Leave Thun—Zweizemmen—The wrong road—Château d’Œx—Gruyères—The Préfet’s ball—Anniversary of the Virgin’s leaving school—Vevay—The patient Griselda’s obstinacy—The exploit—Villeneuve—The Valley of the Rhone—St. Maurice—The Theban legion—The Valais—The village buried—The Rhone overflowed—Former inundation—The old villager saved—St. Bernard—Story of its founder—Martigny—Riddes—Sion—The prelate’s murder—The family of the Rarons—The Mazza—Raron persecuted—Demands the aid of Duke Amedée—His castle burned—His wife driven forth—His revenge—The cretins of Sierre.
Left Thun the 9th, at eleven, as we waited till the morning fogs, which have now grown dense and cold, rolled up from the valley. The last bad weather, which to us brought rain, laid a light covering of snow on the mountain summits, which the natives say is a favourable sign. Madame Rufenacht remains a desolate widow. Madame R. and Mrs. H—— left (wisely) some hours before us, as the mist no sooner rises than the heat becomes intense. The road was for some distance that we had ridden towards Interlaken; it turns off where the river Kander comes dashing along its stony defile, and beneath its covered wooden bridge, to the lake. Our route skirted its precipices, and is very lovely where, at the entrance of the valley of the Simmenthal, the wooded base of the Niesen and the Stockhorn’sr crags leave barely space for the road and the torrent, which a one arched bridge spans. We found at Erlenbachr Mr. ——, who was to be our companion on this day’s journey, and, to our regret, this day’s only; as he is light-hearted and light-footed, all annoyance, and most fatigue, finding him invulnerable. Near the village was an extensive horse and cattle fair, through which, without the assistance of his mountain pole and his hand on her rein, it would have been difficult to guide Fanny unharmed, particularly as, when they stood “betwixt the wind and her nobility,” she took a sly opportunity of biting two four-footed plebeians. Weissenburg is picturesquely situated beside the torrent. We crossed it a few steps further on a wooden bridge, where horses pay a toll of a batz each, which the receiver, in her fly cap, ran after us to levy. The path to the baths winds up the hill on the right hand.
Further on, the river forms a pretty cascade, boiling and bounding over its stones below the precipitous road. Stopped at Zweizemmen, twenty-seven miles from Thun, a village of wooden houses with a wooden inn, and nothing to eat. It was unfortunately too late to go further, as the horses were the only individuals passably lodged and in any degree fed. With the exception of a damp, limp loaf and a plate of nuts, our supper presented an uneatable variety, and I was obliged to confess that I had left comfort behind when I preferred the romantic route of the Simmenthal to that by Berne and Fribourg. A quantity of wearing apparel, very far from new, hung round my bed-room, which the servant, with German phlegm, said “could not derange me as I lay in bed,” and I had some trouble to get removed in consequence. These wooden mansions are like a sounding board, for, while I was dressing this morning, I heard distinctly, as if she had been in the room, a lady in the next admonishing her daughter, and D—— and Mr. —— conversing at breakfast below; forming a tower of Babel colloquy. We had such coffee as the French call eau trouble, its few grounds floating to the top; and dismissed the unborn chickens presented for eggs. Our acquaintance parted from us here, hiring a car as far as Château d’Œx, whence he was to take the footpath to Vevay across the Dent de Jaman. We started after him, and on the wrong road, no one belonging to the Wooden Crown attempting to set us right. Over blocks of stone, and by a way which grew steep and narrow as a mule-path, we toiled debating whether we had mistaken, or this was indeed what the natives called a passable bridle-road. I asked a peasant at a cottage window, “Is this the road to Saanen?” “Ya,” said the dame composedly, pointing her hand with the stocking dangling from it to the sharp ascent scattered over with lumps of crag large enough to break a horse’s leg.
Looking down in despair, we could distinguish another road far away on the other side of the torrent and the valley. “Is that the road to Saanen?” I shrieked to a man who was driving a goat.
“Ya, ya.”
“And this we are going?”
“Ya.” So seeing no further information likely, we led the horses down this stone ladder in search of the new road, returning to the village which it skirts without entering; leaving me a hope that its completion will in no way serve the abominable Wooden Crown of Zweizemmen. It is a grand work, a broad splendid causeway for a long distance cut along the face of the rock several hundred yards above the torrent, but without the semblance of a parapet, a circumstance of which Fanny’s starts often reminded me. It crosses the stream a dozen times over handsome bridges built of stone. One of the principal of these is yet in progress, and a young German at work on the road pointed to the steep sheep-track which dips suddenly down to the torrent’s edge, and a narrow path which followed its windings. Not much liking the itinerary, we asked whether horses might not pass over, but the German, who spoke a little English, saying, “Peoples, only peoples,” down obediently we went, passing under the bridge, and pausing in the loveliest ravine in the world, with its clear rushing water and mountain sides covered with pines, those near us brilliant in light and black in shadow; and the faint mist shedding a blue tinge over the further and higher forests; the bold arch flung over at a considerable elevation, still surrounded by its wooden framework, and all the workmen, variously and picturesquely attired, crowding to the edge to look down on the apparition of Fanny pawing in the water. Continuing to follow its banks, there being neither guide nor finger-post, we crossed a wooden bridge, without rails, broad enough for one horse at a time, and high enough to break our necks perfectly. The glen and the path grew narrower, till at last we came on a party of workmen, whose cart, laden with stones, completely blocked our passage, and the horses, which we tried to force into the water, refused to stir, inasmuch as they did not know its depth, and the crags it foamed over were visible.
The cart, from which the horses had been taken, was immoveable, despite the united efforts of the civil Germans—rather a fortunate circumstance, as, on asking the question, we found we were not likely to arrive that way at Saanen. One of the men left his work to conduct us back to the bridge without parapets, and up a narrow, slippery, and perpendicular road, ranging over the admired ravine, which happily brought us to a level with the new bridge, and beyond it on the way to Saanen, to which unpicturesque place we arrived by a short cut, for once successful.
At the next village, we left the Canton Berne for the Canton Vaud. Before entering the latter at Rougemont, from another stone bridge, we saw a lovely assemblage of torrent and mountain—one range all snow, the rest with a robe of green pastures and a crown of pine forests. Fed the horses at Château d’Œx, a commanding feudal situation when it belonged to the lords of Gruyères, perched on an eminence in the plain, backed by wild crag and mountain.
The road crosses the Saane and enters a narrow pass called Latine. Montbovon, the village which Lord Byron mentions, is here in the Canton Fribourg, and from it ascends the mule-path to the Dent de Jaman. Our own road was far from safe, and at present almost impassable for post-carriages, as for a considerable distance between the rock and precipice there would be no room to pass. We fortunately met only two carts, and had some trouble in leading our horses by, as there is no protection on the side of the precipice; the road rises and falls continually, cut through the rock and the pines, and high over the torrent. It continues thus for some miles, the stream and valley then widen, and grow calmer in their beauty. No one along these new roads, undivided by league-stones, has an idea of distance. We were told two leagues for the last fifteen miles, and we were weary and the sun low when we came in sight of Gruyères, and admired its old castle and town high on the hill, below which we wound. On the authority of the Baumgarten, having reckoned on twenty-five miles, we found we had ridden forty-two. As the last faint light was disappearing, we crossed the last stream with its border of pines, and near the watch-tower of Trême, built on a rock, with an arch by its side and dirty habitations round, and, to my extreme satisfaction, arrived at the Cheval Blanc; and little Fanny, recollecting her bed of a month ago, walked straight to the stable-door.