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E agreed, my wife and I, that the couple whom we saw for the first
time in the post-office at Domo d’Ossoli and a little later met in the
gathering room at the hotel, would be well worth knowing. They were,
evidently, not only husband and wife, but good chums, thoroughly
congenial, and rejoicing in each other’s companionship. That they
were intelligent no one could doubt, and they radiated kindliness and
courtesy. They were dressed for roughing it, and we were prepared for
the remark of the gentleman, made to a by-stander, that they had been
spending a week in mountain climbing in the neighbourhood. When he added
that they would cross into the Rhone Valley by diligence on the morrow,
we were conscious of a distinctly pleasant sensation at the thought
that, for one day at least, they were to be our fellow-travellers.
The table d’hôte that evening gave us the desired opportunity to
cultivate the acquaintance of the attractive strangers, for they were
seated directly across the table from us.
“Going over the Simplon tomorrow?” I venture to ask the gentleman.
“Yes.”--Dead pause! “I am sure that you enjoy Italy,” is our next effort
to make conversation. “Yes,” a pause even more absolutely dead than the
preceding one. What’s the matter? Do they take us for pickpockets? We
furtively examine our attire to see if we are looking especially
dowdy, but can discover nothing very reprehensible. Possibly they are
diffident, so here goes for another attempt:
“Do you know at what time we start in the morning?” Of course we
know, have known for weeks; but it is a question whose answer offers
good-sized opportunities for something more than a monosyllable.
“Six-thirty.” We wait anxiously, but that is all. Even the most obtuse
individual must come to the conclusion that the questioner is being
snubbed; quite courteously, but also very unmistakably snubbed. Our
American blood begins to boil gently, and a solemn vow is registered
then and there to let these attractive but unfriendly people severely
alone. Meanwhile, they have been chatting with each other in some
unfamiliar language which is not Italian or French or German.
When we leave the hotel the next morning for the all-day ride over the
Alps our unresponsive fellow-travellers are in the banquette at the
extreme rear end of the diligence, while we occupy the coupé directly
under the driver’s seat. We could not speak to them if we would, and
would not if we could. Indeed, they are soon forgotten in the joy of the
hour. The deep blue of the Italian sky unflecked by a cloud, the broad,
smooth highway, the cottages with their tiny patches of cultivated land,
the exhilarating morning air and the rattling pace at which we bowl
along for the first mile or more, would help us to ignore even a greater
unhappiness than that caused by the snubbing of the previous evening.
Now we have left the level road and begin the long and tortuous climb
towards the summit of the Simplon Pass. Again and again we cross the
brawling stream with which the road disputes the right of way. The
bridges are all of solid stone. Yonder, to the left, the mountains rise
in great ridges and piles of raw rock, while on the right a more
gentle slope is covered with grass and shrubs. We begin to count the
waterfalls, threads of spun silver hung against the dark background of
the rocks, but soon lose track of the count. On the heights the snow is
lying, and by the roadside the wild flowers blossom in profusion. What
a glory of flowers we find on these Alpine heights! In every meadow and
pasture lot red and yellow and blue and purple, with many indescribable
shades, delight the eye and the heart of the traveller. The
rhododendron, with its brilliant colouring, is everywhere, and the
little forget-me-not nods to every passerby. Up and still up we climb,
and every turn of the road brings new exclamations of delight as the
wonderful panorama of mountain and valley unfolds before us.
But now we have reached the summit, and the tired horses are brought
to a halt in front of the little hotel where we are to have our mid-day
meal. The village is a tiny one, of a dozen houses or so. The hotel does
not look especially attractive, and the meal is even less appetizing
than the appearance of the building has led us to expect. For once in
our life we refuse chicken--at least we are content with one mouthful.
Without attempting to file a bill of particulars, it is enough to say
that the interval between the death of that bird and its appearance on
the table as food has been unduly prolonged. With absolute unanimity the
guests abjure chicken, for that meal at least. The food is so sublimely
bad that every one laughs, and even our foreign friends who refused to
respond to our advances of the previous evening join in the merriment.
Somehow, during the course of the meal, we are led to speak of our
nationality, and then comes the revelation.
“Americans?” cries the hitherto unfriendly foreigner. “Americans?”
echoes his wife, who up to this time had not been supposed to understand
a word of English. The mystery is solved. This gentleman and his wife
are Hollanders and have taken us for English. It is at the time when
the English-Boer war is at its height, and the Hollander has no dealings
with the Englishman if he can help it. The gentleman is an Amsterdam
physician, and a man of culture and wide reading. His evident effort
to be friendly reaches a climax when he tells us of his hotel at Brieg,
where we are to spend the night, and assures us that there we will be
certain to have trout for dinner.
Now for the last half of the trip! We have only just left the hotel when
the diligence is stopped and the passengers are asked to get out and
walk for a mile across the debris of an avalanche which came thundering
down from the terminal moraines of the Ross Boden glacier the previous
spring. The diligence sways and lurches and thumps along, while we pick
our way over stones and ice and around giant rocks. Halfway across we
meet a young man who has spent nearly all of his waking hours for months
past in search for the body of his sister who met her death under the
sudden sweep of the avalanche.
Here, in this little monastery--so they tell us--is where Napoleon
made his headquarters for a time when he led his troops over the mighty
mountains to the sunny plains of Italy. We stop long enough to admire
the St. Bernard dogs, and then on down the mountains. When we begin the
descent some of the party assert that this ride will be less interesting
than that of the morning when we were all the time climbing upward.
Possibly it is; but it is far more exciting. Five horses going at full
speed towards a precipice which drops away for a full thousand feet,
the leaders seemingly pawing into space before they turn the corner, the
outer wheels of the diligence constantly flirting with the edge of the
precipice--these are things that lead to nervous prostration. As I look
back at that trip I am satisfied that it was only by leaning hard toward
the inside of the road that I saved the passengers and the whole outfit
from untimely destruction.
When the Amsterdam doctor descanted upon the deliciousness of the trout
served in the Brieg hostelry, he awakened memories of the Nepigon and
the Adirondacks, of northern Wisconsin and the Miramichi! I formed a
resolution, then and there, to catch as well as to eat some of the trout
for which Brieg was said to be famous. Arriving at Brieg at 5.30 p.m.
after our drive of forty miles, I at once interviewed the concierge of
the hotel, who assured me that it would be no trick at all to catch a
mess of trout before dinner-time. Away to a tackle store, where line and
leader and hooks were bought and a cane-pole rented, an interview with
the hotel “boy,” who dug a can of worms fat enough to have come from
Holland, and then for the Rhone, which was rushing along the valley
about half a mile distant. The first sight of the river somewhat
dampened my ardour. It was of a dirty milk colour, and no respectable
American trout would live in it for a moment. But then, I reasoned,
Swiss trout may not know any better--so here goes. I fished in the
rapids and in swirling pools, under low bending alders and by the side
of huge rocks. I skittered those fat worms on the surface, and dropped
them down to the bottom. Every trick of the angler learned by experience
or gathered from conversation and reading, was tried in vain. Tell it
not in Skegemog and publish it not on Prairie River!--but I never had
a bite. And yet I was not cast down. The setting sun was turning the
mountain tops into glory, the laughter of reapers in a neighbouring
field, the tinkle of goats’ bells far up the mountain side, the gurgle
and singing of the Rhone, the beauty of that matchless valley--I had
gained all these by my efforts, even though of fish I had none.
Let no hard-hearted reader giggle over my poor luck, for when I sat down
that night to dinner, and the far-famed Brieg trout were placed before
me, behold! they were not trout at all, but some sort of a sucker, full
of pronged bones and with soft white meat. I never had any ambition to
catch suckers.
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[Illustration: 0084]
```_The sea is a jovial comrade;
````He laughs wherever he goes;
```His merriment shines in the dim-
`````pling lines
````That wrinkle his hale repose.
```He lays him down at the feet of the
````sun
````And shaking all over with glee,
```And the broad-backed billows fall
````faint on the shore
```In the mirth of the mighty sea!_
--Bayard Taylor, _Wind and Sea._
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