In order to make the pass of the Gemmi, it is necessary to go through
the Baths of Leuk. The ascent from the Rhone bridge at Susten is full of
interest, affording fine views of the valley, which is better to look at
than to travel through, and bringing you almost immediately to the old
town of Leuk, a queer, old, towered place, perched on a precipice, with
the oddest inn, and a notice posted up to the effect, that any one who
drives through its steep streets faster than a walk will be fined five
francs. I paid nothing extra for a fast walk. The road, which is one of
the best in the country, is a wonderful piece of engineering, spanning
streams, cut in rock, rounding precipices, following the wild valley of
the Dala by many a winding and zigzag.
The Baths of Leuk, or Loeche-les-Bains, or Leukerbad, is a little
village at the very head of the valley, over four thousand feet above
the sea, and overhung by the perpendicular walls of the Gemmi, which
rise on all sides, except the south, on an average of two thousand
feet above it. There is a nest of brown houses, clustered together like
bee-hives, into which the few inhabitants creep to hibernate in the long
winters, and several shops, grand hotels, and bathing-houses open for
the season. Innumerable springs issue out of this green, sloping meadow
among the mountains, some of them icy cold, but over twenty of them hot,
and seasoned with a great many disagreeable sulphates, carbonates, and
oxides, and varying in temperature from ninety-five to one hundred and
twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit. Italians, French, and Swiss resort
here in great numbers to take the baths, which are supposed to be very
efficacious for rheumatism and cutaneous affections. Doubtless many of
them do up their bathing for the year while here; and they may need no
more after scalding and soaking in this water for a couple of months.
Before we reached the hotel, we turned aside into one of the
bath-houses. We stood inhaling a sickly steam in a large, close hall,
which was wholly occupied by a huge vat, across which low partitions,
with bridges, ran, dividing it into four compartments. When we entered,
we were assailed with yells in many languages, and howls in the common
tongue, as if all the fiends of the pit had broken loose. We took off
our hats in obedience to the demand; but the clamor did not wholly
subside, and was mingled with singing and horrible laughter. Floating
about in each vat, we at first saw twenty or thirty human heads. The
women could be distinguished from the men by the manner of dressing the
hair. Each wore a loose woolen gown. Each had a little table floating
before him or her, which he or she pushed about at pleasure. One wore
a hideous mask; another kept diving in the opaque pool and coming up to
blow, like the hippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens; some were taking
a lunch from their tables, others playing chess; some sitting on the
benches round the edges, with only heads out of water, as doleful as
owls, while others roamed about, engaged in the game of spattering with
their comrades, and sang and shouted at the top of their voices. The
people in this bath were said to be second class; but they looked as
well and behaved better than those of the first class, whom we saw in
the establishment at our hotel afterward.
It may be a valuable scientific fact, that the water in these vats, in
which people of all sexes, all diseases, and all nations spend so many
hours of the twenty-four, is changed once a day. The temperature at
which the bath is given is ninety-eight. The water is let in at night,
and allowed to cool. At five in the morning, the bathers enter it, and
remain until ten o'clock,--five hours, having breakfast served to them
on the floating tables, “as they sail, as they sail.” They then have a
respite till two, and go in till five. Eight hours in hot water! Nothing
can be more disgusting than the sight of these baths. Gustave Dore
must have learned here how to make those ghostly pictures of the
lost floating about in the Stygian pools, in his illustrations of the
Inferno; and the rocks and cavernous precipices may have enabled him
to complete the picture. On what principle cures are effected in these
filthy vats, I could not learn. I have a theory, that, where so many
diseases meet and mingle in one swashing fluid, they neutralize each
other. It may be that the action is that happily explained by one of
the Hibernian bathmen in an American water-cure establishment. “You see,
sir,” said he, “that the shock of the water unites with the electricity
of the system, and explodes the disease.” I should think that the shock
to one's feeling of decency and cleanliness, at these baths, would
explode any disease in Europe. But, whatever the result may be, I am not
sorry to see so many French and Italians soak themselves once a year.
Out of the bath these people seem to enjoy life. There is a long
promenade, shaded and picturesque, which they take at evening, sometimes
as far as the Ladders, eight of which are fastened, in a shackling
manner, to the perpendicular rocks,--a high and somewhat dangerous
ascent to the village of Albinen, but undertaken constantly by peasants
with baskets on their backs. It is in winter the only mode Leukerbad
has of communicating with the world; and in summer it is the only way of
reaching Albinen, except by a long journey down the Dala and up another
valley and height. The bathers were certainly very lively and social at
table-d'hote, where we had the pleasure of meeting some hundred of
them, dressed. It was presumed that the baths were the subject of the
entertaining conversation; for I read in a charming little work which
sets forth the delights of Leuk, that La poussee forms the staple of
most of the talk. La poussee, or, as this book poetically calls it,
“that daughter of the waters of Loeche,” “that eruption of which we
have already spoken, and which proves the action of the baths upon the
skin,”--becomes the object, and often the end, of all conversation. And
it gives specimens of this pleasant converse, as:
“Comment va votre poussee?”
“Avez-vous la poussee?”
“Je suis en pleine poussee”
“Ma poussee s'est fort bien passee!”
Indeed says this entertaining tract, sans poussee, one would not be able
to hold, at table or in the salon, with a neighbor of either sex,
the least conversation. Further, it is by grace a la poussee that one
arrives at those intimacies which are the characteristics of the baths.
Blessed, then, be La poussee, which renders possible such a high society
and such select and entertaining conversation! Long may the bathers of
Leuk live to soak and converse! In the morning, when we departed for the
ascent of the Gemmi, we passed one of the bathing-houses. I fancied that
a hot steam issued out of the crevices; from within came a discord of
singing and caterwauling; and, as a door swung open, I saw that the
heads floating about on the turbid tide were eating breakfast from the
swimming tables.