At St. Christoph, which is almost at the top of the Arlberg, we stopped long enough to refresh ourselves with a glass of Tiroler wine, and were taken into a little chapel behind the inn to see a wooden statue of St. Christopher, who seems to be held in peculiar veneration in this region, being painted or carved in many churches and even on the walls of houses. This was a great creature of eight or nine feet, standing in the corner of the chapel, with glaring, beady eyes, glossy black painted hair, and a huge staff, to represent the pine-tree of the sweet old legend, in his hand; while on his shoulder was perched the child Jesus, with a face like a small doll. He was as funny and grotesque a saint as the world can boast, yet our hearts went strongly out to him when we learned what a very little peasant-boy it was who had made him with his pocket-knife out of a block of wood, and particularly when we observed his saintship's legs, never too symmetrical, but now hacked and chipped into utter deformity, and were told the reason. Every child in this neighborhood who must leave his mountain home takes a bit of St. Christopher with him as a talisman against homesickness. Poor little souls! Imagine them coming to say, “Lebewohl zu dem heiligen Christoph,” and tearfully hacking away in the region of his patellas and tibias and fibulas, because long ago they have removed the exterior of his stalwart members, and he will soon be dangerously undermined. His shoulders are sufficiently developed to bear considerable cutting down without perceptibly diminishing them; but I presume the little ones attack the region which they can most conveniently reach.
Lovely air and lovely hills! No wonder the children fear Heimweh will come to their hearts when they can no longer see the little village houses all huddled together round the church with the tall spire, while the green hills rise on every side, and the morning mists roll from them, and the evening glow warms and glorifies their cold, white summits, and the impetuous mountain torrent goes foaming by.
We felt premonitory symptoms of homesickness ourselves for those fair and noble heights, and we wanted very much to beg for a bit of St. Christopher's knee-pan. But they would not have given us an atom of the dear old, hideous, overgrown giant-saint, worthless heretics that we are.
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IN THE TYROL.
They said Landeck would not please us, but it did. They said it was not pretty, but it was. They said we would not stay there, but that is all they knew about it or us. In itself, so far as its houses are concerned, it is not attractive, it is true; but it lies in a very picturesque way on both banks of the Inn, which rushes and roars constantly at this point, and the hills around are bold and beautiful. It has its ancient castle, on the heights directly above the town; but the castle now is a failure, whatever proud tales its walls might tell us could they speak,—a failure even as a “ruin,” I mean. It is not very high, but the path is steep; and when you get to the top you wish you had remained below, for there is nothing to reward you. The view is no finer than you can have from almost any point here; and the castle is simply nothing to see, being only a few gray walls without form or comeliness, in the shade of which, the day we visited it, sat a few poor old women, who now occupy it, with snails and bats and wind and storm, rent free.
To Zams, the next village, you walk along the river road past fields of grain, where cornflowers and poppies are gayly growing, and the water hurrying from the mountains sings its loud, bold song, and everywhere around are the varied hues and heights of the Tyrolean Alps. At Zams there is a beautiful waterfall, which you must seek if you would see, for it hides itself from the world. Over a bridge, along the river road, then through lanes where there were more of the pretty cornflowers and gay poppies, past a group of cottages, a mill, a noisy brook, a mass of rugged cliffs, we strolled, the voice of the falling water calling us ever nearer and nearer, until suddenly at the last it was before us. The rocks conceal it on every side up to the last moment when you are directly at the foot of it,—one of the fine dramatic effects in which Mother Nature likes sometimes to indulge.
It falls with great force a hundred and fifty feet, perhaps,—this is a wild feminine guess, yet somewhere near the truth, I hope,—in a narrow, immensely swift stream, which, as it issues from the rock, runs a little diagonally. It has forced a passage through the rock, and when we saw it was sweeping through this aperture; but in stormy weather it hurls itself over the summit of the ledge, increasing its height many feet, and is magnificent in its fury. An experienced mountain-climber told us that there are a succession of these falls, of which this is the seventh and last, and the only one that can be seen without painful and dangerous climbing, they are so singularly concealed. The stream springs from the glaciers far away, and leaps from rock to rock in wild, unseen beauty. It seemed to speak to us of the lonely, frozen heights and solitude of its birthplace.
From Landeck to Innsbruck the scenery, taken all in all, though pleasing, is less bold and more monotonous than are many other parts of the Tyrol. There are many historical points of interest here, and reminders of the bravery of the mountaineers in different wars. You see where they stood high on their native hills hurling down trunks of trees and huge masses of rock on the invading Bavarians; and what this work of destruction failed to do, the sure aim of the Tyrolese riflemen effectually accomplished.
In one village they exhibit the room where Frederic Augustus, king of Saxony, died suddenly from the kick of a horse. Having no inordinate interest in his deceased majesty, we were quite content to gaze placidly at the outside of the house from the post-wagon, as we informed the man who tried to induce us to march in, pay our fees, and so increase the revenues of the inn. He was deeply disgusted, and evidently considered us persons of inferior taste.