Part 9

We felt that we must surely come upon the cattle pretty soon and that then we could buy some milk. The afternoon was half gone, however, before we saw a trace of anything alive, and then it was a very small boy leading a pig way off in the distance. We hailed him and with some difficulty made him understand that we wanted to buy milk. The patois of that region is a fearful and wonderful thing. He agreed to lead us to the cow châlets, but as it was away from our path, and seemed very, very far, we were several times on the point of giving up the quest. However, he kept encouraging us, assuring us we were nearly there, and finally emerging over a grassy shoulder, we came upon the herd of several hundred cows in a sort of pocket.

It was the milking hour, and we could not have struck it better for our wants. The head-man, or Senn, I suppose, escorted us up to the cheese-hut and gave us stools to sit on, while he ladled out foamy warm milk from a bucket in a half gourd and passed it first to one and then another, apologizing for his lack of conveniences. Imagine a dozen men living up there for four months on end with never a cup or a bowl or a ladle among them except this solitary gourd!

There were two huge iron caldrons under which fires were burning and into which the men poured their buckets of milk as they brought them in. This was to make cheese. We asked them to sell us some, but they said they were not allowed to. They gave us, however, a bit of the old, last year’s cheese which they ate themselves and declined any remuneration for it. As it was a present, it would be impolite to say what we thought of it.

All the men crowded into the hut and gazed at us with interest, but only the two intelligent ones in charge did any talking. Perhaps the others spoke only patois, but they were of the utterly stupid heavy type I have already referred to.

We asked about our route, and they told us it was absolutely out of the question for us to get over the pass that day, as we were not more than half way, and it was already four o’clock. We must pass the night at the châlets of Nieder Rawyl, the last pastures on this side of the summit. Would the people there give us shelter, I asked. The man smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “They will have to,” he said.

Very much refreshed by the milk and the little rest, we bade farewell to our friends and made our way back to our path, then onward at a quickened pace, lest darkness come upon us before we reached the huts of Nieder Rawyl. We were getting pretty high now, and the wind that blew down from the snow belt made us feel that a night in the open air would not be a pleasant experience.

For me, the last hour of walking that afternoon was a nightmare, my head swimming with weakness and fever, my feet staggering foolishly. I kept on because I had to. Fortunately, we had no difficult climbing to do, nothing requiring steadiness, no precipices to skirt, just a steep, stony path.

About six o’clock we came in sight of a group of stone cheese and cattle huts, which we knew must be what we were in search of. The milking and cheese-making were just over, and a group of men were standing in a doorway. We went up and addressed the most intelligent-looking. Could they give us shelter for the night? The sun had already set behind the mountains, the long shadows were falling over the valley. It was perfectly obvious that we could not go on into that bare region of rock and snow beyond. Very gravely and courteously the head-man assured us that he had no way of making us comfortable, but that what they had was at our service.

He led us to a little one-room stone hut. It had no windows, and the door consisted of a couple of boards to keep the cattle from straying in, I suppose. It did not keep out the mountain wind, but as there was no other means of ventilation, perhaps it was as well. There was a raised stone platform to build a fire on. Our host brought us some sticks and started them blazing and hung an iron kettle full of milk over the fire to heat for us. He owned a granite-ware cup and a sort of spoon whittled from a cow’s horn, which he placed at our service. There was a long wooden bench which we drew up in front of the fire and sat on while we made our supper of sweet chocolate and hot milk. Our bread and eggs were gone by now.

About half the hut was occupied by a raised wooden sleeping platform, covered with musty-looking hay. Four greasy gray blankets were there, too, which were put at our disposal. They were not inviting-looking, but the bitter Alpine cold was getting into our bones, and we were in no position to pick and choose. We did not even take our shoes off, but each wrapping a blanket outside of whatever coats and wraps we had with us, disposed ourselves on the hay pile and awaited slumber. Personally, I could not have held up my head another minute if the world had been coming to an end. But tired as I was, I could not sleep.

Our host and another man came in and sat on the bench, heated milk and drank it with their supper, which consisted of hunks of black bread and strips of last year’s cheese, which they cut off with their pocket-knives from a stone-hard slab. When they had finished eating they still sat on the bench and kept up a desultory talk. Hours passed and they still stayed. At last one of them lay down on the platform by the embers of the fire and the other stretched himself out on the bench. Whether they slept or not I cannot say, but their conversation ceased. We had been wondering why they stayed so late, but it dawned upon us then that, having given us their beds and blankets, they had no place else to go. Belle Soeur and I exchanged whispered comments still from time to time, but at last she also went to sleep. Frater and Antonio had dropped off first of all like nice tired children.

After this I kept vigil with the fleas. Their name was legion. I have met this voracious animal in various parts of the world, Italy, Egypt, California and Japan, but never in such concentrated swarms! What between them and my headache and fever, and the place I was in, and the company I was keeping, I did not succeed in forgetting my miseries till daylight was appearing wanly in the doorway.

There had been the pigs, too. It seems our hut was built on a steep slope, and though we had entered it from the level of the ground, in the back it had a basement. This was occupied by the pigs. And surely those brutes must have had uneasy consciences, for all night long they kept up the most unholy noises! There were also waves of odor from the piggery, which surged up to us from time to time.

Our hosts had gone out about their work when I woke up, and my companions were starting the fire for breakfast. I did not feel very gay, but the fever was gone and my head was very much clearer, especially after I had bathed it in the chilly brook outside. We ate some more chocolate and drank some more milk and were ready to set out on our way.

When we wished to settle for our entertainment, we found our hosts were charging only for the milk we had consumed, and were quite dazzled by our munificence in adding five francs for lodging. Evidently they did not expect it in the least, and had given up their beds and blankets to us in a spirit of true hospitality.

One of the men offered to show us the path if we could wait about half an hour till he finished his work, but as we had had no great difficulty in finding the path so far, we fallaciously argued that it would be the same the rest of the way, and declined with thanks.

About half a mile beyond the huts the path came to an abrupt end at the beginning of an open meadow, bounded on the far side by a wall of rock. Somewhere beyond that meadow the path began again and led up the rock wall into the Alpine wilderness above. But where? No scanning by the eye could reveal it. Each of us had a different theory as to likelihood. We crossed the meadow and skirted the base of the cliff looking for that vanished path.

At the extreme right, a stream tumbled down a gully in a series of cataracts. By the near bank there had been a slide of stones and loose earth, making a place several hundred feet in height, which, though terrifically steep, was not, like most of the wall, absolutely perpendicular. Above this we saw a horizontal line in the rock, which _might_ be the path.

Somewhat dubiously we decided to try. I never encountered anything more discouraging than that slide of loose stones. With every step we took upward we slid back about nine-tenths of a step. Sometimes more. And we were never sure that we would be able to stop ourselves till we struck bottom. The higher we went, the more precarious and crumbly it became. We clambered on all fours. Belle Soeur and I could never have gotten up if the boys had not helped us. Antonio dubbed it the Gutter Spout of Heaven. I don’t know about the Heaven part, but the Gutter Spout was all right.

We kept encouraging each other with the nearer approach of that horizontal line in the rocks. When at last we got there, breathless and exhausted, we found it was _not_ a path, but merely a natural ledge. How far it led, or whether it led _anywhere_, we did not know.

Belle Soeur’s heart was making itself felt just then, so we had to sit down to let her recover, and while doing so, we held a council of war. We were about half-way up the rock wall now, and none of us wanted to throw away all the time and labor we had put in getting there by going back. Also, since the waterfall marked the extreme right-hand boundary of the rock wall, the path, if it existed at all, must lie to the left. Therefore, by following our hard-won ledge to the left, we should cross the path,—unless indeed the ledge came to an end too soon. At all events we decided it was worth trying, so as soon as Belle Soeur’s heart had returned to the normal, we started. After edging our way along the ledge in a gingerly fashion for about fifteen minutes, our faith was rewarded, for we made out an unmistakable path zigzagging upward, and had no further difficulty in reaching it.

The joy of finding one’s path again is so great that I do not know but it makes worth while having lost it! With renewed vigor we climbed upward to the plateau-like region of snow drifts and rock ledges that awaited us, which some ironist has named the “Plain of Roses.” We should have had fine views of the Valais mountains but for the clouds which enveloped them. Our immediate foreground was wild and desolate enough, but as none of the peaks were more than two thousand feet higher than we were, our views lacked grandeur of outline. For pure bleak Alpine solitude, though, the walk of the next few hours was unrivaled.

We quenched our thirst with handfuls of snow from the virgin drifts around us. This is said to be a bad thing to do, but we experienced no ill effects either on this or other occasions. At noon we sat down on a rock and ate cheese and chocolate. This was the fourth meal we had made from this combination of foodstuffs, with the addition of milk at the second and third, bread at the first and hard-boiled eggs at the first and second. This time there were no accessories. None of us felt much of a craving for either cheese or chocolate for some time thereafter.

The summit of the pass (just under eight thousand feet) is marked by a shelter hut and a great wooden cross, whose bare arms, stretched out over the wilderness of rock and snow, have a singular impressiveness. The cross marks the boundary between the cantons of Valais and Berne.

Another hour’s walking, past a cold gray Alpine lake, brought us to the northern edge of the plateau, where the green and fertile Simmenthal lay spread out at our feet between the piled-up Bernese mountains.

Our path plunged down steeply now, and about three o’clock we reached the outpost of civilization, what Baedeker calls a rustic inn—at Iffigen Alp. We asked with lively interest what they had to eat and found they had neither meat nor eggs. What _did_ they have, then? Coffee, milk, bread, butter, honey and cheese.

We balked at the last-named, but ordered a large supply of everything else. As soon as the maid brought it in, we told her to begin getting ready a second installment just as large. And how we did eat! Was _ever_ anything so good as that bread and butter and honey, except the long drafts of _café-au-lait_ that washed it down?

All day long my health had been improving and my cold disappearing, and this ambrosial meal seemed to complete the cure. We asked for soap, water and towels, combed our hair before a looking-glass, put on clean collars, and looked so respectable that we hardly knew each other. For myself, I felt as if I had just returned to life and the joy of it from a most unpleasant dream. The treatment I had given my influenza had been heroic,—a sort of kill-or-cure. But it had happened to cure, and in a phenomenally short time. The rest of the family, who took their share comfortably at home, also took longer to get over it.

Greatly refreshed, we left the “rustic inn” of blessed memory and swung happily down the path past the pretty Iffigen waterfalls. We soon found ourselves on a wagon-road which led us in the course of a few miles to Lenk, a village of considerable size with thermal springs and the attendant hotels and health-seekers. The specialty here is throat and nose trouble.

We spent the night at Lenk and in the morning walked the eight and a half miles down the valley to Zweisimmen.

The Simmenthal is famous for its cattle, and as we happened to have struck the day on which they were coming home from the high pastures, the whole eight and a half miles was through a procession of moist milky cattle. Sometimes they filled the road so that it required ingenuity to get past. They were big, handsome, sleek creatures, and seemed to be perfectly gentle.

The Rawyl wilderness separates not only the two cantons, but the two languages as with a sharp knife. There is no lapping over at the edges. The herdsmen at Nieder Rawyl spoke French, but no German, and the waitress at Iffigen Alp spoke German and never a word of French.

Zweisimmen is the railway terminus. Here we took train to Spiez, and hence to Interlaken and home in the usual manner.

Thus ended the second trip.

XVIII

The next eight days we consecrated, none too joyously, to the influenza. Frater and Belle Soeur came down with it almost immediately and simultaneously and were put in quarantine. We were determined, if possible, to protect the Mother from contagion, as a cold is a long and serious matter with her. So the two invalids were shut up in the dining-room with books and easy-chairs and a cribbage-board and had their meals served there till they emerged from the fever and sneezing stage. Just as they were convalescent, the two Babes and the domestic staff got it, but in a very light form. Then Antonio, who had been boasting of his immunity, succumbed and had to postpone his intended departure. At last everybody emerged triumphant from quarantine. And it had been successful. The Mother escaped contagion.

Antonio was to leave for Paris, Liverpool and New York next day, the 14th of September, and we were all very sad at the thought of the first break in our happy family. Also we wanted to make the most of the remaining time, so (it sounds singularly idiotic written down in black and white after this lapse of sobering time) we sat up all night! The Mother retired about midnight. Frater had already done so, but we decided he had better get up.

Then followed an interesting “rough-house” in which the young men took the star rôles and Belle Soeur and I acted as chorus. It would be difficult to give an adequate history of the night, but it involved an exciting amount of lockings out and lockings in, climbing to the second-story balcony, and the smashing of a kitchen window by a group of “outs” who wished to be in. This brought Anna and Suzanne to their windows above in great excitement, followed by some disgust when they learned it was only “_Les Messieurs qui s’amusent_.”

Between three and four we invaded the kitchen and made coffee and ate up the cake on hand. Then we played cards till breakfast time. Subsequently, most of those concerned took a nap. The housekeeper and mother of a family, however, was unable to.

Belle Soeur also was unable to slumber long, as she had promised to produce a birthday cake before noon. For this same day which was to witness the flitting of Antonio was further made notable as the eighth anniversary of the appearance on this mundane stage of the Elder Babe. It had been arranged that the birthday feast, including ice-cream from the village confectioner’s and the birthday cake with its eight candles, was to occur at midday, so that Antonio might take part in it.

It was not a wonderfully gay little party, though we strove to make it so, for we all felt that this was the beginning of the end of a fairy-story summer, the breaking up of our little band of Arcadians.

It was raining in doleful sympathy as we walked down to the station with the departing Antonio and stood on the platform watching the chunky little train that bore him away to the every-day workaday world outside of Switzerland.

We missed him very much. The “tropical bird,” as we had occasionally called him, had certainly brought an element of color and brilliancy into our gray Anglo-Saxon lives.

The next day we had a diversion in the shape of an entirely unexpected call from an American friend, who stayed to dinner and spent the evening with us, but flitted away by an early train the following morning.

It was a very blue and brilliant morning (the rainclouds all dissolved and scattered), and we set forth on the Elder Babe’s real birthday party, which the weather and Antonio’s departure had made impossible on the day itself. It was to be a glacier party and involve a guide and roping!

We picked out the guide haphazard from the little group we passed just before reaching the Upper Glacier. He was a heavily-bearded, short, but powerfully built man of between forty-five and fifty, and his name was Fritz Biner. We were destined to know him much better a little later.

The Mother started out with us, but decided she was not equal to the trip, so we left her with her share of the lunch at the Châlet Milchbach on the lateral moraine, from the veranda of which she could watch our progress.

We turned over the small boy to the special care of the guide, who fastened their two waists together with his rope. Then, for nearly a thousand feet, we scrambled up the right bank of the glacier, with the occasional aid of ladders fastened to the rock, till we reached the level part above the ice-fall, where the trail crosses to the Gleckstein Club hut and the summit of the Wetterhorn. Here, on the edge of the glacier, we sat down and ate our luncheon.

Then we were all roped together and proceeded to the opposite side of the hummocky, but not perilous, glacier, whence, leaving the trail to the summit, we followed a narrow goat path on a horizontal ledge of the Wetterhorn cliff known as the Enge. It was nothing that presented any terrors to the older members of the party, who by this time had their heads pretty well seasoned against dizziness, but it would have made the writer extremely nervous to conduct her small son along such a ledge, in view of the (probably) thousand-foot drop at our left, had he not been securely roped fore and aft.

The young person in question, though enjoying himself greatly, was clearly troubled by a little doubt whether this highly delectable roping had not been gotten up as part of the stage-setting to amuse _him_ and not because it was necessary. He had imbibed a fine scorn for the tourists who rope themselves to a guide while ascending the pleasant path to the Châlet Milchbach, just so as to say they have done it, and he clearly did not wish to belong to any such tribe himself. However, when we had gotten almost to the end of the ledge and were just about to unfasten the ropes, the sheer drop beneath us having decreased to perhaps fifty feet, the Babe, growing careless, twisted his feet somehow, slipped and slid straight out in the air and was brought up sharply by the rope. This happy incident removed all doubt from his mind and persuaded him, as nothing else could have done, that the roping had been a genuine mountaineering necessity!

Down among the grassy pastures at the end of the Enge we found the Mother waiting for us (who fortunately for her peace of mind had _not_ seen the falling incident), and the united family tramped home together in great content.

Not, however, till we had made a partial engagement with Fritz Biner. We asked him whether the end of the following week would be too late in the season to go over the Strahlegg; for we had developed an ambition to wind up our last long pedestrian trip, which we were about to start on, with a bit of genuine mountaineering. He assured us it would not be and expressed a desire to act as our guide. We politely voiced the pleasure it would give us to have him, but indicated that it would seem simpler to take a guide from the Grimsel than to have him come over to meet us there. He replied justly that if a Grimsel guide should accompany us to Grindelwald, he would have to go back again, which would be just as far as for him to go over after us. He further suggested that at the Grimsel they would decline to take us over without two guides, or at all events a guide and a porter, whereas he, having seen what expert climbers we were (!), would gladly undertake to bring us over single-handed. This argument appealed to us, though we left the matter open that day in order to make inquiries concerning Biner’s reputation. The result being favorable, we arranged to telegraph him from Andermatt what day he was to meet us at the Grimsel.

XIX

Two days later, we were once more on the road, Frater, Belle Soeur and I. We were going up over the Faulhorn to Lake Brienz on the other side, and just because it was so easy to step out of our back door and start up the slope and we had no prick of a train to catch, we lingered around over last words and last preparations a good hour longer than we should have done. And for some reason that day we did not walk with our usual snap. So we reached the summit at tea-time instead of at lunch-time.

It had been a very beautiful trip up, with the Grindelwald valley sinking lower and lower, and the white peaks behind the Eiger and Wetterhorn opening up more and more. The Schreckhörner are wonderfully impressive from this view and the Finsteraarhorn attains nearly the majesty that belongs to it. The early part of the way the prospect is framed by the fir trees through which one looks. Above the tree belt the foreground is still by no means lacking in picturesque incidents, chief among which are the cold round little Bach lake and the jagged Röthihorn and Simelihorn peaks.

On the summit, which is nearly nine thousand feet high, there is a very solid little stone hotel constructed to withstand the terrible storms which sweep over so exposed a spot. Toward Lake Brienz the drop is very steep,—almost precipitate at first. One looks way over to Lake Lucerne, Pilatus and Rigi. But when we came there that region was covered with fleecy white clouds, which looked like a great churned-up foamy lake, with little mountain-peak islands rising above it here and there. The effect was singularly beautiful—much more so than any topographic clearness could have been.