Fanny sometimes started at a pine trunk fallen on her path, or a cow feeding above us with its tinkling bell, or obstinately refused to pass some unfamiliar object, such as the poor priest who, book in hand, was summoning a dozen white goats from the pinnacles on which they were perched feeding, and who came bounding from crag to crag at his call. At such times, to distract her attention, we cantered along through the sunshine and sweet air, acknowledging its influence, for on the broad road there was little danger; it is certain the mind has less energy, and the body feels more fatigue, on the plain. Somewhere hereabouts we crossed a bridge of planks without parapets, not dangerous however. Here also a stream gushes from the rock, and passes under to foam and lose itself among the pine trees,—some standing to fringe its shores, others, broken by its force, lying at its feet to do it homage. It is one of the sweetest glimpses on the Valais side of Berisol. The last named place consists of two houses, connected by a roof which crosses the road; and here we passed more carriages, ourselves proud and rejoicing in the lesser weight which enabled us to desert them all. Continuing to mount higher, our way became more wild till we had passed the pine region, and the crags were clothed with rhododendron only, whose blossoms lent beautiful tints to the far mountain side. Here and there we saw a solitary tree broken by some avalanche, or raising boughs withered and whitened by the ungenial climate. But the sterility is almost total near the Gallery of Schalbet, the first which we traversed: it is hollowed through a rock which obstructed the passage of the road, here cut along the verge of the precipice and edge of the bare mountain, narrower and without barriers.
From the fifth refuge, which immediately follows this cavern of ninety-five feet long, to the summit, is the place of peril in the time of tourmentes and avalanches. I looked with some attention to the snow, which, lately fallen, had accumulated thick and far above our heads, and to the track of the avalanches, now marked by stream and torrent, which rush down the chasms uttering their ominous roar, repeated and prolonged by all the mocking echoes of the mountain. We were beneath the glaciers of the Kalt Wasser, and, to afford adequate protection to the road they threaten, two houses of refuge, three galleries, and an hospital, have been erected within a brief distance. The second of these galleries passes beneath one of the mighty falls, and our horses started to find themselves wet with its spray, as, carried over the roof, it dashes down before one of the apertures which light it.
The longest of these glacier galleries has been blasted through the living rock, within which it turns, and damp and cold it is as a dungeon—the water distilling through the fissures in its roof, forming in winter long needles of crystal, but now dropping mercilessly on our heads, changing the soil to a sea of mud; and the draught of air striking a chill so penetrating, that to save the horses from harm, we trotted them the one hundred and thirty feet which form the length of this gloomy cavern.
A little further, we passed the sixth refuge, which is the toll-gate also. The receiver, who came running out, found time to tell that he had served in the Hanoverian guard, and fought at Waterloo, and also to cheat us of two francs per horse, the toll amounting to four for the two. It was twelve o’clock, he said, so that we had ascended in three hours, for here is the cross which marks the highest point of the road. It continues bare and wild; but down in the meadow, which seems rather to produce a kind of moss than grass, there are scattered a few wretched cottages; heaven knows what the inhabitants exist on. The hospice founded by Napoleon, and at present occupied by a few Augustine monks, is a fine-looking building without, but desolate and unfinished within. We were saluted as we rode by two of the lonely brothers, who were wandering on the irregular hillocks which surround it, bare of bush or verdure, surmounted by the unchanging snows. In the broad valley below our road, shut in by rocks naked as itself, rises on a mound the square six-storied building, or rather tower, which served for hospice ere this was instituted. A few cows were standing before it, chewing the cud—“of sweet and bitter fancies” it must have been,—for there appeared nothing to swallow bodily. It is said that the old barons of Stockalper were in the habit of sending hither their children to preserve them from the baleful influence of the air of the plain: it still belongs to a proprietor of the same name.
From this place the road commences and continues to descend. We were among green and living things once more, and the milder temperature restored to activity that worst of all species of crawling fly which had already so persecuted our horses in the ascent, and, notwithstanding my long apprenticeship in fly murder, consequent on our ride, resisted all efforts to kill, being cased in armour, till I adopted suffocation, and therefore, for the benefit of future horse travellers, recommend that they be pressed between finger and thumb until death shall ensue.
Crossing a torrent on a bridge, at last, about two leagues from the summit, we entered the most dirty village of the Simplon, where we had decided to stop only to feed the horses, who were well able to end their day’s journey at Domo d’Ossola: it is built on a knoll above the rapid stream, commanding an unproductive valley. The houses, built in stone, take mellow and picturesque tints from the moss and lichens which clothe them, and winter lasting here during two-thirds of the year, the small garden, which each possesses, is cultivated almost in vain. The clearing of the snows and the transport of merchandise (for it has been calculated that at least two hundred horses pass weekly in the severe season) supply to its hardy inhabitants, the profit more easily won in other regions, preserving from the misery which would seem their doom. Traversing courageously heaps of manure and pools of abomination, D—— accompanied the horses to the stables, while I walked into the inn opposite, before which stood a collection of English and other carriages, and on the steps, in discussion or dispute, discomfited gentlemen and villanous-looking Italians. The house was crowded to overflow, a circumstance which appeared to improve neither its attendance nor the politeness of its landlady: for when I asked the last-mentioned fat personage for some refreshment, she handed me to her sharp-faced, thin daughter, who left me on the stairs, saying the salle was at the top, and disappeared, promising to ask the cook if he had anything to eat, which she said she believed he had not, owing to the immense influx of guests who had come thus far, unapprized of the road’s real state, and stayed from the impossibility of proceeding. As she did not come back, I found my way through corridors innumerable to the kitchen, and stood opposite the cook and his company of marmitons. Perhaps he felt mortified that the uninitiated should perceive the nakedness of the land, devoid of both food and fire; certainly he received me unamiably, proffering only a foot of raw beef sausage, and being sulky when I declined it; informing me that it had been five times the length, and all the remainder of the guests had been very glad to eat it raw. When I assured him, that although it might serve his house to spare fuel, it by no means suited me, he produced two shining slices of ham and a piece of bread, the last in the house; he said he had sent to Domo d’Ossola for more, and I returned in triumph to the eating-room, a little marmiton carrying the hot ham and dry crust behind me. I found there several disconsolate groups, and as companions in misfortune we were in five minutes acquainted: there were two American gentlemen, who from their accent I thought Irish, and from their kind politeness afterwards made me feel that Mrs. Trollope’s recital was not always fair; and an amiable English family, about to turn back, the extortion of the Italians who in the morning had asked 500f. for transporting their carriage, now raising it to 1000. The Americans had determined on going on, though every one assured them it was wholly impossible, and D—— said we might follow where they went: so, having given our horses proper repose, we mounted them again,—our new acquaintances having the start of us by about half an hour. For some distance the road was good and smooth, the first awkward-looking portion we approached being where it bends backward like the coil of a snake, beyond the village. The light carriage had passed; for close to the edge of the precipice were the marks left by its wheels, and as we led our horses over we agreed that the damage had been probably exaggerated, and we should want no guide. The gallery of Algaby, 115 feet long, conducted us from the more open space to the gorge of Gondo. In 1814 it was converted to a military post, and its entrance is half closed by a wall, pierced with loopholes to defend the pass. It is the most savage of stony glens: no sunshine in its recesses, for the cliffs rise to a height of more than 2200 feet; no vegetation, except you can call such the broken line of firs here and there seen on the tops of the bare black crags, so nearly met overhead, that
“The wanderer’s eye may barely view
The summer heaven’s delicious blue”—
their fragments lying in the stream, which frets against and over them with a roar so deafening, that we could not hear each other’s voices; as sometimes (I speak for myself), awed by the silence of all saving nature, we rode along a narrower road, guarded only by far severed granite posts, unconnected by pine trunks, advancing like a cornice on the edge of the rock and over the abyss,—proving, it is true, that the work of man has been mighty; but also showing, by the masses of crags scattered like chaff, and the rush of unnumbered waterfalls, which might bring destruction with them from the mountain top, how easily his skill may be baffled. Fanny’s sudden fright at one of these had very nearly closed my journal: while, in consequence of her starts, Grizzle placed outside as a bulwark, we were walking our horses, a sharp turn brought us suddenly on one of these cascades, bounding down a cleft in the rock and crossing the road, she swerved violently behind Grizzle and towards the edge, which of course she did not see, as her bright eye was fixed on the waterfall. The curb-stone was slippery with the spray, and we were within a foot of it; so close that I said, “We are going over;” but at the same time, from instinct, struck poor Fanny with all my force, and the pain made her bound forward, and pass the peril. D—— looked pale and frightened, it being one of the cases in which aid was impossible: I had not time to be afraid. The Ponte Alto, a superb bridge, which, with two enormous crags for support, spans the Doveria, conducts the road to its opposite shore. The still narrowing gorge is at every step more deep sunken and wild, almost resembling a cavern. We had passed a break on the road of small consequence, and had again commenced remarking on Italian exaggeration, when we arrived at a gap, some forty feet wide, cut by the rise of the Doveria. Hid in it were a few men, rather examining than repairing what would have required fifty. To our surprise we saw the marks of the carriage-wheels on the soft earth,—it had been dragged in and out again. We led our horses down the steep, the men significantly pointing to some holes through which we might have sunk too far,—and Fanny, whose rein I held, pulled me gallantly up on the other side. At the wooden bridge which, some steps farther, again traversed the torrent, we found our American acquaintances, tying up their pole which had broken there. We exchanged a few words: on their side promises of help, if help were needed, and thanks on ours, and a portion of undamaged road led us to the gallery of Gondo, 683 feet long, (according to guide-books), blasted through the rock, whose mass stood forth to bar the way: the two vast apertures, made towards the torrent, formerly lighted it but feebly, but this was not the case to-day,—for a part of its rocky roof and wall had been carried away also. Issuing at its mouth, we came, to my surprise, and not, considering my late adventure, to my pleasure, on the bridge, which immediately after crosses the superb waterfall of Frascinodi thundering down its immense volume from the high glacier, and along the hollow of the cliff below the arch with a spray which blinds and a roar which deafens, falling into the deep gulf, where, struggling among the crags, groans, as if in pain, the Doveria.
Having ridden down the abrupt descent which immediately follows, ere the bending of the road concealed this view, we turned to look at it once more. It is that of which we have so often seen drawings, the noblest in the Simplon: the graceful stone arch—the tall rocks and the chasm—the fall and the torrent,—and where the foam was not, the water in the basin it has hollowed in the crag, of that pale clear green seen in the crevices of a glacier.