Chapter 11

I had meant to stay for a little while at Terracina, but somehow I took a kind of "scunner" at this poor old hotel of magnificent distances and the lingering, doddering, unwashed old men who acted as chambermaids. Perhaps, too, the fish kettle as a bath was a discouragement. No bath at all can be put up with in course of time, but a fish kettle invited me to be clean and yet did not allow me to smell so. I went down to my prehistoric landlord and requested him to get me a carriage to go in to Formia, where I should be once more in touch with the rail. I instructed him to get it for me at a reasonable price, and that price I knew to be about twenty lire or francs. For the first time in my Italian experiences I had come across a hotel-keeper who was not in league with the owners of carriages. I was soon made aware of this by overhearing an awful uproar in the big outside corridor. I lighted a cigarette and went out to find the landlord and the man of carriages, a very black and hairy brigand, enjoying themselves as only southerners can when they are making a bargain or _combinazione_. The old landlord brisked up wonderfully at the prospect of such a struggle. It doubtless reminded him of days long past. It made his sluggish blood flow. I believe that he would not have missed the excitement even to pocket a large commission from his opponent. I was so rare a bird and he had not seen a traveller since heaven knows when. My Italian is poor but I understood some of the uproar. The man of carriages presumed that I was a noble gentleman who desired the best and would be ready to pay for it. The landlord retorted that even if I was a prince and a millionaire, both of which seemed likely, it was no reason I should be robbed. He suggested fifteen lire, and the outraged brigand shrieked and demanded forty. For an hour they wrangled and haggled and swore. First one made believe to go, and then the other. They came up and came down franc by franc. More than once any northerner would have anticipated bloodshed. They struggled and beat the palms of their hands with outstretched fingers. It took them half an hour to quarrel over the last two francs. And finally it was settled that the noble prince and millionaire, then leaning against the wall smoking cigarettes, was to pay twenty-two lire and to give a _pourboire_. They shook hands over it and beamed. My old landlord wiped his brow and communicated the result to me with tears of pride. I thanked him for his care of my interests and paid him his modest bill at once. He entreated me to speak well of his hotel, the Albergo Reale, and really I have done my best.

The brigand furnished me with a decent pair of horses--decent at anyrate for Italy--and I left for Formia before noon. Now I was no longer on the railway, but on the real road, the Appian Way, and I felt in a strange dream, such as might well come to one on a spot where ancient Rome, the age of the Goth, and mediæval Italy and modern times mingled. By the road were fragments of Roman tombs; at Torre dell' Epitafia was the ancient southern boundary of the Papal States; in reedy marshes by the road, and near the sea, were herds of huge black buffalo. And the sun shone very brightly for all that it was winter; the distances were fine blue; the sea sparkled, and the earth even then showed its fertility.

Eleven miles from Terracina we drove into Fondi, and the sky clouded over, as indeed it should have done, for Fondi is a gloomy and unhappy, a sullen and unfortunate-looking town. Once it was a noted haunt of brigands, and even yet, as the sullen peasants stand about its one great street, which is still the Appian Way, they look as if they regretted not to be able to seize me and take me to the hills to hold me to ransom. But Fondi, gloomiest of towns, has other stories than those of the brethren of Fra Diavolo. There is a castle in the town, once the property of the Colonnas, and in the sixteenth century this palace was attacked by a pirate, Barbarossa, a Turk and a daring one. His object was to capture Countess Giulia Gonzaga for the hareem of the Sultan. He failed but played havoc among its inhabitants and burnt part of the town. It was rebuilt and burnt again by the Turks in 1594.

We rushed through the latter part of the gloomy town at a gallop. I was glad to see the last of it and get into the clear air. Then my horses climbed the long slope of the Monte St Andrea, where the steep road is cut through hills, while I walked. And then as evening came on we swept down into Itri. This too was gloomy, but not, like Fondi, built upon a flat. This shadowy wreck of ancient times lies on hills and among them. It has an air of mountain savagery. It looks like a ruined mediæval fortress. Broken archways, once part of the Appian Way, are made into substructures for ragged, ruinous modern houses. The place is peaked and pined, desolate, hungry and savage. In it was born Fra Diavolo, who was brigand, soldier and political servant to Cardinal Ruffo when the French Republic, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, invaded the Kingdom of Naples. Once he was lord of the country from the Garigliano to Postella; he even interrupted all communications between Naples and Rome. He was sentenced to death and a price set on his head. Finally he was shot at Baronissi. In such a country one might well believe in the wildest legends of his career.

And now the night fell and my driver drove fast. He even engaged in a wild race with another vehicle, entirely careless of my safety or his own. The pace we drove at put my Italian out of my head, for foreign languages require a certain calmness of spirit in me. I could remember nothing but fine Italian oaths, and these he doubtless took to mean that I wished him to win. And win we did by a neck as we came to the _dazio consume_, the _octroi_ post outside Formia. And below me I saw Formia's lights, at the foot of the hill, and the Bay of Gaeta stretched out before me.

That night I slept in a little Italian inn by the verge of the quiet sea. There also, as at Terracina, ancient and doddering men acted as chambermaids. They wandered in with mattresses and sheets, until I wondered where the women were and what they did. And outside was a fountain where Formia drew water, as it seemed, all the night, chattering of heaven knows what. For Formia is a busy and beautiful little town. On the north side it is sheltered by a high range of hills; on the lower slopes are grown oranges and lemons and pomegranates; there also are olive-groves and vineyards. I stayed a day among the Formian folk, and then Naples, which one can almost see from the terraces above the town, drew me south. At the Villa Caposele one can see Gaeta itself to the south and Ischia in the blue sea, Casamicciola facing one. I remember how the Italian nature came out when I arranged to go to the station to take the train for Sparanise. I had but little baggage and it was put in a truck for me by the landlord of the Hotel dei Fiori. I walked into the station and the boy who pulled the truck followed. As he came up the little slope to the station I saw that eight or ten others were pretending to help him, and I knew that they would inevitably want some pence for assisting. In a few moments I was surrounded by the eager crowd. "Signor, I pushed behind!" "And, signor, so did I!" "And oh, but it was hard work, signor!" And everyone who could have had a finger on the little truck wanted his finger paid. They were insistent, clamorous, and at the same time curious to see how the stray foreigner would take it. I perceived gleams of humour in them, and to their disappointment, yet to their immense delight, for the Italian admires a degree of shrewdness, I stared them all over and burst into laughter. They saw at once that the game was up, and they shrieked with laughter at their own discomfiture. I gave the boy with the truck his lira, dropped an extra ten centesimi into his palm, and said suddenly, "Scappate via!" They gave one shout more of laughter and ran down the hill. And as for me, I got into the train and went to old quarters of mine in Naples. But I was glad to have been off the beaten track for once.

A SNOW-GRIND

Perhaps it is not wholly an advantage that most Alpine literature has been done by experts in climbing, by men who have climbed till climbing is second nature and they see Nature through their snow-goggles as something to be circumvented. That this is the attitude of most mountaineers is tolerably obvious. And though much that is good has been written about the Alps, and some that is, from some points of view, even surpassingly so, most of it is a proof that climbing is a deal easier than writing. Who in reading books of mountain adventure and exploration has not come across machine-made bits of description which are as inspiring as any lumber yard? For my own part, I seldom read my Alpine author when he goes out of his gymnastic way to express admiration for the scenery. It is usually a pumped-up admiration. I am inclined to say that it is unnatural. I am almost ready to go so far as to say that it is wholly out of place. In my own humble opinion, very little above the snow-line is truly beautiful. It is often desolate, sometimes intolerably grand and savage, but lovely it is very rarely. It is perhaps against human nature to be there at all. There is nothing to be got there but health, which flies from us in the city. If life were wholly natural, and men lived in the open air, I think that few would take to climbing. And yet now it has become a passion with many. There are few who will not tell you they do it on account of the beauty of the upper world. Frankly, I do not believe them, and think they are deceived. I would as willingly credit a fox-hunter if he told me he hunted on account of the beauty of midland landscapes in thaw-time.

And yet one climbs. I do it myself whenever I can afford it. I believe I do it because Nature says "You sha'n't." She puts up obstacles. It is not in man to endure such. He _will_ do everything that can be done by endurance. For out of endurance comes a massive sense of satisfaction that nothing can equal. If any healthy man who cannot afford to climb and knows not Switzerland wishes to experience something of the feeling that comes to a climber at the end of his day, let him reckon up how far he can walk and then do twice as much. Upon the Alps man is always doing twice as much as he appears able to do. He not only scouts Nature's obstacles, but discovers that the obstacles of habit in himself are as nothing. For man is the most enduring animal on the earth. He only begins to draw upon his reserves when a thing becomes what he might call impossible.

But this is but talk, a kind of preliminary, equivalent in its way to preparing for an Alpine walk. As for myself, I profess to be little more than a greenhorn above the snow-line. I have done but little and may do but little more. Yet there are so many that have done nothing that the plain account of a plain and long Alpine pass may interest them. I will take one of the easiest, the Schwartzberg-Weissthor, and walk it with them and with a friend of mine and two well-known guides.

The Schwartzberg-Weissthor, a pass from Zermatt to Mattmark in the Saas Valley, is indeed easy. It is nothing more than a long "snow-grind," as mountaineers say. It is supposed to take ten hours, and it can certainly be done in the time by guides. But then guides can always go twice as fast as any but the first flight of amateurs. My companion, though an excellent and well-known mountaineer, took cognisance of the fact that I was not in first-class training. And I must say for him that he is not one of those who think of the Alps as no more than a cinder track to try one's endurance. He was never in a hurry, and was always willing to stay and instruct me in what I ought to admire. It is perhaps not strange that a long walk in high altitudes does not always leave one in a condition to know that without a finger-post. Sometimes he and I sat and wrangled on the edge of a crevasse while I denied that there was anything to admire at all. Indeed, he and I have often quarrelled on the edge of a precipice about matters of mountain æsthetics.

We left Zermatt in the afternoon and walked up to the Riffelhaus, which is usually the starting-point for any of the passes to Macugnaga, or for Monte Rosa or the Lyskamm. It was warm work walking through the close pine woods. In Switzerland, where all is climbing, one does what would be considered a great climb in England in the most casual way. For after all the Riffelhaus is more than 3000 feet above Zermatt, as high, let us say, as Helvellyn above Ullswater. But then 3000 feet in the Alps is a mere preface. We dined at the little hotel, and I went to bed early. For early rising is the one necessary thing when going upon snow. It is the most disagreeable part about climbing, and perhaps the one thing which does most good. In England, in London and in towns, men get into deadly grooves of habit. To break these habits and shake one's self clear of them is the great thing for health. The disagreeables of climbing are many, but the reward afterwards is great. To lie in bed the next morning after having walked for twenty hours is a real luxury. But, nevertheless, to rise at half-past one and wash in cold water before one stumbles downstairs into a black dining-room, lighted by a single candle, is not all that it might be at the moment. Every time I do it I swear sulkily that I will never, never do it again. It is obvious to me that no one but an utter fool would ever climb anything higher than Primrose Hill, and only a sullen determination not to be bested by my own self makes me get out of bed and downstairs at all. I am only a human being by the time the sleepy waiter has given me my coffee. After drinking it and taking a roll and some butter I went into the passage and found O---- sitting on the stairs putting his boots on. He too was silent save for a little muttered swearing. It is always hard to get off camp before dawn. When O---- had finished his breakfast we found the guides waiting for us with a lantern, and we started on our walk by two o'clock or a little later. The guides at anyrate were cheerful enough but quiet. I myself became more and more like a human being, and when we got to the Rothe Boden, from which in daylight there is a wonderful view of the Alps from the Lyskamm to the Weisshorn, I was quite alive and equal to most things, even to cutting a joke without bitterness. For the most part in these early hours I spend the time considering my own folly. It is perhaps a good mental exercise.

It was even now utterly dark. The huge bulwark of the Breithorn rose opposite to us like a great shadow. Monte Rosa was very faintly lighted by the approach of dawn. The mighty pyramid of the solitary Matterhorn had yet no touch of red fire upon it. And presently one of the guides said "Look!" and looking at the Matterhorn we presently perceived that two parties were climbing it from the Zermatt side; we saw their lanterns moving with almost intolerable slowness. And far across the great ice river of the Gorner Glacier we saw other and nearer and brighter lanterns going from the Bétemps Hut on the Untere Plattje. One party was going for Monte Rosa, another for the Lyskamm Joch. We knew that they could see us too. But these little lantern lights upon the vast expanse of snow looked very strange and lonely and very human. We seemed small ourselves, we were like glow-worms, like wounded fire-flies crawling on a plain. And still we saw these little climbing lights upon the Matterhorn. One party was close to the lower hut, another was beginning to near the old hut, twelve thousand feet high. Then and all of a sudden the lights went out. There was a strange red glow upon the Matterhorn, a glow which most people, as victims of tradition, call beautiful. As a matter of fact the colour of dawn upon the rock of the Cervin is not truly a beautiful colour. It is a hard and brick-dusty red, very different from the snow fire seen on true snow peaks. Yet the scene was fine and majestic, and cold and dreadful, solitary and non-human. This fine inhumanity of the mountains is their chief quality to me. The sea is always more human; it moves, it breathes, it seems alive. I have been alone at sea in the Channel and yet never felt quite alone. The human water lapped at the planks of my boat. I knew the sea was the pathway of the world. But on the mountains nothing moves at night. There even stones do not fall; there are no thunders of avalanches; no sudden and awful crash of an ice-fall. Even when the sun is hot and the mountains waken a little these motions seem accidents. And the perpetual motion of a glacier has something about it which is cruelly inevitable, bestial, diabolic. No, upon the mountains one is swung clear of one's fellow-creatures; one is adrift; it is another world; it gives fresh views of the warm world of man.

Now we plunged downwards towards the Gadmen, whence the Monte Rosa track branches off. We went along rock, now in daylight, till we came on ice, and went forward to the Stocknubel, a little resting-place at the base of the Stockhorn. Here the guides made us rest and eat. Swiss guides are, when they are good, the best of men, and ours were of the best. The two young Pollingers of St Niklaus, Joseph and Alois, are known now by all climbers. I am pleased to think they are my friends. I wish I was as strong as either and had as healthy an appetite. As we sat on rock and ate cold meats and other horrible and indigestible matters, washed down by wine and water, we saw another party come after us, an old and ragged guide with two strange little figures of adventurous Frenchmen, clad in knickerbockers and carrying tourist's alpenstocks, bound for the Cima di Jazzi. It must be confessed that our own party looked more workman-like. For we had our faithful ice-axes, and our lower limbs were swathed with putties, now almost universally worn by guides and climbers alike. I fancied our guides looked on the other guide with some contempt He was not one of those who do big ascents. And though we were on an easy task, the Cima di Jazzi is very easy indeed, so easy that most real climbers have never climbed its simple mound of easily rising snow.

Then we went on and soon after roped, as there might be some crevasses not well bridged, and presently I perceived that we had indeed a long snow-grind before us, and I got very gloomy at the prospect and swore and grumbled to myself. For there is no pleasure to me in being on the mountains unless there is some element of risk, apparent or real matters not. For, after all, with good guides and good weather there is little real danger. The main thing is to get a sensation out of it; the feeling of absorption in the moment which prevents one thinking of anything but the next step. A snow-grind is like a book which has to be read and which has no interest. I can imagine many reviewers must have their literary snow-grinds. And so we crawled along the surface of the snow with never a big crevasse to enliven one, and the sun rose up and peered across the vast curves of white and almost blinded us. On our left was the great chain of the Mischabel, of which I had once seen the real bones and anatomy from the Matterhorn, and then came the Rimpfischorn and Strahlhorn. I once asked a guide what had given its name to the Rimpfischorn, and he answered that it was supposed to be like a "rimf." When I asked what that was he said it was something which was like the Rimpfischorn. And to our right were the peaks of Monte Rosa, Nordend and Dufourspitze, black rock out of white snow, and the ridge of the Lyskamm, and the twin white snow peaks, Castor and Pollux. And some might say the view was very beautiful, and no doubt it was beautiful, though not so to me. For I hate the long snow-fields, the vast plains of _névé_ with their glare and their infinite infernal monotony. Sometimes when I took off my snow-goggles the shining white world seemed a glaring and bleached moon-land, a land wholly unfit for human beings, as indeed it is. And though things seem near they are very far off. An hour's walk hardly moves one in the landscape. A man is little more than a lost moth; such a moth as we found dead and frozen as we crawled over the great snow towards the Strahlhorn. We sat down to rest, and I fought with my friend O---- about the beauty of the mountains, and horrified him by denying that there is any real loveliness above the snow-line. He took it quite seriously, forgetting that I was rebelling against so many miles of dead snow with never a thing to do but plod and plod, and plod again.

And then we came to the top of the pass where rocks jutted out of the snow, and a few minutes' climb let us look over into Italy, and down the steep south side of Monte Rosa, under whose white clouds lay Macugnaga. We sat upon the summit for an hour and ate once more, and argued as to the beauty of things, and the wonder and foolishness of climbing, and I own that I was very hard to satisfy. The snow-grind had entered into my soul as it always does. It is duller than a walk through any flat agricultural country before the corn begins to grow.