Part 10

As we drank our tea and enjoyed the view, we made inquiries of the proprietor as to our path downward to Giessbach on Lake Brienz. He tried to dissuade us from attempting it, saying the path was long, rough, and hard to find, and we could not possibly get there before dark. He said that professional delicacy prevented his urging us to remain where we were over-night, which would obviously be the most sensible thing to do, so he would suggest our going to the Schynige Platte, where we _could_ arrive before dark and have a fine path all the way. The Schynige Platte is an excursion place on a lower spur of the Faulhorn ridge, connected by rack and pinion railway with Interlaken. We had resolutely kept away from it all summer and had no notion of visiting it now. Neither did we want to stay all night at the Faulhorn. So we resolved to try for Giessbach and trust to luck to get _some_ shelter if we did not make our destination.

The proprietor disapprovingly pointed out our route as far as he could. No one had been that way for some days, and in the meantime there had been a heavy fall of snow, so the first part of our progress was not rapid, as we sunk half-way to the knees at each step.

After passing a curious rocky pinnacle like an upward-pointing finger, which had been our first land-mark, we got rid of the snow and were able to descend quite rapidly across a rock-strewn plain. It was here that we heard the Whistling Marmots and marked one more of our life ambitions achieved.

I do not know why we had yearned so intensely all summer for whistling marmots, but we had,—even more than for edelweiss, which is too obvious. Baedeker has a way of mentioning them in very solitary places like the Gries Pass or the Rawyl, but we had never met them as scheduled. We had seen a marmot in captivity in Grindelwald, but he was a very sad and depressed little furry beast who would never have dreamed of whistling. But here, when we were least thinking of them, we must have walked right into a marmot colony. We heard their little voices calling to each other, whistling unmistakably, and saw them scurrying to their holes among the rocks as we approached.

We lost our trail a dozen times, but having some abandoned cheese huts just above the woods to direct ourselves to, it did not greatly matter.

Once among the trees, how dark it got all of a sudden! We took the wrong path and found ourselves on the edge of nothing, retraced our steps and started again. We were going just as fast as we could, racing with the darkness, but we soon realized that, so far as Giessbach was concerned, the race would be a losing one. It was so piercingly cold that a night in the open air sounded painful, and we kept on in the hope of finding _something_.

Just in the last moment of twilight we emerged from the thick woods onto a grassy shoulder upon which was an empty cow-shed. Above it was a loft full of hay. On the ground was a ladder. Nothing was locked. Perhaps fifteen hundred feet below us we could see the roofs of a group of huts, which appeared to be inhabited—about such a place as Nieder Rawyl. It was very doubtful if we could find our way down to them through the woods, so dark had it become, and we decided that a clean hayloft to ourselves would be better than the hospitality they could offer anyhow. So we decided to stay. Fortunately we had ample left from our luncheon to serve us for supper, and by skimping a bit, we could save something for breakfast.

We spent a long time trying to start a bonfire at which to warm ourselves and dry our snow-wet shoes. It could have been done by using loose boards which we saw lying around outside, but we had conscientious scruples against making ourselves quite so much at home (or _some_ of us had) and tried to construct the fire from brush gathered in the woods, all of which appeared to be water-soaked.

At last, however, Frater’s bonfire skill triumphed, and we sat down around a cheerful little blaze and steamed out our very chilly water-logged shoes and dress skirts and watched the moon rise over the mountain top. Then, when sufficiently warm, dry and sleepy, we climbed up the ladder into the loft, buried ourselves deep in the hay, and were soon lost to consciousness.

Anybody who has a lingering idea that there is something poetic in sleeping among the fragrant hay of a loft, had better revise his views. It is distinctly tickly and scratchy and full of dust. And the rats run in and out. However, it is clean and warm, and if you’re tired enough, it will serve.

In the early gloaming we were awakened by voices outside. Two men were circumnavigating our hut engaged in earnest discussion. Probably they belonged in the huts below, had seen our bonfire the night before and had come up to find out what damage had been done. Being satisfied on this point, they departed. The ladder was standing against the side of the barn where the loft door was and Belle Soeur’s alpenstock was lying on the ground below, so they must have known we were still there, but they did nothing to disturb us. Meanwhile we, having nothing to gain by an interview, lay low and held our peace. Each of us thought that the other two were asleep and he or she was the only moral coward, but we found later that we were three of a kind! Really, though, the consciousness of being a trespasser _does_ put one at a disadvantage, and the inability to communicate freely with a patois-speaking peasantry increases the handicap.

After our involuntary hosts had taken themselves away, we emerged from our several nests and picked the wisps of hay from each other. It was very cold and gray at that hour, and the inadequate fragments of stale sandwiches left from the day before were not the most cheering sort of breakfast. When we had consumed the last crumb and performed scanty ablutions in an ice-water brook near by and left everything snug and tight at our late lodgings, we started downward. Our muscles were painfully stiff at first, but gradually limbered up.

About nine o’clock we reached an outlying refreshment house overhanging the Giessbach, whose course we had been following for some time, and here we stopped for a belated, but much appreciated, _café-au-lait_.

The rest of the day was, from the point of view of a trio of tramps who had spent the night in a hayloft after forgathering with whistling marmots, distinctly civilized and commonplace. We reached the level of Lake Brienz and skirted it to the upper end where the Aar flows in from the Meiringen Valley. We cut across to the Brünig Pass road and followed the gentle grade upward, lunching late (in view of the nine o’clock breakfast) at a roadside restaurant.

Not only railroad and carriages, but even automobiles go over the Brünig, so it can be imagined that it is not strenuous climbing, nor are its views, though attractive, grandiose.

After leaving the summit, we fairly annihilated space, and by dinner-time had reached the village rejoicing in the euphonious name of Giswil. We put up at a rather comfortable inn where we seemed to be the only guests, but the proprietor’s children appeared so incredibly numerous that we decided he had gone into the hotel business to get their groceries at trade rates.

I asked the maid waiting on us at dinner what time the train left for Lucerne in the morning. She said she wasn’t sure, and would I come down and examine the time-table in the lower hall? It was a very large and complex sheet, some three feet by six, but I thought I could master a time-table—_any_ time-table. We all have our little vanities. I took plenty of time at it and at last found the column and the correct direction and emerged triumphant with the information that the train left at 7.15, and accordingly gave careful directions that our coffee was to be ready at 6.30 and we were to be called at 6.

Things were just a trifle late next morning, and as we were not sure of the distance to the station, we bolted our breakfast and hurried about the paying of our bill and walked at an uncomfortably rapid gait, arriving with just the desirable five minutes to spare, according to our watches. To our surprise the ticket office was closed. So were the baggage office and the freight office. There was not an employee in sight. Were our watches wrong? Had the train already left? Even so, it seemed incredible that the premises could have been completely deserted so quickly. At last, having nothing else to do, I began to study the time-tables on the walls. And then I made a discovery. The train we were trying to take ran only on Sundays and the 12th of May, and it wasn’t either! The regular week-day train wasn’t due for an hour.

I wish to say that the conduct of my companions at this juncture was truly magnanimous. The laugh was very distinctly on me, but they didn’t laugh it. They expended all their risibility on the 12th of May. That annual date on which our train ran seemed to tickle their funny-bones exquisitely. They never once reproached me for the too-hastily swallowed coffee and the precious minutes of sleep that might have been, but wandered off to visit the cemetery or some such cheerful spot, while I read Baedeker and kept guard over the knapsacks in the waiting-room.

If there _had_ been a train when we thought and we had only five minutes before it was due, we certainly should have missed it, for I think it took the station-master a good twenty minutes to make out our tickets. They involved a whole ten miles of railroad travel from Giswil to Alpnachstad, and a boat trip from there to Lucerne. The tickets were long folding affairs in many sections, as for a trip across the continent, filled in at many places with writing (there was also a book in which the poor man had to write an extraordinary amount), and I think they cost us eighteen cents apiece!

The approach to Lucerne by boat instead of by train must be a very pleasant one in any respectable sort of weather, but our day had turned into a gray drizzle with a gale of freezing wind. Mists and clouds shut out all the mountains, and the face of the lake was lashed into a sort of impotent baby fury. It was this kind of a day, I am sure, when Gesler had Tell unbound to take charge of the imperiled row-boat. It was not perilous on a modern lake passenger boat, but neither was it joyous.

XX

When we arrived at Lucerne nobody shanghaied us in the pleasant Geneva way, and as it was not even lunch-time, we resolved to walk about and explore the town before deciding where to lodge. We fed the ducks and swans, wandered over the covered wooden bridge inspecting the quaint old paintings of the Dance of Death, beat around through the older part of the town, and all at once coming back to the river, beheld the Gasthaus zu Pfistern.

We had no sooner seen it than we recognized our fate. The wall toward us was covered with frescoes representing a great tree spreading from cellar to garret, from whose branches, instead of fruit, hung coats of arms. Away up near the top in very big figures was the date 1579. Down below stood a gigantic warrior in coat of mail with curling plumes. He was a very satisfying warrior. The hotel was built directly upon the river’s brink and its lowest story was hollowed out in lovely arcades, where a fruit market was held.

Let no one suppose it was a stylish hotel. It had been chosen as the headquarters of the noncommissioned officers of the artillery regiment stationed at Lucerne. The dining-room was full of cartridges and flags belonging to them and trophies of the Schützenfest societies which also met there. Otherwise I imagine the patronage was chiefly from the smaller class of commercial travelers. Of tourists, there was never a hint.

How we reveled in it! The clean little bedrooms looked out pleasantly over the river and city. But it was the dining-room that charmed us most, with its great blackened old sideboard twenty feet broad and the red wine poured from huge stoneware flagons. They had a genius of a cook at that place and another genius presiding over the dining-room. I know not whether she was an employee or the proprietor’s wife or daughter, but she was a most cheerful, capable, tactful young woman who put everyone in a good humor on the spot. She told us something of the history of the house. It had been built in 1579 as a guildhall for the bakers, whose ancient name, now obsolete, was Pfistern. The original frescoing had been preserved outside, with only the necessary touching up from time to time. This great dining-room, with its huge rafters and lofty ceiling, had been the original meeting-place of the craftsmen. Except that she was evidently a very busy person, I think we should have lingered to talk to her half the afternoon instead of going out to see the city.

Once outside we did, perforce, _faute de mieux_, what everybody does, visited the ghastly War and Peace Museum, the curio shops and Thorwaldsen’s Lion.

The next morning was scheduled for the ascent of Rigi, but the weather continued too thick. We spent the forenoon about Lucerne, shopping, having a look at the old city ramparts and the two-spired church. We still had a lingering hope that it might clear off in time for us to go up Rigi by rail. But it did not, and we took an afternoon steamer for Tell’s Chapel, which marks the spot where he is supposed to have jumped ashore that day of the storm, pushing away the boat with his foot as he did so, and thus escaping Gesler’s vengeance and getting the chance to arouse the slumbering revolt against Austrian tyranny.

The Tell Chapel, with its paintings of incidents in Tell’s life, is a sort of national pilgrimage spot whose sacredness is not greatly reduced by the fact that all educated Swiss now admit that Tell himself was a myth. It is only sentimental foreigners who know nothing about him but his name and the apple story and perhaps Schiller’s play, who insist on believing in his reality.

From the chapel we walked along the very beautiful Axenstrasse that skirts the lake to its terminus at Flüelen, regretting the clouds which shut out all but the nearest mountains. Thence we continued by ordinary highroad to Altdorf, where the hat and apple incidents are supposed to have taken place. They have a rather fine but aggressively modern statue of Tell and his little son (erected in 1895) in the village square. During the summer the villagers play Schiller’s Tell, once a week, I think. We had intended to time our visit to Altdorf for one of these representations. But the week devoted to influenza had delayed us just too long, and the dramatic season was over. The place is so accessible to tourist routes that the play has probably become sophisticated anyhow.

We dined that evening at an inn near the station and played cards to keep awake till the St. Gotthard train came along. It was a slow and crowded train, and we were very glad to arrive about 11 P. M. at Goschenen and follow the porter of the Lion to that very excellent hotel.

Next morning we were up betimes and starting afoot over the St. Gotthard carriage road. It is a very fine piece of engineering, zigzagging back and forth in long loops to keep the grade easy. The scenery is, like that of the Simplon, Tête Noire and other carriage roads, picturesque rather than magnificent. One of the chief scenic elements is furnished by the Reuss, a foamy mountain stream whose course the road follows, the interest culminating at the famous Devil’s Bridge.

Everybody knows the story which has been attached, with local modifications, to numerous other bridges and buildings, about the engineer who, finding his task too great for human skill, invoked the aid of the Prince of Darkness. This potentate gave his assistance in return for the soul of the first passenger who should cross the bridge. Whereupon the engineer, taking a mean advantage of the Devil’s confiding nature, drove over a dog.

On the face of the rock above the bridge there is a very crude painting much reproduced on local postal cards of his Satanic Majesty, very black, with horns and tail and breathing fire from his nostrils, jumping back in surprised disgust before the polka-dotted animal of uncertain species who is trotting across the bridge.

What interested us more than the hackneyed devil legends was the armored gate with loop-holes for musketry, whereby the Swiss government can, when it chooses, effectually close this road. In connection with the mountain batteries known to exist on surrounding heights, this gate would seem to make it practically impossible for an invading army to get by.

While discussing the thoroughness of the Swiss defenses, we recalled the death of an Italian staff-officer a few weeks before who had “accidentally fallen off of a precipice” while taking notes in the forbidden Swiss zone, and we decided we did not care to explore the near-by heights.

Not far from here was the scene of a fight during the Napoleonic wars, and a monument with an inscription in exotic characters is dedicated to the Russians who fell there.

At Andermatt quite a large detachment of troops is stationed, and indeed we met members of the Swiss citizen soldiery all along this road.

It was our intention to go to the summit of the pass and then return to Hospenthal for the night, but a thick snow-storm shut in around us, and at the fork, which we afterwards learned was only about a mile from the Hospice at the summit, we evidently took the wrong branch, and arriving nowhere, grew discouraged and turned back. We lost nothing in the way of scenery, as it was impossible to see ten feet in any direction.

At a considerably lower level we came upon a little road-house and entered to get thawed out. Frater and I called for hot milk, but Belle Soeur rashly ordered coffee. I do not know of what strange herb this drink was brewed. Certainly not the coffee bean. We suspected catnip mixed with a decoction of hay. The color was green and the flavor incredibly unattractive. Belle Soeur decided that she also preferred milk.

We put up that night at the Hotel de la Poste in Hospenthal, than which I never saw a cleaner nor more severely plain little inn. The postmaster’s wife ran it, and we found her a most admirable Hausfrau. The postmaster was, I don’t doubt, a most worthy character also, but he and I had a battle royal over my mail because I had no passport to claim it with. I told him a visiting card was enough at Geneva or Lucerne, and he said the postal authorities there must be very lax. I showed him Frater’s passport, which he said was all right for _him_, but no good for _me_. However, he handed me out my letters after a while, but declined to turn over a package which Anna, in a characteristic spasm of caution, had had the unhappy thought of registering. I knew just what articles it contained and told him in detail, even to the darns, requesting him to open the package if he wished to verify my statement. This suggestion seemed to alarm the old man, and he turned it over to me intact, fortifying himself only by taking my signature and address in a dozen or so different places. But he regarded me with strong disapproval, and frowned when we met, and I suspect his kind old wife put an extra egg or so into the omelet to make up!

Hospenthal is a rather quaint little village dominated by a robber baron’s castle—at least, I think he was a robber baron. Anyhow it makes a good photograph, and we took several next morning as we started out, rejoicing in sunshine and blue sky.

We bought some black bread and cheese to carry along for luncheon (all we could get, but it turned out delicious—no hardship at all), had the village shoemaker drive some new nails into our soles, and swung off gayly to the right on the Furka Pass road. This, with the Grimsel, is one of the most interesting of the carriage-road passes, the scenery toward the end being quite wild and Alpine. The sparklingly clear and bracing atmosphere added much of course to our enjoyment.

At a road-house where we stopped to get something liquid after the dryness of our admirable bread and cheese, we found the wall adorned by a charcoal cartoon of slightly bibulous aspect, left probably by some traveling artist in lieu of paying his bill, and the following ingenious poem:

“Das Wasser ist von jeder Zeit Die Best von aller Menschengaben. Mir aber lehrt Bescheidenheit Man muss nicht stets vom Besten haben.”

Which may be translated: Water is at all times the best of all the gifts to man. Modesty, however, teaches us that we should not always take the best.

We had intended stopping for the night at the hotel on the summit of the pass, but were so unfavorably impressed by the financial shiftiness of the polyglot clerk who airily told us that he spoke equally well “_französisch_, _englisch_, _italienisch_—_Was Sie wollen_,” and tried to double the Baedeker prices on us, that we turned him down and walked on. Truth to tell, we felt grave doubt as to whether we should find any other accommodation short of the Rhone Glacier Hotel, which it would have been highly inconvenient for us to go down to. But principle is a great thing, and we were prepared to sacrifice ourselves for it.

Luck was with us, though, and we found the Bellevue, a first-class hotel on the upper brink of the Rhone Glacier, still open, though preparing to close on the morrow. We enjoyed an excellent dinner and night’s rest after watching the lovely views of glacier, valley and snow mountains pass through the various phases of sunset, twilight and full moon.

In the morning we started out with a guide across the glacier and over the Nägelis Grätli, a stony height on the far side, from which the views are very fine, and the path descends directly to the Grimsel Hospice.

To our surprise we found ourselves making far better time than the Baedeker schedule. We mentioned this to the guide, who said that the path across the glacier had been shortened several years ago, but Baedeker hadn’t found it out yet. “Everything in this world changes, except Baedeker,” he said, and was so much flattered by our appreciation of his _bon mot_ that he repeated it at ten-minute intervals during the rest of the trip.

As soon as we saw our way clear ahead, we sent back our guide, who was a little unduly addicted to his cognac bottle as well as to his Baedeker anecdote, and continued alone.

The Grimsel Hospice and the two turquoise lakes lay right below us. A yodel came floating up through the clear air, and standing out in front of the hotel we soon identified the stocky form of Fritz Biner waiting for us.

XXI

At the Grimsel we received and sent off mail, including Belle Soeur’s and my knapsacks, that we might be in the lightest possible marching order. We also invested in provisions,—ground coffee, cheese, bread, chocolate and hard-boiled eggs. And Frater, at Biner’s suggestion, humbled his pride so far as to purchase an alpenstock. Also we indulged in an excellent lunch.

The weather had been beautiful all the morning, as it had been the day before, but it did not look so well after luncheon. The sky was graying, and there was a suggestion in the air of approaching snow. However, it was not definitely bad and might be all right by morning, so Biner thought there was no reason for postponing our start.

The method of crossing the Strahlegg is to leave the Grimsel in the afternoon and spend the night at the Dollfus Pavilion, one of the Alpine Club refuge huts, and get a very early start for the long day’s trip to Grindelwald. There is another club hut, the Schwarzegg, on the Grindelwald side of the pass, where the second night can be spent if one is belated—a most fortunate circumstance for us as it turned out.