Moreover, where there was no mist, the air was so surprisingly clear
that I could see everything clean and sharp wherever I turned my eyes.
The mountains forbade any very far horizons to the view, and all that
I could see was as neat and vivid as those coloured photographs they
sell with bright green grass and bright white snow, and blue glaciers
like precious stones.
I scrambled down the mountain, for here, on the south side of the
pass, there was no snow or ice, and it was quite easy to leave the
road and take the old path cutting off the zig-zags. As the air got
heavier, I became hungry, and at the very end of my descent, two
hundred feet or so above the young Rhone, I saw a great hotel. I went
round to their front door and asked them whether I could eat, and at
what price. 'Four francs,' they said.
'What!' said I, 'four francs for a meal! Come, let me eat in the
kitchen, and charge me one.' But they became rude and obstinate, being
used only to deal with rich people, so I cursed them, and went down
the road. But I was very hungry.
The road falls quite steeply, and the Rhone, which it accompanies in
that valley, leaps in little falls. On a bridge I passed a sad
Englishman reading a book, and a little lower down, two American women
in a carriage, and after that a priest (it was lucky I did not see him
first. Anyhow, I touched iron at once, to wit, a key in my pocket),
and after that a child minding a goat. Altogether I felt myself in the
world again, and as I was on a good road, all down hill, I thought
myself capable of pushing on to the next village. But my hunger was
really excessive, my right boot almost gone, and my left boot nothing
to exhibit or boast of, when I came to a point where at last one
looked down the Rhone valley for miles. It is like a straight trench,
and at intervals there are little villages, built of most filthy
chalets, the said chalets raised on great stones. There are pine-trees
up, up on either slope, into the clouds, and beyond the clouds I could
not see. I left on my left a village called 'Between the Waters'. I
passed through another called 'Ehringen', but it has no inn. At last,
two miles farther, faint from lack of food, I got into Ulrichen, a
village a little larger than the rest, and the place where I believed
one should start to go either over the Gries or Nufenen Pass. In
Ulrichen was a warm, wooden, deep-eaved, frousty, comfortable,
ramshackle, dark, anyhow kind of a little inn called 'The Bear'. And
entering, I saw one of the women whom god loves.
She was of middle age, very honest and simple in the face, kindly and
good. She was messing about with cooking and stuff, and she came up
to me stooping a little, her eyes wide and innocent, and a great spoon
in her hand. Her face was extremely broad and flat, and I have never
seen eyes set so far apart. Her whole gait, manner, and accent proved
her to be extremely good, and on the straight road to heaven. I
saluted her in the French tongue. She answered me in the same, but
very broken and rustic, for her natural speech was a kind of mountain
German. She spoke very slowly, and had a nice soft voice, and she did
what only good people do, I mean, looked you in the eyes as she spoke
to you.
Beware of shifty-eyed people. It is not only nervousness, it is also a
kind of wickedness. Such people come to no good. I have three of them
now in my mind as I write. One is a Professor.
And, by the way, would you like to know why universities suffer from
this curse of nervous disease? Why the great personages stammer or
have St Vitus' dance, or jabber at the lips, or hop in their walk, or
have their heads screwed round, or tremble in the fingers, or go
through life with great goggles like a motor car? Eh? I will tell you.
It is the punishment of their _intellectual pride,_ than which no sin
is more offensive to the angels.
What! here are we with the jolly world of God all round us, able to
sing, to draw, to paint, to hammer and build, to sail, to ride horses,
to run, to leap; having for our splendid inheritance love in youth and
memory in old age, and we are to take one miserable little faculty,
our one-legged, knock-kneed, gimcrack, purblind, rough-skinned,
underfed, and perpetually irritated and grumpy intellect, or
analytical curiosity rather (a diseased appetite), and let it swell
till it eats up every other function? Away with such foolery.
LECTOR. When shall we get on to...
AUCTOR. Wait a moment. I say, away with such foolery. Note that
pedants lose all proportion. They never can keep sane in a discussion.
They will go wild on matters they are wholly unable to judge, such as
Armenian Religion or the Politics of Paris or what not. Never do they
use one of those three phrases which keep a man steady and balance his
mind, I mean the words (1) _After all it is not my business_. (2) Tut!
tut! You don't say so! and (3) _Credo in Unum Deum Patrem
Omnipotentem, Factorem omnium visibilium atque invisibilium;_ in which
last there is a power of synthesis that can jam all their analytical
dust-heap into such a fine, tight, and compact body as would make them
stare to see. I understand that they need six months' holiday a year.
Had I my way they should take twelve, and an extra day on leap years.
LECTOR. Pray, pray return to the woman at the inn.
AUCTOR. I will, and by this road: to say that on the day of Judgement,
when St Michael weighs souls in his scales, and the wicked are led off
by the Devil with a great rope, as you may see them over the main
porch of Notre Dame (I will heave a stone after them myself I hope),
all the souls of the pedants together will not weigh as heavy and
sound as the one soul of this good woman at the inn.
She put food before me and wine. The wine was good, but in the food
was some fearful herb or other I had never tasted before--a pure spice
or scent, and a nasty one. One could taste nothing else, and it was
revolting; but I ate it for her sake.
Then, very much refreshed, I rose, seized my great staff, shook myself
and said, 'Now it is about noon, and I am off for the frontier.'
At this she made a most fearful clamour, saying that it was madness,
and imploring me not to think of it, and running out fetched from the
stable a tall, sad, pale-eyed man who saluted me profoundly and told
me that he knew more of the mountains than any one for miles. And this
by asking many afterwards I found out to be true. He said that he had
crossed the Nufenen and the Gries whenever they could be crossed since
he was a child, and that if I attempted it that day I should sleep
that night in Paradise. The clouds on the mountain, the soft snow
recently fallen, the rain that now occupied the valleys, the glacier
on the Gries, and the pathless snow in the mist on the Nufenen would
make it sheer suicide for him, an experienced guide, and for me a
worse madness. Also he spoke of my boots and wondered at my poor coat
and trousers, and threatened me with intolerable cold.
It seems that the books I had read at home, when they said that the
Nufenen had no snow on it, spoke of a later season of the year; it was
all snow now, and soft snow, and hidden by a full mist in such a day
from the first third of the ascent. As for the Gries, there was a
glacier on the top which needed some kind of clearness in the weather.
Hearing all this I said I would remain--but it was with a heavy heart.
Already I felt a shadow of defeat over me. The loss of time was a
thorn. I was already short of cash, and my next money was Milan. My
return to England was fixed for a certain date, and stronger than
either of these motives against delay was a burning restlessness that
always takes men when they are on the way to great adventures.
I made him promise to wake me next morning at three o'clock, and,
short of a tempest, to try and get me across the Gries. As for the
Nufenen and Crystalline passes which I had desired to attempt, and
which were (as I have said) the straight line to Rome, he said (and he
was right), that let alone the impassability of the Nufenen just then,
to climb the Crystal Mountain in that season would be as easy as
flying to the moon. Now, to cross the Nufenen alone, would simply land
me in the upper valley of the Ticino, and take me a great bend out of
my way by Bellinzona. Hence my bargain that at least he should show me
over the Gries Pass, and this he said, if man could do it, he would do
the next day; and I, sending my boots to be cobbled (and thereby
breaking another vow), crept up to bed, and all afternoon read the
school-books of the children. They were in French, from lower down the
valley, and very Genevese and heretical for so devout a household. But
the Genevese civilization is the standard for these people, and they
combat the Calvinism of it with missions, and have statues in their
rooms, not to speak of holy water stoups.
The rain beat on my window, the clouds came lower still down the
mountain. Then (as is finely written in the Song of Roland), 'the day
passed and the night came, and I slept.' But with the coming of the
small hours, and with my waking, prepare yourselves for the most
extraordinary and terrible adventure that befell me out of all the
marvels and perils of this pilgrimage, the most momentous and the most
worthy of perpetual record, I think, of all that has ever happened
since the beginning of the world.
At three o'clock the guide knocked at my door, and I rose and came out
to him. We drank coffee and ate bread. We put into our sacks ham and
bread, and he white wine and I brandy. Then we set out. The rain had
dropped to a drizzle, and there was no wind. The sky was obscured for
the most part, but here and there was a star. The hills hung awfully
above us in the night as we crossed the spongy valley. A little wooden
bridge took us over the young Rhone, here only a stream, and we
followed a path up into the tributary ravine which leads to the
Nufenen and the Gries. In a mile or two it was a little lighter, and
this was as well, for some weeks before a great avalanche had fallen,
and we had to cross it gingerly. Beneath the wide cap of frozen snow
ran a torrent roaring. I remembered Colorado, and how I had crossed
the Arkansaw on such a bridge as a boy. We went on in the uneasy dawn.
The woods began to show, and there was a cross where a man had slipped
from above that very April and been killed. Then, most ominous and
disturbing, the drizzle changed to a rain, and the guide shook his
head and said it would be snowing higher up. We went on, and it grew
lighter. Before it was really day (or else the weather confused and
darkened the sky), we crossed a good bridge, built long ago, and we
halted at a shed where the cattle lie in the late summer when the snow
is melted. There we rested a moment.
But on leaving its shelter we noticed many disquieting things. The
place was a hollow, the end of the ravine--a bowl, as it were; one way
out of which is the Nufenen, and the other the Gries.
Here it is in a sketch map. The heights are marked lighter and
lighter, from black in the valleys to white in the impassable
mountains. E is where we stood, in a great cup or basin, having just
come up the ravine B. C is the Italian valley of the Tosa, and the
neck between it and E is the Gries. D is the valley of the Ticino,
and the neck between E and it is the Nufenen. A is the Crystal
Mountain. You may take the necks or passes to be about 8000, and the
mountains 10,000 or 11,000 feet above the sea.
We noticed, I say, many disquieting things. First, all, that bowl or
cup below the passes was a carpet of snow, save where patches of black
water showed, and all the passes and mountains, from top to bottom,
were covered with very thick snow; the deep surface of it soft and
fresh fallen. Secondly, the rain had turned into snow. It was falling
thickly all around. Nowhere have I more perceived the immediate
presence of great Death. Thirdly, it was far colder, and we felt the
beginning of a wind. Fourthly, the clouds had come quite low down.
The guide said it could not be done, but I said we must attempt it. I
was eager, and had not yet felt the awful grip of the cold. We left
the Nufenen on our left, a hopeless steep of new snow buried in fog,
and we attacked the Gries. For half-an-hour we plunged on through snow
above our knees, and my thin cotton clothes were soaked. So far the
guide knew we were more or less on the path, and he went on and I
panted after him. Neither of us spoke, but occasionally he looked back
to make sure I had not dropped out.
The snow began to fall more thickly, and the wind had risen somewhat.
I was afraid of another protest from the guide, but he stuck to it
well, and I after him, continually plunging through soft snow and
making yard after yard upwards. The snow fell more thickly and the
wind still rose.
We came to a place which is, in the warm season, an alp; that is, a
slope of grass, very steep but not terrifying; having here and there
sharp little precipices of rock breaking it into steps, but by no
means (in summer) a matter to make one draw back. Now, however, when
everything was still Arctic it was a very different matter. A sheer
steep of snow whose downward plunge ran into the driving storm and was
lost, whose head was lost in the same mass of thick cloud above, a
slope somewhat hollowed and bent inwards, had to be crossed if we were
to go any farther; and I was terrified, for I knew nothing of
climbing. The guide said there was little danger, only if one slipped
one might slide down to safety, or one might (much less probably) get
over rocks and be killed. I was chattering a little with cold; but as
he did not propose a return, I followed him. The surface was
alternately slabs of frozen snow and patches of soft new snow. In the
first he cut steps, in the second we plunged, and once I went right in
and a mass of snow broke off beneath me and went careering down the
slope. He showed me how to hold my staff backwards as he did his
alpenstock, and use it as a kind of brake in case I slipped.
We had been about twenty minutes crawling over that wall of snow and
ice; and it was more and more apparent that we were in for danger.
Before we had quite reached the far side, the wind was blowing a very
full gale and roared past our ears. The surface snow was whirring
furiously like dust before it: past our faces and against them drove
the snow-flakes, cutting the air: not falling, but making straight
darts and streaks. They seemed like the form of the whistling wind;
they blinded us. The rocks on the far side of the slope, rocks which
had been our goal when we set out to cross it, had long ago
disappeared in the increasing rush of the blizzard. Suddenly as we
were still painfully moving on, stooping against the mad wind, these
rocks loomed up over as large as houses, and we saw them through the
swarming snow-flakes as great hulls are seen through a fog at sea. The
guide crouched under the lee of the nearest; I came up close to him
and he put his hands to my ear and shouted to me that nothing further
could be done--he had so to shout because in among the rocks the
hurricane made a roaring sound, swamping the voice.
I asked how far we were from the summit. He said he did not know where
we were exactly, but that we could not be more than 800 feet from it.
I was but that from Italy and I would not admit defeat. I offered him
all I had in money to go on, but it was folly in me, because if I had
had enough to tempt him and if he had yielded we should both have
died. Luckily it was but a little sum. He shook his head. He would not
go on, he broke out, for all the money there was in the world. He
shouted me to eat and drink, and so we both did.
Then I understood his wisdom, for in a little while the cold began to
seize me in my thin clothes. My hands were numb, my face already gave
me intolerable pain, and my legs suffered and felt heavy. I learnt
another thing (which had I been used to mountains I should have
known), that it was not a simple thing to return. The guide was
hesitating whether to stay in this rough shelter, or to face the
chances of the descent. This terror had not crossed my mind, and I
thought as little of it as I could, needing my courage, and being near
to breaking down from the intensity of the cold.
It seems that in a _tourmente_ (for by that excellent name do the
mountain people call such a storm) it is always a matter of doubt
whether to halt or go back. If you go back through it and lose your
way, you are done for. If you halt in some shelter, it may go on for
two or three days, and then there is an end of you.
After a little he decided for a return, but he told me honestly what
the chances were, and my suffering from cold mercifully mitigated my
fear. But even in that moment, I felt in a confused but very conscious
way that I was defeated. I had crossed so many great hills and rivers,
and pressed so well on my undeviating arrow-line to Rome, and I had
charged this one great barrier manfully where the straight path of my
pilgrimage crossed the Alps--and I had failed! Even in that fearful
cold I felt it, and it ran through my doubt of return like another and
deeper current of pain. Italy was there, just above, right to my hand.
A lifting of a cloud, a little respite, and every downward step would
have been towards the sunlight. As it was, I was being driven back
northward, in retreat and ashamed. The Alps had conquered me.
Let us always after this combat their immensity and their will, and
always hate the inhuman guards that hold the gates of Italy, and the
powers that lie in wait for men on those high places. But now I know
that Italy will always stand apart. She is cut off by no ordinary
wall, and Death has all his army on her frontiers.
Well, we returned. Twice the guide rubbed my hands with brandy, and
once I had to halt and recover for a moment, failing and losing my
hold. Believe it or not, the deep footsteps of our ascent were already
quite lost and covered by the new snow since our halt, and even had
they been visible, the guide would not have retraced them. He did what
I did not at first understand, but what I soon saw to be wise. He took
a steep slant downward over the face of the snow-slope, and though
such a pitch of descent a little unnerved me, it was well in the end.
For when we had gone down perhaps 900 feet, or a thousand, in
perpendicular distance, even I, half numb and fainting, could feel
that the storm was less violent. Another two hundred, and the flakes
could be seen not driving in flashes past, but separately falling.
Then in some few minutes we could see the slope for a very long way
downwards quite clearly; then, soon after, we saw far below us the
place where the mountain-side merged easily into the plain of that cup
or basin whence we had started.
When we saw this, the guide said to me, 'Hold your stick thus, if you
are strong enough, and let yourself slide.' I could just hold it, in
spite of the cold. Life was returning to me with intolerable pain. We
shot down the slope almost as quickly as falling, but it was evidently
safe to do so, as the end was clearly visible, and had no break or
rock in it.
So we reached the plain below, and entered the little shed, and thence
looking up, we saw the storm above us; but no one could have told it
for what it was. Here, below, was silence, and the terror and raging
above seemed only a great trembling cloud occupying the mountain. Then
we set our faces down the ravine by which we had come up, and so came
down to where the snow changed to rain. When we got right down into
the valley of the Rhone, we found it all roofed with cloud, and the
higher trees were white with snow, making a line like a tide mark on
the slopes of the hills.
I re-entered 'The Bear', silent and angered, and not accepting the
humiliation of that failure. Then, having eaten, I determined in equal
silence to take the road like any other fool; to cross the Furka by a
fine highroad, like any tourist, and to cross the St Gothard by
another fine highroad, as millions had done before me, and not to look
heaven in the face again till I was back after my long detour, on the
straight road again for Rome.
But to think of it! I who had all that planned out, and had so nearly
done it! I who had cut a path across Europe like a shaft, and seen so
many strange places!--now to have to recite all the litany of the
vulgar; Bellinzona, Lugano, and this and that, which any railway
travelling fellow can tell you. Not till Como should I feel a man
again...
Indeed it is a bitter thing to have to give up one's sword.
I had not the money to wait; my defeat had lowered me in purse as well
as in heart. I started off to enter by the ordinary gates--not Italy
even, but a half-Italy, the canton of the Ticino. It was very hard.
This book is not a tragedy, and I will not write at any length of such
pain. That same day, in the latter half of it, I went sullenly over
the Furka; exactly as easy a thing as going up St James' Street and
down Piccadilly. I found the same storm on its summit, but on a
highroad it was a different affair. I took no short cuts. I drank at
all the inns--at the base, half-way up, near the top, and at the top.
I told them, as the snow beat past, how I had attacked and all but
conquered the Gries that wild morning, and they took me for a liar; so
I became silent even within my own mind. I looked sullenly at the
white ground all the way. And when on the far side I had got low
enough to be rid of the snow and wind and to be in the dripping rain
again, I welcomed the rain, and let it soothe like a sodden friend my
sodden uncongenial mind.
I will not write of Hospenthal. It has an old tower, and the road to
it is straight and hideous. Much I cared for the old tower! The people
of the inn (which I chose at random) cannot have loved me much.
I will not write of the St Gothard. Get it out of a guide-book. I rose
when I felt inclined; I was delighted to find it still raining. A
dense mist above the rain gave me still greater pleasure. I had
started quite at my leisure late in the day, and I did the thing
stolidly, and my heart was like a dully-heated mass of coal or iron
because I was acknowledging defeat. You who have never taken a
straight line and held it, nor seen strange men and remote places, you
do not know what it is to have to go round by the common way.
Only in the afternoon, and on those little zig-zags which are sharper
than any other in the Alps (perhaps the road is older), something
changed.
A warm air stirred the dense mist which had mercifully cut me off from
anything but the mere road and from the contemplation of hackneyed
sights.
A hint or memory of gracious things ran in the slight breeze, the
wreaths of fog would lift a little for a few yards, and in their
clearings I thought to approach a softer and more desirable world. I
was soothed as though with caresses and when I began to see somewhat
farther and felt a vigour and fulness in the outline of the Trees, I
said to myself suddenly--
'I know what it is! It is the South, and a great part of my blood.
They may call it Switzerland still, but I know now that I am in Italy,
and this is the gate of Italy lying in groves.'
Then and on till evening I reconciled myself with misfortune, and when
I heard again at Airolo the speech of civilized men, and saw the
strong Latin eyes and straight forms of the Race after all those days
of fog and frost and German speech and the north, my eyes filled with
tears and I was as glad as a man come home again, and I could have
kissed the ground.
The wine of Airolo and its songs, how greatly they refreshed me! To
see men with answering eyes and to find a salute returned; the noise
of careless mouths talking all together; the group at cards, and the
laughter that is proper to mankind; the straight carriage of the
women, and in all the people something erect and noble as though
indeed they possessed the earth. I made a meal there, talking to all
my companions left and right in a new speech of my own, which was made
up, as it were, of the essence of all the Latin tongues, saying--
_'Ha! Si jo a traversa li montagna no erat facile! Nenni! II san
Gottardo? Nil est! pooh! poco! Ma hesterna jo ha voulu traversar in
Val Bavona, e credi non ritornar, namfredo, fredo erat in alto! La
tourmente ma prise...'_
And so forth, explaining all fully with gestures, exaggerating,
emphasizing, and acting the whole matter, so that they understood me
without much error. But I found it more difficult to understand them,
because they had a regular formed language with terminations and
special words.
It went to my heart to offer them no wine, but a thought was in me of
which you shall soon hear more. My money was running low, and the
chief anxiety of a civilized man was spreading over my mind like the
shadow of a cloud over a field of corn in summer. They gave me a
number of 'good-nights', and at parting I could not forbear from
boasting that I was a pilgrim on my way to Rome. This they repeated
one to another, and one man told me that the next good halting-place
was a town called Faido, three hours down the road. He held up three
fingers to explain, and that was the last intercourse I had with the
Airolans, for at once I took the road.
I glanced up the dark ravine which I should have descended had I
crossed the Nufenen. I thought of the Val Bavona, only just over the
great wall that held the west; and in one place where a rift (you have
just seen its picture) led up to the summits of the hills I was half
tempted to go back to Airolo and sleep and next morning to attempt a
crossing. But I had accepted my fate on the Gries and the falling road
also held me, and so I continued my way.
Everything was pleasing in this new valley under the sunlight that
still came strongly from behind the enormous mountains; everything
also was new, and I was evidently now in a country of a special kind.
The slopes were populous, I had come to the great mother of fruits and
men, and I was soon to see her cities and her old walls, and the
rivers that glide by them. Church towers also repeated the same shapes
up and up the wooded hills until the villages stopped at the line of
the higher slopes and at the patches of snow. The houses were square
and coloured; they were graced with arbours, and there seemed to be
all around nothing but what was reasonable and secure, and especially
no rich or poor.
I noticed all these things on the one side and the other till, not two
hours from Airolo, I came to a step in the valley. For the valley of
the Ticino is made up of distinct levels, each of which might have
held a lake once for the way it is enclosed: and each level ends in
high rocks with a gorge between them. Down this gorge the river
tumbles in falls and rapids and the road picks its way down steeply,
all banked and cut, and sometimes has to cross from side to side by a
bridge, while the railway above one overcomes the sharp descent by
running round into the heart of the hills through circular tunnels and
coming out again far below the cavern where it plunged in. Then when
all three--the river, the road, and the railway--- have got over the
great step, a new level of the valley opens. This is the way the road
comes into the south, and as I passed down to the lower valley, though
it was darkening into evening, something melted out of the mountain
air, there was content and warmth in the growing things, and I found
it was a place for vineyards. So, before it was yet dark, I came into
Faido, and there I slept, having at last, after so many adventures,
crossed the threshold and occupied Italy.
Next day before sunrise I went out, and all the valley was adorned and
tremulous with the films of morning.
Now all of you who have hitherto followed the story of this great
journey, put out of your minds the Alps and the passes and the
snows--postpone even for a moment the influence of the happy dawn and
of that South into which I had entered, and consider only this truth,
that I found myself just out of Faido on this blessed date of God with
eight francs and forty centimes for my viaticum and temporal provision
wherewith to accomplish the good work of my pilgrimage.
Now when you consider that coffee and bread was twopence and a penny
for the maid, you may say without lying that I had left behind me the
escarpment of the Alps and stood upon the downward slopes of the first
Italian stream and at the summit of the entry road with _eight francs
ten centimes_ in my pocket--my body hearty and my spirit light, for
the arriving sun shot glory into the sky. The air was keen, and a
fresh day came radiant over the high eastern walls of the valley.
And what of that? Why, one might make many things of it. For instance,
eight francs and ten centimes is a very good day's wages; it is a lot
to spend in cab fares but little for a _coupe._ It is a heavy price
for Burgundy but a song for Tokay. It is eighty miles third-class and
more; it is thirty or less first-class; it is a flash in a train _de
luxe,_ and a mere fleabite as a bribe to a journalist. It would be
enormous to give it to an apostle begging at a church door, but
nothing to spend on luncheon.
Properly spent I can imagine it saving five or six souls, but I cannot
believe that so paltry a sum would damn half an one.
Then, again, it would be a nice thing to sing about. Thus, if one were
a modern fool one might write a dirge with 'Huit francs et dix
centimes' all chanted on one low sad note, and coming in between
brackets for a 'motif, and with a lot about autumn and Death--which
last, Death that is, people nowadays seem to regard as something odd,
whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world. Or
one might make the words the Backbone of a triolet, only one would
have to split them up to fit it into the metre; or one might make it
the decisive line in a sonnet; or one might make a pretty little lyric
of it, to the tune of 'Madame la Marquise'--
_'Huit francs et dix centimes, Tra la la, la la la.'_
Or one might put it rhetorically, fiercely, stoically, finely,
republicanly into the Heroics of the Great School. Thus--
HERNANI _(with indignation)... dans ces efforts sublimes_'Qu'avez
vous a offrir?_'