THE LOWER ENGADIN--SÜS--THE FLUELA--DAVOS DÖRFLI--THE
PRÄTIGÄU--SCHIERSCH--GRÜSCH.
Oh! this life
Is nobler than attending for a check,
Richer than doing nothing for a bauble,
Prouder than rustling in unpaid for silk.--SHAKESPEARE.
_August 20._--My plan for to-day was to walk over the Fluela Pass
from Süs in the Engadin to Davos Dörfli, a little place at the head
of the Davosthal, just below the summit of the ridge, which in nature
separates the Davosthal from, though by road it connects it with,
the Prätigäu. I had to turn out at 4 A.M., that I might have time
to get breakfast, and to walk to Tarasp for the 5.10 diligence from
Schuls, which was to take me to Süs. Süs I reached at 7.40. Several
villages, some of them almost little towns, were passed by the way. The
combinations of mountains, woods, villages, reclaimed land, a good road
often constructed in difficult places, and all the time by your side a
full stream, worthy of being one of the main head waters of the Danube,
were enough to maintain the interest of a drive of two hours and a
half.
Now that, having left Süs, I was on the road absolutely alone--for
that could not have been said of my position yesterday evening with
sixty Teutons under the same roof, to dine and sup with at the same
table--and alone, too, for the whole day, but, however, with something
to see and to do, I was no longer disposed to feel like a lone wanderer
far from home. The world seemed a home, and a glorious home, full of
objects in every direction that had plenty to say, and were very good
company. For the first two hours the valley is narrow, not quite of the
ravine kind, but still generally with very little grass, and sometimes
with none at all. When at this distance from Süs you are just getting
clear of the forest, the dreariness and desolateness of the scene
begin to be felt. You are high above the brawling stream; you see its
foamy line, but cannot make out its movement, nor hear its brawling.
Summits scarred with dark cliffs are right and left of you. Before you,
and, if you look back, behind you also, are summits capped with snow.
The snowy summits before you are those of Piz Vadred, from which you
see descending the great Grialetsch glacier. Between that and you is
a singularly dead looking grayish valley. You think that there is no
indication of man’s presence here, except the road on which you are
walking. A few steps, however, further on bring into sight a _châlet_
in the bottom. The singularly dead-looking grayish valley does, then,
maintain for two or three months in the year a herd of cows. You
had been thinking that its produce could not go much beyond lichens
and mosses. You go a little further, and come upon another _châlet_,
that of the alpe of the next higher level, which carries you up to
the summit of the Pass. But the cows and herdsmen are this day out
of sight. You see nothing moving. Rocks and snow alone attract your
attention. You pass a forbidding looking stream; dark, chilly, gruff.
It is snarling at you, and telling you to be gone. As you get to the
further end of the long lozenge-shaped amphitheatre, which conducts you
to the summit of the Pass, with the Fluela Weisshorn on your right,
and the Schwarzhorn on your left, the snow-patches begin to cross the
road. On the actual summit the road is on a level, with a small lake on
either hand. The raised viaduct separates, and their respective colours
distinguish, the two. That on your left being fed by water coming
direct from the near glaciers is a lake of milk. That on your right is
so crystal-clear that you might take it for mountain air liquefied.
Just beyond these two contrasted lakes was a small hotel. I felt,
however, no inclination to exchange the glorious day and scene
outside for the interior of a small room; and so with a salute to the
landlord, who was standing at his door to offer me the hospitality of
his house--under such circumstances the salute seemed almost a kind
of mockery--I continued my way on. The scene, as is usual on reaching
the top of a Pass, was now totally different from what I had lately
been noting. The immediate _entourage_ was of a darker rock, and the
mountain tops were green and rounded. The road for the first mile,
or so, seemed to be along the arc of the segment of a circle. In a
spirit of speculation I took to the scattered rocks along the chord of
the segment. Among the rocks were many pools of water of marvellous
transparency. Every stain and scratch on the rocks at the bottom of the
water was as distinct as if there had been no water at all, indeed they
might have been more distinct, for as seen under the water they had the
appearance of having been brought out by varnish. This water, too, was
so pure and fresh for drinking, that a draught of it made me think that
I had never drank water before, and could not hope ever to drink it
again. As I regained the road I was overtaken by the diligence, which I
had left at Süs, preparing to start, three hours previously.
One welcomes the return of the first trees. It is good to be in the
zone above the trees. It is good also to find yourself returning to
the zone of trees. The first you come upon tell you they have a hard
time of it. You interpret their stunted form and irregular growth, and
their crooked, broken branches as so many accusations brought against
the cold long winters, and the cruel storms, and the summer frosts,
whose assaults they have had to sustain. They are maimed, and scarred
veterans who from their youth up have lived in the midst of war’s
alarms and injuries, but who will not yet be driven from the field.
Their reappearance, too, reminds you that, in respect of the effects
of the landscape, they stand in the same relation to the grassy turf
that the mountains do to the plains. They feed the eye of man, and
furnish his mind with ideas and images. Without them vegetation would
have no more interest than the earth’s surface would have without the
mountains. Each, too, has its place in the working arrangements of the
general scheme; the mountains in those of the world-organism, and the
trees in those of organized life.
With these thoughts I passed the little inn of Tschuggen, five miles
below the summit. About a mile and a quarter below Tschuggen, and a
little above the inn of the Alpen Rose, I called my midday halt. I took
my position among some clean slabs and fragments of a slaty-coloured
glistening rock, a few paces above the road, and on the right side
of it. I was here sheltered by a wood of larch from the north wind,
which was cold at midday. As I looked towards Tschuggen, up the way I
had been descending, a snow-topped pyramid, perhaps the Schwarzhorn,
bounded the view. Then looking across, instead of up, the road, the
mountain of the opposite side rose near and steeply. It was a big
mountain, but not of the naked rocky order, for its flank, full in
view before me, was pretty well covered with a vestment of vegetation.
In this, the predominant element was a sedum now profusely in flower,
which made yellow the predominant colour of the vestment. Just below
me, on the other side of the road, and somewhat below the road, was
a _châlet_, surrounded by little grass patches, wherever the land
could be levelled, from the road down to the valley bottom, out of
which rose, immediately beyond the little stream of the valley, the
yellow-vested mountain. The family, that lived in the _châlet_, were
alertly at work spreading, or carrying, their little parcels of hay.
Old and young, all appeared to be together in the field. As I watched
the labours of this busily employed family I thought their position
not unlike that of the first trees I had just seen some miles above.
Like them, and from the same causes, they had to sustain the struggle
for life against great difficulties. In the contemplation, however, of
their industry there was something to suggest the thought that their
hard days were not rendered additionally hard by the discontent and the
vice, which are seen and felt wherever life is maintained on easier
conditions.
From this halt an hour and a half of pleasant walking brought me to
Davos Dörfli, a well situated village in a broad expanse of grass land
at the foot of the Davoser see. It is only a mile and a half from Davos
am Platz, at which I had dined on my descent from the Strela seventeen
days back. My way then lay to the south. I had since made a round I was
disposed to think worth the time. To-morrow I was to set my face north
for the Prätigäu.
When you are walking, and the more so if you are alone, you are
disposed to note the changing aspects of the weather. Here, then,
are the observations that were made on this day. At 4 A.M. at Tarasp
there was an unbroken canopy of cloud: but it was not low down the
mountain sides. At 6 the summits that were lofty enough for snow were
standing clear; but the lesser summits were still shrouded with clouds.
At 8 most of these had disappeared. From 9 till 12 only thin streaks
and flecks of cloud high above all the summits. The definition of
every mountain ridge and pinnacle against the deep blue was now very
remarkable. At 12 clouds began to form on the tops of the mountains,
and spreading widely to a considerable extent obscured the blue. At
4 these formed solid masses, and the sky was much more obscured. At
6 the clouds sunk low down on the mountain sides, so as to shut out
the view. The wind was northerly all day. In the early morning it had
been so cold from Tarasp to Süs as to make the _banquette_ of the
diligence not altogether pleasant. Near Süs I saw potato-patches by
the road side that had been blackened at the extremities of the haulm
by frost. Throughout the day, even when for some hours I was walking
up hill with the sun on the road, the air was fresh and crisp. I have
already mentioned that on the previous evening at Tarasp it had been
disagreeably cold. This evening at Davos Dörfli I again saw potato
haulm that had been injured by frost. Not, then, taking this day as a
sample of the climate, for its merits were too much above the average
for that, but taking it as a sample of a fine day, almost the best kind
of day the climate has to show, we may say that in summer on some days,
for some hours, the climate is pleasant. The mornings and evenings,
when the weather is fine, that is to say when the wind is from the
north, are too cold. In the fine hours of the fine days the sense of
enjoyment from a sense of penetrating freshness, and of penetrating
warmth, is very delightful.
_August 21._--Had been assured last night that coffee would be ready
at 5 this morning. This promise was a case of deception prepense, for
there had been no intention of letting me have it till half an hour
later, when eight or ten Germans, who were to leave at 6, would have
their breakfast served. On these occasions it is of no manner of use
to complain, or to give yourself the trouble of showing in any way
your dissatisfaction; or rather it is better not to allow yourself to
feel any dissatisfaction at all. The master of the hotel is master of
the situation. And in a place like Davos Dörfli, where there is only
one moderately good hotel, the rule of its master is a despotism,
untempered by any effectual competition. Here again, as at Tarasp, I
found the hotel full of Germans, and of German-speaking Swiss; and, as
a consequence, the table well supplied, and the charges moderate. At
both of these places I had been reminded of three portions of cold meat
I had ordered at Pontresina. To give the particulars--they consisted
of six circular pieces, each of them of the diameter of a florin,
and no thicker than a well-worn three-penny. For this the charge was
about equal to the weight of the pieces in francs. Such doings would
be impossible at Tarasp, or at the Dörfli of Davos, or at the Platz of
that ilk.
At 5.45, then, I got under weigh. My road for the Prätigäu lay at
first along the level shore of the Davoser see for about a mile, and
then for about a mile or so more up a gentle rise of some hundred or
two feet in all to the Davoser Kulm, which from this side seems rather
to connect than to separate the two valleys. Though, indeed, you
afterwards find that the one you are bound for is a considerable way
down on the opposite side. About a mile below the summit I descended
into a cloud, and walked in it for about five miles, that is down to
Klosters. I heard a stream at times, but did not see it; and the books
say that I passed a lake, but I know no more of it than what is said in
the books. All that I saw was the road, and the mist-shrouded trees by
the roadside, from which abundant drops were falling. Not a breath was
stirring, and it was very chilly. The altitudes were from 5,300 feet on
the Kulm to 4,000 at Klosters. I might as well have been on a November
morning in the Essex marshes, or in the Lincolnshire fens. Just above
Klosters, without any intimation of the coming change, I stepped out
of the cloud. There before me, a little below, were the four villages
that form the commune. Many of their houses were goodly structures of
stone. Around the villages was a large expanse of good land. This first
glimpse of the Prätigäu was worthy of its reputation of being one of
the best cultivated valleys in Switzerland, which, arising out of, and
taken in connexion with, their system of land tenure, is what accounts
for its large population of 10,000 souls. It was for the sake of the
contrasts its high cultivation and its populousness would offer to what
I had seen in the valleys I had lately been wandering through, that I
was here to-day. The altitude and climate of most of them restricted
the industry of the inhabitants to the cultivation of grass; and this
in its turn was a great restriction on the number of the inhabitants.
From the first to the second village the road reascended a little.
This brought me again almost to the level of the cloud, and here the
position of the road placed a long reach of the valley before me. The
effect was strange, and such as I do not recollect ever to have seen
elsewhere. The stratum of cloud just roofed the valley. To the eye
it was a flat roof, both on the upper, and on the lower, sides. As I
looked forward the eye traversed the valley, below the roof, just as it
might a long gallery. The cloud-roof was at an uniform level, resting
on the mountains right and left, but of course the valley below it
fell away as it advanced in its descent. I cannot say how many miles
I saw down the valley under this roof. Though from my point of view
it appeared perfectly continuous, and without holes or fissures, such
could not have been the case, as was evident from there being several
patches of sunlight in the valley. These patches of sunlight were
poured in through fissures or holes in the cloud-roof, that is to say
through skylights in it, and they not only gave a strange and unwonted
effect of light and shade in the valley--the unlighted, which was the
greater part, showing of a dark gloomy green, and the lighted patches
of a bright golden green--but also enabled one to see under the roof to
a great distance.
On turning round to look back in the direction by which I had reached
Klosters, I saw another curious effect of cloud. The valley all about
Klosters was clear and bright. Somewhat above this visible, sun-lit,
lower expanse began the masses of cloud I had passed through in
descending. As I was just below these clouds, and looking up at them
through the opening over the neighbourhood of Klosters, in the area of
which opening I was standing, they hid from me the whole mighty mass of
Piz Buin--it is 10,700 feet high--except just the snowy summit. None of
the supports of the summit were seen or suggested. While I looked at
it, it disappeared and reappeared, again and again, as the vast stratum
of cloud moved on, or rose, or sunk a little. Of course the head of
Piz Buin was very far above my stratum of cloud, but as I was close
to it, and looking up at it, it was enough to intercept all but the
summit, which every now and then it did intercept. As the snowy summit
appeared and disappeared, it seemed as if it was not the cloud but the
summit that was moving; for was it not at one moment peering down into
the valley, and the next moment withdrawing itself? The effect was most
unnatural. The unsubstantial fleeting cloud became the solid and fixed,
and the top of the mountain which stands fast for ever the floating,
object.
A further acquaintance with the Prätigäu confirmed the first
impression. I have nowhere seen a richer green, or more of it, or a
more pleasing, I might almost say a more wonderful, combination of
woodland, grass, corn, and fruit trees, or more numerous villages, or
so many scattered _châlets_. Of course there is not much of this kind
in the grassy elevated valleys I had lately been traversing; indeed,
I had seen nothing of the kind since I had left Coire on the third of
the month; and what you see here is far in advance of what you can see
in the neighbourhood of Coire, with the exception of the vineyards.
The bottom of the valley is well cultivated. As you ascend to a higher
zone the fruit trees are gradually replaced by forest trees, and the
garden ground by grass, the _châlets_, however, still continuing. When
the amount of population is recalled all this can be imagined almost
without its being seen. The amount of cultivable land, almost all
of it made land, is of course the first condition. The next is the
altitude of the valley which ranges from about 2,000 feet at Grüsch
to about 4,000 at Klosters; and then its direction, which is such as
to give it protection from the northerly winds, and to expose one
side to the midday sun, while its length is raked both by the morning
and evening sun. These physical conditions, however, would not count
for much were they not accompanied by certain human conditions. Every
man of these 10,000 souls, in proportion to his ability, turns to the
best possible account every square foot of his land, and every ray of
sunshine that falls upon it, because he and his family will get the
whole benefit of his thought and labour. They clear the ground, and dig
it deep, and enrich it all they can, because it is their own ground.
They plant, and they tend what they plant carefully, because they, and
not others, will get the fruit of what they plant and tend. Herein lies
the motive of their industry.
Neither, however, this motive, nor the _terrain_ nature and the
course of events have placed at their disposal, would be of any avail
were it not for the presence of another condition, which has been
entirely overlooked by those who advocate in the press, and on the
platform, the system of peasant proprietorship. This other condition
is knowledge--the knowledge of all that is required for supporting a
family throughout the whole of the twelve months, the knowledge of
how all these things are to be produced from two or three acres of
land, and the knowledge of how each article is to be kept in store, and
when used to be used most advantageously. These are the particulars of
what is very far from being a simple problem. It is, in fact, the most
complicated form in which the problem of how life is to be sustained
is submitted to any portion of the human family. In comparison with it
the form in which the same problem is submitted to our agricultural
labourer is simplicity itself. He has nothing to do but to take from
his employer’s hand on Saturday evening the regulation wages of
the neighbourhood, and to transfer them to the hand of the village
shopkeeper for all that he will want during the next seven days. Add
to this that the law has established for his behoof a national benefit
society, which will provide for him in sickness, and in old age, and
which will not forsake him even when he has shuffled off this mortal
coil, for it will supply the coffin in which he will be carried to his
grave;[1] and then we shall be able not quite to see, but to get a
glimpse of, how completely his life is a school for the non-attainment
of this knowledge. In precisely the same fashion, and to precisely
the same result, domestic service will have acted on the mind of his
wife. They have both been thoroughly and most efficiently trained not
to have the knowledge, and the habits of mind, a peasant proprietor
must have, if he is to live as a peasant proprietor. I think it may
be safely asserted that out of our agricultural labourers not one in
10,000 has this knowledge, and that not one out of 1,000 is, as things
now are with that class, of the mental stuff which would enable him to
attain to this knowledge; for it is a kind of knowledge which is the
result of the accumulated experience and training of many generations.
It is not the knowledge of how to live as a market-gardener, or as a
small farmer: they live by selling and buying: but the knowledge of how
to produce from a little bit of land what will directly, and without
the intervention of much buying and selling, support a family. The
main support of the family is to be the produce of their own labour
applied to their own land. This is a most special kind of knowledge. It
involves a multiplicity of calculations and considerations. It is as
special as, and far more complicated than, that required for enabling
an Esquimaux family to live within the arctic circle. To be carried out
successfully it requires the hearty single-minded devotion to the work
in hand of every day of the life of every member of the family, that
work varying much from day to day. If an acre or two, or two or three
acres, of land were given to an English agricultural labourer, it would
never occur to him to turn it to this account. He would only think of
making it a petty farm, or a market-garden. This is what, whenever he
chances to get hold of a bit of land, he invariably does. He has not
the kind of knowledge which is requisite for enabling him to entertain
the idea of peasant proprietorship, that is of maintaining his family
by the direct produce of the two or three acres. That would require an
amount of forethought, forbearance, hard work, helpfulness, and above
all of varied knowledge, of which he is quite incapable of so much as
forming any adequate conception.
[1] See note at the end of the volume.
Now turn your attention for a few moments to the Prätigäu peasant
proprietor. He has no wages to receive. Wages in this connexion mean
in one word all that is requisite for supporting life. They include
everything. Nothing is omitted from them. He has to find all these
requisites by another road, and in another fashion. He has no village
shop to procure for him, and to keep in store for him, all the articles
that he will want. Pretty nearly everything that he and his family will
require for the twelve months he has to procure from his small plot of
land. This will require all the ingenuity, forethought, and industry a
man is capable of. Consider what it implies. He will have to produce
every article himself, to keep it in store himself, and to make it go
as far as contrivance and frugality can. His house, too, is his own,
and he has to take the same care of it as of everything else. There is
no one but himself to repair it. The same remark applies to his fuel,
every stick of which represents so much of his own labour, and to
his clothes, which represent so much of the labour of the family. The
wife, too, must be as great an adept in this kind of knowledge as the
husband. They were both brought up in its traditions, and were trained
to it from their earliest years. Every day of their lives they have
under the pressure of a quite inexorable necessity been perfecting
themselves in its practice. All their neighbours are employed in the
same way. There is nothing going on among them that diverts attention
to anything else.
If these Prätigäu peasants were transferred to this country, they could
do in England what they do in the Prätigäu. If 10,000 of our peasantry
were transferred to the Prätigäu, and put in possession of the existing
houses, and of the land, and of every appliance needed for cultivating
it, the only result would be universal starvation. Simply because
they would not have the knowledge, and habits of mind, requisite for
enabling each family to live from its little plot of land. The land
would be the same; the motives for turning it to account would be the
same; but the moral and intellectual conditions would be wanting. These
conditions, then, must not be omitted in answering the question of what
it is that has made this valley a garden that is maintaining its 10,000
gardeners.
In old times it may have been held by some half dozen mailed lords.
The ruins of the castles of several of these old oppressors may still
be seen in the valley. Of one we are told that the peasants took it
with clubs and stakes; the wall with which the lord of another barred
the lower ravine is still standing. One object of this wall was that it
might enable him to levy imposts on the necessaries of life, in order
that his own life might be more affluent at the cost of the poor. Such
a state of things may have its picturesque side; but who would not very
much prefer to see the valley as it is, the garden of 10,000 gardeners?
Or in these days we can imagine its becoming a Chamois preserve. But
again, I suppose most people would prefer to see it remain as it is,
the garden of 10,000 gardeners. We know of nothing better in this
world than men and women; and when the men and women are intelligent,
industrious, honest, and can, under very difficult conditions, steer
their course clear of the rocks and quicksands of pauperism, then,
although they may be deficient in the refinements which culture may
confer on those who have wealth and leisure, still they are in many
valuable and attractive qualities far above large classes that we in
this country wot of. But be this as it may, the average human heart is
more pleasingly touched by the picture of their hard and humble labours
than by that of the mailed Baron and his dependents, or of the Chamois
preserver, and his Chamois. Probably they have as brave hearts as the
Baron and his dependents had: at all events their fathers drove them
off with sticks and stones, and even the women of Schiersch in 1622
showed such heroism in assisting their husbands to repel their Austrian
invaders, that the men of Schiersch have since that day conceded to
the women of Schiersch the honour of receiving the sacrament first.
And, too, probably they are as much disposed to respect humanity, and
to help those that need, and to do to others as they would that others
should do to them, as the imaginary Chamois preserver would be.
A little above Kublis on the pebbly borders of a torrent, down the
flank of a mountain, where it was impossible to retain soil enough
for cultivation of any kind, for the occasional rushes of storm water
would sweep from the surface anything soluble or tender, I found the
coarse shingle dotted with hazel, and briar roses, and barberry, and
much of this open thicket almost smothered with the wild clematis then
in flower. This vegetation again reminded me of how completely I had
this morning changed the climate. Where I had been of late nothing of
this could have been seen. A few hours ago, in leaving Davos Dörfli, I
had passed frost-blackened potato haulm; and for three weeks I had not
had much to look upon, in the way of vegetation, besides pine woods and
grass. What I now saw prepared me for the advent on the scene of the
broad glazed leaf and feathery arrow of the maize.
A mile or so below Kublis the green valley is suddenly contracted
into a rock-bound and wooded ravine, which has in the bottom no more
space than is sufficient for the blustering Lanquart and the road.
Whatever good land is hereabouts must be high above you on the top of
the ravine. This ravine ends at Frederis Au, a kind of watering-place,
some little way off from the road. Here you again come on good bottom
land, some of it under maize. A little further on, the stream is again
compressed between high rocky banks.
At Schiersch, having now done twenty-five miles, I stopped for dinner.
It is a place of some size, and has many goodly stone houses; but
what attracts you most is the story of the still-honoured heroism of
its women. The books told me that the Lion was the chief hotel of the
place. Accordingly I entered the Lion, and was shown up to the first
floor. It was evident that the room into which I was shown, like the
sword of Achilles which could either hack a baron of beef, or carve a
Trojan, was used for two purposes. The long table and benches on one
side of it showed that it was intended for travellers’ accommodation.
The sofa, however, and chairs, a little work-table on the other side,
together with the presence of Madame herself and four children, one
asleep on the sofa, one suffering from whooping-cough, the third
waiting on the invalid, and the fourth in the mother’s arms, indicated
that it was also the Lady’s sitting-room, and the nursery. The guests
who came and went while I was in the house were waited upon by the
husband only. My successive inquiries for mutton, beef, butter, eggs,
fruit, cognac, extracted from him only negative replies. What, then,
did the good people of Schiersch live upon? He could let me have
cheese and dried beef. I had been expecting mutton _côtelettes_, with
a dessert of figs and peaches. In my disappointment I felt disposed to
go on further. I could hardly fare worse by doing so. But after I had
entered the house I felt a disinclination, by leaving it, to balk the
expectations of the good people, and perhaps my own too. And so I spent
half an hour at the Lion. As to the dried beef, I had ceased to think
it actively bad. The wine was rather sour. Against the cheese nothing
could be said.
Together with the above viands there was presented to me this problem.
If this is all that Schiersch can set before its guests, what is the
usual fare of the Schierschers themselves? Few of us as we pass through
a smiling Swiss valley think, or know, how hard its inhabitants live.
They, poor souls, or rather their hard-worked bodies, have neither
the dried beef, nor the half sour wine, nor yet such cheese as I had.
Meagre cheese, the curd that rises, on the second heating, after the
first curd for the cheese has been removed, black rye-bread, polenta,
and potatoes constitute, with coffee for their chief beverage, the
normal fare of the inhabitants of most of these valleys. The greater
part of the butter, and of the fresh meat that they produce is sent off
to places, where there are hotels with many travellers to be provided
for. All the fat of the land of the Prätigäu is in this way forwarded
to Davos am Platz, Ragatz, and Coire. Having disposed of this question
not quite satisfactorily, for I had rather that its settlement had
been more in favour of the good people of Schiersch--the brave women
of Schiersch at all events deserve something better; and having, too,
disposed of the comestibles which had suggested it, I said my adieux to
the members of the family of the Lion, and proceeded on my way, caring
little, and not knowing much more, where I was going, except that there
was a place two miles further on called Grüsch.
The first mile was through low wet meadows. Beyond these the torrent
of the Lanquart had in times of flood, carried away all the soil,
leaving behind nothing but rubbly stones. These covered a wide expanse,
rather more than a mile in length. The peasants of the locality, like
a community of bees, or ants, whose nest, or hive, has been disturbed,
had taken in hand the repair of the whole of this damage. They had
carried a dozen, or more, dikes across the valley, and crossed these
again at right angles by another series of dikes. This had divided
the whole of the desolated space into a considerable number of square
compartments. Their plan was to fill these in succession with the muddy
water of the Lanquart, hoping that the deposit from this, would in
time bury the stones, and give them a surface of alluvium, capable
of supporting grass. Some of the compartments were already supporting
beds of reeds. If, therefore, the dikes should not be washed away by
some unusually heavy flood, the time must come when soil enough will be
accumulated for grass. May this precious grass one day crown and reward
their labours!
At Grüsch I was well repaid for having preferred the ills I knew not
of to those of which I had had experience at Schiersch. I found it in
many respects an interesting little place. First it is well situated.
There are points of view in the village, from which the mountains
seem to stand round about it grandly, quite to come down into it. On
the north side a bold ravine has been rent from some height up in the
mountain just down to the level of the road. Some of the houses are
old and large, and were once the residences of local grandees, of the
days when Grüsch had grandees. In one of these I found my supper and
bed--a supper of veal cutlets, coffee, butter, cheese, and raspberry
_compote_. I give the particulars not only from a sense of what is due
to Grüsch, but also for the sake of encouraging Schiersch to greater
efforts. As to my berth for the night; I was at first shown up a
stone staircase to a spacious room containing three beds. From its
ornamented panelling and ceiling it must originally have been intended
for a sitting-room. I was more than satisfied with it. When, however,
there was no further prospect of the arrival of a family, or party,
of distinction, I was informed that there was a better bedroom in
the house, that it was at my disposal, and that the few things I had
brought with me had been removed to it. Even after this announcement
I was quite unprepared for its magnificence. It was a kind of state
apartment. It was gorgeously papered. It had muslin window-curtains.
The stove cased with white china, and bound with hoops of polished
brass, had an imposing effect. The pillows and coverlet were edged with
cotton lace. All this was overpowering, coming so close on Schiersch.
And, then, the manageress was so good-natured and obliging, so anxious
to know what might be wanted, and seemed to have so much pleasure in
doing it--almost as much as the good man at Livigno had had, whose
regard for his guests had extended even beyond this world. But the
crowning grace has still to come. After breakfast to-morrow morning,
I shall have to pay for this substantial fare, the splendour of my
bedroom, and so much pleasing attention, only 3 francs, 30 cents:
the same sum, except the 30 cents, I had paid at Schiersch for the
refection of dried beef and sour wine. This will compare, too, very
favourably with the bill at Livigno. That had been 30 francs, 60 cents.
But then our friend at Livigno had catered for both worlds, for soul
as well as for body. At parting I could not but shake hands with the
young woman who had waited on me and her satisfaction at finding that
her attentions and ministerings had been appreciated was alone quite
worth the 3 francs, 30 cents. All this was a great deal to get for so
little in this hard world.