TAUFFERS--VAL AVIGNA--CRUSCHETTA--SCARLTHAL--TARASP.
So for yourselves ye bear not fleece, ye sheep;
So for yourselves ye store not sweets, ye bees;
So for yourselves ye drag not ploughs, ye steers;
So for yourselves ye build not nests, ye birds.--VIRGIL.
_August 18._--Down at 5 A.M.; but as the people of the house are not
yet accustomed to such hours, did not get away till six. A good deal of
linen that was in the washerwoman’s hands had been left out during the
night on the roadside rails in front of the inn. Here it is taken for
granted that every peasant, and that every one, too, who passes along
the road, and it is one of the most frequented roads of the country, is
an honest man. Of course they are honest, because almost every one has
property, or expects to have it, and has been brought up among those
who have it. The instincts, therefore, which property engenders have
become universal. These instincts, where the properties are small, are
industry, frugality, forethought, and honesty. Some years ago, while
travelling in the East, I had collected for my friends at home a
bundle of walking-sticks, made from the mid-rib of the palm leaf, the
olive wood of Jerusalem, and the balsam of the Jordan. Wherever I had
gone I had left the bundle about unheeded, knowing that no one would
meddle with it. Where a woman may go unmolested through lonely ways,
with several gold coins conspicuously displayed on her head, there
cannot be much disposition to pilfer. It was dark, when on my return
to England, I landed at Southampton. My luggage had to be taken by the
dock servants from the quay of the dock to the custom-house, only a few
yards. In those first few yards on English soil, half-a-dozen of the
best sticks were stolen. In the custom-house I called the attention
of the dock people to this inferiority in our English civilization;
and with some emphasis dwelt on the words stolen and thief. I was
informed that my language was actionable; and that it would be taken
down in writing, if only I would be so good as to repeat it. This I
had no objection to do, if only the writer would head his notes with
the _dicta_, that the man who endeavours to screen a thief is as bad
as the thief; and that if the property stolen has been entrusted to
the safe keeping of the thief, and he, and those whose servant he is,
are paid for protecting it, the theft is of an aggravated kind. Of
course no more was said about taking down in writing my estimate of the
occurrence. The sight this morning of the linen which had been left
out all night by the roadside brought that little matter back to my
recollection, and led me to infer that there must be some condition in
the arrangements of society at Trafoi, as there had been in the East,
which worked effectively in favour of honesty, while there must have
been something at Southampton that worked in the opposite direction.
The walk down the Stelvio below Trafoi was not altogether lacking
in distinctiveness of feature, as must be the case with every
mountain-bounded valley, and indeed with every object in nature. What
most arrests attention here is some little peculiarity in the manner
in which the mountain summits have been weathered away, and the decay
of the rock brought down to form the lower slopes now occupied by
forests, and by the bottom lands which man has reclaimed for grass.
About Trafoi, and for some way below it, you are able to look into
the forests on the flank of the mountain on the opposite side of the
stream. You see there that many decaying trunks of pines strew the
ground. They were thrown down by storms, or fell through age, and no
one thought it worth his while to remove them, and bring them across
the stream. The people, then, are few, and the pines are plentiful.
This led us to discuss the question, whether it was on the cards that
Trafoi should become another Pontresina. I was disposed to hold that
it would. We can see no reason why the stream of tourists that has now
reached Pontresina should not flow further. Trafoi comes next. What
brought it to Pontresina is present here to bring it on to Trafoi.
Here is a great snowfield, and a grand view of it: mighty summits,
more or less difficult of access and ascent; and a better climate, for
it admits of the growth of potatoes, and even of cabbages; and the
Tyrol is open to you by the Vintschgau in much the same way as the
eastern Grisons are from Pontresina by the Engadin. Its turn then, I
think, will come, unless some better point of view can be found in
the circumference of the Ortler group, and which shall be at the same
time easily accessible. Indeed, even now all that is wanted is the
construction of a carriage road over the Stretta and Foscagno Passes to
save the long round by Tirano on the south, or by Martinsbruck on the
north. I am, therefore, disposed to think that the purchase of land at
Trafoi would prove a good investment. I saw that the line for a road
over the Foscagno was already staked out. The special advantages of
Pontresina are the sense of space about it, which you have not here at
Trafoi, and that it is not only accessible itself but that also much is
accessible from it. Should the stream, however, reach Trafoi, we may
be sure that charges will not remain at the moderate level at which I
found them, both there and at Santa Maria.
At last our valley of Trafoi, which had been trending north, debouched
into the valley of the Adige, the direction of which at this point
is from west to east. Had we descended it on the right, it would
have brought us to Meran and Botzen. But as I now had to begin to set
my face homewards we took the road to the left up the valley. Our
destination was Tauffers. The day was very warm, and there was little
air; we now, therefore, began to regret the hour that had been lost
at starting. Between the point at which we left the Stelvio road and
Glurns are two villages. We stopped at the inn of the first of the
two for a glass of Austrian beer. I do not know whether the Austrian
excise, plus the cost of carriage, would justify the price asked,
or whether the lady of the house was demoralized by the unwonted
apparition of an Englishman, it being supposed popularly, that every
Englishman has a gold mine in his pocket; she did, however, demand,
and received, one franc and forty cents for two glasses, each of which
contained not much more than half a pint. Glurns, which is walled and
fortified in the old style, is the chief town hereabouts. A little
beyond it you come to a scene which has a curious effect. You are
turning round the foot of the mountain on your left; but if you will
look up the valley of the Adige beyond Glurns, you will see a perfectly
smooth, broad grass expanse, descending gradually towards you. It may
be somewhat less than a mile wide, and two miles or more long. It is
impossible for you to see it without thinking of a glacier; indeed
it is very like the one we saw yesterday, flowing down from Monte
Cristallo towards the summit of the Stelvio. If it were buried in snow
you would probably take it for a glacier. Of course the site of this
grand breadth of prairie was in old time formed by glacier action:
but it is strange that the glacier should have formed it so precisely
after its own image. Another peculiarity of this prairie is that it is
totally unbacked by either near or distant mountains. All along its
further side the sky line is the grass line. I never saw this before
in Alpine scenery. Everywhere else whether you look up, or down, an
expanse of grass land, mountains close the view, and supply the sky
line.
Some two miles from Tauffers we passed through a short-turfed
cow-pasture, with thinly scattered small larch, and thickly scattered
small fragments of rock. It was several hundred acres in extent. Its
whole surface was blue with the flower spikes of a small species
of Veronica. Christian, who is somewhat observant of plants, was
unacquainted with it. This shows that the climate is here very
different from what it is in the neighbourhood of Pontresina, of
course in the direction of being warmer and drier. This field of
blue supported an observation I had previously made that I know of
no country--we were now again close to the Swiss frontier--in which
there are so many flowers as in Switzerland of this colour, both as
regards the number of species and of individuals. The preponderance of
blue is certainly not the rule on the limestone hills that stand round
about Jerusalem, and which are remarkable in spring for abundance
of flowers, nor is it in any other mountain region with which I am
acquainted.
Our road was now again on the ascent; the sun was hot; the air was
still; and perhaps the Austrian beer aggravated the effects of the
ascent and of the heat. Tauffers, contrary to what we had expected,
was not yet in sight; and so our then state of body and mind suggested
to us the thought that the Teufel had taken away Tauffers. At last,
however, it came in sight, and this expression of our discomfort was no
longer tenable. Still the ascent continued, and the heat became more
aggravating; and though we plodded on we got no nearer to it. It was
clear now that Tauffers was the Teufel. Even the sight of its three
churches did not dissipate this supposition; for we were disposed to
be cynical, and so they only reminded us of the saying, of course the
result of the experience of mankind, that ‘the nearer the church the
farther from heaven.’ The village, therefore, which has the greatest
number must be the farthest off of all. Our suppositions and cynicism
were not abandoned when we had entered Tauffers, and on applying at
the White Cross, which the Austrian Preventive official at Trafoi had
strongly recommended to us, had found that their only bedroom was
engaged for the night. These are small jests, but they were at the time
enough to laugh at, and lightened the way.
There was, however, another inn in the place, the Lamb, and that,
fortunately, was both a better house and had all its accommodation
at our disposal. We were shown upstairs to the reception-room. It was
evident that it had not been used for some days, for the table and
benches were covered with a thick stratum of long undisturbed dust.
This, as the windows were closed, and are seldom opened, their purpose
being to admit light, and not also air, must have required a long time
for its deposition. The woman of the house, with an infant in her arms,
and radiant with good-nature, and the desire to do all she could for
her guests, swept off the dust with her apron. The first question was
of course the old standing question of all wayfarers. What could be had
for dinner? We did not care whether it was _bifteck_, or _côtelettes de
mouton_. The radiancy was extinguished. It was as if a rosy dawn had
been suddenly overcast by dark clouds. These viands were unknown in
Tauffers. Having failed in this _reconnaissance_, we fell back on what
we deemed must always be in this part of the world a secure position:
she could, then, let us have some dried beef. In Tauffers that also was
unknown. Things began to look serious. There was nothing to fall back
upon; and so we must now take our chance, from which, however, we could
not see exactly what was to be expected. We, therefore, gave the good
woman a _carte blanche_: let us have whatever could be had for keeping
body and soul together in Tauffers. This seemed to reassure her. She
began to enumerate the best resources, the luxuries, of the place. We
might have macaroni soup. Very well! We might have a salad with eggs.
Excellent! A pause. Could we have bread and butter? We might have the
bread but not the butter. There was no butter in Tauffers. None? None:
but she would send off a despatch to the alpe, and perhaps might get us
some for supper. At all events she could let us have some cheese? She
could: but it would be only meagre cheese. There was no fat cheese in
the place. Well, then, let us have for dinner the macaroni soup, the
salad and eggs, the bread and the meagre cheese; and let us have all
these viands as soon as possible. Yes, yes. We should have them all in
half an hour.
More than an hour having passed, and there being no symptoms even that
the table would ever be prepared for receiving the dinner, we again
summoned the good woman to ask the cause of the delay. Had she to
wait till the macaroni was made, or till her hens had laid the eggs?
No! no! She had lost the key of the linen chest, and had been an hour
looking for it: but now she would break the lock. This we peremptorily
forbade. To-morrow it would be all the same to us that we had dined
to-day, as we had dined often before, and might often again in the
future, without a table-cloth and napkins. But the loss of the lock
would to the good woman be an abiding loss: for such places have no
locksmiths; and the franc, or so, a new lock would cost, is in Tauffers
something considerable. Like the good man of Livigno, she regarded our
reasoning as sophistical. It was the voice of the Tempter, endeavouring
to persuade her to do what her conscience told her was wrong. The
sacrifice must be made. And so it was: for a few minutes afterwards she
re-entered the room with the indispensable linen, and began to lay the
cloth, smoothing it down with a touch and air that implied that she
knew its value, and how much it had just cost her.
The dinner soon followed. First the soup. After one has been out for
six and a half hours in a hot sun, and has withal begun to feel a
little fagged, any warm liquid, that can be swallowed without offence
to the palate, seems comfortable. Fatigue makes one shrink from
anything cold, from an instinct of the system that it would rather
not make the effort to bring the cold draught up to the temperature
of the body. We were, therefore, not rigid critics of the gastronomic
merits, or demerits, of this macaroni soup. It was enough that it was
comforting; as it certainly was to the good woman to find that we had
so far approved of it, as to have emptied the basin. Like the soup at
Peist, it would probably on analysis have yielded no evidence that
meat of any kind had in any way entered into its composition. Of what,
then, had it been made? I believe of the same ingredients; that is to
say, it was a broth of herbs, enriched with spices, among which mace
predominated, and thickened with vermicelli and flat macaroni. And
now the _pièce de résistance_, the salad, was placed on the table,
supported with twelve hard-boiled eggs. The lettuce was crisp and
good, and the oil with which it was profusely dressed, was not rancid.
I managed to dispose of three of the eggs. I could go no further.
Christian placed himself outside the remaining nine. For this, though
he had been encouraged to complete the achievement, he thought some
apologies necessary. Guides, he remarked deprecatingly, always had
good appetites. Apologies, I told him, were quite unnecessary, for
his dinner had to sustain the porter as well as the guide. And this
justification of his appetite I made him understand was not invented
for the occasion, but was the result of the long and hard experience
of a poor woman, who having had to provide daily bread for eight small
children, had explained to me that, though there were only eight mouths
to feed, yet in fact, as each child had two natures, his growing
nature, and his natural nature, she had to feed daily sixteen natures.
This put Christian quite at his ease. It did even more, for it made
him feel how superior his bachelor condition was to that of the poor
sixteen-natures-weighted woman. As to the meagre cheese, it tasted like
nothing in particular: not even much like cheese. The bread was white,
and not yet sufficiently old to have become a petrifaction.
So ended our dinner to the satisfaction of all concerned; perhaps
to that of the good woman most of all, who, seeing how her soup,
and salad, and eggs had been dealt with, could not refrain from an
announcement of her hope of being able to get the butter by supper
time. As soon as we had taken possession of the room, I had opened the
window. I now leaned out of it to see what from this point could be
seen of Tauffers. Our inn was on what might be called the _place_ of
Tauffers. Opposite to it was the public fountain; and beyond that a
large house. It was now four in the afternoon. The village is far from
small, and must contain about 500 inhabitants. Several ploughs, drawn
by cows, or bullocks, of a diminutive breed, were returning from their
daily tasks. For the human toilers, however, the day’s work was far
from done, for a continued succession of little carts, full of manure,
each containing at most what might have been put into four or five
wheelbarrows, was going out to the fields. Every now and then a woman
would pass with an enormous bundle of hay in a hempen sheet on her
head, or shoulders. The woman of the large house opposite was in the
road, cutting the trunks of some long cembras with a cross-cut saw into
klafter lengths (six feet), aided by a sturdy little boy as her mate.
When the cutting was completed, the pieces were carried by the two, and
piled up against the outer wall of the house, facing the street. This
is done universally, for though the fuel is thus left in the street,
there are no dishonest people to pilfer it. This woman’s house was a
large one, and would require here an establishment of two or three
servants, and an income of 300_l._ or 400_l._ a year. But I was told
that the family that occupied it had no servants; indeed, that there
was not a domestic servant in the place; that every family in Tauffers
did its own work; and that the family in the big house had not 60_l._ a
year to spend.
Behind the big house, and just above the town, for as things go in
these parts it is more than a village, is a strange-looking mountain.
It is of an equally sharp incline from top to bottom, smooth on
the surface, without rocks or trees, and only half clothed with a
very threadbare vegetation; this half clothing being as even as the
underlying soil which shows through it. The vegetation, then, being
poor, and the soil pale, the general colouring is not grass green, but
a kind of celadine. In the evening I went some way up it to see of what
its soil and vegetation consisted. The soil was of a much disintegrated
gritty kind of rock; but as the disintegration hardly proceeded beyond
the point of grit, no turf could be formed upon it, for the rainwater
that did not run down its steep incline, ran through it, as through a
sieve. And that, of course, that ran down over such a surface would
take with it any mould that there might have been an incipient attempt
to accumulate. This decided the character of the vegetation. No plant
could maintain itself on such a station, unless it had good roots for
holding on, was able also to do with very little moisture, and to
live all the while on a diet as simple and meagre as that which was
supporting the inhabitants of the neighbouring town. The species were
mostly veronicas, pinks, sedums, and saxifrages. The majority of them,
therefore, were such as are on a close inspection conspicuous for their
flowers. Almost the only grass was an agrostis which affects poor and
dry stations. These plants were nowhere continuous. Each seemed to
require, or had at all events received from the grace of circumstances,
some elbowroom. The vegetation, then, of the mountain belonged to the
class of things that improve on a near acquaintance, for when you were
upon it you found that it was decked with a great variety of very
bright, though humble, flowers. I was sorry to see that an attempt had
been made to plant a part of the mountain with cembras. The little
plants had been set each in a little hole, and were only a few inches
high. One can hardly believe that in a century they will be many more
feet. But should they ever rise above the ground, which as yet they
show no disposition to do, their presence will destroy the singular
character of the mountain.
The first stage of the ascent brings you to a church: I suppose the
pilgrimage church of Tauffers, for it is very common in this part of
the world to find a church on an eminence, at a little distance off,
to climb up to which, and attend its services on certain days, and at
certain seasons, or for certain classes, or for certain objects, is a
meritorious act, which will secure some special favour from some local
saint, or some saint that respects the locality, or whom the locality
respects. On reaching this church, I found that it stood on a little
excavated and levelled platform, a kind of niche, on the shoulder of
the mountain. On this little stage the water could hang longer than on
the declivity, and there was besides the water that came off the roof
of the building. This had encouraged the grass immediately around it,
and up to its walls, to grow vigorously. While walking round it, to get
a view of a ruined castle beyond it, I came suddenly on a little girl
upon her knees, intently employed in chopping the long grass with a
sickle-shaped knife, and depositing the handfuls in an old cloth. Not
another soul was in sight, or within hailing. She appeared to be about
9 years of age. It was evening. The sun was low, and the valley was in
shade; but, here was this little body, not playing with her fellows at
the end of the day, not looking out for her father’s return from his
labours, but labouring hard herself, far from home, and all alone. The
evening, which brings rest to all, and the mother to her child, had not
brought rest to this little premature grass-cutter, and had separated
her from her mother. As I came down the mountain, half an hour later,
when the remains of light were fast retiring before the brown shades
of approaching night, I overtook on the path the little body, with her
burden, as big as herself, on her head. This bundle of coarse grass was
to be made into hay, and added to the store of winter provender for
the goats and cows of the family.
Such is the training of life for all in Tauffers. Nature intended it
to be hard, but not so hard as the crimes and follies of man have made
it. Half of this little body’s evening task, and half of the daily and
yearly toil of every man, woman, and child in Tauffers is lost to them.
They have to task themselves with the toil; and then half the fruits of
the toil is snatched from the hands of the toilers, and sent to Vienna
to support 1,000,000 men in arms, for which a second tax in flesh and
blood is levied on poor Tauffers, and to pay the bondholders of a
debt incurred through the profitless, and futile attempts of Austria
to maintain a hateful dominion in Italy, and a shadowy and impossible
hegemony in northern Germany.
On the mountain above the church you get a good view of this broad
interesting valley--up and down. You see how much land there is
available for cultivation, and how carefully it is cultivated, and what
a large population it is supporting. Several villages are in sight,
and you will be able to count a hundred houses in Tauffers, which lies
at your feet. The view is more diversified than one coming from the
Grisons will have lately seen. It has much land in corn as well as
in grass. The expanse is sufficiently broad to give you the idea of
its being a substantial component part of the scene, and not merely a
little strip reclaimed from the foot of the mountains. It is in itself
something considerable, and in the general effects of the view can hold
its own against them. The mountains, too, right and left, and before
you, are grand; the latter ending against the sky in the snowy summits
about the Stelvio. At this point also you are not far from the three
old ruined castles of Tauffers. As I looked at them, I thought that
if we could recover the details of their day, we should find that the
civilized exactions of a modern empire are not greater--perhaps they
may be more all-pervading, though we will not be positive even on that
point--than were the rude exactions of mediæval local oppressors. The
old Baron, like the modern Kaiser, appealed to the sense of glory, but
whoever it might have been that was glorified, it was no more then,
than it is now, the poor peasant. And there was then, as now, a claim
for personal loyalty, in return for protection; but then, as now, it
was a protection that was very costly to those who were supposed to be
protected. So wags the world. One unsatisfactory condition is exchanged
for another that does not give satisfaction. But, throughout, men are
dreaming of, and hoping and striving for, something better. And dreams,
and hopes, and efforts have hitherto been the salt of life.
As I re-entered the village I passed a _châlet_ surrounded by grass.
On the grass, in front of the house, were spread out to bleach three
pieces of coarse hempen linen, the winter labours of, I suppose, three
families. They were of varying lengths. I paced them, as I passed, and
found that the longest measured about fifty yards. The differences in
length indicated, perhaps, not so much differences in industry, for
here all are industrious to the best of their ability, as differences
in the opportunities for this kind of work, and in the number of hands,
in the families to which the pieces respectively belonged. Considering
how slowly the shuttle advances in the hand-loom, I wondered that
any human being could have the patience to weave these fifty yards
of linen, and hoped that the time would come when the rewards of
labour would in these valleys be such as to enable these poor women to
withdraw from this old-world monotonous form of labour; and when among
them, as among all people claiming to be civilized, all the coarser
kinds of labour, which task not the intelligence, but only the hands
and muscles, of men, and still more if of women, will be delegated to
iron and steam.
And now we had returned to the hotel; for, as it was getting late,
Christian had gone out to the mountain to fetch me in for supper. The
good woman set before us the coffee, the milk, the cheese, the bread,
and last of all another platter, with ‘Behold the butter!’ She was
duly thanked; and afterwards assured that the world could show none
better, and that the merits of the coffee and of the milk were equally
indisputable. While we were at supper three German pedestrians came in.
They were on their way to Bormio by the Umbrail Pass. They took the
other end of the long table, and in time their supper was served. They
had no coffee, but instead of it, the same kind of soup we had had at
dinner. The salad and eggs were not reproduced. Our dinner, possibly,
had caused a dearth of the latter. Instead of the white wheaten bread,
with which we had been served, they had black rye-bread.
_August 19._--Left Tauffers at 5 A.M. Our destination for the day
was Tarasp in the Engadin; the way was up the Val Avigna over the
Cruschetta, the Pass of the Scarljöchl, and then by the Scarlthal.
The morning was bright and frosty with the air from the north. After
ascending for two hours, all the way through forest, to my surprise we
came on an irrigated meadow of about four acres. It could belong only
to Tauffers, for there had been no gaps in the mountains all the way
up. So far then, had these industrious people gone, and up so rough a
way, to level and irrigate this little bit of land. Every stone had
been cleared from it. It was as smooth as a lawn. The channel, too,
for bringing the water to it, though not long, had not been easy to
construct. I imagined them toiling up to their work, and then bringing
down the hay along the rocky pathway they had made for this purpose,
and for bringing down timber; and then in imagination I saw the
Austrian tax-collector seize upon, and carry off, half the produce of
their labour. It would have been a cruel misfortune, if, after they
had had all the trouble of making their meadow and road, an earthquake
had swallowed up, or a slip from the mountain had buried, just half
of their meadow. But in that case the first loss would have been all.
There would have been no more labour expended on the swallowed up, or
buried half. That would have been bad; but what the government does is
worse. It obliges them, year after year, to keep up, to irrigate, and
to make the hay upon, this half, and to bring it down to Tauffers; and
then it takes it all away from them. And this is to go on for ever.
We had now got beyond the forest, and, therefore, looked back for the
Ortler: and there was its perfectly-shaped dome, rising above the
mountains that form the eastern boundary of the Munsterthal, not to any
great height above them, but still a conspicuous and noble object--a
symmetrical dome of purest snow. Of course the higher up we advanced,
the loftier to us the dome would become. Forty minutes further on,
just below the last rise to the summit of the Pass, we came upon
another surprise in the form of a second prairie. We were now nearly
three hours from Tauffers, and as the forest had ended with the first
prairie, the road had been continued up to this point exclusively for
the sake of the second: this last part of it, however, had not been
difficult to make for it was over Alpine pasture, and only required
the removal of rocks and stones in the lines the rullies would take
in going to and fro. The moral of the sight was that when people work
upon their own land and in that sense for themselves, they work with a
will, which will take no denial, and which will not even be discouraged
by the claims of a government to go shares with them in the fruit of
their labours. This prairie was larger than the one lower down. Like
that it had been carefully levelled and irrigated; though, of course,
as the elevation was much greater, the hay was not so good: it was,
in fact, not so grassy, being largely compounded of non-gramineous
plants. From the same cause its growth was shorter, and it came later
to maturity. This was August 19, and the last load was, as we passed
by, being laid on the little rully on which it was to be taken down to
Tauffers. The man who was loading it, was working alone. He was a spare
weather-beaten veteran.
Beyond this last upland prairie was the summer _châlet_ for the alpe
around, on the mountain flanks. At the back of the _châlet_ was the
natural rock staircase up to and over the Pass. When we got near the
top the path lay over a stream of clean loose rock, with unfilled
interstices, and beneath these, quite out of sight but well within
hearing, was rushing along the stream of water, collected from the
heights right and left. On the summit we stood for some minutes feeding
our eyes with a farewell look at the noble Ortler. Its snowy dome now
stood high above the black ridge of the Munsterthal mountains, which,
as a base, with the two long ranges of the Val Avigna for its equal
side-lines, formed at this point a long acute-angled triangle. At its
apex on the Cruschetta we were standing.
The way was now down hill for four hours to Tarasp: at first over high
Alpine pastures. Here we passed the ashes of a fire that had been kept
up last night to scare away from the cattle a bear, which was supposed
to be in the neighbourhood. After a time the pastures thinned out, and
the path entered on a narrow gorge between precipitous fawn-coloured
mountains. It then passed over a reach of pebbly _débris_, which the
stream of the Clemgia had in times of flood washed clean. It was a
scene of much desolation. ‘You see,’ said Christian, ‘how much more
destructive in this country water is than fire can be. Fire may be
arrested; and at the worst destroys only what can be replaced. But
water cannot be arrested, and it destroys not only moveables and
houses, but also the precious land itself, the source of all our
wealth.’ As we passed through this scene of its destructive action,
walking over the rocks, and rocky rubble it had brought down, and
across the deep seams it had cut in these deposits, I felt that if one
must be caught in a bad storm, there would be few places that would
not be preferable for the encounter to such a gorge as this, where one
would have about as much chance of escaping as a minnow has from the
throat of a pike. As the gorge became still narrower the path was now
obliged to leave the level of the torrent, and mount some way up the
flank of the right hand mountain. This soon brought us into the forest;
and, as the sun was bright, the air was incensed with the fragrant
exhalations of the Scotch fir, which hereabouts was abundant. We were
now about four miles from Tarasp. In front of us to the north-west,
beyond the Engadin, many snowy summits were in sight. On the topmost
point of each the sun had raised into the otherwise unbroken blue
a cloud-banner. These cloud-banners were of very different forms,
each appearing to retain its own form persistently. One was a cap
of liberty; another a wide-spread oak; another an inverted pyramid
attached to its mountain-top by its apex. At last after about four
miles of the forest, its trees having now become larch, we got down to
the level of the Engadin. Schuls was on the opposite bank; but instead
of crossing the Inn to Schuls, we turned to the left, and having
crossed the Clemgia, not far from its junction with the Inn, took up
our quarters at, I believe, the Belvidere, the most southern of the
numerous hotels of Vulpera, a hamlet of hotels, about half a mile from
the Curhaus of Tarasp, which is an enormous establishment on the left
bank of the Inn. It was 12.30 P.M. and we had been out seven and half
hours without a halt.
As we had now got back to the Engadin Christian Grass’s engagement had
terminated. He was to receive 15 francs a day, returning being paid
for at the same rate as service. This is the regular market price at
Pontresina for long engagements. It would not be so high were there
more guides, or fewer tourists. You may sometimes hear those who have
paid lower prices elsewhere speak of Pontresina guides as extortionate.
This is a mistake. The higher and the lower prices are alike the market
prices: only here the market is in favour of the guide, while in such a
population as that of Meiringen it is in favour of the tourist. I was
sorry to part with Christian, but my plans would not for the next three
or four days require a porter; and as the wind was now northerly, and
the weather seemed to have arranged itself for a period of ‘settled
fine,’ he appeared to wish to get back to Pontresina for the chance
of some twenty-five franc days on the glaciers. After dinner, then,
having entrusted my belongings to the Post, which would now for a few
days be my porter, I accompanied him, for he would forthwith commence
his return home, as far as Tarasp. As I returned up hill to my hotel
at Vulpera, a feeling came over me as though I had undergone a sudden
transformation from a well enough contented tourist into a lone
wanderer far from home. For the moment neither the thought of home, nor
of wandering far from home, pleased. Life seemed a pilgrimage without
an object. Of what use could it be to see the world? What pleasure was
there in being where I was? Nor could I say to myself that I wished
to be anywhere else. ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation
of spirit.’ Such was the effect this evening of suddenly finding one’s
self alone.
As I re-entered the hotel, some two hours later, its sixty German
inmates were sitting down to a solid supper. At one o’clock I had seen
them acquitting themselves like Germans in quelling the sacred rage of
appetite: but now at six o’clock it had to be quelled again. No wonder
that they were disposed to give the Tarasp waters a trial. The only
thing to wonder at would have been that they had been made any the
better by drinking them. I stood quite alone in being content, instead
of the solid supper, with ‘a complete coffee.’ Probably some of the
sixty thought me too far gone, or too poor a creature, for the waters
to benefit.
Of course the Engadin is everywhere good. Here at Vulpera the mountains
are bold and varied. One of the nearest--it is the one just before
you as you stand at the door of the Belvidere--has a grand summit of
massive jagged rock. Equal merit cannot be predicated of its climate
at all times, or at any time for long together. In its three months of
cold, the annual supplement to its nine months of winter, the south
wind brings rain and snow, and the north wind brings frosty mornings,
and disagreeably chilly evenings. So had it been this morning; and so
was it now this evening: there was no sitting, or loitering about out
of doors.