August 10.—As I had undertaken to present myself to-day at Pontresina in time for an early dinner, I engaged a char at Casaccia to take me as far as St. Moritz; and having walked to the top of the Maloja, was there overtaken by it. The Maloja has an altitude of only 5,941 feet, which makes it the lowest of all the passes by which Italy may be entered from Switzerland. Its ascent from Casaccia is over an excellent road, with a rise of 1,150 feet, the latter part of which is through well-grown pine woods. I reached the summit so much in advance of my carriage as to have plenty of time for contemplating the backward view of the upper reach of the Bregaglia over the head of the forest—a view which was well worth the time.

The books tell us so much of the peculiarities, interest, and beauties of the Upper Engadin, that every one who goes to see it expects much; and I cannot think that there will be many of those who see it, who will feel any disappointment. In respect of length, and of capability for supporting human life, it may be equalled, or exceeded, by other Swiss Valleys, as for instance by those of the Rhine, of the Rhone, and of the Ticino, but there are other particulars of interest in which it leaves them all far behind. The great point is that it combines an elevation above the sea, which is elsewhere found to be but ill suited for supporting human life with an amount of population which would in any other valley be regarded as considerable; and that this large amount of population is evidently maintained in circumstances of comparative comfort. Beginning at the height just mentioned, it descends at first so gradually that at St. Moritz, twelve miles down the valley, the stream is only 150 feet below the summit of the Pass; while the town of St. Moritz itself, which is 300 feet above the stream, is actually 150 feet higher than the summit of the Pass. And in the sixty miles of its course from the Maloja to Martinsbruck it only loses 2,598 feet. The effect, too, of its actual elevation upon vegetable, and therefore, upon human life, must be somewhat aggravated by its direction, which being to the north-east exposes it to cold winds, and renders it, moreover, somewhat unfavourable for the reception of sunshine. And, then, its temperature is still further lowered by the contiguity on either side of many snowy summits. These conditions make in its upper parts all kinds of cultivation, except that of grass, almost impossible. I saw this day at St. Moritz, and a little above it, some few potato patches, but as in every instance the haulm of these had been killed back by recent midsummer frosts, nothing this year would be got from them but disappointment. Still I found this part of the valley surprisingly populous, for it contains what almost may be called a chain of little towns, in every one of which are several good houses, and in not one of which is there the slightest indication of any approach to pauperism. The absence, however, of this form of wretchedness might almost have been expected, because where the winter is eight or nine months long no family can exist which has not some assured means of living. But this does not explain the well-to-do condition you must infer is the lot of many, whose substantial and neatly kept houses you see in every one of these little towns. Nature you conclude at a glance is too niggard here to maintain so many well-to-do families; you begin then to inquire how they are maintained? Whence come their means? What are they living upon?

The answer to these questions is worth obtaining not only for the sake of what it will tell us of the history of these people’s lives, but also because it will remind us of a change that is now coming over the whole world. These good people are living mainly upon capital, either upon the interest of capital invested in good securities, or upon the dividends of capital employed in such ventures as are open to them. This is a fact of Grison life to which reference has already been made, and to which we shall have to recur again. The reader is already aware that my companion, the circumnavigator, who was now seated by my side, was one of those who had failed in the Grison method of wooing fortune; but the owners of almost all these good houses had been successful wooers, for the good houses that belong to old Grison families are comparatively few. You pass a house which appears to be a goodly mansion. It covers a great deal of ground, is solidly built, and of two, or possibly of three, stories. It may not, however, be quite so large a dwelling-house as it looks, for the ground floor, or part of it, is perhaps a stable for half-a-dozen, or more, cows, and a couple of horses—these are seldom kept in outhouses. And this house may also contain a haystack sufficiently large to maintain these cows and horses for seven or eight months. Still after these deductions have been made it is a goodly house, and much ornamented, for its owner is proud of it; and the question arises, Whence came the money to purchase the land on which it stands, then to build it, then to buy the land which supplies the hay, and last, but not least, of all to support the family in comfort according to Engadin ideas? The money required for all this must have been a considerable sum, and the valley of the Inn has hitherto offered no opportunities for making such sums. In the particular case now before us it was all made by selling little cups of coffee, and still smaller glasses of liqueurs, at Paris. And before its owner could begin this small trade on his own account, he had to serve some years as waiter in an hotel; for he took no capital with him to Paris except the determination to get on. That was then all his stock in trade, but it was of such a kind as to be enough for the purpose. It was ultimately upon that foundation that the big house was built. His pecuniary savings began in the hotel. By the time he had learnt the ways and the language of the place, he had saved enough to commence the sale on his own account of the little cups of coffee, and smaller glasses of liqueurs. With what care must the cent or two that was made by each cup, or glass, have been guarded! How rarely were any of them spent in self-indulgence! It was self-indulgence enough to look forward to the house in the Engadin, with the thought that its owner would become one of the aristocracy of the valley; and to find at the end of the week that the life-supporting prospect—the ambition of a life, was so many francs nearer to realization. The next house was built by one who had rolled up his francs by vending little cakes, and small confectionery at Vienna. The process had been throughout the same. You inquire about a third with a coat of arms over the door, and gilt lattice at the window. Its owner climbed the ladder by becoming a bon-bon maker at Brussels. After half a life spent in unswerving fidelity to their single purpose these keen accumulators of small gains had made enough to enable them to take their ease for the rest of their days in Paris, Vienna, or Brussels; but that was not what they had been slaving and saving for. Of the 100,000 francs each of them had made, each invested the greater part in some good security, and the rest he expended in buying a piece of land, and in building a house, in that valley that has the climate of Iceland; and this house and land together with the money invested, which enables him to live in the house, is his unquestioned patent of nobility. In right of his manifestly achieved success he assumes his place in the aristocracy of the valley.

This is a spontaneously formed, and self-acting system. The distinction is real and substantial, and the way to it is open to all, and must be travelled by all who attain to the distinction, and none who travel it successfully can miss the distinction. With us it is different. Here there are many ways of making money, and but few only of those who have trodden successfully some one or other of the many ways attain to the splendid summits of society. It is not so in the Grisons. There the man who makes the money in the hard and humble way open to him, and builds the big house, and lives in it, becomes ipso facto a Grison grandee. He climbed up to his Herrship by a ladder that was very difficult to mount, but was equally accessible to all; and every one that climbs it enters the charmed circle. Enterprise, self-denial, and patience; great enterprise, for it is that in a penniless peasant to go out into the unknown world to compete with the natives of some great foreign city, unflinching self-denial, and heroical patience are the only course open to them. If the same mental stuff is needed for the making of the Cæsar of the village as of the Cæsar of the world, then we may suppose that under different circumstances, these men would have risen to eminence through higher paths. They were made of good stuff. We see in them men, who had their lot been cast here, would have become Lord Chancellors, Admirals, Generals, Statesmen, Scholars, merchant Princes, perhaps even Bishops.

But these successful builders of big houses are not all the people; and we must not allow their big houses to hide from our view the small houses of these little towns, and the small people who live in them. All men have not the same gifts; and of those who have all do not exercise them alike and to like issues. Many may have had the enterprise without the heroical self-denial and patience, which in some cases may mean a narrow horizon and a hard heart, but which narrow horizon and hard heart were necessary for success in the case of such small traffickers. And some, too, may have had the self-denial and the patience in heroical degrees, and not been deficient either in the requisite enterprise, but yet were kept back from turning these qualities to good account by the goodness of their hearts. That may have kept them at home to provide for, and to tend, an aged parent in his chair-days; or an early affection may have influenced them to the same result. And so possibly there may be as good stuff, intellectually and morally, among those who have never left the village as among those who went forth into the world, and prospered. Chance, too, has a place in the affairs of men. Good fortune does not always mean good conduct, nor bad fortune bad conduct. Conduct that was both wise and good may have had ill-fortuned results. But we will set these cases aside, and ask if those who, because they stayed at home for good reasons, and so are now in no better condition than their fathers were, and those who went forth and prospered, find in any sense their rewards equal? Certainly not, if both of them measure, as the world does, all things by francs. Still each has his reward, and the reward of satisfied affections, and of a satisfied sense of duty, is great as it is felt at the moment, for at that time every consideration gives way to it; and it is great also in retrospect, which is the recalling of the feelings of that moment. We are glad, then, to witness the success of those who made the francs, and built the stone houses, and to talk with them of their experiences of the world in which the francs were made; but this does not diminish our respect for those who stayed at home, and who will live, and toil, and die in the same small wooden châlets in which their fathers lived, and toiled, and died. Indeed, our respect for them, and even our disposition to like them, are rather increased by the sight of the big mansions of the lemonade, and bon-bon, and coffee and confectionery lords.

So much in explanation of the big houses we find not only in the Engadin, but more or less in all the Grison valleys. We now come to the valley itself. The sun on this day was unclouded; but we were on the road from the Maloja to St. Moritz; these words, therefore, must not be taken to mean what they would stand for had they been said of a drive from Bath to Bristol. We all know what a cloudless day is here in the middle of August: in the Upper Engadin it is not quite the same sort of thing. With respect to what meets the eye: there is no trace of haze; the definition of every mountain and glacier outline is sharp and clear; the luminous blue is not blue, or luminous, in our subdued fashion; and even the greens and grays of the mountains are hardly less green and gray quite up to the distant sky-line. There is little toning down. Distance only blends the local variegation into an uniform colour. You cannot make out the variegation of the flowery turf, of the lichen-painted rock, and of the glancing foliage and shaded trunks of the forest, on account of the distance: that is all. The distance as it were fuses together the smaller differences; and then it puts a varnish over the whole: the clear bright air is the varnish. Then as to the appeal this diaphanous rarefied air makes to the sense of feeling: though, indeed, it is not air; that is a word that here would mislead; it is a celestial ether; and so with the sun, though it is hot, what you feel is not heat; it is a permeating, invigorating, life-creating warmth; this warmth, then, which the sun imparts to this ether, pervades your lungs, your heart, and reaches to your very bones. It makes you conscious of a lighter, and of a quicker life than you ever felt before. Like the air of the desert it so rapidly, so instantaneously evaporates the imperceptible perspiration that the skin beneath your clothes as well as that of your face develops a new sensation. It has ceased to be merely a tough, half-dead integument, whose function is just to protect you from external rubs. As the flower expands to the light, and turns to it, from the satisfaction it has in absorbing it, so your skin has become sensitive to this ether, and feels the delight of being in contact with it. And a third sense has yet to be gladdened. Up here it is now the middle of hay harvest, and the air is pervaded with the fragrance of the new hay. And you are all the way passing by, or through, pine-forests, and the bright sun is constantly raising into the air from their trunks, branches, and leaves myriad molecules of their resinous exudations; and this perfume also is wafted to you.

And then the scene has its peculiar features. In these twelve miles you pass four lakes; the small lake of the Maloja summit, the Silser see, four and a half miles long, the Silva Planer see somewhat longer, and that of St. Moritz about a mile in length. Thus, throughout almost all the way, you are driving along this chain of lakes, on a road a little above them. Of the colour of these mountain lakes our English home-trained eyes know nothing. It must be seen to be understood. It is of the blue of the sky, only a shade less deep, and with some slight admixture of green. You wonder what the trout that live in them can find to live upon in water so pure, and which, in truth, is not water, but the lymph of the celestial depths—heaven’s azure liquefied. Everyone feels the charm of water as an addition to the scene: but such lakes as these, which are not of water, but of some less earthly fluid, how great is the charm they add to this scene! And the more so, if you have come upon them suddenly after some days of trudging and toiling in the mountains, where the eyes were wearied, almost wounded, with the continual recurrence of pinnacles and precipices, rocks and ravines, nothing but what was hard, dark, jagged, and torn. The impressions of sombreness, ruggedness, and terror that had of late been stamped on your brain, and seemed to be in it like things that were alive, are now laid to rest by the sight of the smooth blue: its effects are soothing and healing.

Another peculiarity of this road is the number of glaciers and snow summits that are seen from it. Of these, too, as it is with the blue lakes, you are hardly ever out of sight. You come abreast of a lateral valley; and as you look up it you see at its head a mighty glacier, the view of which seems so complete that you think you can make out its whole course, that is to say its whole life, from the snowfield out of which it is compacted, and by which it is forced on, till at last it issues, in another form, from its own mouth. Or a range before you recedes a little, or becomes depressed a little, and you see at this point a mighty snow-capped giant from behind peering over into the valley; and you feel the current of crisp air that is flowing down into the valley from the glacier, or from the giant’s head—the breath of the glacier, or of the giant. And in the twelve miles you pass as many towns as you do lakes; one for every three miles: all clean, and flourishing: and not a dilapidated hovel in a land where nothing is grown but grass, and where there are nine months of winter and three of cold, with the exception of a few such days as was to-day! This absence of visible poverty adds much to the sense of satisfaction with which you contemplate the scene. Nature here has made it difficult for man to live upon his fellow man, for a man, under the conditions here imposed upon him, can hardly do more than support himself. Of course three-fourths of the population might be cleared off, and half the quantity of cattle maintained; but that is not the turn things took here. Every man, excepting the capitalists we have already spoken of, and no one grudges them their hard-earned accumulations, which besides do good to some, and no harm to anyone, everyone, excepting them, must work hard to live; but to live here by his hard work a man must himself have the fruits of it.

The direction in which the stream by your side is flowing is often an ingredient in the thought of the wanderer among these mountains of central Europe. ‘This stream,’ he says to himself, ‘is hurrying to join the Po, or the Rhine, or the Rhone.’ On this day I said to myself, ‘These charming lakes are among the head Waters of the Danube.’ The little stream we passed as it came racing down from Monte Lunghino into the Silser see is the furthest urn of the Inn. This makes you feel that you have passed into another region. The continent is now inclining in another direction. The Danube, and the Black Sea for a time become the goal of your thoughts of this kind. In this respect Lunghino along the eastern roots of which I was now passing, and the opposite side of which I had traversed yesterday, is pre-eminent, for it contains the diffluent urns of three great historic rivers, the Rhine, the Po, and the Danube; of the Rhine by giving birth to one of the feeders of the Oberhalbstein stream, of the Po by giving birth to a feeder of the Maira, which joins the Adda as it is on the point of entering the lake of Como, and of the Danube by giving birth to the actual head water of the Inn.

A little more than a mile before you reach St. Moritz, you look down on the old monster Kurhaus, and a new and more monstrous one nearly completed. They are upon the alluvial flat at the head of the lake. As I saw by my side a patch or two of potatoes smitten by summer frosts, I thought it strange that any people, possessed of free agency, especially invalids, could be found to descend into, and to stay in, such a place. With what ice-cold vapour must the evaporation from that alluvial bottom load the air so soon in the afternoon as the sun is off the ground, and down there they cannot have much of him! And how cutting must the cold wind be down there! Is there anything that can compensate for these evils? I doubt much whether mineral waters can that sometimes are in fashion, and sometimes are forsaken. But there will always be plenty of people who will try anything of this kind, and there will always be some who will endeavour to persuade people to resort to such supposed remedies. One would like to know what is the proportion of people who go to these places a second time, not for the sake of the society they expect to find at them, but for the sake of the waters; and whether the proportion of actual cures is much greater than of the cures effected by touching the bones, or the old clothes, of some supposed saint. If after two or three weeks at such a place as this a man finds himself no worse than when he reached it, he may infer that after all his system is not so far enfeebled but that air, exercise, and diet may do something for him.

The above wayside remark is made subject to correction from those who thoroughly understand these subjects. There is, however, another way of looking at this charming lake, with the green forest that descends to it from the opposite mountain, and beyond the lake the valley opening up to Pontresina, and with the long varied vistas up and down the main valley, and with the little town of St. Moritz, perched on its niche on the mountain side, close before you. There is so much variety, so many objects, so much colour, and everything is so clear and fresh, and so bright in the sunshine, that you can hardly think the scene belongs to the same world as you are accustomed to at home. It hardly looks real, the difference is so great. It looks like something got up to please and astonish you, and in this it quite succeeds.

We reached the Post bureau of St. Moritz at 11.30, and started at once for Pontresina, the Australian having shouldered my sac, or—to be accurate—having taken it in his hand, for from a feeling of self-respect he would never shoulder it in a town, lest this method of carrying it might lead to the degrading inference that he was a professional. The walk was a pleasant one of about four miles down to and across the Inn, along the lake side, and through woods and meadows. I was just in time to save my engagement. Of course everybody knows that time was made for slaves, but sometimes it is pleasant to be punctual, for instance when a long business, subject throughout to a variety of circumstances, has been brought to a close at a prearranged moment, for then you may fancy that it is you who are master of time and of yourself.

As I parted with the Australian he was sufficiently professional to ask for more than he had agreed to serve me for plus the present I added to the agreement. This demand I did not decline to comply with, for had I not now reached my destination for the time with some treasure of memorable sights and of pleasant thoughts for myself, and how could our journeyings benefit him except in this way of francs? And why by withstanding his request for more should I ruffle my companion, or be ruffled myself? Besides, too, in our last four miles I had begun to think him less burdensome, or more tolerable, than he had appeared to me at any time previously. In those four miles he had again, as he had frequently done on other occasions (but as now I was about to see him no more the incongruity seemed rather amusing than shocking) called the ravines gullies, the forest bush, my sac the swag, and the glaciers—how horrible, but how explicable in such a circumnavigator—the icebergs! And so after all we parted amicably, as it is best that people should, and with reciprocal expressions of good wishes for each other’s welfare.

Pontresina consists of a long narrow street. At its northern extremity, by which those arriving from the Engadin enter it, the first building you pass is one of its two large hotels. The other is at its southern extremity. A few hundred yards beyond this is a second little town, Upper Pontresina, with its hotel. The two will soon be united into one long unbroken street of about a mile in length. This street is crowded at most hours of the day. There are people returning from their forenoon excursions, and others starting for their afternoon excursions. People arriving from, or leaving for the near towns of the Engadin, or from or for Italy by the Bernina Pass. After the early dinner, which had regulated my movements throughout the forenoon, and indeed for some days back, my wife and her little boy took me in hand, to introduce me to the sights of the place. ‘There is the Roseg valley, and the Roseg glacier, with such and such peaks above it.’ These could be seen from Pontresina. ‘We will take you there to-morrow. This afternoon we will go along the main valley, and give you a look at the Morterasch.’ And that was what they did. The road, like the street, only in a less degree, was alive with parties coming and going, for it is not only the way to the Morterasch and Bernina, but also the route to Italy by Poschiavo and Tirano. The evening was closing in when we returned to Pontresina. The crowd in the single street had now in the neighbourhood of the Post bureau become almost a block. In the crowd I met an Englishman I had seen in the morning at Casaccia. His air was distracted. He had been for some time in search of a place to shelter him for the night, but was everywhere told the same story, that his search would be hopeless: even every landing and passage in every private house, where a shake-down could be placed, was already bespoken.

Bewildering was the stir in the narrow street. There were many Germans, but the English including the Americans, or as they might put it, the Americans including the English, were largely in the majority. The peculiarity of the crowd was that it included many children, and almost as many ladies as gentlemen. What was it that had brought together this concourse of people from many nations, and even from the New World? It was simply to see glaciers. The glaciers had been there from time before history, from the time, it may be, that man had trod the soil of Europe: it is scarcely, however, a dozen years since such crowds began to assemble here to see them. This indicates new thoughts and new sentiments about the world we live in, as well as an increase of wealth and of facilities for locomotion. It was never so seen of old times. In our fathers’ times men and women flocked to London and Paris, as they had done in the old world to Rome, to see and to be seen. Society was the great attraction. For a little time a few had been attracted to Athens, because it was the centre of art, of culture, and of refinement, but that was a dawn of promise that was soon overcast. For some thousand years before that dawn so soon obscured, the greatest annual gatherings of men had been at Egyptian Thebes. The object, however, which had brought them together there had been the exchange of the commodities of Asia and of Africa. The attraction was first commerce, then social dissipation. Here men are brought together in a lofty Alpine valley, too cold to grow a potato, where there is no trade, and no society, to see mountains and glaciers. This is a higher, because a purely intellectual, purpose. In the first gatherings of the young world only one class of men took part, merchants and traders. In the next mainly those who had riches and nothing to do. Here we have, without excluding the rich, men of all professions, mostly not rich, and many of them with plenty to do. They come in multitudes; and the cry is still, ‘they come,’ that is in yearly increasing multitudes.

But the impulse that has carried the world to Pontresina, will not stop at Pontresina. At no distant day the children of these summer-tourists, when locomotion shall have been still further improved, will cross oceans for their summer excursions, and will climb the Andes, and the Himalaya, as their children may the Mountains of the Moon, going perhaps by the Soudan railway we now hear is in contemplation, and taking the sources of the Nile by the way. People will not for ever, now that they have begun to look out on the world, be content with the moderate altitudes, and the sombre, monotonous pine woods of central Europe. The appetite for seeing nature is one that grows with what it feeds on. Those who have found pleasurable emotions result from seeing Switzerland will wish to see something more of this glorious world. They will long to become acquainted with grander mountain ranges, with nobler and more diversified faunas and floras than those of our temperate zone, and with other conditions and forms of human life than those which obtain among a portion of our near kindred circumstanced not very dissimilarly from ourselves.

The history of the recent spread of the love now so widely felt for nature is interesting and instructive. Clearly it had its rise in that increase in the knowledge of nature which belongs to our times. It is, however, obvious that it is not confined to those who have this knowledge in the form and degree which would entitle it to be regarded as scientific. They are few, but the desire is felt by many, almost, indeed, by all who have received any culture worthy of the name. It seems, therefore, to have spread from the few to the many by a kind of infection, which shows that it is a natural taste, which former conditions kept in a state of repression. From what we see we may conclude that the acquisition and possession of the images and ideas, which the contemplation, or if that is too strong a word for the case of those who have been debarred from any scientific acquaintance with nature, then which the mere sight of the forms and phenomena of nature supplies to the mind, is a source of delight. Of course, the delight would be far greater, had the previous knowledge been wider and deeper, that is to say had the mind been better fitted for the reception of the images and ideas; but still it is felt, and so strongly as to give rise to a desire for more extended fields of observation. Even in old times there are indications of this pleasure having been felt. It was not absent from the awe and wonder which accompanied the observation of the starry firmament, and of the phenomena of the great deep, or from the attempt to co-ordinate the details of the natural scene as depicted in the hundred and fourth Psalm. Solomon’s collection of facts and observations about animals and plants—for his works on these subjects must have been something of this kind—was suggested by this pleasure. And as these emotions had such issues among the ancient Hebrews, we cannot suppose that their kindred neighbours were strangers to them. We know, too, that by the Greeks and Romans they were still more strongly felt. From these early observations and impressions, accompanied by pleasurable emotions, as from a small germ, but one that was full of vital power, has arisen the distinctly aimed effort to grasp in one intelligible whole all the phenomena and forces of nature, and all the forms of life the world has to show us. What was long ago dimly divined is now clearly understood that the world, and all it contains, are very good; that precisely it, and nothing else is the great external gift of God to man—man’s great inheritance; and that it is only by seeing it, and understanding it, that he can enter on the possession of it: for there is no other way in which he can make it his own.

But the picture which the world presents to us for contemplation is not composed merely of land and water, ranging through different zones, with their respective floras and faunas, and physical phenomena: the soul of the picture is the observer himself—man; not the individual observer, but the race. Man it is that imparts dramatic life and interest to the picture. Not that this globe is without a progress, that is a history, of its own. It has that, but its history is devoid of the highest element of interest, that is the moral element. It is by viewing the world in connexion with man that the picture becomes invested with this, the highest source of interest. And if an extended view of the world, inclusive of man’s place in it, and relation to it, be taken, whether the extension be in the direction of space, or of time, it will be seen in each view with equal clearness—and the inference from one view proves and confirms the inference from the other, for they are identical—that in the long drama of human history it is increase in the knowledge of nature which has led to increase in man’s dominion over nature, and it is increase in his dominion over nature which has led on to, and given rise to, those conditions which have resulted in a richer and higher moral life.