CHAPTER I

[Illustration: THE EIGER

_From the Drawing by Fleming Williams_]

WINTER SPORTS

IN SWITZERLAND

BY

E. F. BENSON

WITH 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY

C. FLEMING WILLIAMS

AND 47 REPRODUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY

MRS. AUBREY LE BLOND

LONDON

GEORGE ALLEN & COMPANY, LTD.

44 & 45 RATHBONE PLACE

1913

[All rights reserved]

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE SUN-SEEKER 1

II. RINKS AND SKATERS 23

III. TEES AND CRAMPITS 79

IV. TOBOGGANING 115

V. ICE-HOCKEY 129

VI. SKI-ING 137

VII. NOTES ON WINTER RESORTS 167

VIII. FOR PARENTS AND GUARDIANS 191

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE

THE EIGER (_colour_) _Frontispiece_

I. WINTER SUNLIGHT }

II. BY THE STREAM-SIDE }

III. HOAR-FROST }

IV. JEWELS OF THE FROST } _At end of_

V. BLACK ICE ON THE SILS LAKE } _Chap. I,_

VI. THE BUDDING ICE FLOWERS } _between_

VII. THE FULL-BLOWN ICE FLOWERS (twenty-four hours later)} _pp. 22 and 23_

VIII. ICE FLOWERS IN DETAIL }

IX. MAGNIFIED ICE FLOWERS }

X. WINTER MOONLIGHT }

SKATING, ENGLISH STYLE (_colour_) _Facing p. 32_

SKATING, CONTINENTAL STYLE (_colour_) _” 34_

XI. A WINTER HARVEST }

XII. CLEARING THE SNOW FROM THE RINK } _At end of_

XIII. SPRINKLING THE RINK, CHÂTEAU D’OEX } _Chap. II,_

XIV. PUBLIC RINK, DAVOS } _between_

XV. SKATING-RINK AT MÜRREN } _pp. 78 and 79_

XVI. SKATING-RINK AT CHÂTEAU D’OEX }

“SHE LIES” (_colour_) _Facing p. 98_

XVII. CURLING } _At end of_

XVIII. CURLING AT MÜRREN } _Chap. III,_

XIX. THE THREE KULM RINKS } _between_

XX. LADIES’ CURLING MATCH, ST. MORITZ } _pp. 114 and 115_

“ACHTUNG!” (_colour_) _Facing p. 116_

ON THE CRESTA RUN (_colour_) _” 122_

TAILING (_colour_) _” 126_

XXI. THE BUILDING OF THE CRESTA--“BATTLEDORE” }

XXII. THE TOP OF THE CRESTA, ST. MORITZ }

XXIII. STARTING ON THE CRESTA }

XXIV. CHURCH LEAP, CRESTA RUN }

XXV. CHURCH LEAP, CRESTA RUN }

XXVI. “BATTLEDORE” CORNER, CRESTA } _At end of_

XXVII. CROSSING THE ROAD, CRESTA } _Chap. IV,_

XXVIII. NEAR THE FINISH ON THE CRESTA } _between_

XXIX. BOB-RUN, ST. MORITZ: IN THE LARCH WOODS } _pp. 128 and 129_

XXX. ROUNDING SUNNY CORNER, ST. MORITZ BOB-RUN }

XXXI. BOB-RUN, ST. MORITZ }

XXXII. THE STRAIGHT FROM THE BRIDGE, ST. MORITZ BOB-RUN }

XXXIII. ST. MORITZ BOB-RUN }

ICE HOCKEY (_colour_) _ Facing p. 132_

THE TELEMARK TURN (_colour_) _” 156_

THE JUMP (_colour_) _” 164_

SKI-JORING (_colour_) _” 166_

XXXIV. AT ST. MORITZ }

XXXV. PRACTICE SLOPES, MONTANA, SWITZERLAND } _At end of_

XXXVI. A SLIGHT MISHAP } _Chap. VI,_

XXXVII. SKI-JUMPING } _between_

XXXVIII. SKI-JUMPING, MONTANA, SWITZERLAND } _pp. 166 and 167_

XXXIX. VETERANS OF THE ST. MORITZ SKI CLUB }

XL. A PRACTICE GROUND }

XLI. CROSSING THE ROAD ON THE CRESTA }

XLII. TOP OF KLOSTERS RUN, DAVOS } _At end of_

XLIII. THE START, SCHATZ ALP RUN, DAVOS } _Chap. VII,_

XLIV. BOBBING ON THE SCHATZ ALP RUN, DAVOS } _between_

XLV. SKATING-RINK AT VILLARS } _pp. 190 and 191_

XLVI. AT LA BRETAYE, VILLARS }

XLVII. “BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER WIND” }

THE ICE CARNIVAL (_colour_) _Facing p. 194_

WINTER SPORTS IN SWITZERLAND

CHAPTER I

THE SUN-SEEKER

There is an amazingly silly proverb which quite mistakenly tells us that

“seeing is believing.” The most ordinary conjurer at a village

entertainment will prove the falsity of this saying. For who has not

seen one of these plausible mountebanks put a watch into a top-hat, and,

after clearly smashing it into a thousand pieces with a pestle, stir up

the disintegrated fragments with a spoon and produce an omelette? Or who

is so unacquainted with the affairs of the village schoolroom at

Christmas as not to have seen a solid billiard-ball or a lively canary

squeezed out of the side of a friend’s head? Such phenomena are by no

means rare, and occur periodically all over England. The observer’s eyes

have told him that he has seen such things, and the verb “to see” is

merely a compendious expression to indicate that on the evidence of your

eyes such or such a phenomenon has actually occurred. But no one

believes that the disintegrated watch has become an omelette though

ocular evidence--seeing--insists that it has. It was a conjuring trick.

And this leads me to the consideration of the phenomena on which this

whole book is based.

For High Alpine resorts in winter are a conjuring trick of a glorious

and luminous kind. Our commonsense, based on experience, tells us that

ice is cold, but is melted by heat; and that snow is wet; and that

unless you put on a greatcoat when the thermometer registers frost, you

will feel chilly; and that if you frequently fall down in the snow you

will be wet through, and if you do not change your clothes when you

return home you will catch a cold. All these things are quite obvious,

and he who does not grant them as premises to whatever conclusion we may

happen to base on them, is clearly not to be argued with, but soothed

and comforted like a child or taken care of like a lunatic. But High

Alpine winter resorts give, apparently, ocular disproof of all these

obvious statements, and those who go out to these delectable altitudes

in favourable seasons see (which is ocular evidence) every day and all

day the exact opposite of these primitively simple prepositions

regularly and continually taking place. They sit in the sun, when they

are tired of skating, and see that though a torrid luminary beats down

on the frozen surface, burning and browning the faces of their friends,

the ice remains perfectly dry and unmelted; they trudge through snow,

and find that they are not wet; they see the thermometer marking

anything up or down to thirty degrees of frost, and go out coatless and

very likely hatless, and are conscious only of an agreeable and bracing

warmth; they go ski-ing and all day are smothered in snow, and yet

return dry and warm and comfortable to their hotels, and do not catch

any cold whatever. Shakespeare once made an allusion of some kind (I

cannot look all through his plays to find it) about hot ice, meaning to

employ a nonsensical expression. But it is the most striking testimonial

to the magnificence of his brain that all he ever wrote meant

something, although, as in this instance, he designed it not to. For

without doubt he was alluding to what appears to occur at St. Moritz or

Mürren.

But it is all a conjuring trick, or so these altitudinists are disposed

to think when they return home to the dispiriting chills of a normal

February in England, and find that when the thermometer marks 45° or

thereabouts they shiver disconsolately in the clemming cold. Even when

they were out in Switzerland they hardly believed what appeared to be

happening, for they found that if the weather changed, and instead of

the windless calm, or a light north-wind, the Föhn-wind blew from the

south-west, warm and enervating, then, in proportion as the thermometer

mounted, they felt increasingly cold. All these things, though they

thought they saw and felt them, were of the nature of a conjuring trick,

and they never, after their return to the lowlands, really believed

them. It was obviously impossible that they could have felt warm and

dry, after being rolled in the snow. It must have been an illusion,

capable of immediate disproof if they now went out without a coat, or

sat down on a snowy London pavement. A pleasant illusion, no doubt, but

clearly an illusion. It was like the omelette emerging from the top-hat,

into which a watch had, only a moment before, been placed and pestled.

And if those who think they have experienced these phenomena, which so

clearly contradict the most elementary laws of Nature, cannot fully

believe in them when they re-enter the chilly spring of England, still

less do those who have not experienced them find it possible even to

simulate credulity when the foolish Alpinist recounts them. I rather

fancy that people who have never been to the high altitudes in winter,

believe that all those who say they have done so, and come back and tell

their friends that sun does not melt ice, and that snow is dry, and that

ten degrees of frost is an agreeable temperature to stroll about in

without a coat, are in some sort of inexplicable conspiracy. But the

conspiracy is so widely spread now, and is still spreading so fast, that

one’s remarks on the subject are received with politeness nowadays,

though still with incredulity. Some strange wandering of the wits has

taken possession of the conspirators, who are otherwise harmless. And,

such is the force with which their illusion holds them, and so anxious

are they that credence should be given to it, that they employ some sort

of skin-dye to add completeness to their strange tales, and appear with

brown hands and faces when they come back to the anæmic metropolis. They

are clearly the victims of some obscure but infectious derangement of

the brain, of which the chief symptoms are those strange illusions and

an immense appetite.... And, as I have said, the victims of these

illusions, before they have spent many days in England, are already

themselves wondering whether all these things really were so, or whether

they were but the fabric of a pleasing dream. But they make plans to

dream again about the middle of the ensuing autumn, and for the most

part find that the vision is recapturable. It is all great nonsense; but

if you take a suitable ticket at a suitable time of the year, and go

where that ticket will allow you, the nonsense is found to be recurrent.

I do not know whether ice and snow, and all the forms of the “radiant

frost,” as Shelley calls it, are in themselves more beautiful than the

spectacle, to which we are accustomed, of an unfrozen world, or whether

it is merely because we are unused to the gleams and sparkle of these

whitenesses, that we find them so entrancingly lovely. It would be

interesting, for instance, to ascertain whether an Esquimo or other

dweller in the Arctics accustomed to ice, would go into ecstasies of

admiration at the sight--shall we say--of Hyde Park Corner on a moist

warm day of September, when the roadway is swimming in a thick brown

soup of mud, and gusts of tepid rain stream on the wind-swept

lamp-posts, thus supporting the idea that it is to the novelty of the

spectacle that the arousing of our appreciation is due. Certainly it

would be hard to say that anything in the world is more beautiful than a

beech-tree in spring, or a crimson rambler in full flower, or glimpses

of the Mediterranean in a frame of grey-green olive-trees; and I am

inclined to believe that it is partly the contrast which a sunny morning

in winter among the High Alps presents to all that a Londoner has known

or dreamed of hitherto that partly accounts for the ineffable

impressions it never fails in producing on him. And to that we must add

the exhilarating and invigorating effect of the still dry air, and the

sun that all day pours Pactolus over the gleaming fields. In such an air

and in such a flood of light all our senses and perceptions are

quickened, the vitality of our organs is increased, and with the

wonderful feeling of _bien-être_ which the conditions give, our

appreciation is kindled too. I always feel that it _must_ have been on a

frosty morning that David said: “I opened my mouth and drew in my

breath.” And perhaps on that day the cedars of Lebanon were covered with

the crystals of hoar-frost, and below the snowy uplands the dim blue of

the sea slept insapphirined at the bases of the shining cliffs....

I lick the chops of memory, and go back in thought to the middle of

December, when, having previously determined not to go abroad till

January, I hurriedly fly the country, like a criminal seeking to escape

from the justice that is hot on the heels of a murderer. In such wise do

I fly from my conscience--conscience, I may remark, is one of the things

that everybody leaves behind when he goes to the High Alps: apparently

it and other poisonous organisms, such as the bacillus of tuberculosis

cannot exist in those altitudes--while below my breath I again register

the frequently broken vow that I will be at home again by the middle of

January at the latest. For indeed it seems impossible to tolerate London

any longer just now: the fogs have begun (these are the excuses with

which I seek to stay the protests of conscience, before I fly from it),

and for three days last week we lived in a thick and ominous twilight of

dusky orange, tasting evilly of soot and sulphurous products. At

intervals a copper-coloured plate showed itself above the house roofs:

and, oh, to think that this mean metallic circle was indeed none other

than the hot radiant giant that in the happier climes was rejoicing to

run his course across the turquoise expanse of cloudless sky; that this

remote and meaningless object was the same that sparkled on dazzling

peak and precipice and turned the untrodden snows to sheets of diamond

dust. Then after three days of Stygian gloom the fog was dispersed by a

shrewd and shrill north wind, and for a whole morning snow fell heavily,

which, as it touched the pavements and roadways of town more than

usually befouled by the fog, turned into a base and degrading substance

resembling melting coffee-ice. The streets swam in the icy treacle of

it, and motor-buses and other ponderous vehicles cast undesired helpings

of it at the legs of foot-passengers. After this dispiriting day the

weather changed again and a tepid south-westerly gale squealed through

the streets. This was too much: I bought a quantity of what is known as

sermon-paper and two new stylographs (this was another sop to

conscience, and implied the intention of working out in Switzerland),

made a few hasty and craven arrangements on the telephone, and slid out

of Charing Cross Station at 2.20 P.M. precisely next day, leaving

conscience, like an abandoned wife, sobbing on the platform.

Now, while journeys, whether on land or sea, are apt to be but tiresome

businesses when they are undertaken at the call of some tedious errand,

they are vastly different affairs when they conduct the traveller to

joyful places and delectable pursuits. They are coloured by that which

awaits him at the end of them (like the sweetness of sugar permeating

tea), and this particular progress is to me full of romantic happenings.

Dusk is already closing in before I reach the coast, and as the train

halts on the hill above Folkestone, before being towed backwards down to

the harbour, I can see the lights beginning to twinkle in the town and

along the pier, which is surrounded by the great grey immensity of the

wave-flecked sea. A fine rain is falling dismally, and as I hurry across

the slippery quay I am weighed down by an enormous greatcoat (the

pockets of which, I am sorry to say, are “salted” by various packets of

cigarettes, which is why I wear it), and I stagger under the weight of a

suit-case, sooner than part with which I would die. For the French or

Swiss railway companies often (no doubt with humorous intent) arrange

that the traveller’s large luggage shall not arrive for twenty-four

hours or so after he has got to his destination, and in less experienced

years I have packed my boots and skates in these detained trunks, and

have been obliged to wait in savage inaction till the railway company

has come to the end of its joke, just as one waits for the end of a long

funny story. Not so now: my inseparable bag contains my large and

cumbrous skate-shod boots as a first charge, and after they have been

stowed, the mere necessities of life, like clothes and dressing-case, as

opposed to its joys, fill the rest. Even in the harbour the steamer

sways with the back-wash of the heavy seas outside, and the

mooring-ropes squeak and strain to its unease. I stick in the narrow

gang-plank that conducts in precipitous incline to the deck (at least

the corner of my suit-case does, which is part of my identity); a faint

and awful smell of red plush sofas and cold beef comes up from the

stairs leading to the saloon; the tarpaulins, rigged up along the open

passage between decks, flap uneasily and are buffeted by the rain-soaked

wind, and sailors hurry about with white japanned tin objects in their

hands....

All this sounds dismal and dispiriting enough, but such incidents, I

repeat, take their colour from that to which they lead the traveller,

and when bound for Switzerland they are all haloed in a vague

pleasurable sense of excitement and romance. We put out on the turbulent

and windy sea, and as we round the end of the pier the whole boat

shivers as a great white-headed wave strikes her. It is cold and wet on

deck, but I have to linger there while the cliffs of my beloved native

land vanish into the grey of the swift on-coming night, and feel a

perfect glow of enthusiasm at the idea of not setting eyes on them again

for another month or so (probably “so”: because conscience is now far

away, perhaps still waiting at Charing Cross Station, in case I return

by the next train), and already I am beginning to be doubtful whether I

really made a vow to be back by the middle of January. I pass rows of

silent figures with closed eyes reclining on deck-chairs in the more

sheltered corners: then the whole ship makes a scooping curtsey into the

trough of a wave, and the water pours sonorously on to the deck. Shrill

whistles the wind in the rigging, and a raucous steam-siren proclaims to

all the traffic in the Channel that we are off to Switzerland to skate,

having left our consciences and the white cliffs of England behind us,

and not caring two straws, at this delightful moment, as to whether we

ever see any of them again.

I love the landing on the friendly shores of France, the waiting while

the ship is reluctantly coaxed sidling up to the pier, the hustle to get

through the custom-house and enter the warm, well-lit train. The foreign

tongue is delightful to the ear: so, too, to the eye, the blue-bloused

porters, and the unplatformed station, where the huge carriages tower

high above one, emitting mysterious jets of steam. All is strange and

new and delightful: the engine of unaccustomed build and outlandish

voice, the grey upholstered compartments with their hot-carpeted floors,

the restaurant car with bottle-filled racks, where presently I sit, part

of a moving pageant of eating and drinking, as we shriek through

stations and scour with ever-increasing velocity through the darkness of

a stormy night. At Laon mysterious jugglings take place: another string

of carriages is slowly shunted on to our train, to the accompaniment of

many cries of warning and encouragement and wavings of lanterns, and the

buffers come home with a soft thud. We cast off our tail, lizard-like,

which is hauled away to travel divergently to Basle, and soon we are

thundering on again by the more direct route to Berne. At some timeless

hour a long halt is made, and compartment doors are flung open with the

sonorous proclamation of the arrival of _les messieurs de la douane_.

Enter _les messieurs_, and at their sesame bags fly open, and with

strange staves they explore the hidden recesses under the seats, in

their nightly search for laces and spirits and cigarettes and all the

contraband of peace. Soon this complimentary visit is over, the green

shades are adjusted again over the lamps, and the vibration and rhythm

of the racing wheels mingle and blend themselves into the blurred edges

of dream....

I do not wake until we are actually slowing down to enter Berne--that

city so justly famous for its bears, its President of this delectable

republic, and its terrace from which the eager tourist vainly scans the

impenetrable clouds which invariably screen from his view all possible

glimpses of the mountains of the Oberland. Whenever I arrive at Berne it

is always a grey chilly morning, just above freezing point, so that the

icy streets are half slush. At first this used to depress me with

ominous forebodings of a thaw at the higher altitudes: now I know that

all the winter through it is always just thawing at Berne, and that the

sky there always is heavily be-clouded. I think a sunny frosty morning

there would cause me some considerable anxiety, for it would imply a

complete upset of climatic conditions, and midsummer might be expected

to hold its abhorred sway on the heights. So in perfect equanimity I

climb back again into our train--heated to the temperature of the second

hottest room in a Turkish bath--and we jog in more leisurely fashion

through the half-frozen villages towards the lake of Thun. These

villages are mainly composed of houses taken from the larger-sized boxes

of toys, with stones fastened down on their wood-shingle eaves to

prevent their roofs blowing away, and with staircases, clearly built for

ornament, and completely unpractical, climbing up the outside of their

walls. Stations and banks and hotels seem to be constructed with a view

to moderate permanence; the rest are clearly so made that they can be

taken up and planted down somewhere else. Then as we emerge on to the

edges of the lake, higher hills begin to tower across its steely-grey

levels, and rifts in the clouds that shroud their heads and hunched

shoulders show glimpses of sun that shine on the whiteness of snow. Mile

after mile we pursue a meandering way along the shores, and thread the

darkness of hoarse tunnels, whose lips are fringed with dripping

icicles, and the sense of something coming, something high and clear,

begins to grow. Though in front, where Interlaken lies, a veil of

grey-blue mist is interspersed between us and that which, I know, soars

above it, the clouds are beginning on all sides to become unravelled

like wool-work pulled out, and through the rents and torn edges gleams

of turquoise sky are seen. High up climb serrated rims of rock, cut

vividly clear against the blue and fringed with aspiring pines; higher

yet, where the boldest of these brave vegetables can find no footing,

further ridges appear austere and empty and gleaming. Yet these are but

the outlying buttresses and ramparts of the great towers at the base of

which they lean and cluster: to-night we shall sleep in an eyrie far

above them, and far above us yet will watch the unscaled precipices of

the great range, over the edge of which the unheeding stars climb and

swim into sight all night long, pouring the golden dew of their shining

upon forest and glacier, until the snows are rosy with dawn.

We paused in Interlaken Central Station to draw breath after our

lake-side amble. Here the snow lay crisp and hard-trodden in the

streets, but overhead the gutters gurgled and the eaves of houses

dripped with its melting in this brilliant morning. No shred of cloud

was left in all the shining heavens, and like the flanks of a galloped

horse the pine-clad hillsides steamed in the sun.... And then the

miracle.... As we steamed forth again to the Eastern station, a long

valley lying between two wooded hills opened out, and there, clear in

the light of the young day, and white with virgin snows and blue with

precipices of ice, and set in the illimitable azure, rose the Queen of

Mountains, the maiden, the Jungfrau, peaked and domed and pinnacled in

ineffable crystal.

The Jungfrau is and will always be my mistress among mountains, as she

was when I first saw her at the age of twelve. One mistake I have made

in my conduct towards her, and that was ten years later when I climbed

her--and yet who could tell she would prove so tedious and heavy (not in

hand but in foot)? For I approached the lady of my adoration from the

Concordia hut, and instead of feasting my eyes at every step on her

queenly gracious carriage and maiden slenderness, I found that the

closer I got to her the more did she appear round-shouldered, not to say

hump-backed. In addition, a quantity of fresh snow had fallen, and we

had a long tiresome and utterly unexciting trudge, a hot and stodgy

affair. I had imagined that ventures and perils would have to be

encountered for this wooing and winning of her, with balancings and

poisings on stairways of precipitous ice and needles of pinnacled rock:

instead she had to be solidly and laboriously and dully approached; it

was like wooing some great bolster or gigantic cow. For a little while

after that I cared nothing for her; she was a mature and silent barmaid

of vast proportions, but gradually her charm and enchantment cast their

spell over me again, the dissolution of which I intend never to risk in

the future, unless I approach her by a more hazardous and daring route.

To those who approach her dully, she gives herself dully: the more

daring wooer she may perhaps kill, but she does not bore him.

But the wonder of her, when seen through clear air with the brilliant

winter sky around her head from the entrance to this valley that leads

up to Lauterbrunnen! Up it we steamed in a little angry rattling

snorting train, which cut itself in half to take some of its aspiring

contents to Grindelwald on the left, and others among whom I numbered

myself to Wengen and to Mürren. By the side of our way ran a turbulent

mountain stream fed by the glaciers of the Oberland, too swift to freeze

altogether, but with its backwaters and sheltered reaches covered over

with lids of ice. For all its glacier-birth steam rose from it in the

icy air that hovered in shaded places, and the alders and hazels that

hung over it were thickly encrusted with the marvellous jewellery of

the hoar-frost, spiked and _parsemès_ and refoliaged in wondrous winter

growth with tendrils and scrolls of minutest diamond-dust. Narrower grew

the valley, steeper and taller the wooded hills that overhung it till at

last we reached Lauterbrunnen, close to which the Staubbach, most

amazing of all waterfalls, leaps a clear eight hundred feet from the

edge of the high plateau-shelf, which skirts along the mountain-side on

to the rocks below. Even in summer, when the melting of the snows that

feed the stream make it of far greater volume than when the stricture of

frost is on it, the water, poured as from a jug-spout, disintegrates in

its fall, so that it reaches the valley more in wreaths of mist than in

solid water, and collects again from the dripping rocks; while in winter

its diminished volume is further spent in the manufacture of the huge

icicles that fringe the edge of its leaping-place, and hang in great

streamers, the beard and hair, you would say, of the very Frost-king

himself, who sits at ease on this precipitous throne. Little water

to-day runs away from where the clouds of mist and water-smoke fall on

the rocks, for most of them are frozen there, and a layer of ice covers

the boulders where they come to earth. For here, so engorged lies the

valley, so close to the great rampart of the Oberland, that the sun

which blazed on Interlaken has not yet surmounted the barrier of

mountain-peaks.

Parallel with the Staubbach, and up a hillside which appears hardly less

sheer than the precipice itself, runs the funicular railway which leads

to the Mürren-plateau. At first sight it seems as if it must be meant

for a practical joke, constructed by humorous engineers to astonish the

weak minds of travellers, and, though practical from the point of view

of a joke, to be perfectly impracticable as a means of conveyance. Its

steepness is that of disordered images seen in a dream, and it was with

a sense of utter incredulity that I first took my place in one of the

small wooden compartments and was locked in by an apparently sane and

serious conductor. He blew a whistle, or a bell sounded, just as is done

on real lines of traffic, and immediately afterwards we began to ascend

that impossible line of rails, sauntering with smooth and steady

progress up that ridiculous precipice. More amazing still we soon

observed a similar car sauntering steadily down it, just strolling down,

even as we were strolling up. We met, we passed, and I had a vision of

passengers smoking and chatting, as if nothing in the least remarkable

was happening and imminent death did not await us all....

But more remarkable things than that were happening. Upwards from the

valley we climbed on this Jacob’s ladder that reached if not to Heaven,

to very heavenly places. Pine woods and rocks melted away below,

streaming quietly downwards; presently we were level with the top of the

towering precipice from which the Staubbach was discharged, and

presently that too was left below. But higher as we mounted there

climbed with us, in fresh unfoldings of glaciers and peaks and

glittering snow fields, the great range of the Oberland. New peaks “met

Heaven in snow,” new _arêtes_, too steep and wind-swept to allow a

vestige of snow to lie there pointed arrow-like to the tops above them.

Eiger, Monch, Silberhorn, and Jungfrau towered glittering just across

the Lauterbrunnen valley from which we had come, and as we sidled along

the upland shelf on which Mürren stands, gradually the whole range

spread itself out in tremendous rampart, radiant, rejoicing, and

austere. For foreground was this narrow ledge of white fields dotted

here and there with cattle-châlets, and pines scattered singly or in

companies, all wearing plumes and tippets of snow that made their

foliage seem a black blot in the sunlight, and soon the congregation of

village roofs appeared, and Mürren stood bathed and basking in sunshine,

drowned, so to speak, in the sparkling champagne of the invigorating

winter morning. And the intoxication of the high places, an entrancing

vintage of oxygen and ice and sun, invaded limb and sinew and brain.

It is supposed by those who have never seen the infinite variety of

forms into which frost converts mist and dew and all manner of water,

that there must be a monotony in those vast expanses of snow and ice.

They figure to themselves the depressing spectacle of snow as it usually

appears in England, smooth and soft and wet, and too close a cousin to

slush not to be tainted with a family resemblance; the image called up

by ice is a grey surface in which are imbedded dead leaves, twigs and

stones thrown on to it by boys for purposes not clearly understandable,

while all they know of hoar-frost is an evanescent decoration that

occurs at the edges of ditches and on lawns when tea is being made in

the morning and disappears as soon as the poached eggs, leaving the

grass soaked and dripping. But as is crystal to soap so are those

radiant congelations of the High Alps to the same as seen beneath grey

skies and unluminous days. Here, if snow has fallen, as sometimes

happens, while wind is blowing, it is driven into all manner of curving

wave crests and undulations; then when the fall is over, the sky clears

again, a night of frost hardens and congeals the outlines, and the trees

wear fine feathers and plumes of whiteness. As the snowfall packs with

its own weight, there grows on the surface of the fields a crust half

snow, half ice, covered with dazzling minute crystals. During the fall

of the snow there has been moisture in the air, and often on that

brilliant morning that succeeds the fall, the air is full of minute

frozen particles of water that sparkle like the old-fashioned

glass-decoration on Christmas cards, so that one walks through a shining

company of tiniest diamond fire-flies. And the frozen surface of snow

reflects the wonderful azure and gold of sun and sky, and here in the

blaze it lies white beneath a vivid yellow, there in the shade a dim

blue permeates it. After a few days of hot sun more of the fall will

have melted and slipped from the trees, and they stand black-foliaged

and red-trunked waiting for the decoration of the hoar-frost. The one

more night of frost covers every sprig and fir-needle with amazing

spikes and fernlike sprays of minute crystal. Wondrous are their

growths, more particularly if, as sometimes happens, some cold mist

comes up from the valleys. Then with a craze for decoration almost

ludicrous, you shall see your friends with hair and eyebrows bedecked

with these jewels, each separate hair wearing its frozen garniture, and

their coats and stockings ornamented in like manner. They grow white in

a single minute almost; and such as have moustaches, close to the

moisture of their breath will suddenly turn to walruses with long

dependence of icicles. And yet--here is a conjuring trick again--though

ice and frost frame their faces they are conscious of no cold at all.

Marvellous, too, are the dealings of the frost with the running streams

and the lakes such as those at St. Moritz or Davos or Sils. Often,

unfortunately, it happens that a snowfall will occur when they are but

lightly frozen over, in which case the snow quite covers them, breaks

through perhaps in places, and with the ice already formed, makes a

rough uneven surface useless to the skater, and to the beholder no more

than a level snow-field, with perhaps ugly stains on it where the water

has come through and formed the grey ice, which is of no artistic

moment. But sometimes it happens that a snowfall occurs before any ice

has formed on the lake, and thus, though it lies on the surrounding

ground, it melts in the water, and at the end of the fall the lake is

still unfrozen, though the winter mantle lies over field and wood. Then

let us suppose there comes a hard frost with no more snow. Night after

night ice absolutely clear like glass forms on the water and gradually

thickens. If the days are windless it is entirely smooth, and

practically invisible, so that it is impossible to believe that you are

not looking on a sheet of water. Then the glad word goes forth that the

lake bears, and you hurry forth to skate on it. But mountain and wood

and landscape are all mirrored in it as in perfectly still water, and it

is almost incredible that here is ice a foot or two thick. Tremblingly

you launch yourself on it, scarcely able to believe in its solidity; for

through that unwavering surface you see every weed and stump under

water. The very fishes flit and flick visibly below your feet, and so

glassy is it that through it it is possible to see the subaqueous

foundations of the lacustrine dwellings in the lake of Sils, never to be

seen unless the lake is frozen, since the slightest ripple of the water

sets the surface a-quiver and mars its translucency. But seen through

this foot or so of perfectly clear ice--black ice, as it is called--it

is as if one looked through that charming contrivance called the

bathyscope, by which you can observe the depths of the sea. Below the

ice, the water lies still and in a calm sheltered by this solid ceiling

of crystal, and you see, as if in an aquarium, the fishes and the

water-weeds, and all the gales that ever blew will not shatter the

reflections or obscure the depths. Then when your courage has come to

you, and you begin to grasp the fact that an army might march across

this invisible plain of ice without breaking through, you will no doubt

venture forth from the shore, and feel what you never feel on rinks and

other prepared surfaces of ice, the divine elasticity of your floor. And

very likely just when you are some half-mile from the shore, you will be

terror-stricken to hear a crack as of artillery resound close to you,

and a great crack will zigzag like lightning through the ice. The first

time you hear that, the present writer is willing to wager any

reasonable sum that your face will blanch (unless too sun-tanned) and

you will skate with incredible celerity for the nearest land. But that

salvo portends no danger whatever, except if your skate-blade enters

such a crack (of which there will be, unfortunately, a considerable

number in the course of a few days) longitudinally. Then it is true you

may have a fall, but these explosions do not mean that you will ever be

food for fishes.

But after a few days, in all probability, even though no snow falls, the

surface of the ice, except where it is kept swept, becomes useless for

skating, thanks to another of the wonderful conjuring tricks of the

frost. Owing to dew, or from other moisture in the air, there begin to

form upon the ice little nuclei of hoar-frost such as are seen in Plate

VI. They look harmless enough, and with perfect justice you admire

their exquisite fanlike fronds, and think no more of them. But in a

couple of days the same surface, as shown from the identical point of

view in Plate VII, presents a totally different aspect, and one which is

clearly discouraging to the most ardent of skaters. But then, since you

are finally and completely and irrevocably thwarted in any ambition to

skate on this depressing surface (for it is as if all the ice-moles in

the world had made their common earth there, multiplying exceedingly),

you will be wise to examine and admire the astounding forms of this

fairy frost-work before it becomes confluent, and, losing the

individuality of its separate tufts, covers the whole lake like powdery

snow. In Plate VIII you may see the marvellous delicacy in detail of

these bouquets of frost-flowers, and the same on larger scale in Plate

IX, where they are already becoming a very jungle of anti-tropical

growth.

In that wonderful poem “By the Fireside,” Robert Browning, in speaking

of the Alps in autumn, says:

“But at afternoon or almost eve

’Tis better; then the silence grows

To that extent you half believe

It must get rid of what it knows

Its bosom does so heave.”

And that which he weds to such lovely language is another of the spells

which the circle of the Alpine day and night weaves round us. Only, I

think, in winter the silence which he speaks of at evening, or, he might

have added at night, is a thing incredible to those who, I may almost

say, have never heard that silence. In spring or summer or autumn it is

broken by sounds of cowbells perhaps, and, almost certainly by a murmur

of wind in pine-woods, or of water hurrying from the heights. But in

winter, on a still evening those evidences of life are dumb, and yet the

silence itself is pregnant with vitality. At sunset the high tops burn

in rose-coloured flame, and as the glory fades into the toneless velvet

of the frosty sky, the stars in their wheeling are of a brilliance

utterly unknown to lower altitudes, except perhaps where the desert lies

fallow and dry beneath Egyptian skies, and no emanation from the earth

dims the burning of these “patins of bright gold.” But that “quiring to

the bright-eyed Seraphim” reaches not the mortal ear, and at evening or

at night in these High Alps, there is felt, as it were, that ecstasy of

silence that seems on the point of bursting into chorus: “it must get

rid of what it knows.” Nowhere else have I felt so rapturous a quality

of stillness: the frozen snow lies taut under the grip of the immense

energy of the frost: no avalanches slipping from the snow-laden flanks

of the Jungfrau under the hot beams of the sun, startle the valley with

sonorous thunder: the wind stirs not the lightest needle of the pines;

the villagers are home from the frozen fields, and doors are shut.

Slowly the last rose-colour fades from the peaks, and the stars

brighten, and you hold your breath to hear the most wonderful thing you

have ever heard--utter stillness, that yet is strained almost to

bursting point with the energies that make it, the peace that passes

understanding that lies above the snow and beneath the stars....

* * * * *

Then having heard it, having thought perhaps you understood it, or best

of all, being conscious that you do not understand it at all, you may

start for home, and glide on your skis down a slope to the very doors of

your hotel. Probably you will have a great many falls, for it is the

most difficult thing in the world--which is saying a good deal--to ski

with the smallest success in a fading or faded light. But you will have

heard the silence of the winter night: that will generously console you

for your misadventures....

[Illustration:

PLATE I

WINTER SUNLIGHT]

[Illustration:

PLATE II

BY THE STREAM-SIDE]

[Illustration:

PLATE III

HOAR-FROST]

[Illustration:

PLATE IV

JEWELS OF THE FROST]

[Illustration:

PLATE V

BLACK ICE ON THE SILS LAKE]

[Illustration:

PLATE VI

THE BUDDING ICE FLOWERS]

[Illustration:

PLATE VII

THE FULL-BLOWN ICE FLOWERS

(twenty-four hours later)]

[Illustration:

PLATE VIII

ICE FLOWERS IN DETAIL]

[Illustration:

PLATE IX

MAGNIFIED ICE FLOWERS]

[Illustration:

PLATE X

WINTER MOONLIGHT]