August 22.—Was off at 5 A.M. Just below Grüsch the road passed by a scene of recent devastation, very similar to what I had seen yesterday evening just above the town. A late flood of the Lanquart had swept over some three or four acres of garden ground, from which it had washed out every particle of soil, leaving behind only a bed of clean pebbles. Some corners and shreds of potato and corn patches alone remained to show the passer-by what the poor peasants had lost. One saw proofs of the efforts they had made to save not only their crops, but that which was of far more value than the crops of a single season—the precious land, their only means of living. In the hope of turning the flood back again into its channel they had constructed a kind of long chevaux-de-frise, first by fastening pieces of timber together at right angles to each other, each piece being about ten feet long, and then lashing several of these cross-tied bars, at intervals of about three feet, to a long pine trunk. These contrivances they had fixed at points they wished to protect. Faggots had then been laid athwart the three-feet interstices, in order that the pebbles and rubbish the flood would bring down might be piled against them. Of course these fortifications had not been set at right angles to the line of the flood, but slightly inclined down it, so that when it impinged upon them, the line of least resistance to the impinging flood would be in the direction that would take it back to the main channel. I suppose the plan had been to some extent successful, for the land behind the second line had been mostly saved. I was reminded of Christian Grass’s remark on a similar scene in the Scarlthal, that for these poor people to see a torrent sweeping away their land is a far more dreadful spectacle than to see the flames devouring their houses.

Just beyond this scene of devastation was the stock of pine trunks, that had last winter been cut in, and brought down from, the forest above by the men of Grüsch, for their supply, during the coming winter, of fuel and of timber for house repairs. The size of the trunks is, if age be taken into account, an indication of the nature of the soil and of the climate. These gave good evidence in favour of the soil and climate of the Prätigäu. I measured the butt end of the largest of them. It was nearly four feet in diameter without the bark. This must have been a stately tree. I counted, too, the rings of its annual growth. It had been one of the patriarchs of the forest, for one hundred and forty had been the number of its years. Four generations of Grüschers had withheld their hands from converting it into fuel or money, and a fifth generation were now to have the benefit of their educated forbearance.

The exit from the Prätigäu is through a grand portal. The precipices are high and sheer; the Lanquart is rapid, dashing, and dinning; the road is tortuous. At the last turn of the road, where the precipices are highest and sheerest, and the Lanquart most rapid, dashing, and dinning, you suddenly step out on the long and broad expanse, here two miles wide, of the Rhine valley. The spirit of the scene is changed. Some of this broad flat is so poor, all vegetable mould having ages ago been washed out of it, that it will grow only stunted trees, and some so low and wet that it will grow only reeds and rushes. Should you be making for Ragatz, as I was, two roads will be before you; one along the foot of the right-hand mountain range by Malans and Maienfeld, the other straight across the valley and the Rhine, which is here on its further side, and then along the foot of the left-hand range. For a moment I looked on the scene before me, and then went straight on. The two miles of dead level would be something new, and would give me some idea of what the Rhine valley is here. The two next miles beyond the bridge over the Rhine, and on to Ragatz, with the morning sun full on the road, and against the side of the overhanging mountain, were memorably warm.

Ragatz commences on this side with a monster hotel. Between a large orchard, which you reach first, and this hotel is a road which brings you in three or four hundred yards to the road from the town to the gorge of Pfäffers, at the very mouth of which Ragatz stands on the beginning of the level ground. It was still early, and so, without stopping at Ragatz, I went straight up the gorge. From Ragatz to the old baths is a distance of two and a half miles, and an ascent of somewhat more than five hundred feet. The road is good, though it must have been very costly to construct, and must be so to maintain. The side on which it is excavated and built is not so precipitous as the other, which is generally sheer cliff from five to eight hundred feet high. All the way along, the Tamina is rushing by and tumbling down before you. You see that it is wearing away its rocky bed; and you can see no evidence, nor imagine any reason, why you should not suppose that it was the same stream that in the same manner cut out the whole of the ravine. If sufficient time be given, it is as easy to cut out eight hundred feet as eight. The perpendicular face of the cliff which looks to the east does not at all stand in the way of this conclusion. Of course the rapidly descending water was disposed to take a straight line, and even, if diverted from the straight line, to work back to it as soon as possible. And then it would naturally cut down its channel perpendicularly, because, as it would be flowing rapidly, it would keep its cutting tools, the bits of rock and the sand it was carrying along, at work in the middle of the stream. If you throw anything into a confined mill-race, you will see that it does not grate along the sides, but, as it sinks, is forced into the middle, and swept along the middle, of the stream, there being a pressure on it from both sides. The natural tendency, therefore, is that the erosion of a rapid stream would be both straight and perpendicular. You see this in all the gorges where the water is now, or has at former times been, flowing rapidly. Only one point remains, Why is the face of the gorge which looks to the west less perpendicular than that face which looks to the east? This also may be explained. The afternoon sun shines with sufficient force on the western-looking cliff to melt the snow on its summit, and some little way down. As soon as the sun is withdrawn the water from the melted snow may be recongealed. These alternations of thawing and freezing are a cause that is at work every spring to disintegrate the rock on the side that faces west. This cause is not at work on the side that faces east; that, therefore, remains perpendicular. The other side, however, which is acted on by this cause, has receded a little, and become somewhat inclined. Had there been no frosts, there would have been no weathering of this side, which would then have remained throughout, with the exception of the few places where little lateral streams enter the gorge from this side, as perpendicular as the other side. The rain also being generally on the west-looking side, helps to bring down the disintegrated rubble, and dislodged rocks, to the bottom of the gorge, where the Tamina immediately, if it cannot sweep them away, begins to wear them away.

As to the Baths of Pfäffers, those I mean near the head of the gorge: while at a second breakfast there at 9.30 I thought the appearance of the servants did not say much for the salubrity of the place. They looked fleshless, bloodless, nerveless. But this was no more than you might expect to see in people who had been living for two or three months in so damp and deep a hole. The owner of the establishment ought to change his servants every Saturday night, otherwise they will, or at all events they ought to, scare away his visitors; their pale and emaciated faces are so many finger-posts, on which is written the word dangerous. No breath of air can reach the house. If the stagnation of the air is what in ordinary valleys produces goîtres, what must its stagnation in this wet gorge be capable of producing? If the exterior of the house were not frequently rewhite-washed it would, I suppose, be covered with the lichens and moss, and such like damp growths as you may see on the wall by its side. It may, however, be argued that the actual baths must be a prophylactic against rheumatism, because many of those who have been here a week are still able to walk away.

I spent four hours at Ragatz. It is a loosely put together place, consisting very much of large hotels in the style of Interlaken. The interstices, as it is rapidly increasing in population, will probably soon be filled up. The water of Pfäffers is brought down to the town in a wooden pipe two and a half miles long. This water and the gorge are the sources of the prosperity of Ragatz. As to Pfäffers, it is worth seeing. As to the water it may possibly do no harm to drink it. It issues from the rock at a temperature of about a hundred degrees. This appears to be its only peculiarity; at all events it smells and tastes, we are told, like any other water. No one seemed to know what, if any, therapeutic ingredients it possesses, or what are the maladies in the treatment of which it may be held to be efficacious. These, however, are not the only ways in which it may be regarded. If it can give any sufferer an excuse for hope, so far well, unless it should prevent his having recourse at the same time to some other rational treatment of his ailment. Or if it give an excuse to some for leaving too fast, or too slow, a home, and to others for withdrawing themselves from overwork, for a time, that also may be set down to the credit side of the account.

In the evening I went by rail to Coire. As I passed along the broad valley of the Rhine, I saw several mountains cut down almost as perpendicularly as the gorge at Pfäffers. To the thought, though of course not to the unthinking eye, the valley is more impressive than the gorge. Here mountains have been planed down by old world glaciers, and cut through by still existing streams, to such an extent as to form a valley in places two miles wide. The face of many of the mountains is still a precipice. In many the precipice at the top has been slanted back by the weather, and the chips falling to the bottom have continued the incline in the form of a long talus, which still remains only because in all the centuries that have passed since the chips began to accumulate, the stream has never been working on that side. These are grander operations, and they contain more elements of interest to the thought, than the narrow ravine of Pfäffers.

August 23.—At Coire I had got back to a point already passed in my outward course. Among the guests of the hotel, who were taking an early breakfast to be in time for the early diligence, was a German of the Hercynian forest type. There was an item in his bill of which he did not approve. At the sight of this entry his wrath kindled in a moment. He was not satisfied with assailing the waiters, he must have the manager before him. The manager came. The grievance was detailed with much emphasis. Its enormity was dwelt upon. But the manager was not taken by surprise. He was as firm as a rock, and with a surface as incapable of being ruffled. Again the Teuton returned to the assault. Again the manager received it unmoved. How the conflict ended cannot be recorded, for at this point I left the room.

This German was not more irascible than two of our young compatriots, their ages might have been between twenty-five and thirty, whom I had lately met, were impassive. I sat opposite to them at supper. To each other they had hardly a word to say. Observing this I addressed to them an occasional remark or two. Their replies, however, were seldom more than monosyllabic. They were as indisposed to talk to a stranger as to each other. The next day I sat for several hours in the diligence with them. During the whole of that time, the least taciturn of the two only twice uttered a word. Looking at his watch, which was ostensibly his chief employment, he announced to his companion that it was nine o’clock. Some time later, while we were changing horses, he looked out of the window, and announced in tones expressive of interest suddenly awakened, that a supplément was being got ready. I heard the sound of his more taciturn companion’s voice but once. A Swiss gentleman, who was seated opposite to him, endeavoured to direct his attention to a very celebrated mountain which happened at the moment to be in sight. ‘Oh!’ was his reply, but it was addressed not so much to the gentleman who had just spoken to him as to vacancy, ‘oh! we have had enough of walking.’ Of course exhibitions of this kind are no evidence of a national inferiority in natural gifts. They do, however, suggest a suspicion of the inadequacy of our eight-parts-of-speech system of education. To these two young gentlemen nature may have been not less bountiful in her gifts, or, if the German observation that nature has given to Germans industry, but to Englishmen genius, be true, may have been even more bountiful, than to most men; and if so, then the fault may not have been so much in them, as in the system to which they had presumably been sacrificed: possibly they had not been fairly dealt with. The improbability of any other conclusion arises from this, that if their state of mind was not natural, and we can hardly regard it as natural, it must have been produced artificially.

At Dissentis, too, which I reached this day at 1 P.M., I was still on old ground. My object in stopping here was to get a porter for a walk by the Lukmanier road, the Uomo Pass, Altanca, and Val Bedretto to the Gries glacier, with the descent from which into the Rhone Valley at Ulrichen my excursion would end. As soon as I had reached Dissentis I requested the manager of the hotel to get me the best guide in the place, asking him so to interpret best as to give intelligence a prominent place in his estimate: because what I wanted was not merely a two-legged pack-horse, but a man with whom it would also be pleasant to carry on a conversation of four days’ duration. He knew, he said, exactly what I wanted, and a man who would completely meet my requirements—a man in every respect good, but in respect of intelligence exceptionally good. This was promising; so the possessor of these good qualities was summoned forthwith, and it was agreed that we should, at 3 P.M., start for Perdatsch, ten and a half miles on the way to the Lukmanier, which would be enough for an evening walk. The man’s get-up was elaborate for a guide; and there was a jauntiness in his manner, and, as it struck me, an expression of wiliness in his eye, which suggested to me the thought that it would be as well to put the agreement between us into black and white; and this I accordingly did. He returned half an hour later than the time fixed for starting. We had not got clear of the village before he had informed me that he regarded priests as canaille of the first class. Such was his form of the superlative of that already vigorous superlative of contempt. Why, I asked, did he give them this pre-eminent position? Because, he replied, they did no work at all, and lived better than he did. The fact was that he did not recognize, because he could not understand, that there was any kind of work in the world, except manual labour. He then passed on to the landlords of hotels, the only well-to-do class he was acquainted with in his own neighbourhood, and included them in the same category: they too were canaille. In their case, however, he did not add his superlative suffix. The real reason of his dislike to them appeared to be that they had more capital than himself; for he had only enough to keep a small shop, while they had enough to keep hotels. Of course I could only infer that, as I was unfortunately, or rather heinously, able to pay him for accompanying me, he was regarding me at that moment in the same light, and referring me to the same class. All this was soon explained. He had lately returned from Paris, where he had been at the time of the siege and of the commune; and if he was not an actually affiliated member of the Internationale, he was at all events in opinions and sympathy a communist of the first class. This was not quite the kind of man I should have myself chosen; but still there he was by my side, and must remain there for some days. There was, therefore, nothing to be done now but to make the best of a bad bargain. I had at all events an opportunity for studying at leisure the kind of stuff of which not of course all communists must be, but of which it is not unlikely that some are, made.

For the first six miles, that is as far as Platta, our way was along the new road, which is being made from Dissentis by the Lukmanier to Olivone. It is a grand piece of mountain road-making, as may be understood from there being eleven tunnels in the first four miles. This will also indicate the nature of the ravine, which necessitates such work for the road that traverses it. The stream below the road is the Mittel Rhein, which at Dissentis joins the Vorder Rhein—the main headwater of the Rhine. These new roads, of which so many are being constructed in Switzerland, are, I was told, made at the cost partly of the respective cantons, and partly of the Confederation. This is as it should be, for they are not of local advantage only, but are also indispensable for the general prosperity of the country. Of course there can be no internal or external exchange of commodities, and no human circulation either of natives or of foreigners without roads; and exactly in proportion as roads are multiplied and improved, are these advantages extended. No people see this more clearly than the Swiss. These are questions which their practical lives and practical education enable them to understand readily and thoroughly. They are, therefore, always adding to, and improving their means of communication. And, as far as I know, there is not in the country a road for the use of which a toll is charged: for to their apprehension a toll would be a contradiction of the very purpose for which the road was made. It was made to facilitate communication; and the toll by making communication dearer, has the same effect in discouraging it that needlessly severe gradients, or unnecessary circuits of many miles, or a shockingly bad condition of the roadway itself would have. For this reason, that is to say, because they see distinctly what is the object of having roads, they make them as well as they can be made, keep them in as good repair as possible, and make the use of them perfectly free to all.

The scenery is interesting at first in the ravine, and not the less so afterwards, when you have emerged from the ravine, and have entered on something more valley-like, with the mountains standing somewhat back, and with openings in them to allow you some glimpses of snowy summits. These, however, were matters about which the communist felt no interest. All that he would here talk about was the profligacy of the government in making the roads. The local and the general government were equally culpable, for each raised its funds by taxation. It was the people who paid for it all. Roads and everything else, were only excuses for extracting money from them. It was vain to argue that the roads were made for the people, and were for them a necessity; that they increased their resources; enabled many to live well who had lived miserably before; and increased the opportunities and comforts of all. Probably it was just in this that the sting of the road lay: because for those who had land it raised the value of their property, and enlarged the opportunities of innkeepers and such like folk. The wound this inflicted on the feelings could not be salved by the fact, that while the road did hurt to no one, it must in their proportion have benefited even the smallest tradesmen, for it created a demand for what they had to sell by bringing buyers, while it also enabled them to get from a distance, and more cheaply than before, the commodities in which they dealt. Through such helps and facilities many petty tradesmen had become far more flourishing than they were formerly. Of course there would have been no objection to this last effect. Had it stood by itself it would have been approved of. But, then, the movement had not stopped at this point, but had also benefited innkeepers, and some other such Tritons; indeed, had made them Tritons, and that was intolerable.

It was a pleasant walk to Perdatsch. The new road has not yet got beyond Platta. But there was nothing to regret in this. The new road was good; but so also was the old paved horseway. This also one was glad to see: it was rudely constructed of blocks and slabs of gneiss, long since worn smooth by many centuries of local traffic, and the passage over them, too, of many armies, which in old times, as we are told, went and returned this way, during the long period when the Lukmanier, because it was the easiest, was the most frequented, of all Alpine Passes. It had been 3.30 when we left Dissentis, and as my companion had stopped at Platta for twenty minutes for a chopine of wine, the last gleams of daylight were dying away as we reached Perdatsch. To be still on the tramp at the close of evening gave rise almost to a new sensation, which, too, was not altogether a pleasant one; for you seemed to be still at work when all nature was either going to rest, or counselling rest. The peasants had returned home, and so had the goats and cows. Those belonging to the little inn had come down from the mountain, and, having now been milked, were taking up their berths for the night on the lee side of the châlet, and contiguous rocks. It was the hour, not for walking, but for talking, at your ease, over what had been seen during the day that was past, and for forming plans for the day that was coming.

The inn of Perdatsch is well situated. You have lately been passing several little villages, which had, successively, been becoming smaller, as the height had increased, and so the means for supporting life had decreased. And now at the point where the stream from the Val Cristallina meets that of the Medelser Rhein, and at the foot of M. Garviel, which rises up before you to divide the V. Cristallina from the Val Medels, stands the little wood-built structure. Your memory of what is behind, and the sight of what is in front, suggest to you that you have now reached the verge of inhabitable altitude. As you approach Perdatsch, you see that the stream, in the leap it there takes of a hundred feet, is of considerable volume; and you find it putting in a claim to be a Rhine, the Mittel, or Medelser, Rhein; on the Splügen you had met a second Rhine, the Hinter Rhein; on the Julier, a third, the Oberhalbstein Rhein; in Aversthal a fourth, the Averser Rhein; and you have seen all these joining a fifth, the Vorder Rhein. Each of the five by assuming the famous name seems to insist on your remembering that it bears an important part in the origination of the great river, or at least is among its first contributories. I believe, however, that the word in its original signification was not so much the proper name as the appellative of a stream, or river. The Rhine may have meant the river, the flowing water. Etymologists will say whether it has any blood relationship with rivus, river, and Rhone, and possibly Eridanus, which appears to have been the name of a river that emptied itself into the Baltic, as well as an alias of the Po. But to propound conjectures without an adequate knowledge of the subject, in etymology as in other matters, is easy, and in both senses of the word endless.

This inn was about the smallest châlet I ever entered. The following were its internal arrangements. The entrance door was at the south-east corner. From the door were two little passages. The one facing the door led to the room occupied by the landlord and his wife. This room might have been nine feet wide and a dozen in length. The second passage turned to the right of the door along the wall. It was about four feet wide. In this passage came first the cooking stove; the passage was in fact the kitchen; and then beyond the cooking stove the door of the reception room. This was about eleven feet square, and so low that a tall man could not stand erect in it. Opposite the door of the landlord’s own room, and rising over the door of the house, was a ladder, by which one ascended to a passage corresponding to that which formed the kitchen. At the further end of this upper passage was a miniature bed, which my guide will occupy to-night. Close to his crib was the door which opened into the guests’ bedroom. This was the largest room in the house. It contained three beds. Its extent, however, was only in area, for it was so low that it required some manœuvring to get into bed, and I could not have attempted to sit up in bed without knocking my head against the ceiling. This was the whole structure, which to-night will shelter thirteen mortals. Absit omen!

On my arrival I found a solitary Frenchman—the only Frenchman I met during this expedition—in possession of the little parlour. He had left Dissentis an hour earlier than I; I had, however, seen him there, and as we were in the same hotel, and bound for the same place, I had addressed a few words to him; but he had then appeared to be indisposed to engage in conversation. I now found him full of conversation, and a pleasant man to talk with. He told me that he was a member of the French Alpine Club; that its members had made so few ascents that he was desirous of doing something, and so that he had come out to get into training for an ascent of Mount Blanc; but that he did not contemplate making the attempt till next year. He was a stout and sturdy but rather short man of about thirty-four years of age. He carried his knapsack himself.

The usual question now arose, What could we have for supper? In so small a house, so far from the world, we did not expect to find much. We, therefore, summoned the landlord, and asked him to give us a list of everything in the way of eatables and drinkables his house contained. He had dried beef, and also dried mutton: the latter was quite a novelty to both of us. His wife could make soup. She could also fry eggs in butter. He had, too, Piora cheese, not of course actual Piora, but equally of course quite as good, wine, white bread, and coffee. He was congratulated on having so many good things, and such a wife; and requested to place every one of the good things on the table as soon as his wife could prepare them. The cembra fire was kindled, and its cooking power got up, as soon as the match was put to it; and so in about half an hour, there being hardly room on the little table for all the viands, supper was served. We found there was no reason why we should desert our old acquaintance, the dried beef, for our new acquaintance, the dried mutton. The soup was an instance of the deceptiveness of words. It had no more resemblance to the Tauffers mess of herbs, spice, and macaroni than chicken broth has to the ambrosia of terrapin or turtle. It had but two ingredients, and those were rice and milk; enough of the latter to float the former. It was an undecided question whether the eggs would not have been better without the butter. The plain butter and the Pioresque cheese were good. The white bread was an old world petrifaction. The wine was acid, if not sour. The coffee was good, as was the milk that accompanied it. On the whole we were content. Things were far better than we might have anticipated. We loitered over them; and it was 10 o’clock—a late hour for such places, and for such work as we were engaged in—before we went up the ladder, and crept into our cribs.

I had not been long in the house before eight peasants arrived for the night. They walked into the reception room. We, however, were already in possession. There was hardly standing space for them all; and it was evident that there was no space for another table, and benches, for so many. The landlord and his wife were equal to the occasion; and the peasants being reasonable people at once recognized the necessities of the situation, and accepted the alternative the host offered them till we might retire to bed. They had, too, come to make a night of it, and would not be disappointed. Besides there was nowhere else to go. The alternative was that they might have for the present our host’s and his wife’s bedroom. To this, then, they withdrew, and forthwith commenced playing at cards and drinking, transferring themselves to the reception room when we left it. There they remained till 3 o’clock in the morning; at which hour they quitted the house, to proceed further up the mountains to make hay. They were Platta men, and the foreman of the party was the Platta schoolmaster, a tall wiry man, with a black bushy beard. At times during the night we were woke by their shouts and laughter, as the fortunes of their game varied. The stakes they were playing for was the wine they were drinking, for which the losers had to pay. When disturbed by their merriment, I cannot say that I was lulled again to sleep—the effect was rather in the opposite direction—by the rude bluster of the stream, which was tumbling down its rocky channel not many yards from my head—still I had no wish that either the merrymakers or the stream were further off.