August 25.—The Parisienne’s estimate of the services that had been rendered to me was nine francs: a low estimate if compared with English charges; still for some even of it I was indebted to the communist, as I was also for my not being able to get away before six o’clock. Our destination was All’ Acqua, at the head of the Val Bedretto. As we left Altanca I found that many of the goats and cows of the place were suffering from the foot and mouth disease, that has of late years been very troublesome here among our own herds. It was sad to find such a calamity lessening the resources—and their cows and goats are their chief resource—of these hard-working and scantily provided people. The view, as we began to descend to the valley of the Ticino, was very grand, as it had been from Lake Ritom down to Altanca—far grander, indeed, than anything you can see from the valley itself. Between the village and the valley the path is all the way over very steep reclaimed grass land. To reclaim it had been the labour of many generations. The dusty road of the hot valley was a poor exchange for the Medelserthal, the Uomo, the Piora, the Ritom, and the Altanca of yesterday. We had not, however, much of it, for we were to leave it at Airolo. At Airolo, however, I was provokingly detained for half an hour by my thirsty and lazy attendant, who could not, after a walk of only an hour and a half in the early morning, pass a wine-shop without turning into it. The long main street of Airolo was up, just as if it had been Cheapside, in order that an iron water-main might be laid down in it, in anticipation of its coming wants, when the railway beneath the St. Gothard shall be opened.

A troop of artillery passed through the place. They had been out somewhere near Andermatt for their summer manœuvres. Yesterday at Piora we had heard the booming of their guns. I thought of them, and of the national force to which they belonged, in connection with the railway. Switzerland was strong when it was self-contained, and when a large part of the country was almost inaccessible. This was what enabled it to establish its independence. It could support itself, and its enemies could not get at it. Now, however, it is not self-contained, for it is very largely dependent on trade and travellers. It can no longer produce its own food, but must look to trade and travellers for the means of purchasing a large portion of its daily bread. If, then, the railways that bring these travellers, and the cotton, the wool, and the silk its factories work up, and carry to their markets the manufactured fabrics, and which, too, bring a considerable proportion of its daily bread, were held by an enemy, the country would be starved into submission. This might be done in two or three years without firing many guns, or much fighting. Nor if an enemy should desire to invade it, would any part of the country be inaccessible. Railways and roads have opened the whole of it. Either, then, it might be starved into submission by having its supplies cut off, or the enemy might take advantage of the means of communication it has already constructed, and to which it is still adding, to make himself master of its strongholds, and chief centres of population. Modern Switzerland, therefore, is now no stronger than any other part of Europe: indeed, not so strong as many of its more behindhand districts. All the grand appliances of modern science, wealth, and organization, such as railways, gas-works, water-works, large factories, extensive commerce, banking facilities, must in future wars be so many sources of weakness to the weaker powers, that is to those who are not strong enough to protect the costly material mechanism of modern civilization. The strength with which nature had endowed Switzerland under the old condition of things has under their existing condition been well-nigh completely cancelled. This may in proportion be applied generally to the whole Continent, with the single exception of its strongest nation, for the weaker are now in a degree and manner peculiar to these times at the mercy of the strongest. This suggests the question, what will be the eventual result of the developments of science and wealth having made the weaker nations almost powerless, and the strongest nation almost omnipotent?

It was pleasant on this sunny morning to get out of the stifling heat of Airolo. Before we could enter the Val Bedretto we had to cross the Ticino, close to the mouth of the railway tunnel. Here was presented to us a very busy scene, which showed how much work was doing, and would have to be done. No sooner had we entered the Val Bedretto than we were met by a current of crisply fresh air descending it. There is nothing to a cursory glance particularly striking in this valley. Still it has its own features; but if I were to attempt to put them into words the description would appear to be not unlike that of many another Alpine valley. This, however, would be an injustice; its pathway, its forests, its villages, its mountains, the rents in its mountains, some of them very deep, and from the colour of the rock almost of a pure white, the main valley itself, its laterals, and its broad pebbly stream, have each and all their own character, and quite enough to interest and satisfy the mind; at least I have never found a Swiss valley, and certainly did not find the Val Bedretto, uninteresting; even though, as it happened, I had to stop for a quarter of an hour at Fontana, and again for half an hour at Villa for those ever-craved, and never-satisfying chopines of wine. This annoyance, however, even if in some degree it amounted to that, was one of very small dimensions: it was not, for instance, to be compared in respect of any inconvenience that attended it, with a high wind, or a smart shower, or even an overclouded sky, or still less with a battered foot. At all events, all is well that ends well; and so I thought, as early in the afternoon we reached our day’s halting place at All’ Acqua, though not at first knowing the good-fortune that was awaiting me there; for I had now, without the least anticipation that it would be so, heard the last of those unconscionable chopines of wine.

Here, then, I am in my last little mountain inn. I have now had my last dinner of macaroni soup, and of crude beef, and am sitting outside in the bright sun, very pleasant at this height, and am noting the composition of the scene. The little house stands some hundreds of feet above the Ticino, on the left bank. The stream, though lost to sight, is still heard from down below. Beyond it, on the opposite side, are steep mountains, clothed on their lower flanks with more or less detached larch, tufts of dwarf alder, and patches of grass, to the upper limit of the tree line, and then up to the summit with open grass and rocks. On my side, around me, the foreground is open pasture strewn with rocks. It is studded with a few large venerable larch. A small stream threads its way down it to supply the house with water. This open, rock-strewn pasture rises into a near line of wooded mountains, with a few patches of grass. These constitute the middle distance, beyond the immediate foreground. They are backed by another quite distinct line of mountains, which are the background of this part of the panorama. The second range is in complete contrast to the first, for it is much loftier, and steeper, and absolutely naked. Its summits are in the forms of pyramids, peaks, and cliffs, and grandly dominate the interposed green range. It is against the sky line. Down the valley are the snow-patched finials of the St. Gothard group. Up the valley are dark scantily-turfed slopes, tipped with snow. In that direction will lie my path to-morrow.

I returned to the house with three Italians, who had come from Domo d’Ossola by the Falls of the Tosa. Their coloured scarfs, patent-leather buskins, and the rest to match, were more elaborate, and more designed for artistic effects, than would have been considered appropriate for mountain work by any people from the north of the Alps. But they were engaged in a great undertaking, and this get-up would magnify it in their friends’, and, too, in their own, eyes. While they were at dinner the landlord came in to ask me, if I would give up to them my guide, who in that case would accompany them as their guide and porter in the afternoon back to Airolo, adding that he would himself, to-morrow, take my man’s place with me. I was only too happy to hear the proposal. I declined, however, to have anything to do with the pecuniary part of the arrangement: that the two men must settle between themselves. I would pay my man the whole sum for which he had agreed to go with me across the Pass to Ulrichen, and he must pay the landlord for taking his place for the day. This would be a gain in more ways than one to him, for he would be paid by the Italians for returning with them this evening to Airolo, and I would give him two days’ pay for returning, whereas he could return from Airolo to Dissentis in one day easily, having nothing but himself to carry. He would thus get home two days sooner, get all I had agreed to give him for the longer time, and what the Italians would give him for a day, having only, per contra, to pay his substitute for one day. At this proposal he burst into a storm of wrath, and demanded three days’ pay for returning. This I told him would be contrary to the contract, even had he gone to Ulrichen. In his rage he denied that there had ever been any contract. I produced it. He then took his money; and much to my satisfaction, I saw no more of ‘the most intelligent, and in every respect the best guide in Dissentis.’

The family of the inn comprised six little bare-footed, bare-headed children. The eldest could hardly have been more than eight years old; the youngest was an infant in arms. Their confidence was readily won by a distribution of ten cent pieces. The infant clutched his piece as tenaciously, and appreciated it as highly, as the eldest. The good-natured signora was pleased to find that her little ones were regarded with some interest, and not as nuisances. I spent half an hour in the evening in the dairy to witness the economies of the butter, and of the cheese making. The good man had a sturdy female assistant, with broader shoulders than his own, who accompanied him to the alpe to milk the cows and to bring home the milk, which was immediately curded over the fire, and set for cheese of the Pioresque kind. The milk that had been set for cream, was now skimmed for butter. The sturdy assistant churned the cream, while the good man converted the skimmed milk into meagre cheese. The whey from both the fat and the meagre curd, was set to the fire a second time, for the production of the second curd. This is too soft and poor for cheese. In French Switzerland it is called serré; here it goes by a name which is pronounced muscarp, but written mascarpa. The thin watery whey expressed from this is given to the pigs, who stand outside, with their snouts thrust in at the door, to claim their rights. By the time the whey is ready for them it is almost dark, only just enough light remaining to enable you to see that, as they silently absorb gallon after gallon of the liquid, they are ‘visibly swelling before your eyes.’ The muscarp is then carried into the house in a wooden keeler, and the good man, his prolific wife, the sturdy female attendant, and the six children, the two eldest of whom had, to the extent of their capacities assisted at the butter and the cheese making, sit at the table round the tub, and with wooden spoons address themselves to its contents. I take a spoonful. I had not tasted curds and whey since I was a boy in the West Indies, where the mess goes by I suppose the Scotch name of bonnie clabber. To encourage the family party, for the junket does not quite equal my fancied recollections, I pronounce it to be good. ‘But,’ quoth the good man, ‘you would not think so, if it were all your supper every evening.’

August 26.—At 5 A.M. was off with Clemente Forni. It was as fresh and bright as could be wished for one’s last morning among the mountains. The way was over short rock-strewn turf, by the side of the infant Ticino, with near mountains right and left and before me. Clemente was of the kind of men you take to at once, and who give you afterwards no reason—I will suppose this of him—for changing your opinion. Everything around, and within, promised well for a pleasant day on the Gries glacier, which both last year, and the year before, I had looked at over the head of the Valais, from the top of the Grimsel, with a desire for a nearer acquaintance. From what I had seen of Clemente yesterday he seemed industrious, thoughtful, gentle, honest, one who had a head, a heart, and a conscience. Indeed, the stream of his discursive talk, fed from these fountains, never ran dry. This made him a man whom it was pleasant to walk and to talk with. His only scheming was how he might by his own hard labour bring up his six little folk, and as many more as might come. In about an hour and a half we reached the cheese châlet of the Cruina alpe, in a little mountain-locked bay, well sheltered from every wind. The sixty-four cows kept upon it had all been milked, and with but a few exceptions here and there, were all again lying down, knowing that they should not be taken for the day to pasture, till the four herdsmen had made the cheese, and had their own breakfast.

We entered the châlet. The milk of the sixty-four cows was being curded in a gigantic copper caldron, over a clear smokeless cembra fire. A man of about six-and-thirty, not tall, but broad and bony, of iron frame and massive muscles, was in charge of the caldron. At another fire was another of the party, preparing a pot of polenta made with cream. The other two were lying on thick gray blankets at the further end of the single room. The polenta was soon ready, and was carried, in the pot in which it had been made, outside the châlet—there was no room for the party within—and six one-legged stools set round it for the four herdsmen, my guide, and myself, and a round-bowled spoon brought out for each of us. We ranged ourselves on the one-legged stools around the pot. One who hails from the south of the Tweed will probably prefer polenta made with cream to oatmeal porridge. When they had finished the polenta, each dipped with a miniature wooden keeler, which does duty for dish, plate, and basin, out of a large wooden tub as much muscarp as he would require for supplementing his first course of polenta. A great deal of muscarp is made from sixty-four cows, and it is the work of one of the herdsmen to take this down daily to All’ Acqua, from whence it is sent on upon another back to Bedretto. The man who takes it down to All’ Acqua returns with a load of wood. On leaving the party I had some difficulty in persuading the broad-shouldered, brawny-muscled cheese-maker to accept a franc for his hospitality.

As we passed through the herd one of the cows that was on her legs came up to us, and rubbed her head against my guide. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is my cow.’ While she was thus expressing, in her dumb fashion, her satisfaction at seeing him—there was no hypocrisy in this recognition—two dun yearling heifers rose from the ground, and coming up to him, as the cow had done, began to lick his hand. These also, I needed not to have been told it, were his. Here was irrefragable evidence of the gentleness of the good man. What a pleasant sight to the cow was the familiar form and dress! How often had those yearling heifers eaten from that hand! They had never been cuffed, or kicked, or sworn at. The wife and children, too, then, had had, and would continue to have, done for them all that man could do at All’ Acqua; and so would all who might come in the good man’s way. Who could help liking and respecting one, for whom his beasts were showing such confiding regard, or could fail to be reminded of very different scenes he had witnessed elsewhere? When a horse shrinks from the man who has charge of it, you need not be told in words how he is in the habit of treating it. No further evidence is needed. On this occasion I, too, came in for some share of attention, for a goat that was kept with the herd ran up to me, and, rubbing her nose on my hand, begged for a pinch of salt. How gladly would I have complied with her request! Were I ever again to visit the alpe of Cruina I would not go without a pinch or two of salt.

We were now near the head of the Pass. The grass was beginning to thin out. The marmots were abroad for their morning feed. As we disturbed them, they wriggled home with a slow and awkward movement, for their bodies are long and their legs short; and when they had reached the door of their runs, so that they could feel somewhat secure, paused for a moment or two to make out the designs of the intruders. Just before us was the Corno glacier to which we were approaching, and on to which a few more steps would take us. We had ascended about 3,000 feet from All’ Acqua, and were now at an elevation of 8,000 feet. ‘The little sinuous paths of earthly care’ were far below, and around us were some of ‘the flowers that embellish’ the pedestrian’s way, and ‘the springs that refresh’ him at these heights. One of the former was a pale sky-blue gentian, a flower that still embellishes memory, as it did on that day my path, and from one of the latter I had a rare draught, at the spot where it welled out of the rock a little below the glacier. And now we are upon the Corno glacier, itself. It has some peculiarities. First it is in the form of a saddle, or the segment of a circle, with the glacier for the arc of the segment, the chord being underground. In a word it is convex. This double inclination is one peculiarity. Another is found in its moraine. As it has no lateral glaciers to cause medial moraines, you would suppose that it would have two lateral moraines, and nothing more. It has, however, nothing of the kind on either side, but, instead, one large, well compacted, wall-like moraine some considerable way from the margin. And now we are struck with another peculiarity. The glacier on the Gries side is depressed along the middle in the axis of its length. As, then, the moraine is not on the margin, we should have expected to find it following the line of greatest central depression, whereas it runs along the face of one of the inclines midway between the margin and the line of greatest depression. These, then, are the questions the sight suggests to us; Why are there not two moraines, one on each margin of the glacier? How comes it that the single moraine, which must have been formed from the mountains above, seeing that it is not on one of the margins, is not in the line of the central depression? How comes it to be so compactly and cleanly built along the middle of the descent of one side towards the central depression? And what has produced this central depression? Clemente from his knowledge of the locality was able to answer all these questions, I think, satisfactorily. In winter the glacier is buried in snow to a great depth. At that season, and in the spring, the snow-inclines from the two mountains meet not above the line of longitudinal greatest depression in summer, but exactly along the line of the moraine. Here in winter and spring is the line of greatest depression. Every rock, therefore, that falls from either mountain rolls down to this line, and is added to the moraine. As a general rule rocks only fall in winter and spring. This accounts for their being nowhere except along this line, that is to say for the strange position of the moraine along the flank of an incline of ice. In the early spring, when the snow is beginning to melt, and for some time longer, the moraine continues to be the line of greatest depression. At this time, therefore, all the surface melting flows along it through its open pile of stones: this accounts for their being washed clean and kept open. As the summer advances, and the sun becomes more vertical, the snow is melted away to some distance below the moraine, and the line of greatest depression is advanced considerably, along which, as long as there is any surface snow melting, there is a stream flowing, which, as long as it lasts, aids in deepening the central depression. This accounts for the summer line of depression along the middle of the glacier, far below the moraine. This glacier, then, as we said at first, is, when regarded as a whole, of a convex form; but a transverse section of it on the Gries side, and taken at a point alongside of the moraine would be concave. Its position explains its convexity. It descends on the summit of a gentle ridge, or if you prefer so to state it, is formed on the summit of a gentle ridge; it naturally, therefore, flows down each side of this ridge. I have given Clemente’s explanation of the singular position of the moraine, and of the central concavity of the western limb of the glacier.

Having left the Corno we got upon the Gries by passing along the flank of the last spur of the mountain to the north of the Corno glacier. At its extremity, with the Corno on your left, you command a grand view of the broad expanse of the Gries. To this we now descended. It here presents a smooth surface, rising to the south-west. We passed the line of poles, each fixed in a counterpoise of rock to keep it erect, which mark the horse track across the glacier from the Upper Valais to Domo d’Ossola. We spent about an hour upon it, walking up it, in the direction of the lofty, massive, smooth-faced, umber-coloured mountain, which protrudes through it to the west of the track to Domo d’Ossola. We then recovered the path to Ulrichen.

One goes on a glacier, or goes to see anything, for the sake of the thoughts the sight will awaken. This is as much the case with the man who is unconscious, as with the man who is conscious, of thinking; as much with the clod as with the philosopher; with the man who sneers at thought, that is to say all thought but his own, as with the man who knows that thought is his life, and himself. Now one of the thoughts that interest the mind as you stand on this mighty mass of ice, and know that, as you stand upon it, you and it are being invisibly, imperceptibly, and regularly moved on together, is what moves it? That the movement of the Gries is for local reasons unusually slow, even for a glacier, heightens the interest of the question submitted to your thought. I had at that time a wound on one of my finger-nails, which had been caused by the bite of a dog two months back. It had originally been at the root of the nail. But now it had in the course of those two months advanced almost to the outer edge of the nail, that is to say it had with the utmost slowness, but also with the utmost regularity, travelled from the inner to the outer edge, a journey of an inch in two months. Now what had caused it to move in this way? It was evident that the whole nail, which appears to be firmly fixed to the finger, had moved on with it. Day and night the movement had been going on; but what was it that had been making it move? I suppose the pressure from behind caused by the growth of new matter. This growth of new matter at the root of the nail had caused continuous pressure from behind. This continuous pressure had been propagated throughout the whole extent of the nail, and so had obliged it to move on. Is not the growth of the upper snow-field, and the consequent pressure from it, exactly analogous? Is it not equally continuous? And is it not similarly propagated throughout the whole glacier? And, too, with the same result, that is to say is it not this pressure which obliges the whole mass to move on in the line of least resistance? The wounded point in the nail marked the rate of advance, just as a rock on the surface of the glacier might.

We may see an instance of what continuous pressure will do in the case of a tree growing near an iron fence. They at last come in contact, and the pressure being from the direction of the tree bends the iron. The comparatively soft bark is not cut into: it is the iron that gives way. If the pressure had been in the reverse direction, that is from the iron, the tree would have been cut into. So with the root of a tree in an old wall. The pressure being continuous from the root cracks the wall, though the root is soft and the wall hard. Some ilexes, which a few years back I saw growing on the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars on the Palatine, supplied good instances of the effect of this continuous action of soft on hard substances. Their roots had rent and lifted large masses of what had previously been solid blocks of the firmest masonry, that had stood uninjured through so long a series of centuries, and, had it not been for these roots, would still have been solid and unmoved. So also with the expansion of water when freezing in the cranny of a rock, the expansion of the soft material burst the hard one. The propagation then of continuous pressure throughout the mass of the Gries glacier, although it is four miles long, and one mile broad, and no one can say how thick, may possibly be sufficient to account for its being moved on in the line of least resistance. And if the principle be correct may it not be applied to glaciers of twenty times the magnitude of the Gries? that is to say to all glaciers? In the instances referred to, the formation of new matter at the root of the nail, and of new wood upon the trunk and on the root of a tree, the pressure comes from what is soft, and is applied effectually to what is hard: so may it be with the action of the snow-field on the glacier.

We left the Gries by the same mountain by which we had reached it, with the difference that we now, instead of traversing its southern, had to descend its northern side. First, however, we had to ascend for a few hundred yards. When you have reached the highest point of the path, you look upon a large expanse of the Bernese Oberland. You may find among the Alps many views that are more extensive, and many that in some one feature, or other, are more striking than this. What, however, is before you from this point is in a very high degree impressive. It is a wondrous scene of Alpine architecture, simple in its elements, but grand in its simplicity. To your left is one of the exits of the Gries. The branch glacier in it terminates abruptly, not after a gentle declivity, such as that of the body of the glacier, but in the mid descent of a precipitous outfall. The previously smooth surface is here ruptured with many deep, yawning, transverse seams. Beyond the glacier—to you its further boundary—is a mountain so steep that you may suppose, and perhaps rightly, that no human foot could ascend it. This glacier gorge at your side is a lateral of the transverse valley below you, a valley of enormous depth, scantily clad with humble Alpine pasturage. You can just make out the herd that is grazing in it. On looking over the long steep-sided mountain which forms its opposite range, at the foot of which the cows are grazing, the south-eastern region of the Bernese Oberland is spread out before you. It is at that distance at which the field of vision may comprise many objects, but every object is still seen distinctly. In this wide, verdureless field, there is no suggestion of life. The midday sun, which is shining brightly upon it, brings out nothing but the gray of the summits of rock, which, when not in the shade, show of a pale ash colour, and the white of the summits of snow, which gleams and dazzles in its purity. This dark gray, pale ash, and gleamy white are the only colouring. The gray and pale ash predominate in an endless variety of forms—mountain walls, ridges, battlements, bastions, and escarpments. Every here and there above these is a dome, or a tower, or a pinnacle of gleaming white, just as the domes, and towers, and pinnacles of a great city rise above its other buildings. This is a city of the world’s Builder in which every building is an Alp.

You continue your descent, and soon lose this grand view. But the mountain side, down which your way lies, is grander than usual, longer, and steeper. Your path takes you by intrusive dykes of gneiss and of a black basaltic-looking rock. We here overtook two professors, a botanist with his cases, and an entomologist with his net. They had been beaten by the ascent, and were retracing their steps, fagged, crestfallen, and disappointed. They had our sympathy for their pursuits, and our condolence for their disappointment. Poor fellows! they had just made the painful discovery—may it not have been made too late—that in their mode of life there had been too much desk work, and not enough field work. When human physiology shall be better understood these sad mistakes will not be so frequent. You have now got down into the valley. You look up at the mountain you have been descending. Its height, its steepness, its mass, its ruggedness, its hardness, its inexorableness are so overpowering that your eye shrinks from the effort to aid you in constructing an image of it. At the foot of that high, overhanging, cloud-cleaving upheaval of adamant, you feel very small, very feeble; to your present apprehension your bones are no more than straws, if so much. For a time you allow these impressions of the locality to run their course. Your way is then along the deep valley. As you advance down it you give more heed than usual to the hurrying dashing stream, and you note with more observance than usual the reappearance of the first trees, and of the first châlets, and even the form and size of the detached rocks, for the thought is in your mind that these sounds and sights are being presented to you, for this year at all events, now for the last time. And so about midday you reach the little flat of Ulrichen, and your Month is ended. Your walk will have taken you over between 300 and 400 miles, comprising more than a dozen Passes of one kind or another; and you will have seen much of nature and of man to awaken thought, and to interest you. Every day will have been worth living, and not least so the last. But whatever your capacity for being benefited, or interested, by what you may have seen, you will be but slightly, if at all, indebted for it to that eight-parts-of-speech lore, the study of which, though it formed the chief occupation of all the days of our blessed youth, did not issue in enabling all of us to know so much, or so little, as the names of those eight parts of speech.