CHAPTER XII.
I wish my travelling countrymen—and what land tarns ont such myriads of wanderers?—would betake themselves, in their summer rambles, to the Tyrol, rather than Switzerland. If the use of German be not as frequent with us as French, still very little suffices for the every-day necessities of the road; and while, in point of picturesque beauty, the tour is little, if any thing, inferior to Switzerland in all that regards the people, the superiority of the Tyrolese is without a question.
Switzerland—save in some few remote spots of the German cantons, and these not generally worth the visiting—is a land of extortion and knavery. The whole country is laid out pretty much as St. Paul’s in London used to be, some years back—so much for the Aisle, so much for the Whispering Gallery, so much for the Ball, &c. Each mountain, each glen, every glacier and snow-peak, has its corps of guides, farming out by a tariff the wild regions of the roe and the chamois, and vulgarising the features of nature to the level of the Colosseum in London, and its pasteboard avalanches.
This may be all very delightful for those junket-ting parties who steam up the Rhine on a three weeks’ excursion, and want to “do Switzerland” before they reach home—jogging to Chamouni in an omnibus, and riding up the Rigi in an ass-pannier. But to enjoy mountains—to taste really of the exquisite sense of impressive solemnity a wild mountain-scene can suggest,—give me the Tyrol—give me the land where the crashing cataract is heard in the midst of unbroken stillness—where, in the deep valleys, the tinkling bell of the herd sounds for miles afar—where, better than all, the peasant is not degraded from his self-respect to become a hanger-on of each stranger that he sees, but is still a peasant, stout of heart and limb, ready to do the honours of his humble châlet if you cross his threshold, but not bartering his native hospitality for gold! What a fine national character is made up of that sturdy independence—that almost American pride of equality—with the devoted loyalty to their sovereign! How admirably does the sense of personal freedom blend with obedience to the Kaiser! How intimately is love of country bound up with fealty to the country’s king! O Austria! if all thy subjects were like these, how little need you fear revolutionary Poles or reforming Popes! The sounds of the national sign, “Gott erhalte unser Kaiser!” would drown the wildest cry that ever Anarchy shouted.
The gifted advocates of Progress and Enlightenment, who write in Penny Magazines and People’s Journals, may sneer at the simple faith of a people who recognise a father in their monarch—who are grateful for a system of government that secures to them the peaceful enjoyment of their homes and properties, with scarcely the slightest burden of taxation.
Such travellers as Inglis may record conversations with individuals disposed to grumble at the few opportunities for social convulsion and change; but, taking the mass of the people, judging from what is palpable to every sojourner in the land, where does one see less of poverty—where so much contentment, so much of enjoyment of life, such a general feeling of brotherhood in every rank and class?—where are the graceful virtues of charity and kindliness more conspicuous?—and, above all, where is there so little of actual crime?
It may be said, the temptations are not so great to breaches of law where a general well-being prevails, where each has enough for his daily wants, and life displays no inordinate ambitions. I am willing to acknowledge all this; I cavil not for the cause—I only ask acceptance for the fact. If one would wish to see the boldest spirit of personal freedom united to implicit obedience to a ruler, the most stubborn independence of character with & courteous submission to the will of him recognised as superior, a manly self-reliance with a faithful trust that there are others better, wiser, and more far-seeing than himself,—then let him come to the Tyrol!
The Tyrol is, perhaps, the only part of Europe where any portion of romance still dwells—where the little incidents of daily life are tinctured with customs that derive from long ago—where facts of bygone days, traditions of their fathers’ time, are interwoven with the passing hour—and where primitive habits and tastes are believed to carry with them a blessing, as to those who honour their fathers’ memories. National gratitude is far more closely allied with individual gratitude than is usually believed. Under the shade of the great tree the little plant is often nurtured. It is easy to imagine well of the individual, where the masses are moved by noble aspirations.
Scarcely a valley, not a single defile here, is without Us historic glories—many of them as of yesterday, and yet, in their simple heroism, recalling a time when personal valour was of greater worth than strategic skill and science. I always regret that Scott, who understood mountains and those who dwell thereon so thoroughly, should never have made the Tyrol the scene of a romance.
Even among the “simple annals of the poor” here are little incidents eminently romantic in their character, while so distinctly national that they tell, in every detail, the mind of the people who enacted them.
How I should like once more to be young of heart and limb, and able to travel these winding glens and climb these mountain steeps as once I could have done! Even now, as I sit here in this little “Wirth’s-Haus,” how the old spirit of wandering comes back ‘again as I watch the peasant, with his long staff in hand, braving the mountain side, or standing for a second on some rocky peak, to gaze down into the steep depth below—that narrow valley filled by road and river.
“Gott hat sein plan Für Jedenmann.”
What a road is that from Landeck to Meran!—at once the most beautiful and the grandest of all the Tyrol passes. The gorge is so narrow, that it seems rather like a deep channel cut by the river itself; where, on either side, hundreds of feet in height, rise the rocks—not straight, but actually impending above the head, leaving, in some places, the ravine narrower above than beneath.
Escarped in this rock, the road winds on, protected by a little parapet along the edge of the precipice. Beneath, at a depth to make the head dizzy to gaze at, is seen the river, whose waters are of a pale sky-blue, the most delicate and beautiful colour I ever beheld. As the necessities of the road require, you have to cross the river; more than once, on wooden bridges, which in themselves are curious for their ingenuity of construction, if one could think of aught save the grandeur of the scene around them.
At the second of these bridges, called the Pontlatzer
Brücke, the ravine grows wider, and open, a distant prospect of the “Kaunser-Thal,” backed by the tremendous glacier of Gebatsch. A glorious valley is it, with its grouped cottages and village spires studded along the plain, through which the Inn winds its rapid stream, its surface still ruffled and eddying from the deep descent of the Fünstermünze.
Above the Pontlatzer Brücke, high upon a little table-land of the mountain, stands a small village—if even that humble name be not too dignified for the little group of peasant-houses here assembled. This, called the “Kletscher,” derives its title from a mountain torrent which, leaping from cliff to cliff, actually divides the village into two portions, over each of which, with pretty fair equality, it distributes its spray and foam, and then plunges madly down, till, by a succession of bounds and springs, it reaches the river Inn beneath. The Kletscher, it must be owned, deserves its name: it is at once the most boisterous and foam-covered torrent of the whole region, and, as frequently in its course it pierces the soft rock of the mountain, the roaring stream echoes more loudly still beneath these natural bridges. These, however, are not the only sounds which greet the ear on nearing the spot: the whole air is tremulous with the thumping and crashing noise of saw-mills, every second cottage having one of these ingenious contrivances at work; and thus, between the roaring torrent itself and its forced labour, such a tremendous uproar is created, that the uninitiated are completely stunned.
It is, indeed, a curious transition from the deathlike stillness of the pine forest, the unbroken silence of the steep path by which you wend your way upward, to emerge at once into this land of active life and turmoil, to see here, high amidst the Alps, where the roe and chamois are wild and free—to see here a little colony busied in all the arts of life, and carrying their industry into the regions of cataract and glacier.
What animation and movement on every side does that bright flowing torrent carry with it! The axe of the wood-cutter—the rustling branches sweeping, as twenty or thirty peasants tug some mighty pine-tree along—the hacking clink of the bark adzes—the voices of the children gathering and peeling the bark, and, above and through all, the heavy throbbing of the mill-timbers, shaking the frail sheds and even the very cottages with their giant strokes! There is a character of enterprise in the selection of such a wild spot irresistibly captivating. One cannot look upon those hardy peasants without a sense of respect and admiration for those who have braved climate and danger—and such there is—to seek a livelihood and a home, rather than toil in indigence and dependence in the valley beneath.
The Kletscher is not picturesque for situation only. Its houses, built of the pine-wood, are covered over with a kind of varnish, which, while it preserves the colour, protects the timber from the effects of weather. Each story is flanked externally by a little gallery, whose ornamental balustrades display their native skill in carpentry, and are often distinguished by grotesque carvings, executed with an ability that none but a Tyroler could pretend to. The door and window-frames, too, are finished in the same taste; while, instead of other designation, each cottage is known by some animal of the owner’s selection, which stands proudly above the door-porch: and thus some old white-headed Bauer of eighty winters is called the Chamois; a tart-looking, bitter-faced Frau, his neighbour, being known as the Lamb; a merry little cheerful-eyed peasant being a Buffalo; and the schoolmaster—I blush to write it—diffusing “Useful Knowledge” under the sign of a braying Donkey.
Animated and cheerful as the scene is by day, alive with all the instincts and sounds of happy labour, I like bettor to look upon it by night, when all is calm and still, and nothing but the plash of the waterfall stirs the air—to see these quaint old houses, with their sculptured pinnacles and deep-shadowing eaves sleeping in the mellow moonlight—mill and miller sunk in slumber—not a footstep nor a voice to be heard, save one, the village watchman, going his nightly round, chanting his little verse of assuring comfort to the waking ear, and making the sleeper’s dream a peaceful one.
See how he moves along, followed by his little dog, sleepy-looking and drowsy as its master! He stands in front of that cottage—it belongs to the Vorsteher, or ruler of the Dorf. Power has its privileges even here, and the great man should know how the weather fares, and what the hour is, if, perchance, the cares of state have kept him waking, as Homer tells us that they can. Now he has ended his little song, and he wends his way over the bridge of a single plank that spans the torrent; he slowly descends the flight of stone steps, slippery with falling spray, and, guided by the wooden railing, he treads the narrow path along the edge of the cliff, which, nearly perpendicular, stands over the valley of the Inn. There is a little hut here—a very poor and humble one, the very poorest of the whole village—and yet it is before the door of this lowly dwelling that the “Nachtwachter” stands at midnight each night throughout the year, and then, as he calls the hour, he cries, “Hans Jörgle, good night!—rest soundly, Hans Jörgle!”
Who can be this Hans Jörgle, for whose peaceful slumber authority is watchful? If you care for the answer of the question, you must listen to a story—if I dare to call by so imposing a name the following little narrative—which, for want of better, I shall call