Near Tourtemagnen, where there is a strange looking inn, but I hear comfortable notwithstanding, the beauty of the country wholly disappeared, for the road ran among pools and marshes—the melancholy cows standing to their knees in water to eat the high coarse grass which half grows, half floats, around—the few trees which have attained any size bent and blasted by the searching wind; the wretched stunted women, who would be prodigies of ugliness even without the goitre, were digging in the mud for the unwholesome potatoes which grew there.
The day had grown cold and foggy, and lighted sadly the late ravages of the Rhone—painfully visible; as its widened bed now dry once more swept over meadows and fields of Indian corn, and left, on its retreat, desolating heaps of stones and sand. We passed here and there a shattered mill and a ruined habitation—the owners mostly standing idly and hopelessly on the bank—a few striving to combat with misfortune, and reap the rotting harvest; or at least collect the logs flung to their feet on the shore—relics of bridges broken and scattered in the contempt of the waters they had spanned for a time. We compared it to a land visited by a curse;—the struggle seemed so unequal between earth’s frailest race and her heaviest disasters.
I think it is after passing a village of some miserable huts called St. Pierre, that it improves for a space—green pastures once more ascending to the pine forests, and neater wooden houses covered, for the first time, with trained vines. The peasants seemed miserable as ever, ragged, and famished, but a spice of coquetry remaining through it all, for the outwork of broad riband with a tinsel border eternally trimmed the low crown of the felt hat.
With the exception of this and one other portion of better land, the marshes stretch to Visp, and the thick air is impregnated with miasmas. Visp is built where the valley parts itself in two distinct branches. The one, down which rushes the torrent which gives its name to the village, leading to Monterosa; but it is the Haneck and not Monterosa whose white mass, seen from this spot, terminates the defile of the Moro. The Visp is here broad and rapid as the Rhone, yet this place, situated near their junction, is filthy as all villages in the catholic cantons,—their united streams cannot wash the blackamoor white.
After traversing the streets, our road wound grandly and perilously round the base of rocks blasted for its formation; but this portion passed, we were again amidst the marshes, and between Visp and Glys the overflow of the Rhone has done most damage, as it is hereabouts swollen by numberless tributary streams—most turbulent vassals. Our horses sank above the fetlock in soft mud, which covered the whole face of the valley: Indian corn and pumpkins floating on its surface. The ground floors of the deserted cabins were flooded, for through this desolate tract wound a stream whose deposits made pools deep and broad; and planted in the mud, or half drowned in the water, were several small wooden crucifixes and Madonnas, placed there to deprecate its further rise.
We passed through Glys, in whose church lie buried Georges of Flue and his twenty-three children. At the entrance-gate stands the Virgin Mary, the iron glory round her head resembling the snakes of Medusa; and over the portico is a painting of the heavenly Father, extending his mantle over multitudes of the faithful, who look like deformed children,—the native artist drew, alas! his inspiration from the goitre-afflicted and the cretin. The last bridge which we crossed over the Saltine leads directly to Brieg, and at the window of the hôtel de la Poste we saw the pretty face of Mrs. —— looking out to greet our coming. The pine log fire blazing in the wide hearth was agreeable this chill evening, and her voice and laugh aided to dispel the impressions left by the dull air of that desolate valley. There are rumours of the impossibility of crossing the Simplon, of roads injured and bridges broken by some recent storm—the postmaster’s son has been sent hence to verify their truth, and we wait his fiat.
It is decided that we are to go, the courier from Sierre having passed through Brieg at daybreak with news that the road is open.
September 21st., Domo d’Ossola.
After two days’ silence, I write again to give you a recital of adventures which have befallen us wayfarers. Our friends and ourselves, with the rest of the party assembled at Brieg, left after breakfast, and we hardly said good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. H——, in whose company we were to dine at Domo d’Ossola. The morning was cloudy and cool, changing to the loveliest of days. Half a mile above Brieg we passed the covered bridge which crosses the Saltine, and is the first of the works of the mountain, for it is on the direct road, which begins from Glys, but is seldom taken, as there is no inn there. At this spot they join, and the ascent grows steeper, turning away from the Glytzhorn, which bounds the valley on the right, towards its comrade the Breithorn. Our horses, at a walk, soon left behind the posters and heavy carriages, and we passed beneath a hill, at whose summit is a Calvary, the stations conducting thither peeping whitely out among the thick dark firs. The valley of the Rhone looked beautiful below, Brieg in the plain, the tin globes which surmount her minaret-like steeples shining in the sun as if his rays had kindled so many stars; behind the town and the high bridge which spans the Saltine, dashing towards the Rhone, arose the mountains—parted by the deep and narrow cleft whence the river issues; and again above these were the glaciers, their forms half concealed by the vapours which, as we ascended, partially veiled the range of Bernese Alps also, but made our road the lovelier;—where, skirting the precipice from the depths of the gorge through which the Saltine foams, they rose curling thin and delicate as the smoke from a cottage chimney, or, lying at our feet for a few moments, impenetrable as a floor, slowly opened to show the torrent, glittering among its black crags, and the green forests, all dew and sunshine. At several of the windings of the road, now steep but always smooth and broad, and almost always protected, we again hung over what seemed a miniature of Brieg and the valley as far as Tourtemagnen, till arrived at a certain height, it runs nearly on a level along the edge of the ravine of the Ganther to the bold bridge at its extremity. Beneath its arch, from the rocks which back it, rushes the torrent, forming a cascade in its leap, where in winter roll the avalanches. Crossing this bridge, we returned on a parallel line with that we had already gone on the opposite side of the valley: we could distinguish the carriages some miles behind. The route ascends thence in steep zigzags to Berisol, a post-house and poor inn.