From the summit of the Furka we descended to the Rhone glacier by one of the zigzag mountain roads. Looking down over the edge, we could see below, the ways we were yet to follow on the mountain face before accomplishing the descent. The horses dashed down at a flying pace. The inclination of the road was not sufficient to alarm; but the turns are always so frightfully abrupt as to make it seem as though the leader must dash off. But no; he invariably swung around just upon the outer edge, held, it seemed sometimes, by the traces, and with a crack of the driver's whip was off again before our fears, if we had any, could find words.
One of these abrupt turns fairly hangs over the glacier, where the icy river has fallen into broken masses from a higher point, before spreading out in the narrow valley just here where it ends. Only a short distance from the foot of the glacier is the inn, with its scattered out-buildings, where we were to spend the night. The sheer descent from the summit of the Furka is only about half a mile; but though our horses had galloped the whole distance, and the inn was in sight all the time, we were three hours reaching it; so many turns did the road make upon the face of the mountain.
It was a gloomy valley, shut in by mountains, and surrounded by lesser hills all soaked and dripping with icy streams that chilled the air. We gained the foot of the glacier from the inn by a rough path over and among the rocks, and stones, and heaps of gravel it had brought down and deposited here. From beneath the solid mass of ice flowed a hundred shallow streams, which, uniting, form the beginning of the River Rhone. We penetrated for a short distance the gallery cut into the glacier, surrounded and shut down upon by the walls and ceiling, of a deep blue color, and were preceded by an old man, who awoke the echoes by uttering a series of broken cries. What with the echoes and horrible chill, the place seemed most unearthly, and we were glad to retreat.
The roar of torrents, and hardly less thunderous noise of departing diligences, awakened us the next morning. We were soon off upon the road, skirting the mountains, rolling through the pleasant valleys, and passing village after village now. They seemed silent and deserted, their occupants perhaps busy in the fields, or serving at the inns, or among the mountains as guides. One was a mass of ruins, thrown down in the bed of a torrent, among which a few dull-faced peasants were at work, with a hopeless, aimless air, that promised little. A mountain stream, swollen to a flood by melting snows, had swept it away in a night.
At noon we lunched at Viesch—a slipshod, unwashed village, by the side of the young Rhone, which so far, in its dirty, chalk-white color, was not unlike the white-headed children that played upon its banks. Some of the party left the horses to their noon rest, and strayed out upon the road beyond the village. On its outskirts was a fine new church, of stone. If only something of its beauty could but come into the every-day lives of the poor people here! We sat down upon the steps to wait. Across the road was an orchard, roughly fenced in; beside it one of the picturesque Swiss peasant houses—all steps, and queer old galleries, from which a little tow-headed girl stared out at us in open-eyed wonder, as we blew the down from the dried dandelions we had pulled along the way, and questioned if, in our far-off homes, our mothers wanted us!
It seemed as though we could descend no farther; and yet, after sweeping through a valley, a sudden turn would disclose another, far below, to which this was as a mountain. So down we sped the whole day long; once by a frightfully-narrow zigzag road, the worst by far of any we had seen; passing still through the villages so charming in the distance, but dirty, and full of odors by no means pleasing, as we drew near. At night we rattled into the paved square before the inn at Brieg, just as the first drops of a coming shower wet its stones.
This was evidently something more than a village. The houses were plastered, instead of being of wood with a rich, burnt-sienna color, like those we had seen along the road through the day. They were thickly clustered together, and from their midst rose the four turrets of a chateau. Our inn was a delightfully-dingy old place. It had been an Ursuline convent, and abounded in queer, dark passages, rough stone stairways, and old wooden galleries overlooking the square. One of our rooms had been a part of the convent chapel, and was still lighted by a window just beneath the groined roof. Here we braided our hair, and knotted our ribbons, and dreamed, in the twilight that followed the rain, of the hopeless ones who had sought comfort in other days within these walls, and fell asleep at last, knowing full well that the fringe of many an old prayer was still caught and held in the arches high over our heads. We walked up through the town the next morning, to the beginning of the Simplon Pass. Somewhere in the narrow streets we passed the old chateau, and pressed our faces against the bars of a gate, in order to gain some idea as to the domestic economy of the family which had bestowed upon Brieg its air of importance. But the chateau had degenerated into a brewery, and the court-yard was filled with old carts, clumsy and broken.
Farther up the hill the door of a little chapel stood invitingly open, waiting for stray worshippers, or a chance-burdened heart (for even so far away as Brieg, hearts do grow heavy, I doubt not). Something in its narrow, whitewashed poverty touched our sympathies. It is rare indeed in these countries to find a chapel without at least some votive offering to make it beautiful in the eyes of the simple people: here was only a crucifix, and we pleased ourselves with the fancy that when the ships come in that we sent out as children—laden with hopes that were to be bartered for treasures—we would return, and hang the walls with pictures, and make the whole place wonderful in the eyes that had seen only its bareness. The shower the night before had laid the dust, and the drive that morning was most enjoyable. Following the course of the noisy Rhone, we reached Sierre at noon, where we left the carriages with regret, and took the railway train to Martigny.