A walk in the Grisons

My first business now was to look for some one to take Leuthold’s place. Among the candidates who offered themselves I did not find one whose appearance and style of talk suggested the probability of his proving somewhat of a companion. I, therefore, despatched a telegram to my wife, who was at Portresina, to send me by to-morrow’s post a Poschiavo man, of whom some weeks back I had heard that he was desirous of acting as my porter. I was not unwilling to try him, because he was one of the class—a large and characteristic one in the Grisons—which goes abroad to seek fortune. He had sought his for ten years, but not with complete success, at the antipodes; and now having returned, somewhat disappointed at the result of his quest, was for the present open to any engagement that required only unskilled labour. Their own country being too poor to find them employment, temporary emigration, as most of us are aware, is resorted to by a large proportion of the youth of the Grisons. This is the national tradition. In all the capitals of the old and new world these temporary emigrants are found engaged in the production and sale of pastry and confectionery, of loaf-sugar and sugar-plums, of liqueurs and lemonade. My acquaintance had endeavoured to amass the competency on which he might return home, and which would entitle him to a place among the aristocracy of Poschiavo, by the concoction of lemonade and ices at Sydney, and at several of the New South Wales diggings. But what with fires, bad debts, and bad building ventures at speculative diggings, which had soon been deserted, he had not met with the success which generally crowns Grison ambition; and so it had come about that he was now maintaining himself, as chance enabled him, till he might recover heart for a new effort. Having despatched the telegram for him to meet me to-morrow evening at Coire, I went on in the afternoon by diligence to Dissentis.

As we slowly ascended the zigzags which carry the road through the carefully kept prairies immediately above Andermatt, the picture presented to us was full of interest to an English eye. I went over this ground in my ‘Month in Switzerland’ of last year, and in my narrative of the scenes and incidents of that excursion I said something of the history of the Oberalp alpe which we are now entering on, and of the various ways in which it is at present turned to account. I now again read the scene with undiminished interest. It was thoroughly Swiss. The mountain side was so steep that skilful engineering had been required to construct the road. With the exception of two or three small patches of potatoes on the lower part, nothing but grass could be grown. But how carefully had the grass been cultivated! Though on the mountain flanks, which must originally have been strewn with stones and rocks, not a stone was to be seen, and only a few protruding rocks remained, which were so large as to defy removal. Nowhere was there a noxious weed, or a bush. The smooth emerald-green felt of turf was spread out everywhere, frowned upon by overhanging craggy summits, whose work of centuries had now been all undone; or rather what was obstructive in that work had been undone, and what might be made serviceable had been turned to account. The showers of stones they had been sending down through all those long ages to bury the little soil they had helped to form, had by the labour of successive generations of peasant proprietors been all removed. There was nothing now that could obstruct the stroke of the scythe, or the possible growth of a blade of grass. Some of the summits were still streaked and patched with snow, which suggested that the frost, which rends the rocks, was up there seldom idle. Along the grassy slopes were no walls or hedges. Only where a boundary mark might be required, a stake had been driven into the ground. These rose but a few inches above the surface. Here and there might be seen a hay grange; but not many of them, for in the winter the people hereabouts are all collected into the little town. This, from the first rise, shows as a cluster of sombre gray houses, amongst which two churches stand pre-eminent. The season was late this year, and so on the grassy slopes, some of them very steep, were to be seen busily employed in spreading, or in collecting the hay several women. They were unshod, for here people are too chary of whatever costs money, to wear shoes when they can do without them. On their heads they had orange kerchiefs. The men at this season are most of them dispersed far and wide in their different summer employments, by which they will earn a great part of what will support their families in the long winter; and so the haymaking devolves in some places almost entirely on the women. To-day as they stirred it about they made the air fragrant with its scent, that air, which around us was so purely translucent, but which above our heads seemed to solidify into a firmament of indigo.

The effect of the scene upon you is enhanced by the sense of your being so many thousand feet above your ordinary level. You are, however, still going up, and the mown sward is shrinking into Alpine pasture. The haymakers now at a distance below show like pigmies. The little town is now no longer sombre gray, but has in the sunlight, and by the distance, become gleaming white.

As we approached the lake on the summit of the Pass we saw that much turf had lately been cut for the long cold winter. Up here nature gives no wood for fuel. Fortunately, however, the climate is not unfavourable to the growth of plants that in suitable situations produce peat; though there is considerable difficulty in drying the peat sufficiently to render it combustible. To effect this we found it set up on rocks, or, where these could not be found, on inclined banks from which the rain would quickly run off. I was sorry to see that there was much soil and sand in this peat, and that, therefore, it was not of the best kind for producing heat. Still it is the only fuel the locality supplies; and without it, such even as it is, fewer people could live at Andermatt, because in that case the cost of a prime necessary of life would be much increased.

At the head of the lake you are on the top of the Pass, and enter the Grisons. At first, for some distance, you descend rapidly; and may think, as you often have occasion to think on Alpine roads, and, too, with far more reason than here, that the traveller has some need of faith in the skill of the driver, in the excellence of the materials of the carriage and harness, and in the training and sure-footedness of the horses. For some time the road is down rather poor Alpine pastures, meagre, steep, and rocky: but as we are not looking at the scene with the eye of a Lincolnshire grazier, we are glad to think that these meagre-looking steep and rocky pastures will supply many a family with good milk and cheese, a part of the latter being convertible into such of the necessaries of their humble lives as they cannot produce themselves. And are there not grand mountain summits around you? And is not the valley before you the cradle of the famous Rhine? And are not all these mountains sending down affluents to the already vigorous infant? These are the thoughts with which you begin the descent.

You continue the descent, and in due time come to the first village. You then understand more fully than before the value of the meagre-looking, steep, and rocky pastures. In the way of cultivated human food nothing even here can be attempted but potatoes. For anything else it is still too high, cold, and wet; and the few potatoes will at the best be very poor, small, watery, immature; and a frost may at any time prevent their reaching even these degrees of all but worthlessness. There must, however, be a beginning, and these industrious people are not slow in making it. A little lower down you come upon attempts at cultivating in sheltered places with good aspects rye and barley. It is now August, but here the rye and barley are not yet in bloom. They are still green and growing; the ear, however, has just got out of the stem: that is as yet all. If these crops should ever get so far as to be worth harvesting, you see lofty frames, like monster clothes-horses, with many bars, upon which the sheaves will be fastened to improve the poor peasants’ chances of drying and hardening the grain sufficiently for grinding. You will see, too, that these growers of rye and barley under difficulties are now busy in attempting to make hay under similar difficulties, and in a similar fashion. The mown grass is not spread out on the ground to dry; that would be too wet for such a purpose; but it also is arranged on frames, only of a different construction. Each is formed of a post rising about five feet above the ground, through which are passed two or three bars at right angles to each other. Each bar has two arms, and each arm projects from the post about three feet. On these arms the hay is loaded into a kind of cock, which has this arrangement of the post and bars for an internal skeleton. It is thus lifted off the damp ground, and is so held up throughout by the bars, or arms, as to be completely pervious to the air. In this way it is made in a ventilated cock; and when a fine day comes, the women come, and carry it home in large hempen sheets, and with joyful and thankful hearts: for are they not carrying home what will give their little ones milk in the long winter? And up here their little ones could not live without that milk.

As you approach Dissentis you see not only that the breadth of cultivable land has much increased, but also that you have descended into a more genial stratum of climate. Wheat, and even millet, have put in an appearance on the scene. Here, in favoured situations, I found the former so advanced that it seemed to be beginning to show symptoms of a disposition to change colour.

As two or three hours of daylight still remained I walked down the banks of the stream that descends from the Acletta valley, that I might see its junction with the Rhine, for here the Rhine, of course, occupies a prominent place in one’s thoughts, for has it not a prominent place in the history of the Roman, the French, and the German Empires, and in the history, too, of the greatest captain of each—the great Julius, the great Napoleon, and the great Moltke? Behind it, as a natural and national bulwark, and on its banks, the German people from the beginning of their known national existence, were growing to maturity, and organizing themselves. If the history of the white race be regarded as a whole, this Rhine stands out as the most historic of all its rivers. Much has directly resulted from its being what it is, and where it is. Its absence would have so modified the history of the race as to have brought about a state of things widely different from that of to-day. The stream I was now tracking down to it—one of the first threads from which, as it were from so many roving machines, its first strand is spun—has below the town cut out for about a mile or less a deep ravine bed, along the rocky channel of which it tumbles, and twists itself, in its haste to incorporate itself with the nascent trunk of the famous river. It seemed by its bluster and haste to be emphasizing its desire to become a part of it, and a participant in its renown. The actual junction was achieved a little beyond the ravine, in a more quiet style. The impetuous affluent is now no longer in a hurry, but will taste to the full the contentment of the consummation of the hitherto so eagerly sought union. At this point were several trout-fishers. Up then almost to its source this famous stream is rich in fish. Its banks will soon be rich with vineyards.

As I had loitered for some time on the banks of the young Rhine, and of its affluent, the evening was closing in when I returned to Dissentis. As I passed up the main street I overtook the female swineherd of the place bringing home for the night the pigs of Dissentis. There were four or five score of them. She herself brought up the procession that none might loiter behind. She had been tending them all day in the ravine just mentioned, which was incapable of cultivation, and on some stony irreclaimable waste land on the Rhine bank. Each porker knew his own home in the town. Some ran on in advance of the herd to get as soon as possible to the supper they knew would be ready for them. Some did not separate themselves from the herd till they had arrived at the familiar door. These more quiet-minded members of the herd probably had no expectation of a supper prepared for them, and were, therefore, still thinking of the grassy pasture from which they had just been driven off. The swine were followed, at no great interval, by the goats with stiffly distended udders. They, too, dispersed themselves in the same fashion, from the desire to be promptly relieved of their burden. After the goats, last of all, came the deliberately stepping, sober-minded cows. The tinkling of their bells was heard over the whole of the little town. In a few minutes the streets were cleared: every man, woman, and child appeared to have followed the animals into the houses to give them their supper, or to draw the milk from them, as the case might be; or at all events to bed them for the night. Thus do these hard-pressed peasants from their earliest years learn to treat their dumb associates kindly, almost as if they were members of the family, to the support of which they so largely contribute. There can be few people in Dissentis who do not begin, and end, each day in company with them. How familiar must they be with the ways and the wants of the egoistic pig, of the self-asserting, restless goat, and of the gentle, patient cow! The book of nature, too, is always open before them, and they are ever interested students of its pages. From hour to hour they observe the changes of the heavens, and consider what they import, for to them they import a great deal. How their little crops, too, are looking they note day by day, for the time that will be allowed for bringing them to maturity will be so short, that the loss of sunshine for a few days causes some anxious thoughts. This dependence upon, and close contact with, nature is a large ingredient in their education.

August 3.—Opposite to my hotel was the public fountain of Dissentis. The functions of a Swiss fountain resemble those of an Eastern well. To it come daily all the women of the village for the water they will require for their families. It has, however, other uses besides that of supplying the water that will be needed within the house. The linen, the milk vessels, and the cooking utensils of the village are for the most part washed at the fountain, for it would be hard work to carry home all the water that might be wanted for these purposes. Here, too, the daily news of the village is discussed, and put into circulation. This morning there was a stranger seated on the bench in front of the Hotel de la Poste, observing those who came to the Dissentis fountain. As to their personal appearance, it was evident that the hard work and poor fare of many generations had not dwarfed the race, for those who came were generally above what we should regard as the middle height. Their features, however, as might have been expected, were somewhat hard. Their dress was sombre: they are not a people who much affect colour. Their coiffure was simple: upon it not much time or care had been bestowed. Their chaussure at this early hour was with most of them that of nature. In their manner there was not much of liveliness, not, I suppose, because that would have been deemed unbecoming in public, but probably because they might not have been disposed to it. The hardness of their lives must bring with it some hardness of manner. These good women had already been up some hours, milking the cows and goats, and providing their husbands’ and children’s breakfasts; and this might have taken out of them some of that freshness of feeling that would have been in keeping with the freshness of the morning. They might, too, have been desirous of getting as quickly as possible to the hay-field, and the prospect of the hard work there awaiting them might have had something to do with making them grave and taciturn.

The telegraph bureau is on the ground floor of the hotel. Here the instrument, as is generally the case in Switzerland, was in charge of a young woman. What would the last generation in the valley, or the abbots and monks of their forefathers’ time, have thought of a young woman of Dissentis earning her livelihood by keeping Dissentis in instantaneous communication with all Europe, the new world, and the antipodes? When the locomotive and marine engine were invented man began to move to and fro upon the earth. This movement, however, is still only at its beginning. When the electric telegraph was invented all the world was enabled to converse with all the world. This conversation, too, is still only at its beginning. And yet it is to these two agencies that we must attribute the rapidity with which events march in these times. But as this rapidity is so great at the beginning what are we to suppose that it will be a century hence? This is what no man can imagine. The astounding character of the last war in Europe was due to the railway and the telegraph. Whatever at this moment most engrosses attention, and agitates thought, as for instance the organization of the working classes, the rapid combined action of the leaders of aggressive Ultramontanism, and even the recent development in ‘leaps and bounds’ of the commerce of the world, are mainly due to the same causes. And if one of these causes is more potent than the other, it is that all the world can now converse with all the world, because it is this that in these days enables for any purpose a whole kingdom, a whole continent, or the whole world, to organize itself. We may compare the rapidity with which these inventions have been turned to account with the snail’s pace at which letters, the most fruitful of all human inventions, have been manifesting their powers and uses. For how many thousands of years have they been working for the overthrow of ignorance, superstition, and injustice! It is true that in this work mighty advances have been made: yet when we survey the whole field we see that hitherto only so much has been done as to give assurance that a great deal more will be achieved in the future. What has been accomplished gives us ground for the hope that it is but a glimpse of what is to come. They have done, or at all events have rendered possible the doing of, almost all that has been done for us. What we notice is that it seems to have been done so slowly. Perhaps the electric telegraph by collecting and disseminating intelligence, and enabling people everywhere to converse with each other, is destined to lighten this reproach of letters, that they have not been so rapidly or widely fruitful as might have been expected.

At Dissentis the magician who manipulated this instrument of instantaneous communication with all the world, was a little body, very little, with very gentle voice and manner. By the side of the instrument she was working had been placed a bouquet of flowers, white marguerites, and red geraniums, with a carnation or two—a flower you see everywhere in Switzerland, generally in a pot, or box at the châlet window, for the Swiss are as fond of it, and tend it as lovingly, as the modern Greeks. These flowers much brightened the aspect of things, and took off from their office look. On my asking for a billet for the 10.30 A.M. diligence for Coire, the little body filled it in, and handed it to me made out in my proper name. The traveller, presuming on a previous conversation, commented upon this. ‘Now I see that you are in every respect a little Fairy. You know everything.’

Little Fairy. ‘It is that in these days little Fairies must learn to read, and yesterday evening your sac was left for some time in my bureau.’

Traveller. ‘Yes. But in learning to read letters they have not forgotten their old skill in reading what is meant by a present of flowers.’

Little Fairy. ‘Flowers fade, and so sometimes does their meaning.’

On the opposite side of the road to the hotel Condrau de la Poste, is, to the left of the fountain, the hotel Condrau de la Couronne. The latter Condrau is the editor of the Romansch newspaper which is published at Dissentis. I was told that he was a well-educated man, had for some time been tutor in a French family, and was entitled to write himself Professor. I took away with me a copy of that week’s impression of his paper. I found that it was not difficult by the aid of Latin and Italian to make out the meaning of the printed Romansch of Dissentis, though probably, if I had heard it read, I should not have understood one word in ten.

At 10.30 was under weigh for Coire. The day was fine, and the conductor arranged a seat for me on the roof upon the luggage. The drive was pleasant and interesting. I can, however, only give of it such generalities as might have been seen from my seat on the roof. Of course the mountains most obtrude themselves on the eye. They vary much. Some are grassed, some are wooded to the top; some show much naked rock; of these some terminate in jagged points, some in rounded domes; some that you see through gaps in the bounding ridges gleam with sun-lit snowfields. As a rule the valley is wide, and so its bounding ranges stand back to such a distance that they can be well taken in by the eye from bottom to top, and in combination with their neighbours. They can be leisurely and sufficiently seen.

Another point observable in this grand long valley is the regular improvement in the vegetation which accompanies your descent. This has been already noted as far as Dissentis. In reaching that place yesterday afternoon we had passed from the treeless Alpine zone of altitude down to that of late maturing wheat. When you reach Coire, thirty-eight miles lower down, wheat has been superseded by maize, and you are among vineyards, which had begun to show themselves seven miles higher up at Reichenau. Between Dissentis and Reichenau different kinds of fruit trees, and of garden vegetables successively appeared on the scene. As the fruit trees began to come in, the frames for drying wheat, and other kinds of grain, began to die out. Above Reichenau are some naked glaring ravines cut deep into the white calcareous soil. Here the bottom land has so widened out as to give space for knolls and hills, some in wood, some in grass. As you descend an improvement, corresponding to that in the vegetation, is simultaneously observable in the houses and villages. As nature becomes more kindly and bountiful, human life becomes more varied, more easy, and more embellished. Long before you reach Reichenau good roomy substantial houses begin to appear in the small towns. Many of these are surrounded with gardens, of which you see nothing in the higher part of the valley, but which after they have become possible continue to improve all the way down. At last at Coire there is about the main street an air of something that gives it a not quite unfamiliar aspect. It seems as if a third-rate piece of Paris had been transported to the valley, and there dropped between the mountains.

At Coire, if you have some time before you, and nothing else to do, you will perhaps go to the Cathedral. You will there hear the old story of Saints and wonders, as if there had been better men and greater wonders a thousand years ago than there are now. Here the Saint was a British king, of a date when there were no kings in Britain. You will have met with British and Irish Saints elsewhere. You ask why these legends of British and Irish Saints of that day, but no Saints now? Have we degenerated so much from our fathers? I trow not. We are not worse than were they. We may, perhaps, be somewhat better. How, then, has it come to pass that these islands have ceased to be a factory of Saints? Is it because other people have at last come to know us? No longer are we so separated from them by the sea as to be in their eyes almost another world; and as they have come to know us they have arrived at the discovery that we are very much like themselves, at all events in not being more productive of Saints than themselves. In those times people wanted the idea of a nation of Saints. This they could not imagine of their wicked selves, or of any of their still more wicked neighbours, for they very well knew of themselves and of their neighbours, that they were always trying to overreach, and plunder, and knock on the head, and oppress each other; and so they localized this idea beyond sea, and the British Isles became a kind of realized Christian Atlantis. Tacitus, because the Romans were vicious, invested the distant Germans with a halo of rude virtues. For much the same kind of reason did the ages of ignorance and violence go to the British Isles for so many of their Saints.