Part 5
Along about half-past nine, when the other guests had all been tucked away out of sight, and we were nearly dropping asleep in our chairs, the landlady and two maid servants bearing candles came to conduct us to our lodgings. I should hate to have to find that place again. It seemed miles away and through impenetrable shadows. We found the man and woman of the house sitting up with a candle to greet us and apologize for the poorness of the accommodations. Then we picked our way up a rickety outside staircase and were ushered into the two rooms which were to be ours. We had been told there was only one bed in each room, but that they were large ones, _very_ large, and we had visions of four-posters. We found just the ordinary single bed. However, it was quite too late to go elsewhere, and we were quite too tired. We said we’d manage somehow, and our guides withdrew.
The boys politely took the smaller room, and I understand they tossed pennies to see who should sleep on the floor. The apartment assigned to Belle Soeur and me was quite spacious and immaculately clean. Sleepy as we were, we took time to look at the numerous family photographs on the wall and to puzzle over a square soap-stone structure built into the side of the room, carved with names, dates and symbols. In size and shape it looked painfully like a sarcophagus. The names and dates and crosses on it added to the sepulchral effect. Could it be the custom of the Valais to keep departed relatives right on in the house where they had lived? The idea was so novel that we almost hoped it was so. In the morning, however, it proved to be nothing more exciting than a stove. Our landlady showed us the opening in the hall through which fuel was introduced into its interior. I don’t know what became of the smoke.
Our only other discovery before we lost ourselves in sleep was the date when the house was built, 1787, carved in a great rafter over our heads.
Belle Soeur and I tried to reduce our bulk by half and share the single bed, but before long she slipped off the edge without waking me and betook herself with the crocheted coverlet to the sofa.
IX
We were called in the gray dawn, and I remember the chill of the bathing water. This proved to be the most economical lodging any of us had ever had, for the charge was a franc and a half for each _bed_, so each individual share was fifteen cents!
We took breakfast at the hotel and had them put up a lunch for us, but nearly broke their hearts by declining to take a guide or even a porter. The faithful Baedeker had said “guide unnecessary in fine weather” (which it was), and we had no notion of putting ourselves in bondage to an attendant unless it was absolutely unavoidable.
After we turned aside from the Rhone valley, laid out like a patchwork quilt in cultivated fields, we saw no human being or habitation or trace of man’s labor, save an empty cow-hut or so and the path we were following, till late in the afternoon. The Eginenbach, whose course we were following, drained as wild and desolate a valley as could be imagined. It seemed to have been a great place for landslides, and every once in a while we had to pick our way over masses of fallen rock and débris. We felt like discoverers and rejoiced accordingly.
After some hours’ walking we found ourselves at the end of the valley and simultaneously lost every trace of our path. Now this was too much of a good thing, and our rejoicing was suspended.
The end of the valley was closed by a wall of rock about fifteen hundred feet high, which it was our business to surmount. On top of it was the Gries Glacier, which we were to cross, and which spilled over into our valley in an ice-fall from the base of which issued the Eginenbach. Somewhere there was a path, which at need a pack-horse could follow. But where on earth did it start from?
The land between us and the foot of the rock wall was a steep meadow covered with bowlders and broken cliff-fragments. It had been subjected to some sort of seismic disturbance, leaving fissures here and there, some of them of great depth and quite too wide to jump. We lost a lot of time retracing our steps and hunting for a way around, when we found one of these things in front of us. We understood now why Baedeker considered a guide advisable in foggy weather.
At last we all agreed that we had located the path about half-way up the wall where it crossed some snow. But how to get to it? Antonio announced his intention of making a bee-line scramble for that point, and, if necessary, following the path down to show us the beginning of it. The rest of us made a detour to the left (having already pretty well canvassed the possibilities to the right as far as the ice-fall), and were rewarded by finding the end of a really, truly, unmistakable bridle-path, hacked out of the rock in ledges and built up with masonry, which we followed steeply upward. Belle Soeur got a touch of the mountain sickness and had to lie down for a while. And I nearly slid into perdition when we crossed the hard-frozen snow gully, because I had trodden my heels over and the nails had worn smooth and my alpenstock had no iron point! Antonio was waiting for us on the other bank, and we continued upward together.
Finally we reached the top and saw before us the flat Eis-Meer which we were to cross. We beheld it with interest not untinged with emotion. For although we had been living in daily association with glaciers at Grindelwald, we had never set foot on one, and this was not only to be our maiden glacier-crossing, but we were to do it quite, quite alone!
In the meantime we sat down in a row on the path, our backs against the rock and our feet protruding out into space and ate the hard-boiled eggs and sandwiches that had been put up for us at Ulrichen. We were not as hardened to precipices then as we later became, and I remember the shiver with which I tossed egg-shells over the edge and felt as if I needed to hold on to keep from going with them.
Some rising clouds warned us to finish our meal and start on, for we could not afford to risk being caught by a fog on the Eis-Meer. The route was indicated by poles stuck up in the ice, but some were fallen, and even when standing they were not near enough together to be visible in thick weather.
It was very thrilling when we had clambered over the pile of débris at the edge and found ourselves on the flat, frozen slush of the Eis-Meer. We did not know what unfamiliar dangers might be lying in wait for us, but if they were there, we did not encounter them. There was no special beauty or grandeur in this view of a glacier. The ice had a yellowish, muddy look, and was perfectly flat. The midday sun was melting its surface, and countless little streamlets of water were running in all directions among the corrugations left by last night’s freeze. Here and there a stream would disappear suddenly into a fissure or an air-hole. These seemed to be of indefinite depth, but none which we saw that day were large enough to be a menace to life.
The threat of the clouds was not fulfilled, and we reached the other side of the glacier in half an hour or less without accident. Just beyond was the boundary between Switzerland and Italy, but there was not even a stone to mark it. Strange to say, we encountered no custom house on this route either here or later.
Presently we began to descend a path so steep that it was hard to keep one’s balance. Vegetation gradually reappeared, then some signs of humanity, an empty cow-hut or so, and finally, on a slope below us, we saw a group of men and women cutting and binding grass. And oh, the joyful Italianness of it! All the women had bright-colored kerchiefs on their heads and one wore a brilliant red skirt.
It was almost sunset when we reached the first village, Morasco, where, to our surprise, we found the inhabitants still speaking German. We asked for milk, and a statuesque girl brought us big bowls of it, warm from the cows, which we drank with great gusto, sitting flat on the little grass-plot around which were grouped the dirty stone huts which formed the village. In the next village they spoke Italian only. My question as to the road, put first in German, was not understood until turned into Italian. Think of the isolation of that handful of villagers in Morasco, shut off by the mountains from the people of Valais, whose descendants they doubtless are, and by the even more impassable language barrier from their neighbors in the valley!
We quickened our steps and reached the hotel at the Tosa Falls just before dark. Baedeker allows six and a half hours’ walk from Ulrichen to the Falls, but we had consumed nearly double the time. Of course he allows for no stops, and we had stopped for luncheon and for milk, for Belle Soeur’s mountain sickness, and for a number of photographs and five-minute rests, and we had lost about an hour hunting for our path at the head of the Eginen valley; but these things or others like them have always to be counted on, and we found it well, as a general rule, to allow from one and a half to twice the time given by Baedeker.
The Tosa Falls were disappointing. Baedeker’s double star and phrase “perhaps the grandest among the Alps” had raised our hopes too high. I doubt if any European waterfalls can look really impressive to an American who has seen his own country. They were at their best that evening after dinner when we wandered down the path a little way below the hotel and looked across and partly up at them, magnified in the dim light. There is a drop of four hundred and seventy feet, over a broad, bare, unpicturesque rock ledge.
The volume of water is respectable, but nothing more. I imagine we must have seen the river unusually full, for the upper valley was flooded to the extent of making walking difficult when we passed down.
We had our little growl about the hotel here, too, which charged more than its tariff given in Baedeker and showed a disposition, encountered for the first time on our trip, to run in extras on the bill. This might be considered a necessary accompaniment, however, of being in Italy. It was part of the “local color.”
The extent to which we had grown young through the simplicity of our life may be inferred from the character of our amusements. I can hardly realize now that I was one of four who found entertainment in the infantile game of mystifying our fellow-boarders across the dinner-table that evening by linguistic gymnastics! They were a row of unprepossessing Italians of the small-commercial-traveler type. We spoke French mostly, German a good deal, Spanish some and English a very little, while Antonio occasionally burst into Portuguese. Italian was the one thing we kept clear of, so they discussed us freely in it. They placed all our languages except the Portuguese, but what _we_ were they could not make out. It especially worried the nervous little old man who subsequently created some excitement by squeezing the waitress’ hand as she passed him. Finally the silent fat man, who had taken no part in the discussion, stopped guzzling his food long enough to emit, above his tucked-in napkin, the following oracular statement, “They are North Americans.” Evidently the others accepted this as settling the matter, and we could not but admire his perspicacity, although he had missed on Antonio.
X
The following day, during which we progressed down the Val Formazza to its juncture with the Simplon road at Crevola and up that road as far as Iselle, has a color in my memory all its own. Italy went to our heads. Antonio reverted to type. All the Latin in him came to the surface. Up to now, under the influence of our society and his English grandfather, he had been the most quiet and reserved of us all. Now he suddenly warmed up and blossomed out in shrugs and gesticulations, in song and laughter. We all caught the contagion more or less. Our feet had wings down that lovely wooded valley, and we laughed at nothing for the pure joy of living. We exchanged greetings with all the cheerful, friendly peasants whom we met, so different from the unexpansive Swiss variety. If we did not actually see Pan and the mænads, I am sure they were not far away. The sky above us was different from the Swiss sky—warmer and brighter somehow. The vegetation was richer and more luxuriant. Our northern blood bubbled and effervesced under the enchanted touch of Italy. And in Antonio the South claimed her own again.
Even the discomfort of my shoes could not seriously dampen my enjoyment. Those trodden-over heels had become nearly unbearable; but when I caught one between two rocks and tore it off, the resulting limp was worse. It was not till the next morning that Frater evolved the brilliant thought of prying off the other heel to match, which was a great relief.
Feet and shoes are always a problem on a long pedestrian trip. A shoe too tight is misery, but one too large, which allows the foot to rub and chafe, is almost as bad. Any unhardened foot is sure to develop blisters after two or three days’ walking. These rub and break and leave the flesh raw. It isn’t pleasant, but in the high altitudes, where there are no bacteria, everything heals rapidly, and if one resolutely says nothing about it and keeps on walking, it isn’t so bad as it sounds. We were all in the same fix by this time. I know now that I bestowed more sympathy than was absolutely necessary on the “blistered and bleeding feet” of Washington’s army, over which I used to shed shuddering tears as a little girl.
At San Rocco, where we lunched, we found there was still more than fifteen miles between us and Crevola. So, as we had now struck the carriage road and the daily diligence was just about due, we decided to treat ourselves to a ride.
It was a sort of uncovered omnibus, and proved to have one vacant place too few for us, so Antonio sat on the steps. The driver must surely have been exercising his calling for the first time, for he did strange and fearful things all the way. The worst was when he evolved the wonderful thought of improvising a brake by putting a piece of stout cord-wood through the spokes of the two rear wheels. Of course _something_ had to give way. The spokes cracked ominously and the wood, catching in one of the carriage springs as the wheel revolved, promptly broke it and tilted that side of the ’bus down most unpleasantly. All the passengers, except the priest and ourselves, objurgated the driver in fluent Italian, and the priest gave him some serious advice. So did Frater and Antonio, but I think theirs was in English. After this the driver became very sulky and took out his bad temper in language addressed to the poor horses, who really were not to blame. We were in momentary expectation of our vehicle’s falling to pieces, but it providentially held together while we were in it. I am sure, though, that the catastrophe must have occurred soon after we dismounted.
We sang most of the way (heaven save the mark!) partly to distract our minds from the supposed impending disaster, and partly because the priest enjoyed it so much. He kept his breviary open and his eyes fixed on it, but seldom turned a page and smiled broadly when the choruses grew joyous. He had a good face, that priest, and it was nice to see the way everybody greeted him with “_Buon’ giorno, Riverenza_” and “_Addio, Riverenza_,” on entering and leaving the stage.
Having reached Crevola, where the roads join, about four o’clock, perfectly fresh after our long drive, we decided to walk seven miles up the Simplon to Iselle before stopping for the night. The first part of the road was extremely pretty. There was a deep rocky gorge with a river at the bottom, feathery-leafed trees, and pale blue mountains, just like a landscape by Salvator Rosa. But when we came near Iselle, where the Italian entrance to the tunnel is located, the two sides of the road began to close up with shanties and rookeries. We met some thousands of workmen returning home after their day’s labor in the tunnel. Everything swarmed, reeked and crawled, and we began to wonder if we could possibly find a place to sleep in. We purchased a large watermelon, and ate it sitting on a pile of stones in a wilderness of cranes and derricks, comforting ourselves with the reflection that at least the inside of it must be uncontaminated!
We kept looking for the one hostelry mentioned by Baedeker, which proved to be at the extreme end of the long-drawn-out town. Our hearts sank as we saw it, for it was of an unspeakable griminess. Evidently it had become a workman’s boarding-house, pure and simple. We entered, with the faint hope of finding it better inside than out, but it wasn’t, and we were really relieved to learn that they had no room for us. We retraced our steps to the other hotel they told us about. It was a blaze of light. A promiscuous crowd of men were drinking and smoking on the front balcony, and a woman was banging concert-hall airs out of an atrocious piano inside. The air of dirt and slovenliness was inexpressible, and we were by no means sure the place was even technically respectable. The proprietor, who looked like a brigand, if ever I saw one, offered us one double room in the hotel and another across the street. Belle Soeur and I were not particularly timid, but we agreed that nothing conceivable would tempt us to spend the night in that hole, with our natural protectors in another building. A young German tourist, a pedestrian like ourselves, understanding our predicament, offered to share his room with Frater and Antonio, so as to keep the party under one roof. We thanked him and held his offer in reserve, but resolved to try first the one other inn which we had noticed in passing.
It proved to be kept by a gruff old German-speaking Swiss, and was, though plain, quite reasonably clean inside and of a reassuring respectability. The price—four francs apiece for lodging—struck us as high in view of the accommodations, and we said so. The reply was surprising. “If you had come to me first, it would have been less. But you visited every hotel in town and came to me as a last resort. I saw you when you passed.” The joyous shout of laughter with which we greeted this explanation seemed rather to nonplus the old man. But we made no further protest. His frankness was worth the money.
The balcony in front of our rooms overhung the noisiest river I ever heard, while our windows looked out on the main street, which was filled till midnight with an equally noisy stream of people; but it would have taken more than noise to keep us awake, now that we had clean sheets and felt safe.
We got away from unprepossessing Iselle as soon as possible the next morning. Although we had enjoyed our detour into Italy, I think all of us experienced a sense of relief when we passed the custom house a couple of miles up the road and found ourselves once more in clean, honest Switzerland.
This was an easy day for us, walking somewhat lazily up the easy grade of the excellent post-road which Napoleon was good enough to build for us. It was rather warm and we spent the entire day covering fifteen miles lengthwise and forty-four hundred feet of ascent.
The Simplon road has a great reputation for scenery, and doubtless it would be imposing if one came to it from the plains. But to us who had been living in the heart of the Oberland and who were fresh from that wild climb over the Gries Pass, it was disappointingly tame and sophisticated.
A road-house which we passed had a stone tablet cut into the wall, announcing that at this spot Napoleon stopped and drank a glass of milk. So we did the same (being probably thirstier than he) and paid several prices for the association’s sake.
We ate our luncheon under the shade of a big tree on a velvety meadow running down to a brook, where we refreshed ourselves by washing faces, hands and arms in the cold clear water.
By the way, do people generally realize that glacier water is _not_ clear? It is always thick and muddy, a regular _café-au-lait_ color. Some of the mountain streams which do not come from glaciers are almost as cold and are crystal clear.
We made it a general rule to drink no water on our tramps. Sometimes it was a great temptation, for we would get very thirsty walking, and we were always crossing cool little streams that looked the incarnation of innocence. Doubtless some of them were, but we had no means of knowing which was which.
Antonio was the thirstiest of our party and the most inclined to waive prudence and drink, but a graphic description of his shapely throat adorned with a large goiter usually had the desired restraining effect. He didn’t care a rap about typhoid, of which the danger was much greater. But we all draw the line _somewhere_, and _he_ drew it at goiter!
This reminds me that goiter must be dying out in Switzerland. I don’t think we saw half a dozen cases all summer, but I remember it as one of the horrors of my childhood when I visited Switzerland before. It seems to me nearly every other old person had one then.
There is a hotel on top of the Simplon Pass, and there was no reason in the world why we should not patronize it; but we decided it would be much more interesting to lodge at the Hospice built and endowed by Napoleon and served by the monks of Saint Bernard.
It is a big, barracks-like stone building approached by an imposing flight of steps. At the top is a rope which it is the business of the visitor to pull. It sets a huge bell vibrating in the stone hallway and one feels that one has created an undue disturbance for a mendicant. A member of the brotherhood responds, one asks for hospitality for the night, he leads one to an immaculate bedroom and tells one the dinner hour.
We had taken a provisional farewell of each other on the doorstep before pulling the bell-rope, for we knew nothing of the customs of the place and had an idea that we feminine members of the quartette would probably be herded in some wing apart and not allowed to communicate with our escorts till we left. Nothing of the kind occurred. It was just as though we had been in a hotel, without the necessity of asking prices. They did not even expect us to attend chapel. The bare stone walls and floor lent an air of conventual austerity, and the presence of the monks reminded us where we were.
When the dinner-bell rang, we assembled, along with twenty or thirty other chance guests, at two long tables, and, to our surprise, the brotherhood ate with us. The meal, though plain, was generous in quantity, and they kept pressing us to eat more with true hospitality. We found our hosts very interesting to talk to. One old man took a profound interest in America, especially in the St. Louis exposition, and plied us with questions about it. Naturally _we_ were more interested in asking about _their_ life and mission, which seemed to us a delightful but highly incongruous survival of medievalism. They admitted that the Hospice served no very useful purpose in summer, but it did a big charity work spring and fall when thousands of Italian laborers were tramping into Switzerland and back, who could not afford to stop at the hotel, and during winter, when the hotel was closed, though travelers were few, the Hospice became a life-saving necessity to those who did go over the pass. After dinner they showed us the portrait of himself that Napoleon had given the Hospice and a few other treasured relics.