race and anterior to these--a race that can be proved none the less to
have lingered into the Roman period; which makes him wonder why there
is no mention of them in Latin writers, whereas Herodotus has left us
such an excellent description. (There is a hint of them in Cæsar’s
account of the Britons; and a representation, on Trajan’s Column, of
what might be a Dacian palafitte.) Sundry objects of this epoch have
been found at our end of Lake Constance. To other evidence showing
that the inner Walgau, the Ill valley between Feldkirch and Bludenz,
was at one time also or at least partially a lake, I can add a small
confirmatory fact, namely, the discovery by myself, on the 13 October,
1883, of one of those spindle-whorls of burnt clay--unornamented, this
one--which are characteristic of the lacustrine era. I drew it out of
the earth in the then fresh railway cutting below the convent of St.
Peter at Bludenz, and take some little credit to myself for detecting
it, and realizing its significance, at that tender age. I know not
whether other relics of lake-dwellers have been found up here; this
one specimen is sufficient evidence of their existence for me. It is
worth noting, too, that not a single old village of the inner Walgau
lies in the plain (which may also be due to fear of Ill floods). My
contribution to the antiquities of later periods consists of the
statuette here figured. It was found not far from Lauterach during
those Rhine-regulation works mentioned on p. 54, and I was obliged to
give its owner a diamond scarf-pin which had cost me £65--those were
opulent days--before he could be induced to part with it. The material
is bronze, all except the iron lance-blade and rivetings under the
feet; its height, to the tip of the lance, is 17½ centimeters. Every
detail in this little work of art is challenging, and I will not lose
myself in conjectures as to its age or origin.
[25] Ludwig Steub says that Droussa, Drossa, signifies aldertree or
thicket of alders, that the Rhætian form of this word was probably
_tarusa_ or _trusa_, and that the valley is called _Trusiana_ in
chronicles, “which may be translated as valley of alders.” I have come
across it also marked as _Thrusiana_, and may point out that the dwarf
mountain alder (_alnus viridis_) is to this day called “Droosle” in
our dialect. If Steub be correct, it is an odd circumstance, indeed,
that this identical tree should once more have crept into the modern
designation of this province: Vor_arl_berg, from the German _Erle_, an
elder. “Arlberg”--“Arlenberg” in some old books--has also been derived
from “Arla,” the dwarf pine, which is said to be one of its names in
“German-speaking Rhætia.” It may be so. I have never heard these pines
called “Aria” hereabouts, though they have several other names (_see_
p. 6). They are sometimes called “Adla” in the Bregenxerwald.
[26] This last part is the track from which the two young men, referred
to on p. 24, contrived to fall and kill themselves. I would take any
child up there, though not by night. It may be that they had no nails
to their boots and slipped on some rocks freshly glazed with ice,
dragging each other over the brink.
[27] Nothing is known, I fancy, of the meaning of those old place-names
like Schlins, Düns, Röns, and so forth. The origin of our Thüringen is
held to be different from that of the German province, which has been
derived from Turo, a family name; to be Celtic, and allied to Tours and
Zürich (which is also marked as Türrig in old maps); to this day our
people invariably call the place “z’Türrig.” Schlins is the birthplace
of a remarkable man, Magister Bartholomæus Bernhardt, born 1487. He was
called Velcurio from the neighboring town of Feldkirch, studied (1504)
at the new University of Wittenberg which within twenty years had
received over forty students from Vorarlberg; became a monk and (1519)
rector of that University; thereafter to the end of his life Prior of
Kemberg in Saxony. According to Sebastian Münster (1550) he was the
first priest to take to himself a legitimate wife. He died 1551. His
brother John, who seems to have been also a monk, wrote a commentary on
Aristotle’s “Physics” and was likewise married.
[28] This reads a little jaundiced. I must contemplate my oleographs.
[29] They do not exist in this _Adneter Kalk_. We noticed some fair
specimens the other day at the Freiburger Hut (Formarin).
[30] This tusk has been in the Bregenz Museum since 1859, with a
suitable inscription. A molar, presumably of the same animal, was found
by a peasant in this torrent some twenty years ago; it is now at Invery
House, Banchory, N. B.
[31] “Mounts up to 7000 feet, and probably descends not much below
3000,” says Schreiber, in his _Herpetologia Europea_. Bludenz lies at
half the latter elevation. Brehm draws the word Tattermandl from “toter
Mann,” which is a philologer’s derivation; he is anything but “tot.” It
might be a corruption by popular etymology, of the Latin and Italian
name. Bruhin says that _salamandra maculosa_ occurs at Thüringen. I
have traversed every inch of the Thüringen territory in all seasons and
weathers for the last half century, and never seen one.
[32] Mattli was right. According to Bruhin’s “Wirbelthiere Vorarlbergs”
(1868) the last wolf was shot at the Hanging Stone about 1830, though
he does not mention this fact in his interesting paper on the fauna and
flora of this cliff. The last lynx, he says, was killed about 1820; a
certain Rüf, a well-known chamois hunter of the Bregenzerwald, told me
that when he was a youngster he frequently came across old Lynx-traps
in the woods. There are woodcuts both of lynx and wolf in Schlee’s
“Rhetia”; he speaks of them as being very troublesome in the Bludenz
district (p. 61). The wild boar, long since extinct, he mentions among
the game animals of Bregenz and Dornbirn. I myself found the tusk
of one during some drainage works in the fields between Bludenz and
Rungalin. Bruhin says that a bear was killed near Nenzing in 1828 and
that another one frequented an alp there for a whole summer season in
1867. Bears were passably common when Tschudi wrote his “Thierleben der
Alpenwelt”; Berlepsch (about 1860) says that twelve to twenty of them
were still annually killed in the Alps; soon enough, I shall be one
of the few persons left who have tasted the flesh of a genuine Alpine
bear. This was at Nauders in the Tyrol in May, 1897; the beast had
probably come over from the Grisons.
[33] Since then, the same reason has been given me by two other
natives, both of whom are in a position to know. I call it
“interesting,” because observations of a recent change of climate--and
always in the direction of moisture--have been recorded in other parts
of Europe. In the Shetland Islands, for instance, they will point out
to you stretches of moor and heather once covered with grain which,
owing to increased dampness, could no longer be got to mature. The same
phenomenon has struck me also, but, on thinking it over, I attributed
it to my own imagination; hot summers, I said to myself, and clear
snowy winters, are far more likely to impress a child than rainy
weather; hence we conclude rashly that in the days of our youth the
climate was more continental. Yet how explain a state of affairs like
this: vines were cultivated here by the Romans (even during the Stone
Age, among the pile-dwellers on Lake Constance) and, assiduously, as
early as the eleventh century; in 1615, again, there were no less than
_one hundred vineyards at Bludesch alone_. The site of all of them is
now nothing but grassy slopes. Can hay be more remunerative than wine?
If not, there is perhaps something to be said for the change-of-climate
theory. They seem to have been gay people, by the way, in those
bibulous days. Many are the complaints of illicit dancing and
outrageous swearing, of “Versoffenheit und Tabakfressen”--drunkenness
and tobacco-chewing.
[34] I have just gone through Quinet’s pages again. They are a thing
apart, in French travel-literature. Here is no affectation, no mockery,
no rhetoric, no complaints about this or that, no advice to the Greeks
as to how they should govern themselves; nothing but the impressions
of a blithe and sympathetic traveler. So he wanders through this
country which then possessed “not a single two-wheeled carriage” nor
domestic beasts of any kind; he gives us poignant sketches of its utter
desolation--the fire-blackened villages and their few, half-starved
inhabitants, the putrefying corpses, skeletons by the wayside, leagues
of burnt forest and olive-groves; together with a few brighter
descriptions of life in Arcadia, of those delightful Albanian children,
and of chance meetings with the great Kolokotroni and others. What
strikes me as distinctively non-French in Quinet is his whole-hearted
love of nature, and a certain organic nobility of outlook. One would
gladly quote from those stimulating reflections on the art of ancient
Greece, but as I am on the subject of homesickness, I will merely
transcribe what he says of Sparta (then a mere hovel) which has the
true nostalgic ring. “Je laisse à d’autres à expliquer comment une
ville qui ne vous est rien, bien moins, quelques tertres de cailloux
que vous ne reverrez jamais, peuvent vous manquer plus que votre terre
natale.” Quinet, it will be seen, wrote as citizen of the world, not
of France; and that is why his book is a thing apart. It ends with
a touching farewell to the whole country. “Ni demain, ni après, ne
verrai-je plus mes hôtes de Dhervény ou de Mistra, ni les forêts
brulées, ni les os sur la grève, ni tout ce que les hommes peuvent
souffrir pour une pensée, sans cesser de la mettre à haut prix ...”
There once passed through my hands a copy of these travels marginally
annotated by some Greek reader in faded, yellow ink. One of his
observations ran to this effect: “Ce livre est tout ce qu’il doit être,
admirable de description et de vérité. Moi, Grec, je puis témoigner que
ce livre est plein de vérités et de charmes.”
[35] Avoid the lake salmon.
[36] They are buried at Bludesch--the last one in 1669--in that crypt
below the church which bears the awesome superscription: _Fui non sum.
Estis non critis._ They also built what is now the Krone inn at that
village, one of whose ceilings has taken refuge in the Bregenz Museum,
and whose present proprietor was a schoolfellow of mine at Som’s.
[37] Frastanz is famous for its beer and for its battle, on Saturday,
20 April, 1499, between the Swiss and the Imperial troops, which seems
to have been the bloodiest ever fought in this province. There is a
pretty legend connected with it (_see_ Vonbun’s “Sagen Vorarlbergs,”
Innsbruck, 1858).
[38] These “water-calves” are thin, wire-like worms of the family of
the Gordiidae; they pass through singular stages of development. We
used to be told blood-curdling tales of their effects on the human
stomach if accidentally swallowed with the water.
[39] _G. asclepiadea_, which the Germans briefly call
“Schwalbenwurzblättriger Enzian.” Old Conrad Gesner knew it as
“poison-root,” not because it was poisonous in itself, but because
cattle were said to eat it in order to cure themselves of the stings of
poisonous animals. He learnt this piece of lore, as well as the plant’s
popular name, from the botanist Aretius (Benedikt Marti), and therefore
wished to call the flower “Aretia” in honor of him. Two hundred years
later Haller, the great countryman of Aretius, did give the name Aretia
to a certain genus of plants; and it was retained by Linné.