which stands on a hill of splintered rock some distance from the
principal springs. On the hillside is the hamlet of Sparsels, with a
curious fountain-shrine; and below, by a little lake, Fontana, with
the parish church and a Capuchin hospice, for, owing to the long
tenure of the seigniory by Austria, this commune, alone in the
Engadine, has remained Catholic. In the eleventh century, after long
disputes, the castle and seigniory became vested in the bishopric of
Chur. In 1239 they passed to the counts of Tirol, and remained
Austrian till, by the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, they were made
over to Graubünden as a set-off to various fiefs of the bishopric of
Chur scattered in the Vorarlberg and Tirol. There are enchanting
views of this loveliest nook of the Lower Engadine from the windows
of the castle, whose latest purchaser is the ex-Grand-Duke of Hesse.
Descending the valley, we pass the ruin of the Romanesque church of
St. Peter on a rocky hill. Then the villages of Sent and Crusch,
'The Cross,' a little below which a road crosses the Inn to Sur En on
the right bank at the opening of the sequestered Val d'Uina.
About a mile and a half below Crusch is the deep ravine through which
the Sinestra flows to the Inn. On a rocky hill above is the ruined
castle of Tschanuf, {43} the seat till the beginning of last century
of an episcopal castellan who controlled the jurisdiction of the
Lower Engadine. Less than an hour up the wild and lovely Val
Sinestra are some famous springs impregnated with iron, arsenic, and
other minerals, and highly charged with carbonic acid gas. Centuries
before the present high-road and Kurhaus facilitated access to and
use of them, their virtues were known in the Engadine and Tirol, and
a little band of sufferers flocked yearly to this secluded glen,
living in tents while they drank the waters and bathed with pristine
simplicity under a spreading elder tree in troughs in which the water
was warmed by heated stones.
Descending the Inn Valley we come to Ramuosch in a fertile nook of
ancient cultivation. Its interesting church, which formerly claimed
to enshrine the wonder-working remains of St. Florin, was long a
place of pilgrimage both for Engadiners and Tirolese. Though the
saint was priest of Ramuosch, his birthplace was Matsch in Tirol, and
every year on his festival the chest that was believed to hold his
bones was carried in solemn procession from Ramuosch to Matsch, some
eight hours distant, and back. In 1530 it occurred to the
authorities of Ramuosch to open the chest, which was found to contain
nothing but rags. Ramuosch was then halting at the crossways, and
{44} this cruel disillusion decided it for the Reformation.*
* 'At the commencement of the great schism the Government of the
Three Leagues, after listening to incontrovertible arguments on both
sides in a theological conference at Ilanz in January, 1526, decided
to be perfectly neutral, leaving individual consciences free, and
allowing each commune to decide for itself to which persuasion it
would officially belong. Thus the people settled for themselves the
question that concerned them so deeply, which in the rest of Europe
was mainly decided over their heads by rulers often actuated by
considerations far from religious' ('Upper Engadine,' p. 168).
On the right below Ramuosch a fine waterfall marks the entrance to
the pent, pine-clad Val d'Assa. In a cliff some two hours up is a
stalactite cavern and a spring known as Fontana chi staina, 'the
spring that stands still.' Its final channel is probably a natural
siphon that empties a hidden reservoir three times a day, and ceases
to flow while it is refilling.
In a fertile widening of the Inn Valley is the village of Strada and,
perched high above, that of Tschlin. Dark woods clothe the right
bank of the Inn, now swollen by the melting of many glaciers to a
considerable stream. Then we come to Punt Martina, in German
Martinsbruck, standing amid grand scenery at the end of the Engadine.
By the iron bridge beyond it we pass into Tirol. In front the road
winds up wooded slopes, and then climbs and cuts its way among the
slate rocks of the romantic Finstermünz {45} Pass. On the left a new
road drops down along the Swiss side of the Novella gorge to Alt
Finstermünz, far below, where antiquated fortifications cling to the
sheer cliffs, under which the straitened stream flows swift and deep.
Old wooden bridges from either jealous bank meet in the vaulted
gangway of a square tower set on a submerged rock in midstream.
V
THE NATIONAL PARK
This great reserve has added a unique attraction to the Engadine.
The idea was for a long time the aspiration of an elect few,
leavening public opinion and pestering the Government. At last they
had their reward. For years the authorities that in an admirable
reciprocity govern and are governed by the population of Switzerland
cautiously committed themselves to the enterprise. In 1906 they
appointed a Naturschutzkommission to report on a desirable region to
be sequestrated. In 1909 a Naturschutzbund was formed to supplement
official efforts. The commission negotiated rights in first one
fragment then another of the selected and authorized area: from the
commune of Zernez in 1909 the Val Cluoza, in 1910 the Val Tantermozza
and the northern and western slopes of Piz Esan; from the commune of
S-chanf in 1911 the southern slopes of Piz Esan and {46} Piz
Quatervals, the Val Muschauns, and part of the right side of Val
Trupchum; from the commune of Scuol and the pastoral league of Tavrü
most of the east side of the S-charl district; from Zernez in 1913
the Praspol, Schera, and Stavelchod districts. All concessions were
with option of renewal. Right of emption was also secured over the
region linking the two unequal areas into which the appropriations
fall. This is termed the Verbindungsgebiet, roughly speaking the Val
Nuglia, the upper Val Plavna, and the heights bordering both. In
1914 a resolution of the Federal Council gave legislative seal to the
transactions, banning to human enterprise some fifty square miles.
The addition of the linking domain will bring the area up to about
eighty square miles. Of course, the figures give the horizontal
projection on the map; the surface measurement would be considerably
more, as anyone who has had to do with real property that is 'mostly
on end' will realize.
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{47}
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP SHOWING SWISS NATIONAL PARK.]
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As to the locality of this forbidden land, public opinion has
unanimously endorsed the choice of the commission. In no part of
Switzerland is there an equal area that could be given over to
untrammelled natural agencies with so little social or economical
derangement. It is wholly without permanent human habitation, there
is no tillage and but little pasturage to be disestablished, while
the hardly less important Fremdenindustrie has barely touched the hem
of the great reserve, which boasts none of the {48} transcendent
charm that has made the rest of Switzerland the playground of Europe;
with the exception of a short reach below the Fuorn Pass, no rail or
post-road threads its savage solitudes, it cradles no enchanting
lake, it enshrines no soaring peaks or shining glaciers, its valleys,
which enjoy such uninviting names as Val del Diavel, Sassa, Cluoza,
Nuglia, Sainza bon (I will not insult the reader's ingenuity by
translating them), though full of wild charm, are little haunted by
artist and photographer; wood-cutting, hunting, and scanty and
sporadic pasturage are the only industries that will be interfered
with. This unkempt, unused wilderness at the eastern edge of the
Confederation has the further recommendation that, partly from this
isolation and neglect, partly from lying on the borderland of
distinct botanic zones, it exhibits a varied and comprehensive flora,
and has given asylum to sundry odds and ends of vanishing fauna.
Though, following precedent elsewhere, the term 'reserve,' which was
first employed for the sequestrated area, has officially given place
to that of National Park, the former better expresses the aim of the
scheme. The proposed object of such sequestration in other countries
has been public enjoyment, but this is only incidentally an object of
the Swiss enterprise, which is rather a great scientific experiment
in the interplay of unimpeded natural agencies. Nature is to be
given a free hand, and man, his hands {49} behind his back, will look
on and see what she makes of it.
Of course, the field of unsophisticated nature is not, when closely
looked at, the peaceful paradise dreamed by the artless philosophy of
a century ago. The beneficent mother pictured by sentimental
idealists has been revealed to these latter days as a soulless
monster, red in tooth and claw with ravin, working blindly under the
impulsion of inexorable tendencies that know not truce nor ruth. To
make a sanctuary where she shall have her way without let or
hindrance amounts to keeping the ring for a free fight of flora and
fauna, only the meddlesome hand of her supreme masterpiece--whom it
is rather amusing we should exclude from our conception of
nature--being ruled out.
As regards flora, I believe the procedure has been mainly thus to let
things alone, but the administration are introducing much that is
new, or that has disappeared, in the way of fauna. To a large
extent, indeed, they have introduced themselves with that telepathic
percipience of a sanctuary so remarkable in hunted creatures.
Already in October, 1913, a large bear appeared in the Park. Their
former presence is attested by sundry place-names--Val del Orso, Bagn
del Uors--and in the Val Cluoza and elsewhere old timber bear-traps
still stand. Bears, however, are too expensive guests to be
welcomed. Not sixty years ago their ravages among sheep and cattle
were {50} still considerable, and the administration has engaged with
the neighbouring communes not to harbour them.
A former denizen of the Alps whose successful re-establishment has
been hailed with universal acclamation is the lordly ibex, or, as
Engadiners call it, the Capricorn (bouquetin, steinbock). Throughout
Switzerland there is a sentiment of romance connected with this
stately goat, who for over three centuries has had only an heraldic
existence in his ancient fastnesses; his imperially horned head is
the emblem of the canton, and swings as sign of innumerable inns; he
capers amid thistles on the seal of the commune of Zernez and prances
rampant on either side of armorial devices frescoed on the walls of
old houses. In 1920 seven young Capricorn were let loose in the
Cluoza-Spol section, and their number has increased in spite of
foreign marauders, but here we are on delicate ground, and it is well
to emulate the diplomatic reticence of the Federal authorities. The
stock is to be reinforced this year by a pair from the Zoological
Gardens at Interlaken.
The Park started with a good stock of chamois of several types and
some deer, and more have flocked to it as the good news of a
sanctuary was passed round in ways that man knows not; in fact deer
may be said to have taken possession of the S-charl district.
Marmots abound, and will still more abound. Moreover, {51}
affiliated to the Park, the only patch of it on the left of the Inn
is a sanctuary established for the droll little rodents on the Godgod
slopes between S-chanf and Capella well back in last century. During
the construction of the railway the Italian workmen wrought sad havoc
among them with snares, which they had become too confiding to avoid;
but they have since regained their paradise, and the discreet
wanderer may watch their engaging antics at work and play. Their
surplus progeny is no doubt making its own Verbindungsgebiet with the
Park.
It must not be supposed, from what has been said, that the great
reserve is a forbidding region of interest only to the naturalist.
It is replete with charm and full of a variety that blends in wide
harmonies, or surprises with sudden contrasts; a region of still
forest sanctuaries, of wild ravines and savage gorges, of eager
streams flashing white in cascades and torrents or rushing green and
smooth in deep-worn beds; of many-hued rocks piled in chaotic ruin or
set in mazy labyrinths or strewn splintered on the slopes; lonely
tarns shine on emerald uplands or sleep in stony wildernesses; the
lofty lawns are starred with flowers and sentinelled with immemorial
trees; in sequestered dells rivulets wind and whisper amid blossoming
herbage, or creep and croon in leafy coverts; great grey stones dream
under the hoary trees of Druidic glades; a land of pristine
seclusion, of gracious solitudes, of high, silent places where {52}
earth and heaven seem to meet. And over all plays the wizardry of
the clear mountain air and the fleeting mountain weather, weaving a
glamour of shifting splendour and gloom over peak and vale, stream
and forest, lighting the landscape into a prodigal enchantment of
detail or wrapping it in mystery and portent.
In common with all who are interested in the National Park, I am
greatly indebted to Dr. Stefan Brunies, Secretary and Treasurer of
the Heimatschutz, who has made the subject his own in various
delightful books replete with nature- and folk-lore. Therein are
given a number of itineraries for exploring the Park and studying its
plants, birds, and beasts, in all which the wanderer will find Dr.
Brunies an invaluable and entertaining companion.
S-chanf is, he thinks, the best starting-point for traversing the
Park. Crossing the Inn by the Livigno road, a path on the left
crosses the Varusch stream and follows up its right bank to Alp
Purcher. Here, on the left, a path enters the Park, and runs up the
Alp Müschauns under the chasmed heights of Piz Esan; on the steep
grassy slopes below them the practised eye will seldom fail to locate
chamois browsing. Passing on the right a long narrow tarn fed by a
tongue of glacier we reach a low saddle that leads into the
appropriately named Val Sassa, in the steep screes of which the path
is lost till it reappears on the broad valley floor, where, crossing
a wooden {53} bridge, we find, ensconced in dense forest, the Cluoza
blockhouse.
Here are eight beds and supplementary sleeping accommodation on hay;
the warder supplies meals at a fixed tariff. Chamois, and now and
then deer, may be marked on the slopes above, where salt-licks have
been placed for their delectation. Any wayfarer may pass two nights
at the blockhouse in the heart of the great reserve; for a longer
stay authority must be obtained from the Naturschutzkommission at
Bale.
We commence next day's walk by mounting steeply on the east to the
Murter Alp, a plateau of flowery pasture buttressed round with
precipices. Here we have a survey of the upper Val Cluoza and its
three savage head-valleys: Diavel, Sassa, and Valetta. Descending
eastward to the old sheep-pastures of Laschaida, we come to the first
outposts of forests, hoary, battered larch, which, as the path drops
steeply down, gradually give place to fir. At the bottom we emerge
on the pastures of Praspol by the turbid Spol, one of the largest
tributaries of the Inn, rich in trout, and a last refuge of the
hard-bested otter, who can now live and multiply there in peace,
doubtless giving a wide berth to the right bank for the two miles
along which the Spol forms the Park boundary. It will be interesting
to note if fish do the same; the right of fishing from this bank is
reserved to the commune of Zernez. We may cross {54} the stream by
the Punt Praspol, leaving the Park for a while, or we may take on the
right a lonely and bewitching forest path that runs above the left
bank of the Spol, crosses it by the Punt Purif, and descends to the
point where, half an hour below Fuorn, the post-road re-enters the
Park.
Those not in a hurry will do well to spread this walk, with
digressions that will readily suggest themselves, over the second
day, passing the night at Fuorn. If pressed for time, however, an
early start from the blockhouse will enable good walkers to get on to
S-charl or Tarasp. A quarter of an hour above Fuorn on the road to
the Pass, by the second bridge, which crosses a gully, a footpath on
the left through the forest brings us into the Val del Botsch,
abounding in chamois, and ascends steeply to the Fuorcletta, a low
saddle between towering dolomite peaks. Looking back as we ascend is
an ever-widening prospect of serried summits and savage gorges. Very
striking, too, as we thread the stony trough, is the contrast between
the stark desolation around and the soft rich hues of the Lower
Engadine, with a crowded host of peaks rising behind and about them.
The path then leaves the Park, and is for a while in the
Verbindungsgebiet, descending to Alp Plavna, turning to the left,
ascending, and re-entering the Park at the pleasant col of Sur il
Foss; then descending the Val Minger, it strikes the Clemgia a couple
of miles below the lone, forest-begirt hamlet of S-charl. The {55}
once busy iron-smelting village has dwindled to a dozen houses with
their little church on a holm of the rushing Clemgia. The name of
the secular Jurada forest on the left records an ancient reserve
banned to axe and saw as a protection from avalanches. To the south
the wild and beautiful valley is closed by the snow-flecked dolomite
peaks of the Pisoc. A half-day's walk down the right bank of the
stream, along the eastern edge of the Park, takes us by the Clemgia
Gorge to Tarasp.
'The course of nature' as exhibited in such experiments as the Swiss
National Park irresistibly calls to mind the headlong history of the
world during the ten years that have passed since its inauguration.
The teaching of nature had been studiously assimilated by a great
nation to which the world is deeply indebted in every field of
thought, science, and research; it was made the basis of their
national policy, and put in practice with every resource of skill and
deliberation. The results have been catastrophic, and would seem to
show that when man became a social being--and we may perhaps extend
the statement to all society, however inchoate, from the pack and the
herd to the hive and the ant-heap--he entered a new plane of
evolution, and that those who would apply to it the crude methods of
selection that operated in more primitive and individual stages are
fighting against the stars in their courses.
{56}
Some such thoughts as these shaped themselves in my mind into the
following lines in the second year of the war.
EVOLUTION
They said: Behold, battle is earth's high law,
Turn where we will is ruthlessness and strife,
Beast against beast, and plant with plant wage war,
Through havoc only gain we ampler life.
The strong leaf ousts the weak leaf from the sun,
Root strangles root in wrestle for the soil,
Close-shelved in rock lie types whose race is run,
Cast out in the eternal stress and moil.
Thus painfully, by force and guile and hate,
From flaccid forms that lurked in primal ooze,
Life, in advance from low to high estate,
Ever the weak rejects, the strong doth choose.
Shall man alone shirk universal rule,
And bind the peoples with his petty codes
That shield rank growth of weakling and of fool
And crush the hero under caitiffs' loads?
Truth is a figment, charity a myth,
Life gives its crowns to strength and craft and greed,
Why should we weave, to stay our hands therewith,
A moral net at variance with our need?
We will forswear the outworn, craven creed
That blessed the peacemakers and pure in heart,
And take the lesson taught by beast and weed
To guide our feet in court and camp and mart.
And thus they placed their land all else above,
Suckled their sons at iron paps of war,
Made mock of honour and a God of love,
Trampled on covenant and scoffed at law.
{57}
And God gave unto them their hearts' desire,
And poured into their cup the wine they sought
That turns the soul to stone, the brain to fire,
And brings the centuries' slow work to naught.
Gave strong delusion to believe a lie,
Gave them seared heart, sealed mind, and pervert sense,
The straitened outlook of the earth-bound eye
That sees no kingdom that is not from hence.
On from delusion to delusion hurled,
They worked out madly to its utmost cost
The doom on those whom, though they gain the world,
It profits nothing, for their soul is lost.
The gain is futile and the world is small
That can be bought by barter of the soul,
A new time dawns and gleaming portents call
For fresh means, changed ideals, altered goal.
VI
WINTER
The attraction of the Alpine winter, which till lately was a pious
cult of the elect, has become a common-place of advertisements and
agencies. Every year a larger crowd gathers in what used to be
considered frost-bound solitudes, and some new resort is opened for
the Christmas holiday-maker. Among such resorts the Engadine, with
its dry air, clear sky, and brilliant sunshine, takes a foremost
place. At no {58} time is it more lovely and enjoyable, more unlike
the surroundings we have left at home, more recuperative to jaded
denizens of the town. It would be difficult to find a gayer and
busier scene than its frozen lakes and snow-clad slopes present in
winter. Even the work that goes on partakes of the general
exhilaration. Sleighs and toboggans replace carts and barrows,
lightening the labour of man and beast, and adding a novel animation
to transport and locomotion. Bound and buried though Nature be, the
work of those who deal with her is by no means at a stand-still; the
universal snow, instead of staying it, inaugurates a general
transport system, converting rough mountain roads into smooth and
facile descents; little more than guidance and gravitation is needed
to bring the hay mown in summer and the timber felled in autumn from
the distant uplands to the villages and homesteads where they should
be. Nothing is more enjoyable than to take a passage down on a
sleigh laden with hay or faggots, to rush through the keen air over
glistening slopes, or along winding forest ways, or in the trough of
steep gullies that centuries of similar traffic have cut through
copse and wood; most admirable is the adroitness with which a
practised mountaineer pilots his wayward and unwieldy craft, which,
if once it 'take charge,' runs a mad career as fatal to its crew as
to wayfarers in its path.
Sports are organized in the most business-like {59} manner, and are
as cosmopolitan as the human crowd; northern and mountain lands in
all quarters of the globe have contributed to them, and when the
short sunny day is over, keen brilliant nights, carnival balls on the
illuminated lakes, theatricals, dancing, and unlimited miscellaneous
fooling prolong the strenuous enjoyment.
And then the setting of it all. The exceeding beauty and strangeness
of the snow-clad earth, spotless and radiant, like a bride adorned
for her husband, and the enchanting details that surround us, wander
where we will. On every side cold and heat, wind and moisture, play
fantastic tricks before high heaven, stereotyping cascades on the
precipices, casing in crystal the swirls and falls of streamlets,
draping cliffs and caves with iridescent fringe and lacework of ice.
Snow decorates the sombre towers of pine and fir as with jewelled
fleece, and bows to an added grace the pliant larch-limbs on which
remnants of autumn foliage still linger in brushes of tawny gold;
hoar-frost weaves fairy-like embroidery over twigs and leaves;
shadows chequer the stainless ground with exquisite pencilling; all
the familiar objects of wayside, croft and fell suffer a winter
change into something rich and strange.
He who would see all this at its best and at his ease must take to
skis, for the gift of which the Alps owe an incalculable debt to
Norway. The introduction is comparatively recent, but the alacrity
with {60} which it has been taken up shows how thoroughly it met a
want. Detachments of the Swiss army are exercised on skis every
winter, and the citizen soldiers have taken the accomplishment back
to their mountain homes, where it has been eagerly adopted. Children
may be seen on home-made skis trooping to the often distant school,
or having the time of their lives on slopes and plateaux.