THE SCHANFIGGTHAL--PEIST--THE STRELA--DAVOS AM PLATZ.
Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;
Where rolled the ocean thereon was his home;
Where a blue sky, and glowing clime extends,
He had the passion and the power to roam;
The desert, forest, cavern, breaker’s foam
Were unto him companionship.--BYRON.
_August 4._--My Grison circumnavigator--for he had gone to Sydney by
the Cape, and returned by the Horn--had been due at Coire last night at
9.30. A violent storm, however, on the Albula, and which had extended
to Coire, had delayed the post till past midnight, and so I had gone
to bed before his arrival. At 6 o’clock this morning he introduced
himself to me. The first impression was not quite what he intended it
to be. His general get-up was elaborate, and far in advance of mine.
Everything upon him was new, from his stylish billycock hat, which
afterwards he told me he had bought in Paris, to his boots which
were fitter for the carpet than for the road. His outer apparel was
of good broadcloth. His umbrella was of silk. As I was noting these
particulars at the first glance, he improved their effect by telling
me that he considered the 10 francs a day, for which he had agreed to
carry my _sac_, insufficient. This I at once cut short by assuring him
that I was of a different opinion; and that, if he had any intention of
accompanying me, he must be ready to start for the Strela as soon as it
ceased to rain. At 10.30 the sun burst through the previously unbroken
canopy of dripping cloud, which withdrew with a magical rapidity that
made one wonder what had become of it, and where it had gone. There was
no corresponding promptitude in the appearance of the circumnavigator,
for the sun had been shining half an hour when he again presented
himself at my hotel (I had not seen him since the interview at 6
o’clock), and with overdone complaints of the cost of his breakfast,
and with a bad grace, having taken my _sac_ in one hand, his silk
umbrella being in the other, we were off.
It is a good practical rule to be prepared for the worst, without at
all taking it for granted that it will come to that, for things need
seldom turn out as bad as they may be made to look, or as they may be
forced into becoming. So I began by assuming that all was just as it
should be, and would so continue. Our road was at first up hill, and
the sun was full on our side of the valley. This, and the moisture
with which the air was laden, for the wet on the surface of the
ground, and on every dripping object, was being rapidly evaporated,
made it unusually warm walking. I foresaw the good effect this might
have, for I anticipated that it would bring my circumnavigator to a
consciousness of his unfitness for his work, and so probably would lead
him to correct the estimate he had lately been setting forth of the
value of his prospective services. What I had anticipated was not long
in coming. He soon had to take off his broadcloth coat. Within an hour
he called a halt. Before the second hour was out his boots had become
so pinching and galling that he had begun to limp. He never again was
so beaten as on this day; indeed, he continued to improve during the
whole of the time he remained with me, though to the last he was far
from having acquired the power of doing well an ordinary day’s work;
and this often obliged me, as it did to-day, to end the day’s march
short of the point to which I should have been glad to have extended
it; but from this time nothing more was heard of his having underrated
the value of his services.
From Coire to the Strela my road this day lay along the Schanfiggthal.
As to the road itself it was still in process of construction. The
first moiety had for some time been completed, but not much used, as
was evident from the metal not yet having been compacted together.
Here the construction had been easy. The latter moiety was in a very
incomplete state, for here the difficulties in the way of constructing
a road had been great; and, as we saw to-day, there will be still
greater difficulties in the way of its maintenance. The heavy rains of
last night, and of the foregoing week, had made this manifest to the
contractors, for in some places, where the new road had been merely
gouged out of the flank of the mountain, it had been entirely swept
away; and this had been so done that it would be far more difficult
to replace it than it had been to form it in the first instance. The
mountain side is here composed of small incoherent slaty _débris_,
inclined at the greatest angle at which such materials, when aided by
the turf and forest upon them, are capable of withstanding the wash
of the rain torrents. In forming the road the turf, or forest, had
been cut through, and the angle above and below the road enlarged.
Both the angle, therefore, and the retaining conditions had been made
less favourable. Of this it was a necessary consequence that when the
rain torrent came down it should in many places cut through the road,
as it would through so much sand; indeed more easily, for the small
incoherent slaty _débris_ is more pervious to water; and should leave
incipient ravines sometimes across, sometimes even in the direction of
the road. In some places, too, where the road had been built up, the
substructions had been swept away. All this which was disastrous to
the contractors was not without some interest for those who now had to
pass over it, for it presented good opportunities for observing the
nature of the soil, and the action of running water upon it, and so
made clear what it was that gave to the valley its peculiar character.
On a long new slope where the road, in consequence of the removal of
the turf, had been completely carried away, and the whole mountain side
set in motion, I had to find my way across the steep, loose _débris_,
where if I had stumbled upon it, or it had slipped beneath my weight, I
should probably have rolled down many hundred feet to the valley below.
Again in a ravine, where a bridge was to be built, the late flood had
so cut away the further side as to leave a perpendicular face of some
twenty feet in height. From the left corner of the bottom of this to
the right corner of the top I had to walk up a diagonal ledge, nowhere
wider than the width of the foot, this being all that the workmen had
for the present thought it necessary to make for themselves. If I had
slipped from this ledge, or if it had given way under me, I should have
fallen on the rocks of the torrent: of its giving way, however, I had
no fear, for I saw that some of the workmen must have tried it with two
or three more stones weight than I had to place upon it. Of this road
one may say further that not only will it be very costly to maintain,
but that the population of the valley is so small, that if it is not
carried over the Strela to the Davosthal, it can never be much used. We
may, however, be sure that if maintained as far as Langwies, to which
point it will soon be completed, it will not be allowed permanently
to terminate there; for the Swiss are very wisely, and with much skill
and cost, rapidly opening up to the traveller every valley that can be
taken in hand by the engineer. This is one of the conditions of the
continued growth of their prosperity. Every valley that is opened soon
has its hotels; and the increase of travellers the hotels attract, and
the concomitant increase in the value of the land of the valley, before
long many times recoup the cost of the road. No people understand
so distinctly as the Swiss that to improve means of communication,
whether footpaths, post roads, or railways, is to improve the most
indispensable of the material conditions of progress.
And now a word about the Schanfiggthal itself. If not unique in its
character, still it exhibits so interestingly the characteristics of
the class of valleys to which it belongs as to make it well worth a
visit. What you first notice is that the new road, it was so with the
old horse path, is always at a great height, perhaps never less than
1,000 feet, above the bottom of the valley. A little observation soon
reveals why you have here, and must have, a high-level road. The valley
is formed on each side by a long precipitous _talus_ of the loose
_débris_ already mentioned. These slant from their respective ridges
down to the channel of the Plessur, in which they meet. The question
then arises, Why is not the road here, as in other valleys, on the
banks of the stream? The answer is that it is impossible to carry it
along the bottom, or anywhere near the bottom, because every small
affluent, or torrent, that descends from the lofty ridges on the north
or south side, has cut in its rapid course down to the Plessur a deep
ravine. Some of these ravines are of an extraordinary depth, and they
all become wider and deeper the nearer they approach to the bottom. A
road, therefore, is only possible at such a height as will enable it
to turn, or cross, these ravines, where they have not yet become of an
impracticable depth and width, and where it will not be liable to be
carried away every spring, or at any time by any storm that may occur
even at midsummer. Hence the necessity of the high-level road. That
it is something peculiar is forced on your attention by the scenery
throughout the valley being presented to you from an unusual point of
view. The Plessur is generally quite out of sight and hearing. You are
always looking down slopes of prairie or forest, which are seldom open
to the bottom. And the point blank of the opposite ridge is always
its middle height. All this is new to you; and will give in your
memory a character of its own to the green, well wooded, ravine-seamed
Schanfiggthal.
Another particular of interest the Schanfiggthal supplies is an
instance of what geologists call earth-pillars. Some of these I saw by
the wayside in the last ravine before entering Castiel, or St. Peter’s,
I forget which: the locality, however, may be so described as to be
readily identified. They are to be seen from the new road about 200
yards beyond the chief ravine it crosses in its whole course. It had
just made a bend to the left to cross this ravine, and then had faced
to the south to recover the line of its general eastward direction.
Just before it resumes this direction, that is to say just as it is
about to leave the left side of the ravine, there are visible, some
way below you, on the opposite side of the ravine, several of these
earth pillars. Some appeared thirty feet, or more, in height. Some had
still on their tops the boulders which had led to their formation. Of
course they are situated so high above the torrent of the ravine as
to be quite out of its reach, even at the times of its greatest rise;
for had it ever touched them it must have undermined and washed them
away. Obviously their formation is due exclusively to the action of
rain. It must commence the work on the side of a ravine, above high
torrent mark, by washing away the soil around a boulder. A beginning
having thus been made, the storms of centuries continue the work;
the water of every rainfall runs off the boulder, and cuts down a
little deeper into the soil beneath, carrying down into the torrent
below what has been cut away. This action does not cut down the soil
beneath the boulder-cap quite perpendicularly, so that as the height
of the pillar increases, or rather as the soil is more cut into, the
base of the pillar becomes somewhat enlarged. Its form, therefore,
is that of an exceedingly steep-sided cone. The interest of these
earth pillars is not confined to the fact that they are a result of so
long a continuance of rain action, for as we look at them we cannot
but be reminded of some other conditions that were requisite for
their formation, such as suitableness of situation, and soil of the
requisite texture. Other instances of the formation are to be found
in Switzerland elsewhere, and there may be some others even in this
valley; I believe, however, that nowhere in Europe is it exhibited on
so large a scale, and with such lofty and perfectly formed specimens as
in the Tyrol, in the neighbourhood of Botzen.
To one coming from Coire the first village of the Schanfiggthal is
Maladers. The maps letter the name conspicuously to indicate the
importance of the place. We, however, passed through it, or by it,
without seeing a house. We now, in the afternoon, passed through Peist
from end to end without seeing a soul. It was now the height of the
busy season, and all the people were up or down the mountain making
hay, and the shutters of all the houses were closed. As to the little
inn, or _châlet_ which occasionally does duty for one, it, as is
frequently the case in the Grisons, had no name or sign; and so we had
looked at it, as at the other houses of the place, without observing in
it any indications of likelihood for the discharge of this function.
At last an old woman, who had heard our shouts, put her head out of an
upper window, and gave us the information we needed. This unobtrusive
inn was on the old road parallel to, and a few paces below, the new
road. We were admitted by a young woman who had been left in charge
of the house. The room into which she showed us was small, low, and
square, with two very small square windows in the Grison, that is to
say the embrasure, style. The little light they might have admitted was
lessened by the favourite branching carnation, and a plant of ivy, in
pots. Our first question was what could she give us to eat? Her reply
was, ‘meagre cheese and dried beef.’
‘Of course you have milk.’
‘No.’
‘Can you get some?’
‘Perhaps.’ For she knew of a neighbour who might have a cow at home in
the village. All the rest were on the alpe.
In about half an hour the meagre cheese, dried beef, and milk were
set before us, for I saw that in such a house it would be better that
I should invite the circumnavigator to take his meals with me: it
would be soothing to his Australian sense of the dignity of man, and
would save trouble to the good people. I afterwards came to a similar
conclusion with respect to the second bed in my bedroom, for I could
not suppose that there was any other room in the house available for
guests to sleep in.
As to the meagre cheese, and dried beef, during the following three
weeks, as must be the case with every pedestrian through the by ways
of the Grisons, I had many opportunities of weighing their merits
and demerits, undisturbed by any simultaneous consideration of other
comestibles. The meagre cheese is made of skimmed milk in places
where a market can be found for butter. Peist sells its butter at
Coire; and so the good people of the place, and their few visitors,
have to content themselves with cheese from which the butter has been
extracted. It is not positively bad; but this negation of badness is
its only merit. The dried beef is a production of the Grisons, for
which they are indebted to their climate. At the altitude of their
valleys, the air is so dry that for nine months out of the twelve
meat has no tendency to decomposition. Availing themselves of this
favourable condition they kill in the autumn the beef and pork they
will require in the ensuing year. It is slightly salted and hung up
to dry. Nothing more is done to it, except eating it. In three or
four months time it is not only dried, but also cooked, that is to
say the air has given it all the cooking it will ever receive. It
has become as dry and hard as a board, and internally of the colour
of an old mahogany table. Externally there is nothing to suggest the
idea of meat; it is covered with cobwebs, dust and mould, and is
undistinguishable from fragments of the mummies of the sacred bulls
taken from the catacombs of the Serapeum at Memphis. When your host
brings from his cellar the leg of the mummy of a Grison cow, shrunk
to the dimensions of the human limb, and tells you that it is to be
your dinner, you are disposed to advise him to take it to the trustees
of the British Museum. He is, however, about to prepare some for your
repast, and you watch the process with curiosity. It is a very simple
one: the material is cut across the grain with a very sharp knife in
shavings no thicker than writing-paper. Were it cut the length of the
fibre it would be as unmanageable in the mouth as a piece of whipcord,
or a fiddle-string. Curiosity again, somewhat stimulated by necessity,
for the only alternative is the meagre cheese, at last impels you,
with many misgivings, and after much deliberation, to carry one of the
shavings to your mouth. After a week or two’s experience you will begin
to think that it is not badly flavoured, nor unusually repugnant to the
process of digestion.
It was not, however, my first essay in dining on mummy beef which
brought me to this negative estimate of its qualities. My dinner,
therefore, to-day was but a frugal one. While its remains were being
removed, our host, to whom in some way or other our arrival had been
communicated, entered the room, and seating himself on a chair which
he had placed in the middle of it, lighted his pipe, as a preliminary
to conversation. This presented an opportunity for inquiring whether
the resources of the village could be made to supply a supper that
might in some degree compensate for the shortcomings of the dinner. To
every question a decided negative was returned. There was, however, one
suggestion the good man could make. A neighbour had a hen; she might
not be unwilling to part with the creature for a proper consideration;
and there would be time to make it into something for supper. I was
horrified. I looked on the author of the suggestion, seated in the
middle of the room, in his blouse and with his pipe in his mouth, as an
ogre, and who, besides being an ogre himself, was offensively taking me
for a brother ogre. That this unprepared hen, the pet of the children,
and the familiar acquaintance of all the village, should have its days,
and its career, too, of usefulness, cut short; that it should be put
into the pot before the life was well out of it, merely to make a very
doubtful addition to my supper! The blood of the poor bird would be
upon me. The first mouthful would choke me; and that would be only what
I had deserved. I peremptorily forbad the repetition of so shocking a
proposal.
It was now the daughter’s turn, and her suggestion was soup and a
salad. This was a delightful suggestion; and there could be no doubt
but that the soup and salad would at seven o’clock prove as good
as the suggestion sounded charming. But of what was the soup to be
made? Curiosity could not but be awakened, though I suppressed it for
the present, thinking it better to give the soup that proof which a
pudding is known to require. In due time the opportunity came for
applying this proof: but all that it enables me to say unhesitatingly
is--this I say only to those who can participate in what was my
own curiosity--that herbs, onions, spices, and milk were among the
ingredients. I even lean to the opinion that nothing more had been
put into the pot. First, because these were all the elements of the
composition I could detect, either by the eye or palate; and next
because there was nothing else in the village that could have been
added except mummy beef, and I cannot believe that these frugal people
would for a moment have entertained the thought of expending any of
their little store of that precious material for such a purpose. No:
I believe that it was rigidly a _potage_ of herbs; and that there was
in it no element that would have disqualified it for being placed, at
their great annual festival, before the President of the Vegetarian
Society.
The beds and bedroom were as clean as one could wish. The basins were
coloured pie-dishes; the goblets were black wine bottles. At five
o’clock the next morning we found that the goodnatured contriver of
the soup had managed to procure some butter from the alpe for our
breakfast. The coffee was quite up to the usual hotel mark. The bill
for dinner, supper, bed, and breakfast for two persons was 2_s._ 8_d._;
that there may be no mistake, 3 francs 20 cents.
_August 4._--At Langwies, where the new char-road ended, the path
for the first time began to descend towards the valley bottom, which
was reached a little further on. In some places beyond Langwies the
horse-track was quite overgrown with long grass and nettles. This
indicated how little the Pass of the Strela is used. The scenery had
now begun to assume a new aspect. Up to this time an unusual amount
of bright green grass, and of dark green pine, had been universal.
We were now approaching the head of the valley, and the grass was
assuming the more sober green of upland pasture, while the forests
became less vigorous in growth, and less profuse in foliage. The
rock, too, where exposed to view, was no longer dark crumbly slate,
but had become of a hard compact texture, and of a gray tint. At last
the stream was reached, but not crossed; for after keeping upon its
northern bank for a short distance, we had to turn our backs to it,
and to ascend a grassy glade with forest on either side. The eastern
direction, however, was soon resumed, which soon carried us beyond
the last trees. After a time we had to cross a swollen stream on the
trunk of an unsquared pine, the wooden bridge having been carried
away two days back. Then passing some Alpine _châlets_, and skirting
a lofty mountain, both on the left, over good Alpine pasture, we
reached the head water of the Plessur. For stepping across this, upon
the stones which form its bed, you must yourself select a spot, for
just hereabouts there cannot be said to be any pathway. Immediately
beyond the stream you begin the last ascent. Here a good path, over
rock-strewn, and unusually flowery turf, conducts you up a steep
ascent, that for half an hour will shrewdly try your lungs and legs.
By that time you will have reached the top of the Pass of the Strela.
You will now have lifted yourself nearly 6,000 feet above Coire, and
will be at an elevation of nearly 8,000. Grand, naked, rocky summits,
free from weather stains, will rise some thousand feet higher on your
right and left. At first your way lies over a good expanse of turfy
plateau, with some precipitous rock-faced ravines on the right and on
the left. Before you is a troubled sea of mighty ridges and multiform
summits, many capped and streaked with snow. Everything is in strong
contrast to the somewhat monotonous green of the two long ranges of
the Schanfiggthal. A little advance brings to your feet the long
valley of Davos, 3,000 feet below you. At its head, to your left, you
look down on the blue-green surface of the glassy Davoser see. On a
quiet cloudless day you marvel at its reflection of the aerial azure.
The mountains stand round about it, and the woods come down to its
margin, except on the side nearest to you, where the prairies of the
valley reach up to it. Amid them is the little town of Davos Dörfli.
Somewhat further down the valley, which soon spreads out to a goodly
expanse of softest tinted grass is the larger town of Davos am Platz,
covering much space, for its houses are much dispersed. With that
full before you, you no longer care to keep to the horse track, but
taking the cattle tracks down the alpe, which carry you through a fine
old larch forest, you again strike the regular path just before you
enter the town. For a moment, if you have come from the Schanfiggthal,
you will feel some surprise at finding so many good houses, so many
large hotels, so considerable a town, and so excellent a road, in such
a place. The Kurhaus is an enormous establishment. Being repelled
by its name, and not attracted by its size, I went on to the hotel
Rhätia, at the further, or southern end of the town, having passed some
other hotels by the way. It was now twelve o’clock, and as the _table
d’hôte_ hour was near at hand, I stayed there for dinner. Chairs were
set for 116 guests. The landlord told me that among them all were but
three English parties. German was the only language I heard spoken. My
experience has brought me to the conclusion that where this is the case
the table is more bountifully provided, and the charges are less, than
in hotels that are frequented chiefly by English and Americans. Germans
will not submit to be badly served, or to be overcharged. Englishmen
are generally indisposed to assert their rights in matters of this
kind. And if they had the disposition, they seldom have sufficient
command of the language to enable them to wrangle glibly with hotel
authorities.
The contrast between the valley I had left and the valley I had now
entered, as I have just said, was great; but still greater was the
contrast between the human life of the one and of the other. There
was an awning along the south side of the hotel. At one end of this,
where it was of considerable depth, the seats were arranged in a
square: this part of the space, now that dinner was over, was occupied
by ladies and children. The other end, where there was only a single
bench against the wall, was assigned to the gentlemen, who, as they
took their after-dinner cigar, were conversing upon the condition of
Europe, and other questions of the day. In the road was a constant
succession of parties, departing, some on foot, and some in _chars_,
for an afternoon excursion. The contentment of rest after exertion,
aided by the narcotic leaf, disposed to dreaminess, and would not allow
present objects quite to overpower and obliterate recent impressions.
The bloused landlord of Peist, with his short pipe in his mouth, and
his good-natured daughter, who had earned their three francs and twenty
cents with so much unaffected kindly attention, and the villagers, who
during the long winter meet to spin in each other’s houses, that they
may effect some little savings of firing and lights, and at the same
time have a little talk about the affairs of the village, their world,
would not be displaced from my thoughts. Each order of impressions
somewhat deprived the other of reality. Each became a concurrent dream,
or the two together formed themselves into a single confused dream.
The fantoccini figures of the one story jostled those of the other
story for possession of the stage in the brain. For the time one felt
no longer as an actor in life, but merely as a spectator of life. Human
concerns became a spectacle, which only suggested evanescent fragments
of half-formed thought.