An idea is afloat that there will be a proposal to sell these, and to
capitalise the price. But one can hardly suppose that many, except
‘adjacent’ proprietors, will be found to support the scheme, after
people have seen what has become of such portions of these lands as have
already been sold under the recent Acts just referred to; and when they
remember that the discharge of certain duties is attached to the
revenues of these corporate and endowment estates. And if these duties
are not always discharged satisfactorily, that is a matter which better
superintendence might set right. At all events, it is better for the
public that they should get out of these estates something, than that
they should get nothing. If the public desire that it should be so, the
Legislature, we may be sure, will be ready enough to see that all
endowments are turned to good account.
We frequently hear the remark, and it is made as if it explained the
existence and the character of our present system, that feudalism still
flourishes in this country. This is very wide indeed of the mark. There
are many, we may be sure, who would be disposed to think that it would
be of advantage if something like the division of land of the feudal
times still obtained amongst us. The records of the Exchequer give the
number of knights’ fees at 60,215. Let that, however, be as it may, our
system is as unlike that of feudalism as anything can be. It belongs in
its whole character to the era of capital, but in the form a land-system
must assume; and this is its distinguishing feature, when the flow of
capital to the land has been so interfered with as practically to
prohibit its investment in land, except by very rich people, in very
large amounts; that is to say, by people who already have a great deal
of land, or who have a great deal of capital. This is an artificial
state of things belonging to the era of capital. The natural state of
things in the era of capital would be the direct opposite: for that
would issue in there being a multitude of owners of estates, purchased
and used for all manner of purposes; and to all the land being
marketable; and, indeed, to a considerable portion of it, everywhere,
being at any time in the market. Both of these states, the artificial
and the natural one, are equally possible in the era of capital. The
first is brought about, when, as I have pointed out, the action of the
law favours perpetuity, unsaleability, and agglomeration. The latter,
when all the land is saleable; and everyone who has capital, no matter
whether much or little, is able to buy. There is no feudalism in either
of these two states of things. The former is a factitious kind of
capitalism.
It may sound paradoxical, after what has been said, to announce that the
change suggested in our present system would have the effect of raising
the price of land: I am, however, of opinion that it would have this
paradoxical effect; because, though it would largely increase the
supply, it would in a still greater degree increase the demand for, and
the uses of land. It would make all who have capital possible
purchasers, and would be an inducement to many, particularly among those
whose work is on the land, to save capital in order that they might
become purchasers. It would bring into play and activity a great variety
of motives for purchasing. For instance; we should then see joint-stock
companies buying land which offers no particular advantages for
residence, for the single purpose of manufacturing food out of it. They
would pour capital into it in such amounts as only proprietors, who were
also joint-stock companies, could. They would drain, mix soils, employ
steam machinery for cultivation, for preparing artificial manures, and
for cutting, crushing, and cooking food for cattle; they would build
beet-sugar factories, or whatever else would pay when done well, and on
a large scale. Other districts adapted to small properties, if such
there be, we should see falling into the hands of small proprietors.
Others again, which from their salubrity, or beauty, or local proximity
to large towns, were adapted for residential purposes, we should see
turned to this account: so that in places where now there may be one, or
perhaps not one, resident proprietor, there would be a hundred, or a
thousand. In these days of railways and capital all this is natural: and
as it is natural it is what would be best for us. I cannot see anything
bad in such a state of things; and I think it is what will be brought
about eventually. If it had existed during the last fifty years,
probably a large portion of the 1,000,000,000_l._ of capital that have
been sent out of the country, would have been kept at home. If there
were perfect freedom in dealing with the land, in this rich and populous
country, the price of agricultural land would rise to a higher price
than it has attained in Switzerland, Belgium, and parts of France, where
it has long been selling for more than it sells for here. If a
joint-stock company were to demonstrate that 25_l._ of capital per acre
applied to the cultivation of 1,000 acres was a profitable speculation,
would that have any tendency to lower the value of land?
I believe that some of us will live to see the joint-stock principle
introduced into farming, or rather applied to the ownership and
cultivation of the land. My reason for believing this is, that it has
been found to answer in everything else; and that I can see no other way
in which capital, to the amount required in these days, can be applied
to the land; and that I can see in the nature of the case no reason why
it should not be so applied to the land. I take it for granted that, at
this moment, land can be cultivated more productively, and more
economically, comparing the amount of produce with the cost of producing
it, in farms of about 1,000 acres each, cultivated highly, and by steam
machinery, than in any other fashion. If it be so, then the system must
force its way to general adoption; and to the looker-on, practically, no
question remains uncertain but that of time. If he is satisfied that it
is the natural system in the era of capital, he knows that, sooner or
later, it must come. One of its pre-requisites, which it will take time
to bring about, is, that the land should be owned by those who cultivate
it; probably, in each case, by a firm. Whether the firm consist of three
or four partners, or of three or four dozen shareholders, will make no
difference. On no other conditions will the costly plant be provided, or
the inducement in the way of profits be sufficient.
The past history of agriculture will here help us in our attempt to
understand its future. The aboriginal agricultural implement was, as we
all know, a burnt stick—a broken branch, with its point hardened in the
fire. That was in the stone era, and so the forest could not be felled.
Only here and there a small plot could be cultivated with such an
implement. The rest of the land, that is to say almost the whole of it,
was a game preserve for wild animals, deer, wild cattle, wild hogs, &c.
After nobody knows how many ages of this style of farming, and of
utilising the land, came the discovery of metals. An iron hoe was then
regarded as a more wonderful machine than a steam-plough is now. It was
beyond the means of any individual, except perhaps here and there a
great chief. Villages may have clubbed together the few articles they
had of exchangeable value, that is to say became a joint-stock company,
to secure the possession of one of these marvellous implements. Whatever
the land had yielded to the tillage of the burnt stick, and through the
game preserves, it now yielded a great deal more. The game preserves
still continued: but with respect to animal food also there had been a
little advance, for domestic animals now began to appear in the village.
One advance always draws on others. But the domestic animals were at
first kept only in small numbers, for they wandered over large expanses
of land, almost exclusively forest; the game still remaining the more
important of the two. This was the second stage. But as time goes on
iron, and the domestic animals, become more abundant; and an ox, or so
many ox-hides, can be exchanged for a hoe. It is now possible to get so
much more food out of the land, that one man can raise enough for the
support of two. This immediately leads to slavery, which always makes
its appearance in rude societies as soon as they have reached the point
at which one man can produce more food than is sufficient for himself.
This advances agriculture some steps further. Cattle become abundant;
labour is abundant; and a sufficiency of iron is procurable. The forest
is, therefore, taken in hand, and fields, that is spaces where the trees
have been felled, are formed. And now the plough appears on the scene,
and civilised society is fairly under weigh. Cultivation continues to
extend, and with cultivation pasturage. The forest gradually disappears,
and domestic animals entirely take the place of wild game, except for
purposes of amusement and luxury. And so on up to the system with which
we are all familiar. Every discovery advanced matters a step, and made
the land more productive. As, for instance, the introduction of
artificial grasses and roots, for our ancestors in the autumn used to
kill and salt the beef and mutton they would require for the winter and
spring. Then came a better supply of manures, and the two together
rendered the abandonment of fallows possible. The land has all along
been a constant quantity. It, from the beginning, has been the same. But
its produce has from the first been increasing through never-ceasing
advances in the means and methods of cultivating it and of turning it to
account.
And now another advance is in sight, that of cultivation by steam. This
implies a great deal. In each stage there grew out of the nature of
things, as they then were, a certain definite proportion between the
means used and the amount of land cultivated as one concern. In the
burnt stick era the little cultivated plots might have shown in the
forest as the stars do in the field of heaven. In the hoe-period they
were multiplied and enlarged as the stars appear to us through a
telescope. Then we had peasant proprietors, and small tenants. The
number and size of the luminous, that is, of the cultivated, plots were
increasing, as means and appliances increased and improved. And now we
suppose that a farm ought properly to be of 400 or 500 acres in extent.
This means that the instruments of production and our organisation have
advanced very greatly. So must it be with steam cultivation: each
concern must be on a large scale. I have supposed that not less than
1,000 acres will be necessary for turning to good account the machinery
that will be required for tilling the soil, and gathering in the crops,
and preparing them for market, for preparing food for the stock, and for
making artificial manures, &c. No existing buildings will be of any use.
Everything will have to be constructed for the purposes required. Land,
therefore, that has to be cultivated in this way must be regarded as
quite unprovided with the necessary plant, as much so as a thousand
acres of the prairie of Colorado, or of the Pampas of La Plata. And as
nobody will invest all this costly fixed plant on other people’s land,
the land must be owned by those who are to cultivate it in this way. But
the purchasing, the providing with such plant, and the so cultivating a
thousand acres will require not less than 75,000_l._ This, at present at
all events, is quite beyond a farmer’s means. It can, therefore,
speaking generally, only be done by firms or companies. If it will pay,
they will do it. Lord Derby tells us the land ought to yield twice as
much as it does now. We may, I suppose, set the present gross produce of
good average land fairly farmed at 10_l._ an acre. If land highly
cultivated by steam, and with the liberal application of capital we are
supposing, would advance its produce to only half of Lord Derby’s
supposed possible increase, the gross yield would be 15_l._ an acre. And
this might give, after allowing one-third for working expenses,
deterioration, and insurance, 13⅓_l._ per cent. on the investment; but
we will put the working at half, which will leave a profit of 10 per
cent. If this could be done, then the streams of English capital that
are perennially flowing off into all countries would be profitably
diverted to the cultivation and enrichment of our own land; and no small
portion of the other millions we are year by year paying the foreigner
for food, might be paid to food-manufacturers of our own, and so saved
to the country.
France produces at home its own sugar; and, besides, sends to us 60,000
tons a-year. We do not manufacture sugar at home, because an English
tenant would not spend 8,000_l._, if he had it, in erecting a sugar
factory on another man’s land; but such firms of proprietors could, and
probably would, on their own.
Capital swept away the peasant proprietor. It has almost swept away the
50-acre tenant. And it will sweep away the 250-acre tenant. But it
offers to all better careers than those it closes against them. The
system it is bringing upon us will employ more hands, and will require
them all to be better men, and will pay them all better, both for their
work and for their capital. Under it there will be openings everywhere
for everyone to become what he is fit to become. This will be a premium
on education; and it will do more to suppress drunkenness in the rural
districts than any conceivable licensing, or permissive, or prohibitory
Acts.
I do not know what, under such a state of things, will become of our old
friend, who was also the friend of our forefathers—the agricultural
pauper. On a farm of a thousand acres, carried on in the fashion we have
been supposing, there would be no place for him. Upon its area there
would not be a man who was not wanted. And all who were wanted would be
well paid and well housed. There would be engine-men, and stock tenders,
and horsemen, and labourers, more in number perhaps than the hands now
employed on the same space, but all would be better off, and would be
better men. In order, however, that this may be brought about, capital
must be allowed free access to the land, that is to say, the land must
be set free.
The argument from the picturesque will not arrest the course of events.
Never was the country so picturesque as when there was no cultivation at
all, and the noble savage pursued his wild game through the primæval
forest over hill and dale. The little hoed plots of a succeeding epoch
were a great encroachment on the picturesque. The fields that came in
with the plough carried the disfigurement still further. Our hedges and
copses, under the existing system, are rapidly disappearing. But the
human interest in the scene has always been increasing: and it will
culminate when the steam-engine shall have brought in a system under
which those who do the very lowest forms of labour then required will be
better fed, and housed, and clothed, and paid, because it will be a
system that will not admit of bad work, than was possible under previous
systems, which did not depend for their success on the intelligence of
the labourer, and the accuracy and excellence of his work.
Such a system would carry out to their logical and ultimate consummation
the free interaction of capital and agricultural land. All such land,
the implements, and whole plant employed in its cultivation, and even
the labour, skill, and intelligence of its cultivators, would be
represented by dividend-receiving, 10_l._, 5_l._, or 1_l._ share
certificates, transferable merely by the double endorsement of the
seller and of the buyer. The old certificate, thus endorsed, would be
presented to the manager, if necessary by post; and a new certificate
would be issued to the new holder. These certificates would circulate
almost as freely as money; but as it would be a kind of money that would
carry a dividend at the rate of capital employed in safe ventures, say
four-and-a-half or five per cent., with a prospect of improvement,
wherein it would differ from the low interest of Exchequer bills, the
holding of such certificates would be the most attractive kind of
savings’ bank to the poor, and to all. The great difficulty in the way
of saving in the case of the poor, and of all who are unacquainted with
business, is to find suitable, and safe, investments. That difficulty
would be removed; and they would be enabled to participate, according to
their means, as easily, and on the same footing, as the richest and the
best informed, in the wealth and property of the country. Any labourer
on any joint-stock farm, or elsewhere, any artisan, any servant girl,
any poor governess, who might save a few pounds, might invest them in a
share or two; and the increment, whether earned or unearned, in the
value of land, and of its produce, would go to them proportionally with
the wealthiest. Everyone would, in this way, have opened to him an
avenue for participating, to any amount possible to him, in the
possession of the land everywhere. A large proportion of the population
would thus become interested in the development of its resources, and so
in the prosperity of the country, and in the order and stability of
society. The land would, in a sense, become mobilised; and the
possession of it rendered capable of universal diffusion. Any one of the
present owners, who might come to wish that any portion of his land
might be held, and used, in this fashion, might receive, if he chose to
be so paid, as many shares in each concern formed out of it, as would
equal the value of land he might make over to it.
If the possibility of such a system could be demonstrated, the existing
owners of land might be the first to wish to see it carried out. The
following figures will show why. Suppose a thousand acres of
agricultural land is letting at what is about the average rent of such
land, that is at about 30_s._ an acre, the landlord will be receiving
for it 1,500_l._ a-year, subject to some not inconsiderable deductions.
But if this same land were sold to a cultivating firm at 50_l._ an acre,
the price being received in shares, and the concern were to pay to
original shareholders 10 per cent. the rent of 1,500_l._, subject to
deductions, would have become a dividend of 5,000_l._ subject to no
deductions. But we will suppose only 3,000_l._, for that will be double
the present rent, and so quite sufficient for our argument.
So far as the system might be adopted would ownership of the land of the
old kind cease, and in its place be substituted, in convenient amounts,
dividend-receiving, easily transferable, and freely circulating capital
stock certificates, within everybody’s reach, secured upon definite
portions of the agricultural land of the country, representing its
present value, and participating in its future advances in value. Such
certificates would, also, offer an improving security for trust funds of
all kinds, and for endowments.
The combination of what I have observed, during a life in the country,
of the requirements of land, and of the condition and wants of the poor,
with my experience of the duties of a trustee (which have devolved upon
me to, perhaps, an unusually great extent), suggested to me the ideas I
have just been endeavouring to present to the reader. If they are
practicable they may contribute to the solution of existing difficulties
of several kinds. I am aware that they cannot do this, because in that
case they would be quite visionary, if they are not in harmony with the
natural requirements and conditions of the era of capital. That they
would have been impracticable in other times does not prove that they
would be impracticable now.
But we have been enticed off the main line of our discussion to a
by-path, which was offering a very interesting view into the future. We
must now return to the point we had before reached, which was that of
the popular misconceptions that are held with respect to our existing
system. There are, then, again, others who suppose that its salient
peculiarities may be explained by a reference to what is frequently
spoken of as ‘The Law of Primogeniture.’ We have, however, in this
country no law of primogeniture in any sense that can be intended in
such a reference. There is no body of rights attaching by law to the
eldest son. The extent of what may be regarded as law in this matter is
the right of the eldest son of a peer to succeed to his father’s
peerage; and of the eldest sons of those who have hereditary titles to
succeed to their father’s titles. The power of entailing landed property
only acts in favour of the system of primogeniture, because the holders
of landed property themselves choose to work it in this direction; for
it might be used equally in favour of equal partition. There is then no
law of primogeniture in the sense supposed. A man who buys land, or in
any way comes to have the absolute disposal of it, as the word absolute
implies, may dispose of it as he pleases. He may, if such should be his
wish, leave it all to his youngest child, or in equal partition amongst
all his children. Only, should he die intestate, the law will deal with
his land (but we have just been told that this is to be altered) in the
way in which, looking at the conduct in this matter of English landlords
generally, it may be supposed the man himself would have dealt with it
had he made a will. Possibly he may not have made a will because he knew
that the law would so dispose of it. The law in the few exceptional
cases of this kind that arise from time to time, recognises, and acts
on, the state of opinion and sentiment which has grown out of the power,
it had itself given, of charging and encumbering land—a power which
probably had no very glaring economical evils and inconveniences in an
age when the population of the country was only a third of what it is at
present, and when capital was only in an embryonic condition, and when,
too, perhaps the political system this power upheld appeared to be
necessary.
It is not, then, any law of primogeniture which has brought about our
present land-system, but certain powers, conferred by law, which have
suggested to people the desirability of acting on, and enabled them to
act on, the voluntarily adopted principle of primogeniture; that is to
say the power of charging and encumbering their estates. And, now that
the era of capital is upon us, it is not improbable that the policy of
continuing this power will be debated, for at such a time it has some
very obvious evils and inconveniences. I do not mean that it will be
reconsidered by the legislature before many years have elapsed, or in
the first instance; for in a matter of this kind the legislature can do
nothing but give form and sanction to what the circumstances of the
times have already settled. If it shall be generally felt that the ill
consequences of the exercise of this power overbalance its advantages,
we may suppose that it will be withdrawn. This is not a question that
will be much affected by any amount of speaking or writing, if that be
all. If the facts of the matter are of themselves not felt as evils and
inconveniences, no amount of speaking or of writing will bring people so
to regard them. But should they come to be so felt, the people of this
country will be desirous of dealing with them as all men, always and
everywhere, have dealt with such matters, when they were seen to admit
of removal. But however that may be, it is not a law of primogeniture,
but certain law-conferred powers, enabling people to act on the
principle of primogeniture, which are the cause of the existing state of
things in this matter.
In the discussion of this subject, which ramifies in many directions,
for it has moral and social, as well as economical, political, and
constitutional bearings, many questions will be propounded, and will
have to be considered: such, for instance, as whether, in these several
respects, a comparatively small number of large landowners is better, in
this era of capital, and of large cities, than a large number of
landowners, holding estates varying in dimensions, according to the
amounts of capital people would, from a variety of motives, be desirous
of investing in land, were all the land of the country free and
marketable; or, in other words, whether, in such times, the artificial
condition of things we have been considering is safer than, and
preferable to, the natural condition? The share-certificates, I just now
spoke about, would make it free and marketable to the greatest
imaginable degree.
It will also be asked whether it is fair to the land-owner, and, all
things considered, advantageous to the community, that he should be
obliged to provide for his widow and younger children either by saving
the means for making such provision from his income, or by leaving to
them, absolutely, what portions of his landed property he may think fit?
Those same share-certificates would supply an easy, inexpensive, and
safe method of providing for widows and younger children.
Another question will be whether in this era of capital, which means
that there will always be some large capitalists as well as many small
ones, the liberation of the land would really lead to the extinction of
large estates? Largeness is a word of comparative signification. Of
course there would be few such large estates as there are now, because
that is the result of growth through many generations under the very
peculiar circumstances we have been referring to: but if the interchange
of land and capital were perfectly free there would be everywhere many
considerable estates, though the general order of things might be
estates of moderate size, descending to holdings of small extent, which
might be the most numerous of all; or such holdings might not be very
numerous: for in matters of this kind there is always much that is
unforeseen. One point, however, may, I think, be held to be certain: we
shall never, in this country, see anything approximating to peasant
proprietorship. That is simply inconceivable in the era of capital. Both
the land and the man can be turned, now, to better account. Its
advocates are either ignorant demagogues, or members of that harmless
class who, having their eyes in the back of their heads, can only see,
and wish for, what has passed away. If we ever come to have
share-estates, such as I have endeavoured to describe, they will,
probably, average, as I said, about 1,000 acres each.
It will, perhaps, also, be suggested that there may be some mixed method
of proceeding, which, while respecting existing arrangements, would, at
the same time, largely increase the number of proprietors; as, for
instance, to deal with the rents of endowments compulsorily, and with
those of the owners of land at their option, just as the tithe was dealt
with; that is to say, to convert the rent into a permanent charge upon
the land; and then to sell the land, subject to this rent-charge, the
yearly value of which would be ascertained, as is done in the case of
the tithe commutation rent-charge, by reference to certain averages of
the price of the different kinds of grain cultivated in this country.
The immediate gain to corporations, and trustees, and to proprietors who
might be disposed to sell, would be considerable, for they would
continue to get their present rents, without deductions, and would,
besides, be able to sell the proprietary right in the land, and its
capacity for future increase in value, for whatever they would fetch in
the market. This would suit the share-system, for the land might then be
bought with or without the rent, as it might happen in each case.
Our opinions on any question are very much influenced by our observation
of the direction things are taking. Now, with respect to our existing
land-system, all changes in matters connected with, or bearing upon, it,
and which appear to be either imminent, or possible, are likely to take
only the direction of what will be unfavourable to its maintenance. For
instance, if it be decided that endowments, now consisting of land,
should be capitalised, in order that more land may be brought into the
market, the line of argument, that triumphed against them, will be
equally available against our existing land-system. And, furthermore, if
the lands belonging to charities, institutions, and corporations be
sold, it is evident that, as things now are, they will, for the most
part, be bought up by the owners of large contiguous estates; so that,
in fact, the remedy attempted will only make the evil it was intended to
remedy, more glaring: the great estates will have become greater. The
fate of the corporate estates, thus compulsorily sold, will be that of
the thousands of small properties the large estates have of late years
swallowed up. Everybody knows that many houses of the gentry of former
times are now farm-houses on every large estate. It cannot be otherwise,
for this is how a large estate is formed. All the smaller estates in the
neighbourhood, just like the meteoric bodies which come at last to be
overpowered by the attraction of our planet, must, as things are now,
gravitate towards it: their end is, sooner or later, generally the
former, to fall into it. So, if the estates of the endowments are sold,
will it be with them. It has been so with those that have been already
sold.
Again, if the Church be disestablished and disendowed, a certain
proportion of the rent of each parish in the country, pretty generally
more or less increased by private income, will cease to be spent within
the parish. What is so spent at present, as far as it goes, and to a
great extent in many cases, lessens the hard and repellent features of
the absenteeism of the owners of the land in those parishes.
Disendowment, therefore, will make the evils and inconveniences of the
present system, whatever they may be, more felt, and more conspicuous;
and a better mark, as they will then stand clear of all shelter, for
adverse comment.
So, too, if the agricultural land of this country should continue, and
there is no reason for supposing the contrary, to fall, year by year,
into fewer hands, the strength of those who will have to defend the
system will be diminishing at the very time that wealth, intelligence,
numbers, union, and every element of power, are increasing on the side
of those who cannot see that they have any interest in maintaining it.
If the recent Education Act have the intended effect of educating the
millions who have no landed property, the most coveted of all human
possessions, will they find anything in the existing system that will
commend it to their favour? Will they not rather be in favour of a
system, which would make every acre of land in the country marketable?
If people should come to think that the reason why France,
notwithstanding the abject condition of a large proportion of its
peasant-proprietors, and without our stupendous prosperity in
manufactures and commerce, has become so rich, is that it keeps its
savings at home, because the land of the country is marketable, while
we, every year, scatter tens of millions of pounds of our savings all
over the earth to be utterly lost, because they cannot be invested at
home in the land of the country, the natural reservoir, or savings’
bank, of the surplus capital of a country, as well as the best field for
its employment, will they not go on to wish that the land here, too,
could be made marketable?
If population and capital go on increasing, may we not anticipate that
this will engender a desire—for in these days of railways and telegraphs
it is much the same where a man lives—that the agricultural land of the
country should be brought into the state of divisibility and
marketableness, into which some of the land in the neighbourhood of our
great cities has been brought through the pressure of circumstances?
This pressure may extend, and be felt with respect to the land of the
whole country.
In an era, too, when popular principles so thoroughly pervade society as
to influence all our legislation, is it probable that a system which is
the reverse of popular will commend itself to general acceptance? It is
also on the cards now that manual labour may become so costly as to
necessitate, if a great deal of land is not to go out of cultivation,
the substitution of machinery to such an extent as will be done,
generally, only by those who own the land.
The whole stream of tendency, then, both in what is now occurring, and
in what is likely to occur in no remote future, seems setting strongly
in a direction which cannot be regarded as favourable to the maintenance
of our present land-system. And the observation of this will, sooner or
later, consciously or unconsciously, very much modify opinion on the
subject; for in human affairs, just as with respect to the operations of
Nature, we are disposed to acquiesce in what we have come to understand
is inevitable.
But we have for some time lost sight of the Valley of the Visp, though
not of its imaginary sole Proprietor. He has all along been before us.
What we have been considering was how, in this era of capital, he came
to be its sole proprietor, what are the action and effects of those
artificial conditions which placed him in this position, and what are
the chances of the maintenance of these artificial conditions.
Things move fast in these days: but few people expect that any change
will take place in his time. He will continue in the position of social
eminence, and of political power, he now occupies. He will go on hoping
to leave after him a line of descendants occupying the same, or even a
greater, position. This will be the dominant motive in his mind. If any
land is to be bought in his neighbourhood, there will still be a
likelihood that he will become the purchaser of it. It has always been
so, since the estate became the predominant one in those parts. And that
it should be so is now regarded almost as a law of nature; as something
quite inevitable; so that no one need enquire whether it is beneficent
in its action, or otherwise. If he have not cash in hand to pay for the
new purchase, he will mortgage his property to the amount of the price.
In this era of capital the value of land goes on increasing, and so the
mortgage will in time be paid off by the estate itself. In this way, in
these times, every large estate has within itself, even without Austrian
marriages,[1] a progress-generated power of absorption and growth.
Without lessening the area of the estate, he will provide for those who
are dependent on him by charging it with the payment of whatever he may
please to leave them: so that while no very apparent injustice will be
done to them, the position of the single representative of the family
will not be affected, for he will still appear before the world as the
owner of the whole estate. He will also hope that, from time to time,
the representatives of the family will, by making purchases in the way
in which he has, and by the introduction of great heiresses into the
family, increase the extent of the estate.
Footnote 1:
Bella gerant alii. Tu felix Austria nube: Nam, quæ Mars aliis, dat
tibi regna Venus.
At times, when he hears how demagogues are raving about the
nationalisation of the land, and the tyranny of capital; and when he
visits the valley, and sees the condition of many, indeed of all the
people on the estate, he may feel that he is in a somewhat invidious
position. But he will feel also that no one is to blame: his progenitors
could not well have acted otherwise than as they did; nor could he well
act otherwise than as he is acting, and will act. And those who are
discussing the matter, sometimes with the tone of men who are suffering
a wrong, would, we may be sure, not act otherwise, under the
circumstances, themselves.
Suppose, however, that for the restricted and artificial action of
capital, which has brought this state of things about, its natural
action has been substituted: what will be the effect on the hopes, and
on the family, of the proprietor of our valley? We may venture to
predict that the natural order of things will give him a securer chance
of realising his hopes in their best sense. His family will start, in
the race of life, in possession of the whole of the land of the valley.
For them this will be no bad start. The land of the valley will bear
division for several generations without reducing the members of the
family to a bad position, even if none of them should do anything at all
to improve their position. But this, judging by the ordinary principles
of human nature, we may be sure, speaking generally, will not be the
case. Two centuries hence, it will be their own fault, if, instead of
the family being really only one man, they have not become a clan in the
valley: a clan possessed of more social importance, and of more
political influence, than could attach to a family represented by a
single member. Some will have become invigorated by the inducements to
exertion that will have come home to them, and by the wholesome
consciousness in each that he is somewhat dependent on himself for
maintaining and improving his position. Whatever efforts to advance
themselves they may come to make, will not be made under unfavourable
circumstances. None of them will have occasion to feel, as perhaps some
of their ancestors at times had, that they are in an invidious position;
and none will regard them with feelings that, if not ‘somewhat leavened
with a sense of injustice,’ do yet arise from a suspicion that things
are not quite as they ought to be, through there having been some kind
of interference with their natural course. Is not this a nobler, a more
patriotic, a more human, and in every way a better prospect than that
which is now feeding the somewhat misdirected paternal ambition of the
present proprietor? Would it not be a better anticipation of the
fortunes of his family, to think of them as a numerous body of
proprietors, occupying a good position, through the natural action of
the circumstances and conditions of the times, than to look forward to
the uncertain character and uncertain position of a single member of his
family, who will be maintained, if maintained, by conditions, on the
permanency of which no dependence can be placed, because they are at
discord with the needs and circumstances of the times?
Land now no longer rules. Capital is king. Capital it is that does
everything now; that even, but under abnormal and artificial conditions,
aggregates our large estates. Under this dynasty the advantages the land
is capable of conferring on man are not withdrawn, but much increased
both in degree and in variety; and everything desirable, the land not
excepted, becomes, in a manner and degree inconceivable in all foregone
times, the reward of personal exertion and worth. This is what
distinguishes this dynasty from those that have preceded it. If it be
the true king, it will prove its legitimacy, by removing all artificial
barriers to the development and exercise of its beneficent powers. If it
cannot do this, it is a bastard dynasty, and will be dethroned.
* * * * *
V. But I have not yet exhausted all the possible forms in which land may
be held. Their name is legion. Every country, and every condition of
society, has had, has now, and will have, its own. I say nothing of the
serf-system: that among civilised nations has gone for ever. So has the
system of village communities. The co-operative system, however, has
believers, and, it appears possible, may have a trial. But I, for one,
because I believe in capital, and in the individual, have no belief in
this kind of co-operation, as a general system, either in manufactures
and commerce, or, and that least of all, in agriculture: and, with
respect to the latter, whether the co-operators be renters, or owners.
Ownership would make no difference at all beyond the power owners would
possess of mortgaging their land; and this, as it is a resource that
would very soon be exhausted, need not be considered here. The only
practical difference would be, that co-operative renters would require a
larger extent of land to live from than co-operative owners, whose land
was unmortgaged. If the system of co-operation were general,
competition, and the increase of population that would have to be
provided for, and which would lead either to subdivision, or to an
increase of co-operators upon each farm, would inevitably bring the
style of living down to a point at which it would be no better than it
is now in the Visp Valley. And this is so low a condition of life, both
materially and intellectually, that most people are of opinion that it
is not worth while to go in for its maintenance, or even, perhaps, to
regret its disappearance.
A population of co-operators sunk to this depth, and they could not but
sink to it, would, like the old Irish potatovors, or the French petty
proprietors, be in a state of chronic wretchedness and degradation:
this, in bad seasons, amounts to a state of starvation. If the
individual Irish potatovor could not, and the individual French petty
proprietor, in whom the parsimonious disposition of his race is
exaggerated, rarely can, save, because bad seasons oblige him to
mortgage his little plot of land, from which he can hardly extract a
living in good seasons, we may be sure that neither would, nor could,
such co-operators. I am disposed to prefer the present condition of our
agricultural labourers, the most feeble class amongst us. At all events,
they have more than one buffer between themselves and bad seasons. First
there is the reservoir of capital possessed by the farmer. This is, to
the extent of wages, generally, sufficient. In consequence of its
existence bad seasons make little or no difference to hired labourers.
But under the co-operative system there would be no farmers, but only
co-operators, just able to get along in ordinary seasons. Our labourers
have, also, a second buffer, which is often of some use to them, in
their wealthy neighbours. But under the co-operative system there would
probably be no wealthy neighbours. They possess, too, a third buffer in
the State, which comes in, in the last resort, to rescue them from the
extreme consequences of every kind of calamity. But under a system of
peasant co-operators there could hardly be anything resembling our
poor-law; for the rationale of that is, that the people who cultivate
the soil of the country, are themselves devoid of all property. These
three buffers, then, would all have disappeared; and nothing, as far as
we can see, would arise, or could be created, to take their place. Such
co-operators would be only co-operative peasant-proprietors: which is an
absurdity.
Another sufficient objection to this system is, that this is the era of
capital, and that such a system would most effectually prohibit the
outflow of capital to the land. Capital could no more be invested in the
ownings of a wretched population of co-operators, than it could be in
the plots of Irish potatovors, or of French petty proprietors.
* * * * *
The conclusion, then, to which my moralising on the spectacle of the
Valley of the Visp brought me was, that it belongs to a state of things,
which, even in such secluded retreats, will not be able to linger on
much longer: at all events, that it is not desirable that it should. We
live under the dominion of capital, that is to say, of property other
than land, or rather, perhaps, of an accumulated, and still
accumulating, interest or dividend-bearing essence of all property
(which is labour stored up in some material), reconvertible at will, for
productive purposes, into land, labour, or anything men have of
exchangeable value. This mighty essence of all property is within the
reach of us all, in proportion to our respective opportunities and
abilities, and the efforts to gain possession of it we choose to make.
But though within the reach of all, it is the mightiest of all
magicians; and it is evident that it must modify both the possession,
the distribution, and the use of land, as well as everything else with
which we have to do. In this there is nothing to be regretted. On the
contrary, we ought all of us to congratulate ourselves on the advent of
such an era: for it means that our resources for living, and for living
well, in respect of all the requirements of human happiness, have been
thereby vastly enlarged, and with a power of indefinite enlargement,
irrespective of the area of the country. It means, too, that careers
have been thereby opened to all, in ways which would have been
inconceivable when land supplied the only resource for living; for that
now every moral and intellectual endowment, every form of labour, and
every aptitude can be turned to account. Even land can be made
productive of greater benefits to us than we were wont to derive from
it, for capital is showing that it has economical, and other, capacities
for improving man’s estate, undreamt of by its old cultivators.
Popular language, which is the expression of popular ideas, on this
subject is adequate. It gives correctly the philosophy of the matter.
What is wanted is that it should be clearly and generally understood,
and used with accuracy. Money has both an intrinsic value as the
representative of so much labour expended in the acquisition of the
precious metals, and a conventional use as a metallic certificate,
entitling its holder to exchange it against anything else in the world
anyone has to part with, that costs in its production an equal amount of
labour, there being at the time no abnormal disturbance of the ratio of
supply and demand. In the latter respect it matters not whether the
certificate is on gold or paper: for the paper represents gold, or equal
value. When earned, or otherwise acquired, by a kitchen-maid, a
speculator, or a prime-minister, it may be used in any one of three
ways. First, it may be spent. Secondly, it may be hoarded. Thirdly, it
may be used as capital. By spending is meant using money for the
acquisition of what perishes in the use; when it passes into another
man’s hands who again has the option of using it in any one of the three
ways. It is evident that a man may spend money for clothing, food, and
other necessary purposes, in order to live, and to enable him to do his
work in life well, whatever it may be: it is then spent well, and in a
sense productively. Or he may spend it on vice, or ostentation, or
hurtful pleasures: it is then spent ill. By hoarding is meant putting it
away unproductively for future use. This was originally the only
alternative to spending. The money stored away in the treasuries of the
old Pharaohs was an instance of this unproductive suspension of use.
This is still the practice, everywhere, among rude and ignorant people:
it is the hibernation of money; its active uses are put in abeyance. As
capital it may be used in two ways. It may either be invested, or
employed. Investing it means placing it in securities that do not
require management, as, for instance, consols, mortgages, the rent of
land, &c.; the correlative of which is interest. Employing it means
placing it in reproductive industries, as, for instance, in agriculture,
manufactures, trade, commerce, &c., which require management, and the
correlative of which is profit. This when divided among shareholders,
who manage the concern jointly, or by a selection from their body,
becomes dividend. This is the highest form of economical organisation.
It gives to all, in their respective proportions, however small those
proportions may be, the power of employing capital; and to all who have
the ability and integrity, the chance of rising to its management. It is
the full development of the era of capital. It is the stage we have now
reached. It enables the kitchen-maid, and everybody, to participate in
the highest advantages of capital. I think we shall see it employed in
this way in the cultivation and proprietorship of the land. If so, then,
I think the poor and ignorant will have brought home to them a very
strong motive for saving, because they will have constantly before their
eyes a safe and profitable means of employing their savings. They, too,
may thus become capitalists of the best kind.
Two pregnant errors, however, there appear to be, which it will be
necessary for us to avoid, especially, in order that, as respects the
land, we may secure the natural conditions and natural advantages of our
era of capital. One is the error of making people’s wills for them
directly, in the way done in France. This breaks up the land of a
country into properties smaller than they would become under the natural
circumstances of the times: thus condemning, through legislation, a
large part of the population, deluded by the fallacious disguise of
proprietorship, to life-long misery. The other error is that of making
people’s wills for them indirectly, in the way done in some other
countries. This has the opposite effect of agglomerating the land of the
country into estates larger than they would become under the natural
circumstances of the times, and of reducing the number of proprietors of
agricultural land almost to the vanishing point. The first method both
increases the number of wretched, degraded, and almost useless
proprietors, and diminishes the size of the properties, to a highly
mischievous degree. The latter just in proportion as it increases the
size of the estates diminishes the number of proprietors. Both limit the
variety of uses to which the land may be put. Both introduce causes of
political action at variance with the natural conditions of the times.
Every system has some advantages: but whatever may be the advantages of
the latter, it is, at all events, an interference with the natural
rights of each generation, and with the natural course of things; for it
prevents the ownership, and the uses, of the land of the country
adjusting themselves to the circumstances and the requirements of the
times; and hinders the application, to its culture, of that combination
of knowledge, energy, and capital, which is manifestly within reach, and
has become requisite for developing its productiveness to the degree
acknowledged to be possible now, but which cannot be secured under our
present landlord-and-tenant system. If, however, this be a serious evil,
it is, for reasons already given, one of that class of evils which
engender their own remedy.
Many are of opinion that landlordism was all along at the bottom of the
evils of Ireland. Landlordism is probably the cause of the Liberalism of
Scotch constituencies. If so, what is there to prevent the same cause
having, eventually, somewhat similar effects in England? And, if so,
then, what next? If, however, the law, instead of interfering with the
natural course of things, by indirectly making people’s wills for them,
would take care that the land of the country should pass from generation
to generation, and from hand to hand, free from every kind of
encumbrance, and so be all, at all times, at the will of the holder,
marketable, a question, which is now causing much anxiety, because it
may, before long, give much trouble, would probably die away, and be no
more heard of; nor, probably, should we hear any more of the
antagonisms, with which we are all now so familiar, between the town and
the country. One step, at least, would have been taken towards making us
one people.
* * * * *
The stimulus new scenes apply to the mind, more particularly when its
owner is passing through them on foot, and alone, accounts for the
foregoing chapter. But its having been thought out under such
circumstances by A is no reason for its being read by B, who is neither
on foot, nor, probably, alone; and the only scene before whom is,
doubtless, the not unfamiliar one of his own fireside; one which,
perhaps, has never invited, and may, too, be quite unfitted for, either
the debate, or the rumination, of such discussions. Still, as it was
suggested by, and constructed in the mind during, the tramp I am
recording, and was so one of its incidents, I set it down here in its
place.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V.
WALK TO SAAS IM GRUND—FEE, AND ITS GLACIER—THE MATTMARK SEE
Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her. ’Tis her privilege
Through all the years of this our life to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts.—WORDSWORTH.
_September 4._—Started at 6 A.M. My wife and myself on foot, the little
boy on horseback. We walked down the Zermatt valley to Stalden; and
then, turning to the right, ascended the Saas valley. The latter being
narrower—so narrow as to bring the opposite mountains very near to
you—makes the scenery often more striking than that of the parallel, and
wider, valley you have just left. Sometimes the mountain sides are so
precipitous, quite down to the torrent, which tumbles, and brawls, along
the rocky bottom, that no space is presented even for a cherry or
apple-tree. For a great part of the way there is no valley, but only a
fissure between the two mountain ranges; and nothing can establish
itself in the rifts, and almost on the surface of the rocks, but the
larch.
We stopped at a small roadside inn, about an hour and a half from Saas,
for luncheon. A German professor and his wife came in for the same
purpose. He was a tall, gaunt, study-worn man; she a tough, determined
little woman. He recommended Heidelberg (it was not his university) both
as a winter residence, and as a place of education. The pair appeared to
be, like their country-people generally, honest, earnest, and
simple-minded, and in the habit of making the most of their small means
without complaining. They were carrying very little besides themselves.
We reached Saas im Grund at 12.30. We had been on our legs for six
hours. The reason why walking on the level takes more out of one than
climbing for an equal number of hours, is not merely that in walking the
effort is always the same, but that it is at the same time rapid and
continuous; whereas in climbing it is not only varied, sometimes up and
sometimes down, but is also deliberate, and often interrupted for a
moment or two, while you are looking where to set your foot.
A guide, who was on his way to Saas, overtook us soon after we had left
St. Niklaus, and asked permission to accompany our party. He had lately
made his first attempt to ascend the Matterhorn. He had not got to the
top, but his having failed to do so was no fault of his. He could speak
a little French, and was a good-natured, talkative fellow.
At Saas we put up at Zurbriggen’s Hotel. We found the house clean, the
people obliging, the charges moderate, and the aspect of things quite
unlike—all the difference being on the right side—that of the large
Swiss caravansary.
The contrast between Saas and Zermatt is very great. At Zermatt the
valley ends, with great emphasis, in a grand amphitheatre of mountains
and snowy peaks. At Saas it seems suddenly brought to a close without
any objects of interest to look upon. With the mind full of Zermatt,
Saas appears but a lame and impotent conclusion. The village, however,
is very far indeed from being at the head of the valley. That is to be
found at the Monte Moro, five hours further on; and, as it includes the
Allalein glacier, the grand scenery of the Mattmark See, and of the
Monte Moro itself, it has enough to satisfy even great expectations;
such as one has, of course, coming from Zermatt.
_September 5._—Went to the Fee glacier with the guide who had joined
company with us yesterday. My wife and I walked. The blue boy rode. The
path from the village lies across the stream, and up the hill on the
west side of the valley. This brings you to a mountain-surrounded
expanse of greenest grass, in which lies the village of Fee. The
substantial character of the _châlets_, and their tidy air, imply that
the inhabitants of the place are pretty well off. At the western
extremity of the reclaimed and irrigated meadow is the great Fee
glacier. The mounds and ridges of _débris_ the glacier has brought down
are very considerable. I mean the mounds and ridges that are still
naked; for, of course, all that now forms the cultivated valley must
equally, only at remoter dates, have been brought down by the same
agency. The only difference between the two is that time, and man, have
levelled the latter, and enabled it to clothe itself in a vestment of
luxuriant grass. This grass it is that has built and peopled the
village. In this way human thought and feeling, or rather the
multiplication of the thinking and feeling organism, man, is the direct
result of the storms, and frosts, that have shattered, and riven, the
mountain peaks above; and of the glacier which has transported the
fragments to the sheltered valley, where they could be turned to human
account; and, in the act of transporting them, so ground and comminuted
their constituent particles as to render them capable of maintaining a
rich vegetation; and which same glacier is, at this moment, engaged in
supplying the irrigating streams, the stimulant of the richness of the
vegetation.
The upper part of the naked _débris_ overlays large masses of ice. This
is very uneven, and full of depressions and cracks, the sides of which
are, generally, covered with loose stones, but, sometimes, only with a
thin film of mud. A fall upon this combination of ice, pebbles, and
slush is the easily attained consequence of inattention to what you are
about, and where you are going, while crossing such ground. We had a
walk on the glacier; and then, having taken in a fresh supply of
materials for keeping up the steam, at a station on one of the _moraine_
ridges, which gave us a good view of the contiguous glacier, the
overhanging mountains, and the green valley, we returned to Saas in the
afternoon.
After dinner I started with our guide—his communicativeness during the
two days he had been with us had made us feel as if he were an old
acquaintance—for a walk over the Monte Moro, down the Val Anzasca, and
over the Simplon, to Brieg. I also took a porter with me, who was to
carry my _sac_ as far as Macugnaga, from which place the guide was to
take charge of it. He would not undertake to carry it where he was known
as a guide, for that, he affirmed, would be losing caste. My wrappers I
sent from Saas to Brieg by post. The charge was a franc and a half for a
great coat and shawl. The latter, of fine wool, four yards in length,
and two in width, is less than half the weight of an ordinary travelling
rug, and more than twice as serviceable. My portmanteau I had already
despatched from Zermatt for Brieg by the same common carriers. The
facilities of the Swiss post-office for the conveyance of baggage—we
found them very convenient—result from the department having absorbed
all the diligences. It has thus become the carrier not only of letters,
but equally of travellers, and of parcels of all kinds. In fact it seems
that in Switzerland you may post anything short of a house. Mistakes
appear to be made very seldom; and when they are made you have a
responsible office to deal with, whose interest it is to set them right.
At Saas the post-master was also the chemist, the doctor, the
alpenstock-maker, &c. &c. of the place. Where there are but few people
there must be many employments which will not occupy the whole of a
man’s time, or, singly, support him.
My wife and the little boy accompanied me half of the way to the
Mattmark See. Our plan was that they should return to Saas, and on the
third day meet me again at Brieg. Soon after they left me I met two
well-grown, clean-limbed Englishmen—it is always a pleasure to meet such
specimens of one’s countrymen—with whom I had a little conversation. I
asked them what snow there was on the pass which they had just come
over. They told me they had crossed seven snow-fields. The next morning
I found only four, and of these two small enough. They could have had no
wish to misrepresent; but so fallible is human testimony; and nowhere
more so than in Switzerland, where you never find two eye-witnesses
giving the same account of the same thing. It is possible, however, that
they may have made some _détour_ in crossing, and, illogically, answered
a question different from the one put to them.
When the path reaches the Allalein glacier the scenery becomes grand.
You are again on the visible confines of the ice-and-snow world. On the
left side of the glacier you ascend a stiffish mountain. This brings you
to the Mattmark See. The path is a little above, and the whole length
of, its eastern side. It is carried on a level line along a very rocky
descent, a few yards above the water. The humble plants in the narrow
rocky strip between the path and the lake were charmingly full of
colour, for at this time the leaves of many of them were assuming their
rich autumnal tints. At the foot of this narrow strip of shattered
rocks, interspersed with highly coloured vegetation, was the unruffled
water, looking like polished steel, dark, hard, smooth, and cold. Beyond
the water, and rising precipitously from it, towered the rugged,
slaty-coloured mountains, capped with white, and streaked in their
ravines with snow-drifts and glaciers.
At the further end of the lake stands the Mattmark Inn, exactly where it
ought to stand. Further back, you would be disturbed by the feeling that
you had not yet seen everything, and so were forming an imperfect
conception of the scene. Further on, the scene would, by comparison, be
dull. Higher up, the opposite mountain would not look so overpowering,
and you would lose the mighty masses of fallen rock, as big as houses,
which are close to the inn; and you might also lose the water, which is
the distinguishing feature of the scene. As to the inn itself, so far
away in the mountains you cannot expect anything very extensive either
in the way of structure or of _cuisine_. But you will get here, which is
worlds better, a clean house, very obliging people, and all that they
can offer for your entertainment—of course without much variety—good of
its kind. If you go to Switzerland for what is peculiar to Switzerland,
these are the places you should look out for. Large hotels, full of
loiterers, among whom there may be perhaps a French count, or even a
Russian Prince, may be found elsewhere than in Switzerland, should you
think them worth finding. But the very advantage of the Mattmark See
Inn, and of other mountain inns like it, is that you will see in them
none of this kind of people, while you will have plenty of the grandest
mountain scenery, and plenty of mountain work, if that is what you have
come for, all around you. From the great hotels you may see the outline
of the mountains; but that is a very different thing from being in the
midst of the mountains themselves; in the very society and company of
the mountains; so that you look at each other face to face, and can make
out all their features, and all the components, and the whole colouring,
of every feature.
From Saas to the Mattmark See Hotel is three hours and a half. Before
turning in I ordered coffee at 3.50 A.M., and told the guide and porter
to be ready for a start at 4 A.M.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI.
OVER MONTE MORO BY MACUGNAGA TO PONTE GRANDE, AND DOMO D’OSSOLA
Creation’s heir, the world, the world is mine.—GOLDSMITH.
_September 6._—At 3.50 A.M. coffee was ready, but was told that it was
not so with the guide and porter. On looking them up, I found them both
in bed, and asleep. I was not quite unprepared for this, from something
I had been told at Saas about the way in which my friend sometimes spent
his evenings. But, having taken a kind of liking to him, I had replied
that this would make no difference to me, so long as he was all right
during the day. About that I was assured that I need entertain no doubt.
The delay, however, caused on this occasion, by his inability to wake of
himself at the appointed time, did not, as it happened, amount to much.
After a gentle ascent of, if I recollect rightly, about forty minutes,
and somewhat beyond the Distel _châlets_, we came to the first snow. It
might have been a quarter of a mile across. With nails in your boots,
and an alpenstock in your hand, this is almost as easy to walk upon as
the path that brings you to it, only, of course, that you cannot walk
upon it quite so quickly. Beyond this, the ascent is somewhat stiff up
to the summit. Sometimes it is on a ledge of gneiss, with a deep
precipice down to the glacier-ravine on your left hand. Another
snow-field also has to be crossed here, which lies at an angle of,
perhaps, 25° or 30°. The summit of the pass is like a small crater a few
yards across. Here my friend, who had been as brisk and talkative as
heretofore since we started, called a halt for breakfast. The cold meat
and bread were certainly of the driest, and that perhaps encouraged him
in the idea that not they, but the liquid with which they were washed
down, was the essential part of the repast. Young Andermatten, a name
well known in these parts, was now carrying my _sac_. He had met us
between the two snow-fields we had passed, and as my porter had some
reason for wishing to return to Saas, he had undertaken to supply his
place to Macugnaga.
As soon as you leave the summit you begin to descend a ledge of very
smooth gneiss, about six or eight feet wide. On your left is a
precipice; on your right a broken wall of rock. You go down this for
about a hundred yards, and then get off it by a few projecting steps,
which have been fixed in the face of the rock. This takes you on to some
snow lying at a sharp incline. It would not do to slip on this ledge of
gneiss; and, at first, not being used to such paths, that is to say if
it is your first pass, you think you must slip. But you take heart when
you see your guide walking down it much the same as if he were walking
on London pavement. He turns round to see what you are about, and to
offer assistance; but that you cannot accept. Still you are glad when it
is done. The descent to Macugnaga is, throughout, rough and steep.
Ascending it, and with the sun on your back—it faces the south—must be
hard work. If it had been a Swiss mountain there would, long ago, have
been a good horse-path made to the top.
This is an old and easy pass. Ordinary lungs, ankles, and head, are all
that it wants. It was known to, and used by, the Romans. It was for some
time occupied by the Saracens, who left their name upon it, as they did
names of their own on several peaks and places around it.
As you trudge over the mountain, in the fresh morning air, accompanied
by your guide and porter, and with your attention quickened to receive
the impressions of the grandeur around you, which you know will hold a
place among the most valued and abiding of your mental possessions, you
feel as if you were really one of the lords of creation. This feeling
would be a wee bit marred, if the eternal mountain had been
presumptuously appropriated by some mortal molecule, for then you might
be troubled with apprehensions of disturbing, or of being thought likely
to disturb, his ibexes and chamois.
I made the Monte Rosa Hotel at Macugnaga at 8.30; that is to say, in
four hours from the Mattmark See, excluding the twenty minutes’ halt in
the little crateriform chamber on the top of the Moro. I now had a
breakfast, which, by the grace of ‘mine host,’ bore a close resemblance
to a dinner, for it consisted of a long succession of dishes. This did
not come amiss to one who, having been up some time before the sun, had
an appetite that took a deal of killing; and ‘mine host’ had also the
grace to charge modestly for what he purveyed bountifully. I found that
the inn of the Mattmark See was an off-hand house of his, under the
management of his wife. He is besides by profession a guide. He must,
therefore, be doubly disposed to regard with favour and sympathy those
who do the Monte Moro. I found here a London member of the faculty, who
was making Macugnaga his head-quarters for a part of his holiday; and
his fuller experiences of the house, and landlord, were all on the right
side. The balcony of the hotel commands the best possible view of the
upper ten thousand feet of Monte Rosa: its subterranean foundations—the
remaining third of its height—are spread out beneath you. You are just
at a good distance for taking in the whole of the visible structure—the
height, the form, the ravines, the glacier, and the contiguous peaks,
with the head of the valley for the foreground. It is a grand, varied,
complete, impressive sight.
At 1 P.M. left the Monte Rosa Hotel for Ponte Grande. The guide, who was
now also porter, shouldered my _sac_ with a jaunty air, and we started
at a good pace. My new acquaintance of the hotel joined company for the
first mile and a half. At parting we hoped that we should meet again at
the Athenæum. At this point you leave the path on _terra firma_, and
take to a path, laid on a wooden platform, strewn with sand, which
overhangs the brawling Anza. This platform road is curious, and well
worth seeing. In some places it is supported by lofty pine poles, which
must be fifty or sixty feet high. You hardly understand how support can
be found for it in the sheer chasms it occasionally has to be carried
along. I have somewhere read that the old Roman road along the bank of
the Danube was in places constructed in this fashion, and that the holes
cut in the rock, for the bearings of the king-posts and struts, are
still visible. This of the Anza is very much out of repair. In some
places there are gaps you must step, or jump, over. In others it has
been entirely destroyed, and you must make a little _détour_ to recover
it. For a mile or two, or more, above Ceppo Morelli you quit it
altogether, and take to a rocky mule path, which might easily enough be
very considerably improved. At Ceppo Morelli is a bridge of one long,
slender, much-elevated arch, somewhat in the form a loop caterpillar
assumes in walking. Here you return to the left bank; and the carriage
road of the Val Anzasca commences. Hitherto we had been walking at a
good pace for a rough path; but now the road, having become smooth,
invited us to quicken our pace to near four miles an hour. The guide,
who had already called two halts, now called them at shorter intervals.
He was evidently breaking down. Still he was unwilling to lessen speed.
We reached Ponte Grande in a little over four hours. Here is what
appeared to be a fairly good hotel. Just before I turned in, the
waitress came to inform me that my guide had ordered a carriage, in my
name, for the next day. She suspected that all was not right. I asked
her to have the carriage counter-ordered, as he was under contract to
walk with me over the Simplon to Brieg; and to tell him that I should be
off at five o’clock in the morning.
_September 7._—Found that the guide’s feet were so swollen that he was
quite incapable of going any further. The way, I suppose, in which I had
understood that he sometimes spent his evenings had been a bad
preparation for continuous hard walking, in a valley with very little
air, commanded all day by an unclouded sun, and with a dozen, or more,
pounds on his back. I was now obliged to leave my _sac_, with
instructions that it should be sent on to Domo D’Ossola by diligence;
and then started alone. To Pié de Muléra (7½ miles) there is an
excellent carriage road. So far you are on the mountain side. From
thence to Domo D’Ossola (about 7 miles more) the road is generally on
the flat. There was a perfectly clear sky, and no air was stirring; and
so I found the latter part of my morning’s tramp very warm. Under such
conditions one might expect even a water-drinker’s feet to swell.
I was in Domo D’Ossola at 12 o’clock. Having breakfasted leisurely and
looked over the newspapers in the reading-room of the hotel, I was ready
for another ten or twelve miles; and should have done this in the
evening had I not thought it better to wait for my _sac_. As it was, I
spent the afternoon and night at Domo. As I care little for towns,
particularly third or fourth-rate ones, and have seen enough of churches
and hôtels de ville, this was an unprofitable waste of time. I amused
myself as well as I could with the arrival and departure of the
diligences, and with the Italian aspect of things. The hotel was
cheerless and lifeless. As soon as a diligence left, everyone about the
place suddenly became invisible, just as if they had all sunk into the
ground, or melted away into the air. Still, it may be the least unlively
house, as things go, in a place so dismally doleful.
To go back then to the valley of the Anza. As soon as you enter it at
Macugnaga you see that you are among a more sprightly and joyous people;
and are struck with the contrasts between them and the homely Swiss on
the other side of the mountains. They are better dressed, and with more
attention to effect; particularly the women with their white linen
smocks, showing very white beneath the dark jacket, not untouched with
colour—this is worn open and sleeveless; and with their more
gaudily-coloured kerchiefs on their heads. The dress of the fairer part
of creation in Switzerland is somewhat sombre. They make little use of
colour, and appear to be attracted most by what will wear best; and, if
it may be written, will require least washing. The women in this valley
have good eyes. They are not unaware of the advantage, and use them
accordingly. Their complexion, too, is clear. That of the Swiss is,
generally, somewhat cloudy. Their bearing and air are those of people
who are of opinion that the best use of life is to enjoy it. The Swiss
seem to regard life as if they were a little oppressed by its cares and
labours. Perhaps the conditions of existence on their side of the
mountains are so hard, that the people must take things seriously. One
respects their laborious industry. There is a kind of manliness in their
never-ending struggle against the niggardliness and severity of nature.
This, and their forethought, one applauds, only regretting that so much
toil should secure so little enjoyment; and should have such humble
issues. There is something that pleases, and attracts, in the smiles,
and in the greater sense of enjoyment, of the light-hearted Italian.
In the upper part of this valley German is still spoken. Here also it is
observable that not nearly so much has been done, as on the Swiss side,
to reclaim and irrigate the land. You wish to know whether this is at
all attributable to a difference in the distribution and tenure of
landed property. You pass several mines: some of gold. The abundance and
size of the chesnut-trees are a new feature. You contrast their
freely-spreading branches and noble foliage with the formal and gloomy
pines, of whose society you have lately had much.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII.
THE SIMPLON
Julius Cæsar also left behind him a treatise in two books on
Analogy (_a department of grammar_); which he composed while
crossing the Alps.—SUETONIUS.
_September 8._—Last night I had told the head-waiter that I must be off
at 5 A.M., and he had replied that it was impossible: that at that hour
no one in the hotel would be up; that coffee could not be prepared
before six. I, however, gained my point by asking him to set the coffee
for me overnight; telling him that I would take it in the morning cold.
This proposal appeared to him so uncivilised, that he was confounded by
its enormity, and offered no further resistance. I then paid the bill;
and was off this morning at the desired time.
As my _sac_ had not arrived from Ponte Grande, I left written
instructions that, when it turned up—it was due last evening—it should
be sent on to Brieg. Thus I had gained nothing by the afternoon I had
lost. At Ponte Grande, on the morning after the break-down of my own
porter-guide, it was evident that the master of the hotel had conceived
the very natural idea of persuading me to take one of his people in that
double capacity, or, that failing, to take a carriage. In resentment of
this, I had contented myself with putting into my pocket what I should
want most during the two following days; and had left the bag, and the
rest of what was in it, to chance. I now saw the absurdity of what I had
done; for why, in such a matter, should I have taken into consideration,
the landlord’s scheming, or anything in the world, except my own
convenience? My bag, as might have been expected, did not turn up at
Brieg. This made me still more conscious of my absurdity. Eventually,
however, by the aid of the telegraph and post-office, I recovered it at
Interlaken. This I felt I had not deserved.
As you begin to ascend the Simplon, perhaps you will be thinking—at all
events you have read remarks of the kind often enough to be reminded of
them now—that its road is a line of masonry, carried for forty-four
miles over mountains, and through storm and avalanche-swept ravines;
that it is one of the mighty works by which man has triumphed over a
great obstacle, which nature had placed in his path; that it was
constructed for purposes of war and rapine, and for the aggrandizement
of an individual, but is now used for the purposes of peace, and for the
friendly intercourse of nations; and that the barrier, which it has
practically removed, had its use in those times when it was shielding
nascent civilisation from northern barbarism. If so, you will not
altogether regret that you are on foot, and alone. This will give you an
opportunity for conferring, without irrelevant interruptions, with the
_genius loci_, and allow the trains of thought it brings you to unfold
themselves, as they will, in your mind: and so, probably, you will feel
no want of a _vehiculum_, either literally, or in the metaphorical
sense, in which the proverb says the _bonus amicus_ is a substitute for
it.
This day’s walk was very diversified. It began with level ground; some
of it productive, and well cultivated; some covered with the coarse
shingle the torrent stream, which passes through it, has brought down
from the mountains. The ascent then commenced through a region of
chestnuts and trellised vines. After that came the zone of pines,
sometimes lost, and again recovered. At last the scene was compounded of
the naked mountain side, the savage ravine, and the blustering torrent,
overtopped with rugged crags; these at times capped with snow, and with
glaciers between. But even to the summit, as you follow the road, all is
not desolation; for wherever the soil, formed by the weathering of the
rock, could be retained, your eye will rest on some little expanse of
green turf; or, if the situation be too exposed, and the soil too poor
and shallow for turf, it will be clad in the sober mantle of humble
Alpine plants.
As I walked along I often noticed how the surface of the fragments of
rock lying in the torrent, and their side looking up the stream, were
being worn away; while the side looking down, and its upper angle,
remained quite unworn. This teaches how the solid rock itself, at the
bottom of the torrent, that is to say how its channel, is always being
abraded; which means being lowered. While this is going on below, the
frosts, and storms, and earthquakes are, at the same time, bringing down
the rocks from above. This accounts for the top of the valley,
vertically, being very much wider than the bottom. If there had been no
frosts, and storms, and earthquakes, the torrent would now be running in
a perfectly perpendicular-sided trough, of the same depth as the
existing valley—but, then, there would be no valley, only a trough. The
valley is wider at the top than at the bottom, because the widening
action of frost, storms, and earthquakes has been going on at the top
for tens of thousands of years; while it has been going on lower down,
with very much less force, only for some hundreds of years. You observe
the contrast between the calm majesty of the everlasting mountains and
the brawling impatience of the insignificant torrent. The torrent,
however, has already set its mark on the mountains; and you see is
surely, though slowly, having the best of it. It works, and works
incessantly day and night; winter and summer; fair weather and foul.
Everything that occurs aids it. The mountain merely stands still to be
kicked to death by grass-hoppers. But the end of the conflict will be
their mutual destruction. The torrent will so far carry away the
mountain, that the mountain will no longer be able to feed the torrent.
Probably, in the ages preceding the torrent, a glacier, availing itself
of some aboriginal facilities in the lay of the ground, commenced the
work of excavation, which its successor, the torrent, took up, and has
since continued in the line thus prepared for it.
_La belle horreur_ of the gorge of Gondo, its sheer, adamantine,
mountain-high precipices, its terrific chasms, its overhanging rocks,
its raging torrent, its rugged peaks against the sky, make it the great
sight of the ascent. Two bits interested me especially at the moment,
and have impressed themselves on my mind more distinctly than the rest.
The first was the Fall of the Frosinone. Crashing and roaring, it leaps
down from the mountain, a dozen yards or so from the road, under which
it passes, beneath a most audaciously conceived and executed bridge,
and, immediately, on your left, rushes into the torrent of the Gorge.
The road, at once, enters the long tunnel of the Gondo, upon which the
bridge abuts. Here is an unparalleled combination of extraordinary and
stirring objects. The other is a cascade, a little way off, of a
character, in every particular, the opposite of that of the Fall of the
Frosinone. It is on the other side of the Gorge. Here there is no
ruggedness in the rock. The cleavage of nature has left it, from top to
bottom, with a polished surface. Over this almost perpendicular face of
the mountain the water glides down so smoothly and so noiselessly that,
at night, you would pass it without being aware of the existence of the
cascade. The water is as smooth as the rock, and so transparent that you
everywhere see the rock through it. It is only, everywhere, equally
marked with a delicate network of lines, and bars, of white foam. The
effect is precisely that of an endless broad band of lace, rapidly and
everlastingly, drawn down the side of the mountain.
The day was bright and warm; and the walk, being all the while against
the collar, brought one into the category of thirsty souls. I must have
drunk, I believe, twenty times at the little runnels that crossed the
road. However heated you may be, and however cold the water, no bad
consequences appear to ensue. At 12.30 P.M. I got to the village of
Simplon. Here I breakfasted, or dined, for under the circumstances the
meal was as much breakfast as dinner; or, rather, it was both in one. As
I was now just twenty-two miles from Domo D’Ossola, that is just half
way to Brieg, I had thought of sleeping here. Finding the house,
however, in possession of a company of strolling Italian players, whose
noise and childishness were insufferable, I left the hotel—uninviting
enough of itself from the slovenly, dirty look of everything about it;
and made for the Hospice, five miles further on. I found it in a
sheltered, green depression, on the very summit of the pass. It is a
large rectangular massive building, well able to set at defiance even an
Alpine winter storm. As it has no stabling, it takes in only those who
come on foot.
The Brother, who showed me to my berth, was very young and very
good-natured. He brought to me in my room all that I wanted, instead of
obliging me to go to the refectory for my supper, where, as it happened,
I should have met again the Italian players I had run away from some
hours before; for they had followed me on to the Hospice. I might have
guessed that they would not have stayed at the inn. Perhaps my
alpenstock, and very dusty feet, had some weight with the good man.
_September 9._—Was up, and out of my room at 5 A.M. Found no one
stirring in the Hospice but a lad and a girl. Both appeared to be about
fourteen years of age. For an early traveller to begin the day with,
there was plenty of coffee and milk, and of bread and butter, in my
room; the remains of the bountiful refection of yesterday evening. On my
asking the young people where I was to find some one to whom I might
make an acknowledgment for the hospitality I had received, I was told
that it was the custom for the visitors to make their offerings in the
chapel, putting them in a basin which was shown me behind the door. I
left them in the chapel, discussing the amount I had deposited. Having
complied with this ceremony, I started for Brieg. As the road was good,
and the whole of it downhill, I walked at a good pace, and had completed
the sixteen miles at 9.15. There is a short cut by which you may be
saved the long _détour_ by Berisal, and lessen the distance, as the
books say, though I do not believe the books upon this point, to the
amount of five miles. I did not look for this short cut, for fear that
my attempting to take it might issue in a loss of time. When you don’t
know the country, the short cut often proves the longest way.
Soon after commencing the descent you come to the galleries, partly
excavated in the rock, and partly formed of very massive masonry,
through which the road is carried along the flank of the Monte Leone,
and across the gorge of Schalbet. These galleries, as well as the Houses
of Refuge and the Hospice, shelter the traveller from the storms and
avalanches, which are frequent in this part of the pass. The great
Kaltenwasser glacier of Monte Leone hangs over them; and the torrent
from it slips over the roof of one of the galleries. To find yourself in
this way beneath an Alpine torrent, and to look into it, as it dashes
by, through an opening in the side of the galleries, will give to some a
new sensation. This is the head-water of the Saltine, which joins the
Rhone at Brieg. As you pass along this part of the road you have before
you the terrific forces, and savagery, of Alpine nature; but you reflect
that civilised man has been able, if not to overcome them, yet at all
events to protect himself from them. You think that it is something to
be a man; or, with less of personal feeling, that civilisation has
endowed him with much power. These scenes stir the mind. They enlarge
thought, and strengthen will. Below Berisal the torrent of the Gauter,
an affluent of the Saltine, is crossed by a massive stone bridge. This
is so lofty that it appears a light and airy structure; still it
possesses what it requires, a great deal of strength, to enable it to
resist the blasts created by the falling avalanches, which are frequent
in this neighbourhood. You are surprised at coming so soon in sight of
Brieg, and of the valley of the Rhone. You see that you have now
completely surmounted the great barrier nature interposed between her
darling Italy, where you were yesterday morning, and the hardy North, of
which you rejoice to be a child. Perhaps you will think that it was not
ill done that you crossed it on foot.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VIII.
BRIEG—THROUGH THE UPPER RHONE VALLEY BY _CHAR_ TO THE RHONE
GLACIER—HÔTEL DU GLACIER DU RHÔNE
Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound;
Content to breathe his native air
On his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.—POPE.
MY first hour at Brieg was spent in finding the single barber of the
place. He was an idle fellow; and, having it all his own way, was, as it
appeared, in the habit of devoting his mornings to society and
amusement. His evenings, also, we may suppose, were not allowed, like
his business, to run entirely to waste. At last by despatching three
little boys, in different directions, to search for him, the finder to
be rewarded with half a franc, I succeeded in bringing him back to his
razors: mine were in the _sac_ I had lost sight of through having lost
sight of self. I had breakfasted; had had a little talk with two or
three people in the hotel; had looked over the place—no great labour,
but the conclusion to which the inspection brought me was that things
appear to be better organised in it, and life to be pitched at a higher
level, than in places of equal smallness amongst ourselves; had traced
the Saltine down to its junction with the Rhone; had had some talk with
a woman who was regulating the irrigation of a meadow; and had, having
thus exhausted everything local, just retired to my room with a cigar
and a book, when the blue boy burst open the door to report himself,
like the armies of the old Romans, before he had been expected. When I
had left Saas, the calculation had been that my wife and he would not
reach Brieg till the evening of this day; and that that might also be
the time of my own arrival. We were both before our time. In such
calculations, however, it is wise to allow some margin for ‘the
unforeseen,’ and for the imperfections and uncertainties of the human
machine. As it happened, had I not lost an afternoon at Domo D’Ossola—I
shall for the future in all such deliberations, instinctively, eliminate
irrelevant matter—I should have slept in Brieg last night; though,
indeed, under the circumstances, there would have been in that no
particular gain.
During my absence my wife, and the little man, had made two excursions;
one to the Trift glacier with young Andermatten for guide—the youth who
in the first hours of the same day had carried my sac into Macugnaga,
and had then forthwith returned to Saas; and the other, without a guide,
to the Mattmark See. Knowing that their thoughts were turned in this
direction, I had sent them a note from the Mattmark See, pencilled on
the night of the 5th, begging them not to attempt it, as the road was
quite too rough and steep, in the latter part, for a child who had shown
no great capacity for mountaineering. They did not get my note till they
were on the way. My prudence, however, was no match for their
enterprise. They managed to get to the Mattmark See Hotel; and, after
dinner, to return the same evening to Saas. As the little man was not
ten years old, I accept the seven hours they were on foot as an augury
of future endurance. I had almost thought, but I ought to have known
better, that my note would have deterred them from going; and so, as I
tramped along to Ponte Grande, I had not pictured them to myself, as now
I did, toiling up the open mountain, and trudging along the lonely shore
of the dark Mattmark See, in the very centre of the Alpine world,
without another breathing thing in sight.
On the morning of this day (the 9th) my wife had walked from Saas to
Visp, fourteen miles. The little boy had ridden. From Visp to Brieg they
had come on in the diligence.
_September 10._—As it was thirty miles of, we may call it, high road,
and that not particularly interesting, from Brieg to the Rhone glacier,
for which we were bound, we took a _voiture_ for the day. It was a
three-horse affair. The driver was an ill-conditioned fellow; but not
without some redeeming qualities, for he was the only one of his kind we
met with throughout our excursion; and in the afternoon, when _bonne
main_ had become the uppermost thought in what mind he had, he showed
some capacity for the rudiments of civilisation. At Viesch he insisted
on stopping for two hours; two hours that were an age, as there was
nothing to see there, and nothing that we could do, having just
breakfasted at Brieg. It was an aggravation to see at least a dozen
one-horse vehicles pass by without one of them halting. At Munster we
stopped again, for an hour and a half: but that was for dinner.
This was the first time I had been on wheels since getting upon my own
legs at Visp, on August 29. If we had had time enough, it would have
been better to have walked this morning to the Belle Alp, giving to it
one day; then on to the Eggishorn, for the great Aletsch glacier; two
days more: and thus reaching the Rhone glacier on the fourth day. But as
we could hardly have spared the time for this, we were satisfied with
what we did. To refuse to take a carriage on a carriage road, when much
time is saved by taking it, and every object along the road can be seen
as well from a carriage as on foot, is the pedantry of pedestrianism,
which sacrifices the substance of one’s object for useless consistency.
In the upper part of the Rhone valley there are considerable expanses of
good grass land, particularly about Munster; and the villages are
numerous, and close together. Each of these villages, as seen from a
little distance, is a cluster of _châlets_, without any visible internal
spaces, and without any apparent differences in their dimensions, or
structure. They have no suburbs; there is no shading off; the bright
green meadow is not gradually lost in the dark brown village. The houses
do not gradually thin out in the fields. There are no fields; no
detached houses. There is nothing but the expanse of grass, and these
clusters of _châlets_, each like a piece of honeycomb laid upon it; and
as distinct from each other as so many communities of bees. Each village
looks as if it were something that had dropped from heaven upon the
grass; or like a compact, homogeneous excrescence upon the grass—a kind
of Brobdingnagian fungus. There is, however, one exception to the
general uniformity of the excrescence, and that is the church tower. It
stands above the rest, just as its shaft would, if the Brobdingnagian
fungus were turned upside down.
Here you have, apparently without disturbing elements, as perfect a
picture, as could now be seen, of the old rationale of religion; that it
is a power among men, equally above all, interpreting to all their moral
nature, and proclaiming the interpretation to all with an authoritative
voice; and obliging all, by its constant authoritative iteration, to
receive the proclamation; and to allow its reception to form within
themselves, even if they were such as by nature would have been without
conscience, the ideas and sentiments requisite for society. You see that
this Arcadian application of the function of religion may have been
completely, and undisturbedly realised, in times past, in such isolated
and self-contained villages; and that you are at the moment looking upon
one in which it is still being realised to some extent. But you, who
belong to the outside world, and know it, too; its large cities, its
wealth, its poverty, its estranged classes, its mental activity, its
social and controversial battle-shouts, its pæans of short-lived
triumph, its cries of agonising defeat, its individualism, are aware
that the day for such an exhibition of religion is gone by. Your
religion, if you are religious, will be in the form, and after the kind,
needed now in that outside world. It will have stronger roots, that seek
their nutriment at greater distances; a firmer knit stem, such as a tree
will have that has grown up in the open, exposed to many gales; and more
wide-spreading branches, such as those far-travelling roots, and that
firm-knit stem, can alone support. And this will enable you to
understand, and, if you do understand, will save you from despising, the
religion of the Alpine village before you: for you will find that it is
the same as your own, only in embryo.
At Oberwald, three and a half miles from the Rhone glacier, the road
leaves the grassy valley, and begins to ascend the zig-zags on the
mountain-side. We here found the inclination to leave the carriage, and
walk, irresistible. This road, which is carried over the Furca Pass to
Andermatt, is a grand achievement, for which the country, and those who
travel in it, have to thank the modern, more centralised and
democratised government. To it also their thanks are due for the new
coinage, the most simple in the world, whereas the old cantonal coinages
it superseded were the most confusing, and the worst; for the postal
arrangements, which are very good; for the telegraph; and even for the
railways. And, furthermore it must be credited with many advances, and
improvements, that have been made in the Swiss system of education.
The Rhone glacier is a broad and grand river of ice. As it descends from
the mountains on a rapid incline you see a great deal of it from below,
and are disposed to regard it as worthy to be the parent of a great
historic river. The Rhone, however, itself issues from it, at present,
in a very feeble and disappointing fashion. It slips out from beneath
the ice so quietly, and inconspicuously, that you might pass by it, as
doubtless many do, without observing it. It steals off, as if it were
ashamed of its parentage; of which, rather, it might well be proud.
A word about the Hôtel du Glacier du Rhône. It has plenty of pretension;
but I never passed a night in a house I was so glad to leave in the
morning. Nowhere did one ever meet with such a plague of flies, flies so
swarming, and so persecuting; and nowhere did one ever meet with such
revolting stenches. What produces the stenches is what produces the
flies; that is want of drainage, and the non-removal of unclean
accumulations. At first, on account of the stench which pervaded the
gallery—it was that of the first and chief floor, I refused to take the
room I was shown to; and only, after a time, consented on the assurance
that this matter could, and should be set right. This assurance was
utterly fallacious; for, though I kept my window wide open, from the
time I entered the room till I left it, I soon sickened, and was
afflicted with uninterrupted nausea throughout the whole night. Want of
proper drainage, the cause of these horrors, is very common in Swiss
hotels. Their pretentious character, which, with many thoughtless
people, atones for much, ought, on the contrary, to intensify one’s
sense of such shameful neglect. The larger the house is the larger are
the gains of the landlord, and the greater is the number of people
exposed to the mischief. I do not at all join in the cry against the
rise in the charges of the monster hotels of Southern Switzerland.
Landlords, like other people, have a right to charge what they can get,
when the commodity they deal in is much in demand. But, as their charges
are certainly remunerative, there can be no reason for forbearing to
denounce manifest and disgraceful disregard of necessary sanitary
arrangements. I heard the next morning from one, who spoke from that
day’s personal experience, that matters were no better at the
neighbouring hotel of the Grimsel Hospice. Strange is it that man should
be so careless about poisoning the very air nature has made so pure!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IX.
WALK OVER THE GRIMSEL BY THE AAR VALLEY, HELLE PLATTE, FALLS OF HANDECK,
TO MEIRINGEN
These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good;
Almighty, Thine this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous, then!
Unspeakable, Who sitt’st above the heavens
To us invisible, or dimly seen
In these Thy lowest works.—MILTON.
_September 11._—We were off at 6 A.M. for a long day over the Grimsel
Pass to Meiringen. As usual, my wife and I on foot, and the little man
on horseback. You begin the ascent of the mountain immediately from the
hotel. It is stiff walking all the way to the top, which is reached in
about an hour. The height above the sea is somewhat more than 7,000
feet. On the side of the mountain the most conspicuous plant is the
Rhododendron, the rose of the Alps. On the summit of the pass is a dark
tarn. The mephitic Hospice, about three fourths of a mile off, is 700
feet below. Soon after you begin the descent you come upon indications
of former glacier action in polished slabs of gneiss all around you. On
your right is a rugged glacier, among still more rugged pinnacles of
rock. Before you and to the left, is a world of snowy mountains, of
which you catch some glimpses. After a few yards of descent from the
Hospice the path strikes the Aar, fresh from its exit from the upper and
lower Aar glaciers. It then turns to the right along the margin of the
torrent: the torrent and the path passing side by side through a narrow
defile, overtopped, right and left, with precipitous mountains. After a
time the path leaves the margin of the torrent, having first been
carried over it by a narrow stone bridge. Everywhere you find
indications of the great height to which the glaciers reached in some
remote epoch. Among these are several instances of deep horizontal
lines, graven along the apparently perpendicular face of the mountain,
at a height of even 2,000 feet above the valley. In a place called
_Helle Platte_, or the Open Plain, the path is carried over what was
formerly the bed of the glacier; the gneiss still retaining the polish
that was given to its surface so many millenniums ago. This extends for
about a quarter of a mile, the interstices, between the mighty slabs of
gneiss being filled with fringes and patches of stunted Rhododendrons,
and of the Pinus Pumilio, a spreading dwarf pine, that does not reach
more than three or four feet from the ground; but which, notwithstanding
its diminutive size, conveys to you, far more impressively than its
lofty congeners, the idea of great age. This scene surrounded by naked
mountain masses, as rugged as adamantine, stirs the mind deeply. The
effect culminates as you pass the bridge, beneath which the torrent of
the Aar roars and dashes along its rock-impeded channel. No animal life
is seen, with the one exception of a multitude of butterflies, glancing
to and fro in the clear warm sunshine, like winged flowers. Your thought
is interested by the contrast between their feeble fragile beauty and
the force and savagery of surrounding nature.
The way in which I saw that the Aar had cut its channel through the
gneiss suggested to me the inquiry, whether what had enabled it to do
this was not the fact that the pebbles and broken rock the torrent
brought down were gneiss, so that it was gneiss which it had to dash
against the sides and bottom of its channel. Perhaps torrent-borne
fragments of gneiss may widen and deepen a gneiss channel as effectually
as fragments of lime-stone may a lime-stone channel.
At eleven miles from the Rhone glacier you reach Handeck: a small
expanse of greenest Alpine meadow, intermixed with pine-forest, and
surrounded with dark craggy mountains. Here we called a halt for
luncheon, and a cigar. It was a bright, airy day; one to be for ever
remembered. Many travellers came and went; some facing up, some down the
pass. Fortunately this charming spot has not yet been disfigured by a
staring stone hotel. The suave landlord, and expectant porter, have not
yet invaded it. But I am afraid that they cannot be far off. At all
events for the present, may it long remain so! you have the wooden
_châlet_, with its low panelled reception room, innocent of gilding and
of paint; the green rock-strewn turf coming up to the door; and the
bench along the wall outside. You can here get a mutton-chop that has
not been first passed through a bath to make _potage_ for yesterday’s
visitors, and then, for you, had its impoverishment thinly disguised by
having been dipped into a nondescript _sauce piquante_.