ROSEG GLACIER--PIZ LANGUARD--LA PISCHA--MORTERATSCH GLACIER--PONTRESINA.
Ah! that such beauty varying in the light
Of living nature, cannot be portrayed
By words, nor by the pencil’s silent skill;
But is the property of him alone,
Who hath beheld it, noted it with care,
And in his mind recorded it with love.--WORDSWORTH.
_August 11._--At 8.30 A.M. got under weigh for the Roseg glacier,
piloted by my two new guides. The morning was bright, the air quiet
and fresh, and everything level to their wish that what they had to
show might be seen to the best advantage. As you turn your back on
Pontresina, and cross the rocky channel of the Bernina Bach, which
carries off the outflow of the eastern and northern sides of the
Bernina group, you command the upward view of the valley of the Roseg.
It is not of the narrow ravine kind, but has some little space of
wooded bottom, generally open enough to afford a little pasturage. You
are 6,000 feet above the sea; the forest, therefore, is composed of
larch and cembra. On either side are grand mountains. The western is
steeper than the eastern wall, and is still in the morning sun. The eye
ranges over the valley to rest on the great snow-field at its head,
which commences its rise at a distance from you of six miles. It is
of the purest white, and this is not to any great extent scarred and
broken by protruding rocks and summits, for the naked rock faces of its
ridges look not in this, but in the opposite, or southern, direction.
It closes the head of the valley, and is a wide field that satisfies
the eye with its amplitude of expansion, its pure white, and its
majestic rise to the sky-line.
A walk of five miles through the forest brings you to a little plain,
which is evidently the site of an old lake long since filled up with
glacier _débris_. At the near end of this is a little inn, kept by a
little Frenchman, who will talk to you about the empire, the commune,
and the republic, but with some reserve. At the further end, about half
a mile off, is the foot of the glacier. My guides, in the exercise of
a wise discretion, did not take me upon the glacier itself, but by a
path along the flank of Piz Corvatsch, for about a mile or more, to a
very commanding position, a little beyond the _châlet_ of the alpe.
This point, which is sufficiently above the glacier, is opposite to
a dark protruding eminence in it, yclept Agagliouls, below which its
two main ice-streams meet. And here, like the Lord Thomas and fair
Annet of the ballad we sat a while on a hill. They sat all day; and
when night was come, and sun was set, they had not talked their fill.
We, not having the excuse they had for being forgetful of time, after
half an hour began to retrace our steps, though we had hardly looked
our fill. Still we had looked enough to be able to carry away with us
a mental picture, that might be recalled at will, of the topography
and aspects of the grand scene--the widespread uptilted snowfield, and
its component parts, and the named summits, and their relations to
each other, and respective effects on the whole, and upon the glacier
in particular, which is the outcome of the whole. A peculiarity of
this scene is its bounded completeness. It does not in any direction
suggest the infinite, as it might if you were on a central, or
commanding eminence, with snowy heights all around you, reaching away
to distant horizons. It has near, definite boundaries. You seem to
take in the whole of it, when it is looked at from our to-day’s point
of observation; and when looked at from Pontresina, as all other
objects are there excluded from your view, the effect is almost that
of a picture set in a frame. One marked feature of the scene, from
our point of observation on Piz Corvatsch, is the lofty, precipitous,
slate-coloured, _couloir_-streaked Piz Tschierva, with its dark hanging
glaciers. It bounds our snowfield on the north.
As we returned we made a requisition for our dinner on the resources of
the expatriated Parisian, the victim of political instability. It was
verging towards evening, when, after a day of pleasant loitering, we
again found ourselves at Pontresina. The greater part of the evening
I spent in a long discussion with the head of one of the old patroon
families of what was once New Amsterdam, and is now New York, on the
suitableness, or the reverse, of the principle of free trade to the
present industrial condition of the United States. Of course the logic
of neither had any effect on the other.
_August 12._--Out at a few minutes before 5 A.M. We contemplated the
ascent of the Piz Languard, and whatever else the day might admit of
our doing. The masons and carpenters employed in building on our side
of the road a large new hotel, and on the opposite side a _dépendance_
to the existing hotel, were already seated around on pieces of timber,
and heaps of stones, waiting for the moment when they were to commence
the labours of the day. The horse that was to carry the little man as
far as the foot of the cone, and the guide we had engaged for the day,
arrived as we were emerging from the door of President Saratz’s house,
in which we had been so fortunate as to obtain our lodgings, and we
were started by the clock of the church across the street striking the
hour. Upper Pontresina was soon passed by our taking a short cut up
to the forest through a prairie or two, from which the hay had just
been carried. The ascent may be roughly divided into three stages,
each requiring about an hour. The first is through the forest, and is
somewhat toilsome. The second lies beyond the trees, and is about an
hour more of open, rocky, bleak, not steep Alpine pasture, along and
up the valley of the Languard. Then an hour of stiff climbing up the
cone by a grandly irregular mountain staircase. Here steps have been
made in the rock, here slabs of rock have been fixed for steps, here
an impracticable rock so barred the way that the path had to take half
the circuit of it before the staircase could again ascend. All this is
on a perfectly naked, precipitously steep incline--truly the side of a
mountain cone.
The summit which is sufficiently level affords standing and sitting
space for perhaps half a dozen parties. There might have been as many
upon it before we left it. It is composed of huge blocks and slabs of
rock tossed together in disorder, but so as to give many natural seats,
and some shelter from wind.
But what of the view? On this morning it was not seen to the most
advantage. There were clouds rising from many of the valleys; and
these, though they were neither continuous, nor fixed, interfered much
with the view, for they obliged us to watch for an opportunity for
seeing all that was to be seen in any direction, and made it throughout
impossible to see the whole panorama connectedly at a single glance
round. In time, however, we managed to see the whole in detail, so as
to be able to put it together in the mind. The view takes its character
very much from that of the region. It is the peculiarity of this
region, as compared with other great mountain districts of Switzerland,
that, while the mountain tops are not so lofty as elsewhere, the
valleys are far loftier. For instance, the Finster-Aarhorn rises to an
altitude of 14,026 feet, Monte Rosa of 15,364, Mont Blanc of 15,781,
but the Piz Bernina, the loftiest of the surrounding heights, rises
only to an altitude of 13,294. And if the small group to which the Piz
Bernina belongs be excepted, the height of but few of the summits of
the encircling ranges is greater than the 10,715 of the Piz Languard
itself, that is to say of your point of view. And as to the valleys:
while Interlaken is depressed to 1,863 feet, Brieg to 2,244, and
Chamouni to 3,445, St. Moritz and Campfer, the only points in the
valley of the Engadin visible from our observatory, do not descend
below 6,000 feet. Here, therefore, we have to look at a ring of lower
mountains springing from a far higher level. The consequence of this
is that they have not sufficient altitude to develop any very marked
peculiarities of form. This will be seen at a glance by comparing any
part of the panorama of this view with any other: the two will resemble
each other very closely. And if the whole view be compared with that
from the Gorner Grat, the Eggischhorn, or the Rigi, its general
sameness will be again perceived. What we here have is a multitude of
apparently small summits, a large proportion of which are snow-capped,
but none of which are distinctly featured; and they all appear to be
at about our own level. The effect is almost the same as that of an
agitated sea, the waves of which are of about the same height, and many
of them crested with foaming white. The only exception to this is the
Bernina group close by, into which you look: but even here the summits
which stand out of the snowfield appear to have no striking varieties
of form. There are no Wetterhorns and Shrekhorns, and Finster-Aarhorns,
no Weisshorns and Matterhorns among them. What in this group is really
grand, and which we saw well to-day, is that the whole of the snowfield
that is visible from right to left, and from above, converges to the
Morterasch glacier. There is in this the unity of a picture. It is
held up to you who are on the Piz Languard, to be looked at, just as
a picture might be, and just at the right distance for taking in the
details of such a picture. It has the completeness, limitation and
definiteness, which, from this side, belong to views of this group.
And, too, its pure field of unsullied white, contrasts well with the
dark rusty brown of the cliffs and ravines immediately around and below
you, which are themselves one of the most striking and interesting
features of this view from the Piz Languard. They are the foreground,
and have an impressive and awe-inspiring aspect. Beyond them, all round
the horizon, excepting the Bernina group, is the ocean of petrified
waves, many crested with petrified foam. Just in one place an opening
enables you to look down on St. Moritz and Campfer, the only point in
the vast panorama, at which you can find a trace of man, and of his
works--all the rest is but mountain summits innumerable, a world to the
utmost horizon of rock and snow.
In descending the cone, you may find near the foot of it a low
inconspicuous signboard, not two feet out of the ground, as if it had
been intended that it should escape observation. On it is inscribed the
word Bormio. The little man, who, during his stay at Pontresina, had
been constructing in his mind a map of the neighbourhood, knew very
well what this meant. It pointed in the direction of the Pischa Pass
to the Val del Fain. There below us, to the left, was the Western spur
of the snowfield of the Pass; and snow appears to have an irresistible
attraction for youthful minds, as it has also for feminine in the Alps.
A debate, therefore, instantly commenced whether it would not be better
to take to the snow. In this debate I did not join, in order that the
other members of the party might decide for themselves according to
their own wishes, and their own estimates of their own powers. I had,
however, no doubt of what the decision would be. It took but a little
moment to arrive at it; and then we turned our backs on Pontresina, and
made for the snow. First we had to get to the bottom of the valley:
that was quickly done; and then to ascend it to the snow over blocks
and fragments of rock, each of which was as clean as if it had been
boiled in caustic lye. They were also so tightly jammed together,
that you might walk a hundred yards, or more, upon them without one
slipping, or so much as moving, under your feet. How came they to be
of so clean a surface, and so tightly fixed together? They are clean
because there is little up here to soil them--no dirt, no dust; and
being buried deeply in winter and spring under the snow, there is
not much chance for lichens to form upon them; and whatever soil,
or stain, might commence to adhere to them, is washed away when the
snow is melting in the spring. And as to their being so firmly fixed
together, I believe that is a consequence of their being every year
rammed together by a rammer, that has to a London paviour’s the ratio
of Nasmyth’s steam-hammer to a blacksmith’s. And this rammer that is
brought into operation here is that of the avalanches that break away
from the overhanging heights. They fall on these streams and beds of
fragments of rock with hundred ton blows, compressing and jamming them
together, when the blow is direct, and, when they slide, sweeping off
the pieces that cannot be infixed in the compacted mass.
After the clean macadamized rocks came the snow: first about
three-quarters of a mile of gradual ascent; and then, when the actual
Pass was reached, a steep incline of snow up the mountain on the right,
and on the left a more level field on a lower stage. The two were
separated by a kind of ridge of snow about 250 yards long. A slip
from this to the lower stage would have been easy, and might have been
serious: there was, however, footing enough on the ridge, if only you
would look where you were going to set your foot, and not at the lower
snowfield. From this we stepped off to a glacier on our right; the
glacier of the Val del Fain, or Heuthal. It is of no great length, and
is uncrevassed, but has rather too great an incline for direct descent:
we, therefore, took it diagonally. The stream from the glacier is not
seen to issue from it, but as you walk over the stream of rocks, that
continues the stream of ice, you hear the stream of water rushing
by beneath your feet. The books I see say that this is a Pass for
experienced mountaineers; I should rather say that, when it is as it
was this day, it is a charming bit for lady beginners, who have got
so far as to know that they can, under not very trying circumstances,
trust to their feet and heads.
Having left the glacier you find yourself in a depressed area of some
little extent surrounded with jagged summits, on which, wherever it
can find a lodgment, snow is resting. The central area is not flat,
but composed of knolls and pools. As we were standing on one of these
knolls--it had a flattened top--noticing how hard, and cold, and dead,
was everything around us, we espied at our feet, growing here and there
on the scaly rubble on which we were treading, several plants of the
_Aretia Glacialis_. To find unexpectedly upon such a surface, and
with such surroundings, so charming a form of life could not but give
a little thrill of pleasure. Each plant was a compact round patch of
mossy foliage, singularly even and smooth, and firmly set together,
perhaps half an inch high, and two or three inches in diameter. Out
of this little green cushion stood up about a dozen, or more, little
pearl-coloured stars, not in one cluster, or in several, but each star
singly on its own stem. The pearl-coloured stars were interspersed with
some that were of a waxy white. The pearl-colour was the hue of youth,
freshness, and vigour; the white told of age and incipient decay. This
discovery led to our looking about for something more; and our search
was rewarded, for on the next knoll we found several tufts--that is the
shape it assumes up here--of the golden dwarf _Papaver Pyrenaicum_.
These two lovely plants did not on this day waste their beauty on the
desolate scene. Their flowers are now gone, and they are themselves
buried in snow; but what they were on that August day still lives in
the mind. The little pearly stars, and the golden cups, have still an
existence. Their form and colour, now that they are creatures of the
brain, are the same as they were while they were expanded on the shaly
knoll, protruded through the snow, on the top of the Pischa, quickened
by the warmth, and drinking in the light, of the sun that was smiling
on them. There, too, in the brain, they must have some substance, for
creatures of the brain must be of the substance of the brain. The
difference is that now they exist in another medium, and are cognisable
by another sense; but in that new medium they still have their original
form and colour, and still possess the power of giving pleasure.
If then any lady beginner in Alpinism shall have been brought here by
a desire to add to her Alpine mementos these two plants (I left them
undisturbed), gathered after such a walk, and on such a spot; she will
find, after she has secured her mementos, that what she has next to do
is to effect her descent into the Val del Fain. The first stage of the
descent will be found somewhat steep, and very incoherent. We, having
done this piece, and reached the turf-grown side of the mountain,
instead of continuing straight down into the valley below, along the
bottom of which lies the path to the Bernina House (not the Hospice),
descended the flank of the long mountain diagonally from the point
where we first came out on its side all the way to the Bernina House.
It is worth while to take the Val del Fain in this fashion, because,
although it may give you somewhat rougher work, the added amount of
rougher work will be repaid tenfold by the astonishing variety of
beautiful flowers you will see on the mountain flank. The stations,
as botanists call them, vary much, the ground being sometimes wet,
and sometimes dry, sometimes good and deep, and sometimes shallow and
stony. Indeed, this valley is celebrated for its flowers; and I am
acquainted with no other in which they may be found in greater variety
and profusion. As we approached the Bernina House--about half a mile
from it--the air was loaded with perfume. The _Edelweiss_ abounds on
these ridges. Some days back, my two unprofessional Pontresina guides
had found many specimens of it up the valley, only at a point further
up than we were to-day. While we were at dinner at the Bernina House
our professional guide ascended in search of it the dark cliffs at the
back of the house, beyond the stream, and was not long in returning
with a large _bouquet_.
The dinner just mentioned we had earned, for we had been on the move
since 5 A.M., and in that time had ascended the Piz Languard, and
crossed La Pischa. Nor was the dinner unequal to such antecedents;
for it consisted of trout, beefsteaks, Poschiavo potatoes, Valtelline
wine, _omelette aux confitures_, a _compote_ of pears, and cream at
discretion. The charge for this for three persons, was 9 francs, 20
cents. I give these particulars because it is a kind of ingratitude,
when you have been treated well at an inn, not to have a word to say
upon the subject. After you have paid your bill, the only way in which
you can encourage well-doing of this kind, and make a return for the
good services by which you have been benefited, is to make them known.
We now set our faces towards Pontresina--somewhat more than 5 miles
distant. Our way lay along the excellent Bernina post-road. At about
a mile, or a little more, from the inn we were abreast of the falls of
the Bernina. As the rest of the party knew the road well, having this
summer, and last, made many excursions along it, I here left them to
find their way home, while I diverged from the road to see the falls,
and to get a near view of the lower part of the Morteratsch glacier. As
to the falls: the rocks over and upon which the stream tumbles being
in unusually large blocks and slabs, and of a dark colour, and the
tumbling water being much broken, and in consequence very white, and
the overhanging larch being of a tender green, make them a favourite
bit with painters, and on this sunny day there were several easels
beside them. As to the glacier: it has a very distinctive character.
The point of view from which I was now looking at it was a rock just
above the last trees on the mountain side. Here it has the appearance
of descending by a rapid and short course (in fact, however, it has a
descent of 7 miles), from the snow-clad ridges above you, which, as
seen from this point, do not appear of commanding elevation, nor do
they present any very distinguishing features. The characteristics of
the glacier are its breadth and massiveness. At the point I took for
viewing it, its eastern half was hid from sight by an enormous central
_moraine_. As I afterwards saw from the road this enormous _moraine_
assumed on the lower part of the glacier the form of a Brobdingnagian
Ray or Skate, with its tail upwards, and its broad shoulders just
reaching to the termination of the glacier. As you continue your
contemplation of the scene, you may fancy that you are taking in at a
few glances the whole life and history of the glacier, from its first
beginnings on those heights, throughout its course opposite to where
you are seated, and down to its termination at the head of the small
filled-up lake you crossed, as you were coming up through the wood
below you. As to its termination at the head of the old filled-up lake,
that alone is well worth turning out of the road to see; for this is
not a glacier which thins out, and dies away feebly, as the fashion
of some is, but is one of those which end grandly and abruptly: few,
indeed, more so, for it emphasizes the conclusion of its course with
perpendicular ice-cliffs some 200, or more, feet high. This near view I
have been speaking of must necessarily be very incomplete, but you will
to some extent be able to supplement its incompleteness by what you
will see of the glacier from the road, and by the general survey of it
you will take from the top of the Piz Languard.
I got back to Pontresina at 5 P.M., having been out twelve hours.
This may seem a long day to those who are killing themselves by their
sedentary habits. But if a lady, and a child who had not yet numbered
as many years as these hours, could go through it without suffering
that amount of fatigue which is implied by the expression of ‘being
knocked up,’ we may be sure that a great many of those who might
pronounce it beyond their powers, would be very well able to do it;
and would be all the better for a month’s excursion, which would give
them such a day once a week. Such a month every year might perhaps add
a dozen years to their lives, and enable them to do each year a great
deal more than they will ever otherwise be equal to, and to do it
better.
Our guide of this day was a young man by trade a carpenter. He told
us that it was his intention, in accordance with the Grison custom,
to go abroad for some years. His plans were already arranged. At the
end of the summer he was to start for Chicago, where he understood
that a great deal of building was going on. He hoped that he should
be able to make and save some money, and, while so employed, to learn
English; with which money and language he further hoped in some half
dozen years to return to Pontresina. How strangely do things come
about, and combine! Here we have a Grison peasant going to the New
World to learn English, and a fire in a town on the border of Lake
Michigan, at a spot where, in the memory of people still living, the
buffalo quenched his thirst, creating for him an opening for going.
But, then, this peasant can read and write, and so can his neighbours:
had it been otherwise, he never would have comprehended the advantages,
or imagined the possibility, of his learning English; and never would
have known anything about Chicago, and its fires; much less have been
able to plan how he might turn the possibilities of the place to his
own account. And this is only a particular instance of a wide general
fact. The whole world is now in a very practical sense becoming the
stage for the activity of all who are capable of doing its work; and in
every field those who are better qualified will push aside those who
are not so well qualified. For a long time this has been exemplified
by the Scotch. Scotchmen were to be found not only in every large town
in England, but in India, China, the West Indies, and more or less all
over the world. So is it now beginning to be with the Germans. They
are spreading themselves over the whole of the commercial world. They
are to be found in this country, and in all countries, wherever any
business is to be transacted. The reason is again the same. Germany
is not favoured by nature with a rich soil, with any great variety of
produce, or with good harbours: what is giving its people so large a
share in the business of the world is that they have endeavoured to fit
themselves for it. And in these days of general intercommunication, and
of inexhaustible supplies of capital, nations follow the same rule as
individuals. The nation that has become better qualified than others
for producing anything the world requires, will take the place of those
who have not kept themselves up to the mark. If its people have the
other requisite qualifications they will never find any difficulty
about commanding the requisite capital; for it is they who will be
able to employ it most profitably, and it is for profitable employment
that capital exists. All the world is now open to all the world, and
the principle of the selection of the fittest, which Mr. Darwin tells
us rules among plants and the lower animals, will assign its place to
each nation, as it does to a great, and ever increasing, extent to
individuals. If it be a law of nature, it must be universal and without
exemptions.
At Pontresina everybody complains of the dearness of everything. The
hotel-keepers endeavour to persuade the grumblers among their guests
that this comes of its being a place that produces nothing but milk
and a scanty allowance of fuel. This is not the cause of the high
prices. London, which has to provide for a million more mouths than
the whole of the Swiss Confederation, does not produce even the milk
and the fuel. Much of its bread is brought from California, Oregon,
and the Antipodes. Much of its meat comes from Scotland and the
Continent; and so with everything it consumes. The supplies, however,
of Pontresina are drawn from central Switzerland and northern Italy--no
great distances. I saw in its long street hucksters’ carts, which had
been dragged up from the Valtellina and the Bregaglia by the wretched
animals then between the shafts. These carts were full of the most
perishable kinds of fruit, which were being retailed by the men who
had brought them, and who would soon be back again with another venture
of the same kind: here, as everywhere else in the world, whatever is
wanted is sure to come. The true reason of the high prices is one which
would not sound well in the mouths of those who are naturally, and not
reprehensibly, profiting by them: it is that scores of people more than
the hotels can accommodate, apply for accommodation every day in the
season. For every bedroom there are many applicants of this kind. The
one, therefore, to whom it is assigned, is glad to have it, as each of
the rejected applicants would have been, at rather a high price. It is
the same with guides, horses, and carriages; the people who are anxious
to secure them are out of all proportion to the supply. Every market is
practically a kind of auction; and at an auction no one thinks it wrong
that there should be much competition, or that there should be little.
Here we have much competition, in consequence of the supply being very
much in arrear of the demand. This is a matter which time will set
right. President Saratz’s new hotel, to be opened next year, will do a
little towards trimming the balance. It will be under the management of
his son, whom he kept in London for two years to learn English, and to
make him a Master of Arts in hotel-keeping. The Charing Cross Hotel was
the college in which he pursued these studies.
I have already mentioned that I saw this year more birds in the
Grisons than I had ever seen before elsewhere in Switzerland. To those
who take an interest in ornithology, the President will readily show
a collection of the birds of the canton, made by himself. He has well
set-up specimens of a great many species. As might be expected from
the altitude of the valleys our English species do not figure largely
among them. He has besides, in a room in the basement of his house, two
living specimens of the noble rock eagle--the Stein Orteler. These,
I believe, he intends to add to his collection as soon as they shall
have attained their full adult plumage. In his younger days he was a
successful chamois-hunter, and he has preserved the heads of more than
thirty of these antelopes as trophies of his prowess.
But to go back for a moment to the high prices now ruling at
Pontresina. They press hard on the peasants. None of them have, or ever
had, superfluities enough of cheese, and of potatoes and rye-flour
purchased with their surplus cheese, the fruits of very hard work, and
a bare sufficiency of fuel, with no margin for reduction in anything,
was pretty well all that in the general distribution of the good things
of this world fell to them. And now the prices of these necessaries
of life, and of the few other things they may be obliged to purchase,
have been greatly raised against them, first by the general rise of
prices everywhere, and then by the local causes of a great increase
in the permanent population of the neighbourhood, and of the large
summer influx of visitors, who are, as respects the peasants, merely a
flight of locusts, that in their passage eat up everything. As, then,
a Pontresina peasant, after maintaining his family from the produce of
his little plot of ground, can have very little surplus to sell, it is
evident that, if he cannot make his house fit for lodging visitors, or
obtain some share in the new, highly-paid summer employments, his life
must be much harder than it was before. To him that the world now comes
to Pontresina is the reverse of a gain.