natives can appreciate and few of the visitors ever see. It is a kind of
beauty which demands a certain training in perceiving the beautiful.
There are some folks in this world who cannot perceive the beauty of a
sunset reflected in the mud of a tidal river at the ebb. They have so
keen a sense of the ugliness of mud that they fail to see the
reflections of gold and pink shining on the wet surface. It is so with
sand, and Las Palmas has some of the greatest and most living sand-dunes
in the world. And not only does it owe its one great beauty to the sand,
it owes its prosperity to it as well. Yet folks curse its great folded
dunes, which by blocking the channel between the main island and the
Isleta have created the sheltered Puerto de la Luz, where all its
shipping lies in security from the great seas breaking in Confital Bay.
These dunes rise two hundred feet at least, and for ever creep and shift
and move in the draught of keen air blowing north and north-west. In the
sunlight (and it is on them the sunlight seems most to fall) they shine
sleekly and appear to have a certain pleasant and silky texture from
afar. But as we walk towards them the light gets stronger, almost
intolerably strong, and when one is among them they deceive the eye so
that distances seem doubled. And they lie and move in the wind. Day
after day I watched them, and walked upon them, and on no two days were
they alike; their contours changed perpetually, changed beneath one's
eyes like yellow drifting snow. They advanced in walls, and the leeward
scarp of these walls was of mathematical exactness. As the wind blew the
sands moved, a million grains were set in motion, so that at times the
surface was like a low cloud of sand driving south-east. In the lee of
the greater dunes were carven hollows, and here the sand-clouds moved in
faint shadows. A gust of wind made one look up into the clear sky for
clouds where there were none. The motion of the sand was like shot silk.
Now and again we came to a vast hollow, a smooth crater, a cup, and from
its bottom nothing was visible but the skyline and the sky. Again we saw
over the blazing yellow ridge sudden white roofs of the Puerto and the
masts of ships, and then a streak of blue more intense than ever because
of the red yellow of the sand. And all the time the dunes moved, lived
and marched south-east, while the sands rose up out of the sea of the
windy bay and marched overland. The sand itself was very dry, very fine,
so fine indeed that when it trickled through the fingers it felt like
fine warm silk. No particle adhered to another. As I raked it through my
fingers the sand ran in strange, enticing curves, each pouring stream
finely lined, as if it was woven of curious fibres, making a wonderful
design of interlacing columns. And deep beneath the surface it held the
heat of yesterday.
To sit upon, within, these dunes and see the wind dance and the sand
pour had a strange fascination for me. I lost the sense of time and yet
had it impressed upon me. The march of the sand was slow and yet fast;
there was a strange sense of inevitability about it; each grain was
alive, moving, bent on going south-east. There was silence and yet an
infinite sense of motion; no life and yet a sense of living. The sand
came up from the sea, marched solemnly and descended into the sea again.
The two seas were two eternities; that narrow neck of sand was life.
Distances grew great in the sun and the glare; it was a desert and a
solitude, and yet close at hand were all the works of man. I often sat
in the folds of the dunes and soaked in the sunshine as I was lost to
the world.
And beyond it all was Confital Bay; there I forgot that Las Palmas was
ugly, a bastard child of Spanish mis-rule and modern commerce, for the
curve of the bay and its sands and boulder beach to the eastward were
wonderful. For though Confital is but a few steps across the long sand
spit to leeward of which the commercial port lies, it might be a
thousand miles away as it faces the wind and has its own quiet and its
own glory of colour. The sea tumbles in upon a beach of shingle and sand
and is for ever in foam, and the colour of it is tropical. Away to the
left the hills above Banyodero and Guia are for the most part shadowy
with clouds. Often they are hidden, swathed in mist to the breakers at
their feet. And yet the sun shines on Confital and both bays, and on the
Isleta, which is red and yellow and a fine atmospheric blue away towards
Point Confital, where the sea thunders for ever and breaks in high foam
like a breaking geyser. On the beach at one's feet often lie Portuguese
men-of-war, thrown up by the sea. They are wonderful purple and blue,
and very poisonous to touch, as so many beautiful things of the sea are.
One whole day was greatly spoiled to me by handling one of them
carelessly. My hands smarted furiously, and when I sucked an aching
finger, after washing it in the sea, the poison transferred itself to my
tongue and I had hardly voice left to swear with at a wandering band of
young beggars from the Puerto. But then neither swearing, nor entreaty,
nor indifference will send Spanish beggars away. They are to be borne
with like flies, or mosquitoes, or bad weather, and only patience may
survive them. But for them and for cruelty to animals Spain and Spain's
dependencies might make a better harvest out of travellers. One may
indeed imagine after all that nothing but accident or a sense of
desperation might land and keep one at Las Palmas. I would as soon stay
there for a long time as I would deliberately get out of a Union Pacific
overland train at Laramie Junction and put down my stakes in that dusty
and bedevilled sand and alkali hell. And yet there is the climate at Las
Palmas. And out of it are the sand-dunes and Confital Bay.
THE TERRACINA ROAD
Nowadays the traveller gets into the train at Rome and goes south by
express. He sees a little of the wide and waste Campagna, sees a few of
the broken arches of the mighty aqueducts which brought water to the
Imperial city so long ago, but he is not steeped in the soil; he misses
the best, because he is living wholly in the present. The beauty of
Italy, its mere outward beauty, is one thing; the ancient spirit of the
past brooding in desolate places is another. And the road which runs
from Terracina south by sullen Fondi, by broken and romantic Itri and
Formia of the Gaetan Gulf, is full at once of natural beauty and the
strange influences of the past. It is To-day and Yester-day and Long
Ago; the age of the ancient Romans and the Samnites with whom they
warred is mingled with stories of Fra Diavolo and piratical Saracens.
And To-day marches two and two in the stalwart figures of twin
_carabinieri_ upon dangerous roads, even yet not wholly without some
danger from brigands. These _carabinieri_ (there are never less than two
together) represent law and order and authority in parts where the law
is hated, where order is unsettled, where authority means those who tax
salt and everything that the rich or poor consume. And down that ancient
Appian Way, made by Appius Claudius three centuries before the Christian
era, there are many poor, and poor of a sullen mind, differing much from
the laughter-loving _lazzaroni_ of Naples. I saw many of them: they
belonged still to a conquered Samnium. Or so it seemed to me.
The train now runs from Rome to Velletri, and on to Terracina. The
Sabine and Alban Mountains are upon the left soon after leaving the
city. Further south are the Volscian Hills. Velletri is an old city of
the Volscians subdued by Rome even before Samnium. The Appian Way and
the rail soon run across the Pontine marshes, scourged by malaria at all
seasons of the year but winter. Down past Piperno the Monte Circello is
visible. This was the fabled seat and grove and palace of Circe the
enchantress. One might imagine that her influence has not departed with
her ruined shrine. Fear and desolation and degradation exist in scenes
of exquisite and silent beauty. From Circello's height one sees Mount
Vesuvius, the dome of St Peter's, the islands in the bay of Naples.
Below, to the south-east, lies Terracina; on its high rock the arched
ruins of the palace of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who conquered
Odoacer and won Italy, ruling it with justice after he had slain Odoacer
at Ravenna with his own hand.
I got to Terracina late at night one January, and though I own that
things past touch me with no such sense of sympathy as things yet to be,
my heart beat a little faster as I drove in the darkness through this
ancient Anxur, once a stronghold of the Volscians. Here too I left the
railway and the southern road was before me. Terracina was touched with
literary memories; Washington Irving had written about that very same
old inn at Terracina to which I was going, that inn which poor deceived
Baedeker called Grand Hotel Royal in small capitals. I was among the
Volscians, in the Appian Way, in the country of brigands, with the
spirit of Irving. And suddenly I drove across rough paving stones in the
heavy shadows of vast corridors, and was greeted by a feeble and
broken-down old landlord, who wished the noblest signor of them all, my
undistinguished self, all good things. Poor Francia was the very spirit
of a deserted landlord. I imagined that he might have remembered
prosperous days before the railway through Monte Cassino and Sparanise
robbed Terracina of her robber's dues from south-bound travellers. His
vast hotel, entered meanly by a little hall, was dimly lighted by
candles. With another feeble creature, once a man, he preceded me, and
speaking poor French said he had had my letter and had prepared me the
best apartment in his house. We climbed stone staircases as one might
climb the Pyramids, wandered on through resounding and ghostly
corridors, and finally came to a room as vast as a quarry and almost as
chilly as a catacomb. When he placed the candle on a cold slab of a
table and withdrew with many bows I could have imagined myself a lost
spirit. There was just sufficient light to see the darkness. The room
was a kind of tragedy in itself; the floor was stone; a little bed in
one far distant corner was only to be discovered by travel. It was a
long walk to the window. Outside I saw white foam breaking in the
harbour now silted up and wholly useless.
I dined that night in another hall which could have accommodated a
hundred. I was lost in shadows. But then I was a shadow among shades.
This was the past indeed, an ancient world. And after dinner, at last, I
got a bath. It took me two hours to get it, and when it came it was
nothing more than a great kettle for boiling fish in. I knew it was that
by the smell. I rejected it for a basin which was almost as large as an
English saucer for a breakfast cup. And then I slept. I felt that I was
in a tomb, sleeping with my fathers. It was a kind of unexpected
resurrection to wake and find daylight about me.
I had meant to stay for a little while at Terracina, but somehow I took
a kind of "scunner" at this poor old hotel of magnificent distances and
the lingering, doddering, unwashed old men who acted as chambermaids.
Perhaps, too, the fish kettle as a bath was a discouragement. No bath at
all can be put up with in course of time, but a fish kettle invited me
to be clean and yet did not allow me to smell so. I went down to my
prehistoric landlord and requested him to get me a carriage to go in to
Formia, where I should be once more in touch with the rail. I
instructed him to get it for me at a reasonable price, and that price I
knew to be about twenty lire or francs. For the first time in my Italian
experiences I had come across a hotel-keeper who was not in league with
the owners of carriages. I was soon made aware of this by overhearing an
awful uproar in the big outside corridor. I lighted a cigarette and went
out to find the landlord and the man of carriages, a very black and
hairy brigand, enjoying themselves as only southerners can when they are
making a bargain or _combinazione_. The old landlord brisked up
wonderfully at the prospect of such a struggle. It doubtless reminded
him of days long past. It made his sluggish blood flow. I believe that
he would not have missed the excitement even to pocket a large
commission from his opponent. I was so rare a bird and he had not seen a
traveller since heaven knows when. My Italian is poor but I understood
some of the uproar. The man of carriages presumed that I was a noble
gentleman who desired the best and would be ready to pay for it. The
landlord retorted that even if I was a prince and a millionaire, both of
which seemed likely, it was no reason I should be robbed. He suggested
fifteen lire, and the outraged brigand shrieked and demanded forty. For
an hour they wrangled and haggled and swore. First one made believe to
go, and then the other. They came up and came down franc by franc. More
than once any northerner would have anticipated bloodshed. They
struggled and beat the palms of their hands with outstretched fingers.
It took them half an hour to quarrel over the last two francs. And
finally it was settled that the noble prince and millionaire, then
leaning against the wall smoking cigarettes, was to pay twenty-two lire
and to give a _pourboire_. They shook hands over it and beamed. My old
landlord wiped his brow and communicated the result to me with tears of
pride. I thanked him for his care of my interests and paid him his
modest bill at once. He entreated me to speak well of his hotel, the
Albergo Reale, and really I have done my best.
The brigand furnished me with a decent pair of horses--decent at anyrate
for Italy--and I left for Formia before noon. Now I was no longer on the
railway, but on the real road, the Appian Way, and I felt in a strange
dream, such as might well come to one on a spot where ancient Rome, the
age of the Goth, and mediæval Italy and modern times mingled. By the
road were fragments of Roman tombs; at Torre dell' Epitafia was the
ancient southern boundary of the Papal States; in reedy marshes by the
road, and near the sea, were herds of huge black buffalo. And the sun
shone very brightly for all that it was winter; the distances were fine
blue; the sea sparkled, and the earth even then showed its fertility.
Eleven miles from Terracina we drove into Fondi, and the sky clouded
over, as indeed it should have done, for Fondi is a gloomy and unhappy,
a sullen and unfortunate-looking town. Once it was a noted haunt of
brigands, and even yet, as the sullen peasants stand about its one great
street, which is still the Appian Way, they look as if they regretted
not to be able to seize me and take me to the hills to hold me to
ransom. But Fondi, gloomiest of towns, has other stories than those of
the brethren of Fra Diavolo. There is a castle in the town, once the
property of the Colonnas, and in the sixteenth century this palace was
attacked by a pirate, Barbarossa, a Turk and a daring one. His object
was to capture Countess Giulia Gonzaga for the hareem of the Sultan. He
failed but played havoc among its inhabitants and burnt part of the
town. It was rebuilt and burnt again by the Turks in 1594.
We rushed through the latter part of the gloomy town at a gallop. I was
glad to see the last of it and get into the clear air. Then my horses
climbed the long slope of the Monte St Andrea, where the steep road is
cut through hills, while I walked. And then as evening came on we swept
down into Itri. This too was gloomy, but not, like Fondi, built upon a
flat. This shadowy wreck of ancient times lies on hills and among them.
It has an air of mountain savagery. It looks like a ruined mediæval
fortress. Broken archways, once part of the Appian Way, are made into
substructures for ragged, ruinous modern houses. The place is peaked and
pined, desolate, hungry and savage. In it was born Fra Diavolo, who was
brigand, soldier and political servant to Cardinal Ruffo when the French
Republic, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, invaded the
Kingdom of Naples. Once he was lord of the country from the Garigliano
to Postella; he even interrupted all communications between Naples and
Rome. He was sentenced to death and a price set on his head. Finally he
was shot at Baronissi. In such a country one might well believe in the
wildest legends of his career.
And now the night fell and my driver drove fast. He even engaged in a
wild race with another vehicle, entirely careless of my safety or his
own. The pace we drove at put my Italian out of my head, for foreign
languages require a certain calmness of spirit in me. I could remember
nothing but fine Italian oaths, and these he doubtless took to mean that
I wished him to win. And win we did by a neck as we came to the _dazio
consume_, the _octroi_ post outside Formia. And below me I saw Formia's
lights, at the foot of the hill, and the Bay of Gaeta stretched out
before me.
That night I slept in a little Italian inn by the verge of the quiet
sea. There also, as at Terracina, ancient and doddering men acted as
chambermaids. They wandered in with mattresses and sheets, until I
wondered where the women were and what they did. And outside was a
fountain where Formia drew water, as it seemed, all the night,
chattering of heaven knows what. For Formia is a busy and beautiful
little town. On the north side it is sheltered by a high range of hills;
on the lower slopes are grown oranges and lemons and pomegranates;
there also are olive-groves and vineyards. I stayed a day among the
Formian folk, and then Naples, which one can almost see from the
terraces above the town, drew me south. At the Villa Caposele one can
see Gaeta itself to the south and Ischia in the blue sea, Casamicciola
facing one. I remember how the Italian nature came out when I arranged
to go to the station to take the train for Sparanise. I had but little
baggage and it was put in a truck for me by the landlord of the Hotel
dei Fiori. I walked into the station and the boy who pulled the truck
followed. As he came up the little slope to the station I saw that eight
or ten others were pretending to help him, and I knew that they would
inevitably want some pence for assisting. In a few moments I was
surrounded by the eager crowd. "Signor, I pushed behind!" "And, signor,
so did I!" "And oh, but it was hard work, signor!" And everyone who
could have had a finger on the little truck wanted his finger paid. They
were insistent, clamorous, and at the same time curious to see how the
stray foreigner would take it. I perceived gleams of humour in them, and
to their disappointment, yet to their immense delight, for the Italian
admires a degree of shrewdness, I stared them all over and burst into
laughter. They saw at once that the game was up, and they shrieked with
laughter at their own discomfiture. I gave the boy with the truck his
lira, dropped an extra ten centesimi into his palm, and said suddenly,
"Scappate via!" They gave one shout more of laughter and ran down the
hill. And as for me, I got into the train and went to old quarters of
mine in Naples. But I was glad to have been off the beaten track for
once.
A SNOW-GRIND
Perhaps it is not wholly an advantage that most Alpine literature has
been done by experts in climbing, by men who have climbed till climbing
is second nature and they see Nature through their snow-goggles as
something to be circumvented. That this is the attitude of most
mountaineers is tolerably obvious. And though much that is good has been
written about the Alps, and some that is, from some points of view, even
surpassingly so, most of it is a proof that climbing is a deal easier
than writing. Who in reading books of mountain adventure and exploration
has not come across machine-made bits of description which are as
inspiring as any lumber yard? For my own part, I seldom read my Alpine
author when he goes out of his gymnastic way to express admiration for
the scenery. It is usually a pumped-up admiration. I am inclined to say
that it is unnatural. I am almost ready to go so far as to say that it
is wholly out of place. In my own humble opinion, very little above the
snow-line is truly beautiful. It is often desolate, sometimes
intolerably grand and savage, but lovely it is very rarely. It is
perhaps against human nature to be there at all. There is nothing to be
got there but health, which flies from us in the city. If life were
wholly natural, and men lived in the open air, I think that few would
take to climbing. And yet now it has become a passion with many. There
are few who will not tell you they do it on account of the beauty of the
upper world. Frankly, I do not believe them, and think they are
deceived. I would as willingly credit a fox-hunter if he told me he
hunted on account of the beauty of midland landscapes in thaw-time.
And yet one climbs. I do it myself whenever I can afford it. I believe I
do it because Nature says "You sha'n't." She puts up obstacles. It is
not in man to endure such. He _will_ do everything that can be done by
endurance. For out of endurance comes a massive sense of satisfaction
that nothing can equal. If any healthy man who cannot afford to climb
and knows not Switzerland wishes to experience something of the feeling
that comes to a climber at the end of his day, let him reckon up how
far he can walk and then do twice as much. Upon the Alps man is always
doing twice as much as he appears able to do. He not only scouts
Nature's obstacles, but discovers that the obstacles of habit in himself
are as nothing. For man is the most enduring animal on the earth. He
only begins to draw upon his reserves when a thing becomes what he might
call impossible.
But this is but talk, a kind of preliminary, equivalent in its way to
preparing for an Alpine walk. As for myself, I profess to be little more
than a greenhorn above the snow-line. I have done but little and may do
but little more. Yet there are so many that have done nothing that the
plain account of a plain and long Alpine pass may interest them. I will
take one of the easiest, the Schwartzberg-Weissthor, and walk it with
them and with a friend of mine and two well-known guides.
The Schwartzberg-Weissthor, a pass from Zermatt to Mattmark in the Saas
Valley, is indeed easy. It is nothing more than a long "snow-grind," as
mountaineers say. It is supposed to take ten hours, and it can certainly
be done in the time by guides. But then guides can always go twice as
fast as any but the first flight of amateurs. My companion, though an
excellent and well-known mountaineer, took cognisance of the fact that I
was not in first-class training. And I must say for him that he is not
one of those who think of the Alps as no more than a cinder track to try
one's endurance. He was never in a hurry, and was always willing to stay
and instruct me in what I ought to admire. It is perhaps not strange
that a long walk in high altitudes does not always leave one in a
condition to know that without a finger-post. Sometimes he and I sat and
wrangled on the edge of a crevasse while I denied that there was
anything to admire at all. Indeed, he and I have often quarrelled on the
edge of a precipice about matters of mountain æsthetics.
We left Zermatt in the afternoon and walked up to the Riffelhaus, which
is usually the starting-point for any of the passes to Macugnaga, or for
Monte Rosa or the Lyskamm. It was warm work walking through the close
pine woods. In Switzerland, where all is climbing, one does what would
be considered a great climb in England in the most casual way. For after
all the Riffelhaus is more than 3000 feet above Zermatt, as high, let us
say, as Helvellyn above Ullswater. But then 3000 feet in the Alps is a
mere preface. We dined at the little hotel, and I went to bed early. For
early rising is the one necessary thing when going upon snow. It is the
most disagreeable part about climbing, and perhaps the one thing which
does most good. In England, in London and in towns, men get into deadly
grooves of habit. To break these habits and shake one's self clear of
them is the great thing for health. The disagreeables of climbing are
many, but the reward afterwards is great. To lie in bed the next morning
after having walked for twenty hours is a real luxury. But,
nevertheless, to rise at half-past one and wash in cold water before one
stumbles downstairs into a black dining-room, lighted by a single
candle, is not all that it might be at the moment. Every time I do it I
swear sulkily that I will never, never do it again. It is obvious to me
that no one but an utter fool would ever climb anything higher than
Primrose Hill, and only a sullen determination not to be bested by my
own self makes me get out of bed and downstairs at all. I am only a
human being by the time the sleepy waiter has given me my coffee. After
drinking it and taking a roll and some butter I went into the passage
and found O---- sitting on the stairs putting his boots on. He too was
silent save for a little muttered swearing. It is always hard to get off
camp before dawn. When O---- had finished his breakfast we found the
guides waiting for us with a lantern, and we started on our walk by two
o'clock or a little later. The guides at anyrate were cheerful enough
but quiet. I myself became more and more like a human being, and when we
got to the Rothe Boden, from which in daylight there is a wonderful view
of the Alps from the Lyskamm to the Weisshorn, I was quite alive and
equal to most things, even to cutting a joke without bitterness. For the
most part in these early hours I spend the time considering my own
folly. It is perhaps a good mental exercise.