Italian Alps

Our evening drive was swift and exciting. An impetuous horse whirled us down a steep vine-clad hill, rounding the zigzags at a pace which made perils by mountains sink into insignificance compared to the perils by road. Near a beautiful waterfall tumbling from the opposite hills, the Malero was leapt by a bold arch, and for some time we ran along a terrace, high above the strong glacier torrent.

From the last brow overlooking the Val Tellina the eye rests on one of those wonderful landscapes which tell the southward-bound traveller that he has reached his goal and is at last in Italy.

The great barrier is crossed, and the North is all behind us. The face of the earth, nay the very nature of the air, has changed, colours have a new depth, shadows a new sharpness. From the deep-green carpet of the smooth valley to the crowns of the sunset-flushed hills, all is wealth and luxuriance. No more pines stand stiff in regimental ranks to resist the assaults of winter and rough weather. No mountain rhododendrons collect all their strength in a few tough short shoots, and push themselves forward like hardy skirmishers of the vegetable world into the very abode of snow. Here the 'green things of the earth' are all at home and at peace, not as in some high Graubunden valley waging unequal war in an enemy's country. The beeches cluster in friendly companies on the hills. The chestnut-forest rejoicing in a green old age spreads out into the kindly air broad, glossy branches, the vines toss their long arms here and there in sheer exuberance of life. Even on the roadside wall the lizards run in and out amongst beds of cyclamen and tenderest ferns and mosses. The hills seem to stand back and leave room for the sunshine; and the broad, shining town of Sondrio, girt by towers and villas, wears, after the poor hamlets of the mountains, a stately air, as if humanity too shared in the general well-being.

It is one of the peculiar privileges of the Alpine traveller to enjoy, if he pleases, the choicest luxury of travel, a descent into Italy, half-a-dozen times in the space of one short summer holiday.

We drove down through vineyards and past a large villa and church, and through a narrow Via Garibaldi into a Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. The south side of the square was formed by the hotel, an imposing building which contains within its walls the post and diligence offices. The windows command a view up Val Malenco, terminated by the twin peaks of the Schwestern, which appear from this side as two rocky teeth, hardly to be recognised as the pure snow-cones which look in at every window at Pontresina.

I have now, I hope, given an account of the mountains of Val Masino, which, though far from complete, may suffice to aid mountaineers who wish to visit them, and to direct attention to some of the most enjoyable expeditions within their limits. But, as I put aside the various pamphlets from which I have tried to add to my own information on this group, I notice that a worthy Herr Professor has remarked on the first ascent of the Disgrazia, that it was 'wholly devoid of scientific interest and results.' I fancy my learned friend preparing to lay down this holiday chronicle with a similar shrug of the shoulders; and I feel indisposed to allow him his criticism until he has first submitted it to be examined in detail, and listened to what may be urged on the other side.

'The Alps,' that shrug seems to say, 'are not a playground for idle boys, but a store-room full of puzzles; and it is only on the understanding that you will set to work to dissect one of these that you can be allowed to enter. You have free leave to look on them, according to your taste, as an herbarium, or as a geological, or even an entomological museum, but they must be treated, and treated only, as a laboratory. The belief that the noblest use of mountains is to serve as a refectory at once mental and physical for an overworked generation, that —

Men in these crags a medicine findTo stem corruption of the mind,

is a poetical delusion unworthy of the philosopher who penned the lines. You must not come here to climb for mere health, or to indulge a sensual love of the beautiful, or, still worse, that brutelike physical energy which may be more harmlessly exhausted in persecuting foxes or trampling turnips. Μηδεὶς ἀγεωμέτρητος εἰσίτω. Come with a measuring rod or not at all.'

So far our critic. In his anxiety to claim on behalf of science exclusive dominion over the mountains, he forgets that all great works of nature are not only monuments of past changes but also living influences. The physical history of our globe is a study the importance of which no one at the present day is likely to disallow. Because we refuse to look on mountains simply as so much historical evidence, we of the Alpine Club do not by any means, as has been frequently suggested, range ourselves amongst the Philistines. We listen with the greatest interest to the men of genius whose mission it is to interpret the hieroglyphics of the temple in which we only worship. But we do not all of us recognise it as our duty to try to imitate their researches. Nor would the wiser of them wish for imitation from an incompetent herd of dabblers, who, however much they might gratify individual vanity, would advance the general sum of knowledge about as much as an ordinary amateur sketchbook does art.

Is it always better for a man, when acres of red rhododendron are in full bloom around him, and the insects are filling the air with a delicious murmur, to be engrossed body and soul in poking about for some rare plant or impaling an unfortunate beetle? When two hundred miles of mountain and plain, lake and river, cornland and forest, are spread out before the eyes, ought one to be remembering that 'justification' depends on ascertaining whether the back is resting on granite or feldspathic gneiss?

The preposterous pretension that no one is 'justified' (it is the favourite word) in drinking in mountain glory in its highest forms unless he brings as a passport a profession of research, cannot be too strongly denounced. To require from every Alpine climber some show of a scientific object would be to preoccupy men's minds at the moment when they should, and would otherwise, be most open to enlarging influences; it would in many cases be to throw away moral advantages and to encourage egotism, vanity, and humbug.

An obvious comparison may perhaps render more clear the relative positions of the simple lover of the Alps and the scientific dabbler. Rome is almost as universal a goal of modern travel as Switzerland. There also is a great history to be studied, on many of the problems of which investigation of the ground we tread may throw light.

The world listens with eager attention to anyone who has the requisite training to study such problems with profit, who can tell us what rude remains may be of the time of the Kings, can distinguish between the work of the Republic and the Empire. And amongst the galleries we are glad to meet those who can trace the progress of art and analyse a great picture so as to show the elements drawn from earlier masters which have been crowned and immortalised by the genius of Raphael or Michael Angelo.

But who ever ventured to assert that Rome was the peculiar heritage of the archæologist or the art critic? that the pathetic strength of its world-centring ruins or the glorious beauty of its frescoed palaces was reserved for the few who can explain, or make guesses at, how these things grew, and forbidden to the many who can only appreciate their present charm?

The Alps, we hold, like Rome, are for everyone who has a soul capable of enjoying them. They have been given us by right of birth for the recreation of our minds and bodies, and we refuse to hand over the key of our playground or to accept the tickets of admission which are so condescendingly offered. If anybody – even if a scientific body – calls after us as we pass along the mountain-path, we shall return no other answer than the very sufficient one made under similar circumstances by the hero of Mr. Longfellow's popular ballad. And if, like that unhappy young man, we are doomed to perish in our attempt, I do not fancy our last moments will be seriously embittered by the absence of such consolations as a barometer or a spirit-level might have afforded.

CHAPTER V.

EAST OF THE BERNINA

TARASP AND THE LIVIGNO DISTRICT– Comest thouTo see strange forests and new snowsAnd tread uplifted land?Emerson.THE PRÄTIGAU – VERSTANKLA THOR – TARASP – PIZ PISOC – PASSO DEL DIAVEL – LIVIGNO – MONTE ZEMBRASCA – PASSO DI DOSDÈ – VAL GROSINA

In the last two chapters I have sketched a route from the highway of traffic and tourists – the Rhine valley – to the Italian Alps, passing to the west of the crowded roads which lead to the Upper Engadine. My design now is to point out a similar track lying to the east both of the Julier and the Albula, which by means of variations may be made equally available either for the foot or carriage traveller.

Our starting-point is the station of Landquart, some miles beyond Ragatz and short of Chur, and opposite the opening of the long, deep Prätigau.

Above the gorge which secludes this side valley from the Rheinthal a car-track mounts to Seewis, an upland village with 'Pensions,' frequented in summer by Swiss guests, whence the ascent of the Scesa Plana, an isolated block commanding a wide panorama, and enclosing in its recesses a large mountain lake – the Luner See – is often made.

This frontier valley rivals as a specimen of Swiss pastoral scenery the more famous spots in Canton Bern. Its villages, surrounded by fat, wide-spreading meadows of the brightest green, and overshadowed by noble walnuts, wear on the outside an air of long peace and prosperity. The interiors do not contradict the first impression. In the wayside inns one finds rich brown panelled walls decorated here and there with armorial bearings, old mirrors and carved presses. Mountainous stoves tower in peak form to the ceiling, and are cased in tiles, each of which represents some Scripture scene in a style often remarkable both for vigour and humour.

After twenty-four miles of tolerably continuous ascent the road reaches the upper expanse of the Prätigau and the scattered hamlets of Klosters. The scenery is of a character more common in Tyrol than Switzerland. Although it does not awe by sublimity or enchant by richness and variety, it is yet thoroughly Alpine.

Behind a foreground of level meadows and green but bold hillsides the glaciers and snow-peaks shine modestly but invitingly in the distance. They are not, as in the Bernese Oberland, magnificently rampant intruders on the pasturages, but quiet, stream-nursing benefactors, whose acquaintance is never forced on you, and must be sought out with some trouble.

Consequently the charm of such valleys is a self-contained peacefulness; and a troop of cows rather than a herd of chamois represents the animal life in harmony with their sentiment.

At the bridge of Klosters, in 1866, my companion deserted me for England. Francis and I wanted to turn south again to the Engadine, and we determined to take a glance by the way at the retiring beauties of the Silvretta Ferner. This considerable glacier group, scarcely known to Englishmen, runs parallel to the Lower Engadine, separating that valley from the Tyrolese Montafun and Paznaun Thal, and abutting at its western end against the head of the Prätigau. The Swiss Alpine Club made it one year the scene of their summer excursion, and have conquered most of its peaks and passes. At their instigation a hut has been built four and a half hours from Klosters, close to the glaciers, and there we intended to pass the night.

A new inn and pension was just opened on the left bank of the stream, and I did not long remain without society in the salon. First appeared an invalid from the Baths of Serneus, who speedily broke down my German by preferring to talk of war-politics rather than of mountains. Next came a gentleman from Chur bound for Davos, who puzzled me still more by launching into what he gave me to understand was English. Last of all the local guide turned up, armed with testimonials from the Swiss Alpine Club, and aghast at the notion of any traveller crossing the glaciers without his aid. Finding the native willing to accompany us on very moderate terms, and being one too few for a glacier pass, we readily agreed to take him.

Above Klosters the path is level for some distance, and leads through thick woods rich in ferns and flowers. After passing the mouth of the Vereina Thal the forest grew thinner and we reached the châlets of the Sardasca Alp, standing at the true head of the valley on a level meadow where several streams poured down to form the Landquart. A steep hillside was now climbed by sharp zigzags; then, a stream and track leading to an easy pass into the Fermont Thal having been left, the path wound along the hillside until it met the water flowing from the great Silvretta Glacier.

A short distance higher a pole was conspicuously fixed on a large boulder, and a few yards further back we found the hut in a sheltered hollow scarcely 300 yards from the end of the glacier. It was sufficiently large and proof against wind and rain, as we had afterwards good reason to know; but the furniture was scanty and in bad repair. Two benches and a hay-bed were all we found, and there was no stove.

However, this did not matter much for the night. But before we went to sleep the wind had begun to howl, and next morning when we opened the door a great, white gust rushed in, and all without was a seething mist alive with snow-flakes.

Unless we decided to return, there was nothing for it but to make our provisions hold out by submitting to an orthodox 'Vendredi Maigre,' and to amuse ourselves as best we could by toasting cheese and carving wood. Fortunately an inkbottle was discovered which materially alleviated our position. I have heard under similar circumstances of a chess-board being constructed by means of a lead pencil, and the game played with pieces of black bread and cheese appropriately carved; but two are required for this diversion.

About midday we made a hopeless and rather feeble 'sortie,' which the snow-storm speedily repulsed. Two peasants who had brought up wood for the hut paid us a visit in the course of the day, and a stray cow-boy dropped in later for an afternoon call.

To our great delight Saturday, though still cloudy, promised better weather, and we left our prison at 5 A.M. and soon reached the broad ridge of rocks separating the Silvretta and Verstankla Glaciers. It was not our intention to cross the Silvretta Pass, but to find a shorter way to the Engadine through the gap at the head of the Verstankla Glacier, and to descend by the Tiatscha ice-fall22 into Val Lavinuoz – a course which we did not believe to have been previously taken.

Substitute the Cimes Blanches for the Silvretta Pass, the short cut from Zermatt to Breuil near the Matterhorn for the pass we aimed at, and the Val d' Aosta for the Lower Engadine, and anyone who knows the Zermatt district will understand the relation of the two routes. Only of course the lateral glens of the Lower Engadine are much shorter than the side valleys of Val d' Aosta.

The Verstankla Glacier lies lower than the Silvretta, and to avoid a descent we kept on the spur between them to the point where it was buried by an ice-cascade overflowing from the larger to the smaller flood. We crossed the fall diagonally, and found ourselves in an upper basin of snow, and close to a narrow gap between the splendid crags of the Schwarzhorn and the far lower Gletscherkammhorn. This was our Pass, the Verstankla Thor, already christened but not crossed by Swiss climbers. The view was limited, but wonderfully snowy; on every side stretched broad, white glaciers and dark snow-powdered rocks, and on the south Piz Linard stood up, a bold, isolated pyramid against the blue sky.

We soon reached the spot where the glacier first plunges towards Val Lavinuoz in an ice-fall which in 1865 had turned back Herr Weilenmann, one of the best climbers in the Swiss Club. It made an attempt, at least, to frighten us. We had not reached the open crevasses when François, who was leading, suddenly disappeared like a sprite in a pantomime. There was no great shock given to the rope, but a considerable one to the feelings of the Klosters guide. François had lighted on a ledge, and after popping up his head for a moment to reassure us, withdrew it again down the trapdoor to look for the pipe which had been knocked out of his mouth by the fall. The treasure recovered, our leader was helped out of his hole and we went on. An incident like this, trivial as it is in fact and in telling, is so only because the rope is used, and properly used; had we been unattached, or walking too near one another, the consequences might easily have been very different. If any Alpine novice wishes to learn how to have and to describe moments of 'intensivsten Schrecken' he may turn to Herr Weilenmann's 'Aus der Firnenwelt,' and read how, on almost the same spot, the Swiss climber, walking with the rope in his hand instead of round his waist, nearly lost his life.

We found a fairly easy way through some fine snow-castles and ice-labyrinths to the rocks on the eastern side of the fall. The cliffs close to the glacier are precipitous, but a commodious ledge leads round to some beds of avalanche snow, down which it is easy to glissade. The lower glacier is smooth, and below its end we had a very pleasant walk down Val Lavinuoz, with views of the noble mass of Piz Linard immediately overhead. The glen soon opened, at Lavin, on the high-road of the Lower Engadine, which we reached in 4½ hours' walking from the hut – so that our short cut is not liable to the charge, usually brought against Alpine short cuts, of being considerably longer than the ordinary road.

Lavin, in 1869, suffered the usual fate of Engadine villages, by being burnt to the ground. It is consequently a new hamlet, with substantial, stone-built cottages and broad expanses of whitewash. In their passion for whiteness and cleanness, fresh paint and bright flowers, and, I may add, in a certain slow persistency of character, the eastern Swiss seem to me the Dutch of the mountains. The neighbourhood of Piz Linard makes Lavin a desirable resting-place for climbers. Horses can be taken for three hours in the ascent, and a path has, I believe, been made up to the last rocks.23 This taller rival of Piz Languard deserves more attention from strangers than it has yet received.

But the ordinary tourist will hasten on until he reaches the great bathing-place of the Lower Engadine, which, if it has not yet equalled St. Moritz in popularity, is only behindhand because in the present generation there are more Hamlets than Falstaffs, more nervous and excitable than fat natures, and consequently a greater call for iron than for saline waters.

The Baths of Tarasp are so named from the commune in which they are situated. Between Tarasp and Schuls, on the verge of Switzerland and within a few miles of the Austrian frontier at Martinsbruck, a number of mineral springs issue from the ground on both sides of the Inn. Their properties are various, but the most in repute with patients are of a strongly saline character. Of late years a large bath-house – the largest in Switzerland, as advertisements continually inform us – has been built near to the principal sources.

The first disease on the long list prepared by the local doctor of those likely to be benefited by a course of the waters is 'general fattiness.' Hither, accordingly, from the furthest parts of Germany, and even from Spain and Denmark, repair a crowd of patients to seek relief from the bonds of the corpulency to which nature or their own appetites have condemned them.

In short, if St. Moritz is, as Mr. Stephen thinks, the limbo of Switzerland set apart for the world – that is, for kings, millionaires and people who travel with couriers – Tarasp is its purgatory, providentially created for the class whom the flesh has rendered unfit for such Alpine paradises as Grindelwald, or even Pontresina.

The bath-house, planted as it is beside the river at the bottom of a steep-sided trench, in a position very like a deep railway cutting, is never, I think, likely to become a favourite resort of mountaineers. It is difficult even to feel mountain enthusiasm in an establishment tenanted chiefly by invalids or Italians whose walks are limited to the extent of their own bowl's throw. The social atmosphere of the place is, as might be expected, utterly unalpine. The use of guides is unknown, as excursions are habitually undertaken in carriages and have villages for their object; riding-horses for ladies are a rare luxury, and their owners attempt to bargain that they shall never be taken off the car-roads of the valley.

It is only fair, however, to say that travellers need not stay at the Baths. They have the choice of two neighbouring villages, at both of which inns have sprung up of late years. Neither of these situations, however, struck me as attractive. Schuls, on the left bank of the Inn, lies on a bare hillside at a considerable distance from the commencement of all the pleasantest walks; while the pensions at Vulpera, although better placed for excursions, look straight on to the dreary slopes behind Schuls, a prospect to which eyes accustomed to other Alpine scenery will scarcely reconcile themselves.

The neighbourhood of Tarasp is not, however, so wholly ugly as appears probable to the traveller who arrives at the bath-house by the high-road. The slopes on the northern side of the valley remain, it is true, from whatever point they are seen, amongst the most naked and featureless in the Alps, and the knobs which crown the lower spurs of the Silvretta Ferner can only by an extreme stretch of courtesy be called peaks. But the natural features of the country on the opposite bank of the Inn are far bolder and more varied. There the ground rises above the river in a succession of wooded banks and grassy terraces, cut by the deep ravines of torrents issuing from wild lateral glens. Copses of birch and fragrant pine-woods afford shelter to a host of rare ferns and wild flowers, while the sides of the path are garlanded with dog-roses blooming with a profusion and brilliancy peculiar to the spot.

On the lowest and broadest of the meadow-shelves or terraces stands the hamlet and castle of Tarasp; the latter a whitewashed building perched on a rocky knoll, and mirrored in a shallow tarn. Seen from a certain distance, it forms a picturesque element in the foreground. From this point, where an hotel ought to be built, a charming forest-path follows the right bank of the Inn to Steinhaus, and numerous sledge-tracks, commanding fine views of the stern limestone peaks which encircle the entrance to the Scarl Thal, lead to upper shelves of the mountain.

The Piz Pisoc, Piz St. Jon, and Piz Lischanna, are in their own way really fine objects, challenging, of course, no comparison with the snow-clad giants of the Upper Engadine, but rather recalling to mind some of the wilder and least beautiful portions of the Venetian Alps.

Piz Lischanna is easy of ascent, and nourishes a glacier oddly described in 'Bradshaw' as 'the finest of the higher glaciers of Switzerland.' It is in fact a broad ice-lake which rests sluggishly on its uplifted limestone platform, and, finding sufficient difficulty to maintain existence where it is, has not energy enough to make a push for the valley. A slight increase of temperature – say to the climate of Primiero – would melt its masses and lay bare the rocky bed.

Piz Pisoc, the highest of the group, enjoyed for long a local reputation for inaccessibility, until, in 1865, Fluri took the trouble to come down from Pontresina, and, untroubled with any impediment in the way of 'herrschaft,' but with for companion a young native of Schuls, who has since left the country, planted a flag on the summit. This is not the only first ascent that has been made by Pontresina men on their own account: two of them repeated the unusual proceeding afterwards on Piz d' Aela near Bergun. One ought to be glad, I suppose, to see such evidence of a genuine love of sport in a class sometimes represented as the unwilling victims of foreign gold. But to the Alpine clubman such conduct looks a little like the gamekeeper turning poacher, and selecting moreover the moment when his employer's game is nearly exhausted to go out by himself and shoot off the few remaining pheasants. And the mountaineer recollects further as an aggravation of the offence that maiden peaks cannot like pheasants be bred in the farmyard or sent down by the morning express from town. Fortunately for the Engadiners they are not subject to the jurisdiction of a bench of climbing county magistrates. From their own countrymen they have nothing to fear. Swiss 'Klubists' do not seem to find the point or interest of a 'first' ascent seriously diminished by the fact that their guides have made it beforehand; and as the guides of Pontresina have never got on particularly well with our countrymen they are quite right, perhaps, even from a professional point of view, in their practice.