnificent
view, giving us a good idea of the glories of nature that were to be
entered upon on the morrow.
When the Gorge du Trient was organized, nature must have been laboring
under an attack of cholera morbus.
At some remote period in the history of the earth there was a solid
mountain, but some glacier, or earthquake, or other irresistible force,
cleft it in twain, and the ever present water, nature's slow but
exceedingly certain worker, poured into the chasm to finish what the
first rude force commenced.
There is a great plenty of water stored away in these mountains, and it
has been pouring through this rent in the bosom of the earth, wearing
away a few feet here and a few feet there, augmenting in volume as the
space for it increased, until it has become a wild, resistless torrent,
which doesn't dance, but rushes through the rocks, till after its brief
attack of delirium tremens it loses itself in the Rhone and finally in
Lake Geneva, and becomes as quiet and well-behaved as you could wish.
The scenic artist who painted "The Devil's Glen" in the Black Crook, had
doubtless visited this gorge. If devils ever came together in
convention, and wanted a place, the horrible wildness of which should be
absolutely satanic, they could find it here.
The rocks on either hand are nearly five hundred feet high, and the
ravine twists and turns in every direction, the sides approaching each
other so nearly at every turn at their summit that the gorge seems to be
but an immense vaulted cavern with an entirely irresponsible torrent of
water gyrating through it.
It drops itself down sheer precipices, in places thirty feet, and
everywhere _rushes_, it never dances, but rushes with an ugly, wicked,
vindictive rush, a cruel rush, a resistless force, as if it wanted to
catch something in its merciless grasp, and toss it against rocks, grasp
it when it came back, and hurl it down a dizzy fall of cruel, jagged
rocks, and shoot it way up the side of the gorge, on other rocks, and
finally release it when pounded to a jelly, in the river below.
This water is well-behaved enough when it reaches the river, but up here
in the gorge it is the wildest, most cruel, most devilish and wicked
water I ever saw.
Niagara impresses one with its calm, resistless strength, Minnehaha is
beautiful enough to induce one, almost, to go over it, but this torrent
in the gorge has strength only. It is a fiendish, impish body of water.
[Sidenote: THE LEGEND OF THE GORGE.]
It is not utilized. Its only use is to support a very good hotel, the
venerable party who takes a franc for admission to it, and several shops
devoted to selling "souvenirs" to tourists. These are the only wheels
this water power turns. About one hundred people make a comfortable
living from the gorge, and they no doubt esteem it highly.
Of course the gorge has its legend. Every well regulated gorge in
Switzerland as well as every other country in Europe has a legend, done
in the most atrocious English, and execrably printed, which you can
purchase of the local guide for what is equivalent to ten cents American
money. I doubt not that Switzerland has a legend-factory running
somewhere, which turns them out to order. People go several times, you
see, and they want a new legend every time.
This legend accounts for the formation of the gorge, and I spent an
entire night getting it into understandable English. It runs thus:--
Way back in the dark ages, when the devil was in the habit of coming in
person to transact his business with men--and women--there was no gorge
at all. The mountain was shaped not as it is now, but was a respectable
mountain, with a properly conducted stream dancing down its side. This
stream turned two mills, one owned by a very nice miller, named
Balthazar, and the other by a very wicked miller, named Caspar.
Balthazar had the respect and esteem of his fellow-men, while Caspar was
universally detested. He was a griping, grasping man, who took double
toll, and was as avaricious as a grave-yard. Balthazar, on the other
hand, was beloved by everybody, because he was good; and, because he was
good, he was very poor. Caspar had succeeded in buying up his notes, and
he held a claim on his mill, which he desired to get out of the way, as
he wanted no competition. But Balthazar kept right along, for he had
friends somewhere who advanced money to him, so that he could keep up
the interest and defy the enemy.
Caspar tried every way to get rid of his competitor, but he could not,
and he chafed under it. He dwelt upon it so long that it became a mania
with him. How to crush Balthazar and have the sole privilege of
plundering the people was the thought with him by day and night.
One Spring he bought more of Balthazar's paper, but, to his chagrin,
Balthazar came around promptly and paid it, the day it was due, and
Caspar found himself foiled again.
And so that night when he was pacing his room and fretting and fuming
about his disappointment, he remarked to himself mentally--a very
dangerous thing in those days--that he would give his soul to be
relieved of this popular rival.
No sooner thought than done. The archdemon appeared in person, and
Caspar did not seem to be surprised.
"Are you in earnest, Herr Caspar?"
"Indeed I am. That man is poison to me. I must get rid of him and his
mill."
"Very right. You can do it, but you know the terms?"
"Certainly. You remove the mill, you ruin Balthazar, and after a time I
become yours, I sign an article of agreement, writing my name in my own
blood. That's the regular thing, I believe!"
"You are right, old man, right as a trivet. Sign here."
And he produced the document which he had with him. It stipulated that
Balthazar's mill was to be utterly destroyed, and Caspar's not injured,
and that things should be so fixed that Caspar's would be the only
respectable water-power possible on the mountain.
As a consideration for this friendly service, Caspar was, after twenty
years of milling with no competition, to yield himself gracefully to the
demon, body and soul.
Caspar whipped off his coat, cut his arm for blood, and signed.
The devil disappeared in a clap of thunder, leaving a perceptible odor
of brimstone in the room, and Caspar went calmly to bed.
The next morning he heard that an immense stream of water had burst out
of the mountain below his mill, and that it had swept poor Balthazar's
property entirely away--that not a vestige of it was left. He smiled
grimly, doubled the size of his toll-dish, and went about his business.
[Sidenote: SOME DOUBTS.]
Twenty years later, to the minute, the devil appeared and demanded his
pay. But he did not know Caspar, who had been thinking the matter over
for some two years, and being hale and hearty, had no idea of going at
all, and especially of going where he had rashly ticketed himself. He
had consulted an abbott of rare power in such cases, and the abbott had
shown him how to evade the contract. The writer of the legend does not
state just what this was, but it was sufficient.
Caspar declined to fulfil his contract, and the devil saw he was foiled.
He recognized the superior power of the abbott, but he couldn't help
himself. He merely lashed his tail around, and smiling sarcastically,
remarked:
"Very good, my fine fellow, you have won the first point in this game,
but I shall proceed to show you that there are things over which the
abbott has no control. Good night."
He sailed out into the night, Caspar jeering him. He jeered too soon.
For just then there came a horrible darkness, with terrible thunder and
flashes of frightful lightning, and the mountain was rent in twain, and
Caspar's mill with himself and his live stock all went down into the
chasm, and the Gorge du Trient was made.
Caspar's body was found in the river below, with ugly marks about the
throat, with the debris of his mill. There was not a splinter left of
anything.
This is the legend. I don't believe it, for several reasons.
If the devil had sufficient knowledge of the intention of men in advance
to bring with him a contract all drawn up, (which must have cost him
some trouble unless he kept them printed in blank) he would also have
known that Caspar would outwit him in the end.
If he had the power to catch Caspar by destroying his mill by splitting
the mountain, he had the same power before, and was just as sure of the
miller before as after this exhibition of his power.
Going through all this rigmarole of signing and making contracts would
be totally unnecessary. Satan is supposed to be cunning. What sense was
there in laying traps for Caspar when Caspar was doing his level best to
get to him anyhow? Had he let him alone, Caspar would have come to him
of his own accord.
And then splitting a mountain to catch one miller would be something
like firing a columbiad at a cock sparrow. It would be a great waste of
ammunition. He could safely have depended upon Caspar's own toll-dish.
He may have made the gorge knowing it would be used, as time rolled on,
by guides and hotel-keepers, but the legend of the miller will not do.
However, it is the legend of the place, and so I have to give it. The
only lesson I can draw from it is not a good one. The virtuous Balthazar
lost his property just the same as the wicked Caspar, and as he probably
starved to death immediately, while Caspar had a good time for twenty
years, his virtue counted him nothing, so far as this world goes. I have
found that out, however, in my own experience.
In every country in the world that has rocks, there is some frightfully
high one from which a great many years ago a maiden leaped. Indian
maidens were addicted to this in America, and so were maidens in
Switzerland.
You are compelled to climb to the very top of the mountain on one side
of the gorge to see the place where a maiden threw herself over. The
guide said she was crossed in love by her parents, while our landlord
had it that she was deserted by her lover. Thus you had two stories at
the price of one, and could believe which you chose.
Tibbitts looked calmly down the frightful chasm.
"The maiden leaped from this spot?"
"Yes, sare."
"How under Heaven did she _ever_ get back!"
"She did not get back."
"Did she hurt herself?"
"Hurt hairselluf! It ees five huntret veet to ze bottom. How could she
fall five huntret veet and not hurt hairselluf?"
"Five hundred feet! Well, I should say it was rather risky. What did the
old folks do about it?"
He wanted to know all the circumstances, but the information of guides
on such subjects always ends with the blood-curdling tragedy. They know
nothing of what happened after the girl took the fatal plunge.
[Sidenote: MARTIGNY.]
The road from Vernayaz leads through a number of pretty Swiss villages,
whose peculiarly built stone houses contrast strangely with the
pretentious edifices of the towns and cities we had just left. The one
narrow street through which the carriages passed is filled with queerly
dressed people, to whom the passing of a tourist party is about the only
event that relieves the dull routine of their monotonous lives.
[Illustration: WHERE THE MAIDEN LEAPED FROM.]
Near Martigny we pass an old dilapidated castle, that, seven hundred
years ago, was the stronghold of Peter of Savoy, who ruled with an iron
hand the people in the neighboring Cantons.
Now we leave the valley of the Rhone and begin in earnest the ascent of
the mountains.
It is hard to realize that horses and carriage can make their way over
these great towering mountains. Apparently they are inaccessible as the
clouds that float lazily above them. But we bowl along the hard white
road at a rattling pace, and are soon at an elevation from which the
villages in the valley below look like toy towns. The road is a
continuous letter Z, winding up the side of the mountain, each tack
bringing us higher and higher.
The air is clear and dry, so that at each turn in the road a wonderful
view is afforded. Across the valley are seen well cultivated farms, with
men and women hard at work in the harvest fields. Further down is a
grove, the green foliage standing out in bold relief from the golden
fields of grain that surround it, while above towers an old ruined
church, its cold, gray color softened and subdued by the ivy that nearly
covers it.
There is an exhilaration as we mount higher and higher. All thoughts of
worldly cares are thrown to the winds and we revel in the delights of
this new and wonderful experience. We almost envy the Swiss peasant as
he cuts the sweet-smelling grass high up the mountain side. We are
tempted to stop and visit some of these ugly chalets, with their
stone-anchored roofs, which looked like miniature bee-hives from the
valley below. We want to do almost anything to give vent to the
superabundant supply of animal spirits this clear and bracing air
produces.
[Sidenote: A WOEFUL LACK.]
We were subjected, however, to many grievous disappointments. We
expected the moment we struck the Alps to see the graceful chamois,
leaping from crag to crag, the Alpine hunter, dressed in knee breeches,
with a peaked hat and particolored ribbons wound around his stockings.
We kept sharp lookout for the Swiss maidens with their broad-brimmed
hats and picturesque short dresses, and above all we hungered for a
sight of a Swiss chalet, one of those delightfully beautiful and
picturesque houses, all angles and gables, and things of that nature,
which we all have admired at Long Branch and other watering places in
America.
[Illustration: THE CHAMOIS.]
We saw no chamois, either leaping from crag to crag, or in any other
business. If there are any chamois they manage to keep themselves in
very strict seclusion.
[Illustration: TAKING THE CATTLE TO THE MOUNTAINS.]
There being no chamois, it follows, as a matter of course, that there
are no Alpine hunters after them, for the Alpine Swiss don't go about
posing in picturesque garments for the benefit of tourists. Not he. He
keeps himself busy in his shop, making carvings of wood, which he sells
to the tourists, and he isn't picturesque either. He wears shocking bad
clothes, just about the same that poor people wear the world over, and
poverty is scarcely ever picturesque.
The smiling Swiss maiden is also a myth. Those we met on the roads were
anything but pretty, anything but smiling, and anything but pleasant to
look at. They were, as a rule, short, dumpy young ladies, with either
bare feet or feet in wooden shoes, carrying enormous loads, their
mothers following them, also carrying a heavy load of grass or wood, and
she and the mother were generally ornamented with immense goitres which
hung down from their necks in particularly disagreeable prominence.
This disease is fearfully prevalent in these mountains, almost every
other woman of age having it. I don't remember seeing a man with it, nor
a very young woman, but it is almost the rule in some sections, in women
of forty and over.
Physicians do not pretend to cure it, and so it hangs and grows, and the
neck swells and swells, till the goitre becomes an immense bag.
It is a singular dispensation. Why should it be the exclusive property
of women? It doesn't make much difference how a man looks, and the Swiss
women, worked to death as they are, have little enough beauty at best,
and with all these disadvantages to hang a goitre upon their necks is
burdening them a trifle too much. Still, so much do they love their
mountains, that they would stay among them if their necks should enlarge
to the degree of requiring wheelbarrows to carry them comfortably.
The Swiss chalet is another disappointment. We expected to see the
mountains dotted all over with those beautiful houses, all gables and
dormer windows, picturesquely painted in all sorts of gay colors, such
as we see in the theaters.
Such a house with a pretty peasant girl in short dress, with gay colored
stockings, and a simple but very sweet broad straw hat, and a few dozens
of chamois leaping from crag to crag, would make a very pretty picture
and one worth going a long way to see.
[Sidenote: THE SWISS COTTAGE.]
As we were disappointed in the chamois and the maidens, so were we in
the Swiss houses. There is everything in them but beauty. They are just
about as beautiful as a western grain elevator or a Quaker
meeting-house. There is enough timber in them--each stick crossing the
other in a most unnecessary way, and there are gables, and dormer
windows and all that, but they are put together in a most unsatisfactory
way, if beauty is what you are after. They are absolutely shapeless. The
roof is burdened with layers of stone to keep it on in the high winds
that prevail, and they are invariably weather-beaten, dingy, and
altogether unsatisfactory.
[Illustration: OUTSIDE THE CHALET.]
In one end of these uncouth dwellings the family reside, and the work is
done, and in the other the cattle are stabled, in what in America we use
as a barn. The cattle, the pigs and the poultry are all stabled
convenient, only a thin wall separating them from the women and
children.
It must be confessed that the residence end of the hideous building is
kept very clean, and very nicely, for your Swiss housewife is a good
one, but the proximity to the stock would not be considered pleasant in
any other country. They cannot plead lack of land for thus crowding
together, for these mountains are immense, and very sparsely settled. It
is so arranged probably for convenience.
Inasmuch as the traveler through Switzerland is always disappointed in
the matter of chamois, picturesquely clad and pretty girls and Swiss
chalets, I insist that the government should furnish them. It is a
matter for national action. The government should breed chamois, and
train them to skip from crag to crag, it should maintain a force of
chamois hunters, such as we see in pictures and at the theater, to hunt
them, and it should have pretty girls dressed as we were led to expect
to see them, at regular intervals, even if it should import them from
Paris, and it should build on each Alpine pass at least a dozen chalets
of the regulation style.
Then tourists would be satisfied and invest more liberally in wood
carvings and music boxes, and would be more content with having got the
full worth of their money.
[Illustration: INSIDE THE CHALET.]
The principal industry on the mountains is cheese, and selling
refreshments to travelers. The travelers stop and drink wine every time
possible, for the purpose of improving their taste in wines, which
affords a very respectable revenue to the inhabitants along the roads.
The cattle in the Spring are driven to the very summits of such of the
mountains as are not tipped with snow, in the little valleys of which a
very sweet grass is found, which makes a cheese almost as good as the
imitations that are produced in various sections of America. The people
live upon a tolerably bad cheese, very bad bread, and still worse wine,
and when one looks at the almost absolute sterility of the soil, the
wonder is how they get enough of that to sustain life.
[Sidenote: THE SWISS IN GENERAL.]
But they do. It takes very little to sustain a mountain family in this
country. The women don't wear gaiters with high heels at ten dollars a
pair--wooden shoes, a pair of which lasts for several generations, does
them, if indeed they do not go barefooted, which in the Summer is the
prevailing fashion. Their clothing is substantial, though very coarse,
and if they don't go to theaters or operas, or have any of the expenses
of a more luxurious civilization, they get on very well, and seem to be
happy. As it is a day's journey down a mountain to a village where there
is anything to buy, they don't buy very much; and as their little land
furnishes all they can eat, drink and wear, they are just as rich as
Rothschild, every bit. It isn't what you want that makes you rich, it is
what you don't want. The mountain Swiss don't want anything, and they
have it. Therefore they are rich. Their government doesn't bother them
with taxes to any extent; they don't require daily newspapers or
magazines, or anything of that kind, and so they live on the next thing
to nothing a long time, and die at the end of it, when they have just as
much as anybody.
As quiet and stagnant as is the life of a Swiss family, don't make the
mistake of supposing them to be either unintelligent or stupid. They are
well educated, and in every one of these ugly houses there are books,
and books that are used. They keep themselves posted in everything that
is going on in the world outside, their intelligence being a month or
such a matter behind the rest of the world, but they get it, and they
understand it when they do get it.
A sturdy race they are, and the world knows and appreciates them. There
is scarcely a battle-field in Europe upon which they have not bled, and
though subjected to the stigma of being hirelings and mercenaries, they
have never proved false to the side they hired to. They do not
scrutinize the cause they fight for very closely, unless it be their
own, but when once enlisted they can be depended upon to the death.
Thousands of them are coming to the United States, and I wish every one
of them could be multiplied by a hundred. They make excellent Americans,
and we can't have too many of them.